PROLETARIAN
WRITING
FRANCIS: Where modern writing
is concerned, it would seem that the age is more spontaneous than ever before
and therefore, in a sense, more careless than ever before. Would you agree?
GERALD:
Yes, in a way I would. For spontaneity is pertinent to a comparatively advanced age, in
which intellectual dynamism has come to signify the appropriate momentum. Where, formerly, it was the body that was
especially active and the mind that remained relatively inert, nowadays it is
the converse which increasingly applies, and this is compatible with
evolutionary progress from the material to the spiritual realm, from the
physical to the mental one. To
deliberate overmuch on a script one was writing would be to acquiesce in a
degree of mental inertia out-of-step with the essential intellectual dynamism
of the age. As a truly contemporary
writer, one should be hard-pressed to keep-up with one's thoughts and,
consequently, if one writes before typing, one will be obliged to adopt a kind
of shorthand in order to ensure the quickest possible conveyance of one's
thought to paper. For it normally
happens that one's best thoughts come to one 'on the wing', so to speak, and
must be captured for letters before they disappear again.
FRANCIS: Yet, to return
to the second part of my question, surely this results in a degree of carelessness unprecedented in literary history?
GERALD: In the aesthetic sense I suppose it does, since one won't
have either the time or inclination to carefully arrange and, as it were,
chisel one's sentences into harmonious shapes.
But in another, dynamic sense one must remember that the contemporary
literary mind is so much more highly charged than the traditional one ... that
it is able to both muster and master thought more quickly and efficiently than
ever before, and thus mould it into intelligible sentences with the minimum of
hesitation. The struggle is mainly
carried out before the words reach paper, so that only a minimum
revision is required for the completed script.
It is no use one's coming to the work with a lazy or disordered mind, as
various writers did in the past. The
test of one's credibility as a contemporary writer will rest with the fluency
of one's style, and that is dependent upon the dynamic workings of the mind.
FRANCIS: Yet, even so,
it cannot be denied that such writings as you endorse are less than perfect
from a grammatical standpoint. I mean,
there will be instances of split infinitives, prepositions ending sentences,
conjunctions out of place, adverbs not close enough to the adjective or noun they
are intended to define, subordinate phrases occurring in ungainly or even
unlikely places, punctuation logically inconsistent, phrases less than wholly
apposite, choice of words sometimes inappropriate, tenses not properly followed
through, elision, and so on - through a whole host of academic failings.
GERALD:
Yes, there will doubtless be lapses - sometimes frequent, sometimes occasional
- from textbook criteria ... as expounded by pedants. But so what?
Does that necessarily disqualify the contemporary writer from artistic
or intellectual credibility, turning his work into an example of how not to
write? No, I don't believe so, and for
the simple reason that textbook criteria and serious literary endeavour are two
entirely separate things, which rarely if ever overlap!
FRANCIS: Oh, but
really...!
GERALD: I
assure you this is no exaggeration, but a wholehearted confession of fidelity
to contemporary literary requirements, irrespective of what the case may have
been in the past. Of course, it is true
that bourgeois and, to an even greater extent, aristocratic authors have taken
great pains with their work in the past, not least as it bears on grammar. But such a fastidious attitude, by no means
uncommon in the present century, is hardly justifiable as an eternal verity, to
be scrupulously adhered to in the interests of professional dignity and
integrity. On the contrary, we find that
as writing progresses from class to class, so it becomes increasingly bolder in
defying strict grammatical rules and establishing new criteria for itself in
the face of tradition. Where, in less
enlightened ages, writing was shackled by numerous grammatical fetters, it is
now comparatively free of them and must become even more so in the future, if
there is to be any further literary progress.
FRANCIS: But why must
it become ever freer in this way? After
all, grammatical rules exist to assist our understanding of writing, not to
hinder it.
GERALD:
Doubtless that is fundamentally true.
But it should also be remembered that, if adhered too rigorously to,
such rules can also serve to impede or obscure our understanding. No, the real reason behind the gradual
emancipation of letters from grammatical fetters is that, by so freeing itself,
writing can become a medium for the conveyance of essence over appearance, as
it should be in any advanced stage of its evolution.
FRANCIS: How, pray, do
you distinguish between essence and appearance?
GERALD:
Very simply. Essence appertains to the
thematic content of a work, appearance to the means used to convey it. The one is subject-matter, the other
technique. Now the fact is that the
ratio of the one to the other has been steadily changing ever since man first
acquired the rudiments of civilization and put pen to paper. If you'll permit me to generalize, we shall
discover that appearance predominates over essence in pre-dualistic writings;
that appearance and essence are approximately in-balance during a dualistic
age; and that now, as we enter a post-dualistic age, essence predominates over
appearance, in accordance with the spiritual bias of the times. Thus less attention is given to technique in
post-dualistic writings than was given to it at any previous time in the
history of letters, and this is compatible with the fact that much more
importance is attached to content, to what is being said rather than the way in
which one says it. Content is the
all-important factor, and because it is recognized as such in the best and most
progressive writings of the age, less time is wasted on apparent factors than
ever before. Indeed, a concern with
appearances could only detract from the content, as well, no doubt, as impede
the fast flow of thought so crucial to the intellectual dynamism of the times. To unduly deliberate over the choice and
arrangement of words like an aristocrat or pseudo-aristocrat, such as Edgar
Allan Poe, would constitute a gross anachronism in an age which is tending,
willy-nilly, towards greater spiritual mobility. What Poe was to pseudo-aristocratic writings,
Baudelaire was to bourgeois writings, and neither of them should be emulated
now - certainly not by proletarian authors, at any rate!
FRANCIS: Would this
development away from appearance, as applied to literature, also apply to
poetry then, so that the absence of rhyme from modern poems is regarded as a
mark of their evolutionary superiority over traditional, rhyming poems, rather
than as a reflection of technical disintegration or prosy degeneration?
GERALD:
Most assuredly! And
never more so than when we are dealing with the free verse of the best
proletarian poets. Not for
nothing is Poe regarded as a jingle-jangle man.
For to write verse in the manner of Poe now would be to fall way behind
the foremost developments of the day, which are becoming ever more biased on
the side of essence. Rhymes of whatever
sort primarily appeal to the senses, to eyes and ears, rather than to the mind,
and so, too, do such apparent devices as alliteration, assonance, regular
metres, vowel placements, and stanza divisions - all of which have constituted
an irreplaceable and, I regret to say, irreproachable aspect of pre-dualistic
and even dualistic poetry. In the final
analysis, however, appearance can only detract from or limit the applicability
of essence, never enhance it! The
rhyming poetry of the past can never be resurrected in any seriously
progressive context, and in general one finds that only the most conservative
poets of the twentieth century continued to write it, as did W.B. Yeats and
Robert Graves, doubtless with some justification within the context of
dualistic civilization. But such rhyming
poetry can certainly be bettered, and it is and will continue to be the fate of
petty-bourgeois and/or proletarian poets to do so. Compare Yeats' early poems with Allen Ginsberg's
late ones, and you'll see what I mean!
Yet poetry is only one branch of literature, and what applies there must
also apply elsewhere, in response to evolutionary progress. Thus the spontaneous attitude of D.H.
Lawrence to novel writing is, despite the reactionary or traditional nature of
much of his thought, inherently superior to and somehow more contemporary than
the deliberative, rather formal attitudes of novelists like James Joyce and
Thomas Mann, whose large attention to technique could only detract, in the
long-run, from the importance attached to content. With Joyce, words become important in
themselves, as things to be looked at and listened to, juggled into amusing or
teasing juxtapositions, riddles or puns.
He retains a traditional poetic attitude to writing, so that his novels
become - most especially in the case of Finnegans Wake -
exercises in poetic prose. How different
from D.H. Lawrence, who conveys the impression that words are all on the same
level, with no hierarchic preferences, and need scarcely be looked at except as
means of conveying thought! Truly,
Lawrence's is the more progressive attitude, and although I despise much of his
thought, I can't help but admire his spontaneous approach to writing, which
gives maximum priority to essence.
FRANCIS:
You would obviously admire the spontaneity of John Cowper Powys' writing, too. He must surely be among the most prolific
novelists of the century.
GERALD:
Yes, though once again I am obliged to admit that I despise his thought and
would not wish to champion it! The age
of nature-worship is long dead and unlikely ever to be resurrected in the
future, as the world tends ever more radically away from nature in pursuit of
the supernatural. Powys is, it seems to
me, a kind of neo-pagan anachronism in the modern world, a remnant or rehash of
the old world rather than a pioneer of a new one. If his literary facility is commendable, his
philosophy, in my opinion, is considerably less so, and we need not expect it
to be influential in building the next civilization. He is really one of those curious hybrids or
chimeras which the twentieth century, as a transitional age, seemed prodigal in
producing, whose class bias, while fundamentally bourgeois, isn't exempt from
proletarian leanings, whether technical, as in Powys' case, or thematic, as in
the case, for example, of Aldous Huxley. A wholly post-dualistic writer we haven't as
yet seen, which isn't altogether surprising, since the West remains
fundamentally bourgeois and, hence, dualistic.
Even America, which represents the higher, transitional civilization
between dualism and post-dualism, hasn't produced a full-blown
transcendentalist, although it has fostered a number of transitional
(bourgeois/proletarian) writers whose works are, on the whole, more progressive
than those of their European contemporaries.
FRANCIS:
I presume you are alluding to writers like Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, whose
novels are not only more transcendentalist than is to be found in the general
pattern of European writings, but more technically spontaneous as well?
GERALD:
Yes, especially is this true of Kerouac, whose quasi-mystical novels are among
the most free and enlightened literature of the age. Kerouac went a step further than Miller in
developing the American novel, and, no doubt, others have since gone a step
further again, using a more spontaneous technique in the service of a more
enlightened transcendentalism. But there
are limits, as I said, to the development of such literature within the confines
of a transitional civilization. For
truly proletarian literature is only relevant to a post-dualistic civilization,
and nowhere in the world does such a civilization currently exist.
FRANCIS: Not even in
the former
GERALD: No,
since the
FRANCIS: And what, exactly, will these criteria be?
GERALD:
Adherence, above all, to the intellectual dynamism of the age, with the
inevitable corollary of spontaneity in writing and the reduction of appearances
to the barest minimum. The further
development of truth as essence is expanded as much as possible. The organization of one's work into a
collectivistic format, so that the traditional procedure of keeping the various
literary genres separate is transcended in a divine-oriented literature that
reflects an evolutionary convergence to the Omega Point, to cite Teilhard de Chardin. The use of computers, so that discs replace
books as the medium through which this ultimate literature is read. An adherence, all along the line, to
post-dualistic ideology, whether political or religious.... Thus the full-blown
proletarian literature of the future will bring literature to its consummation,
and so prepare the way for the post-literary epoch of the post-Human
Millennium. It will eventually spread
throughout the world, becoming universally accepted, as the ultimate
civilization supersedes the neo-barbarism of socialist materialism in response
to historical necessity.
FRANCIS: So what the
Americans, with their transitional literature, are to the contemporary
dualistic world, the Irish, in their subsequent development of post-dualistic
civilization, will become to the neo-barbarous one - cultural leaders on the
world stage.
GERALD: I
see no reason why not, especially as I am an Irishman and the world's first
truly post-dualistic writer, whose literature awaits its due recognition. Sooner or later my hour will come, and when
it does you can rest assured that proletarian literature will be here to stay,
never impeded, any more, by bourgeois realism or neo-barbarous
materialism. Who knows, but if such
writings are allowed to develop to the full, they may well transcend
appearances altogether one day, as increased spontaneity pushes them towards
the maximum freedom in total abstraction, thereby transforming literature once
again. For once truth has been attained
to, in meaningful sentences, there is nothing left for
us to do ... other than begin to free ourselves from words by breaking-up
meanings. Verbal concepts are all very
well for man, but they won't be of much use to his superhuman successor,
believe me!
FRANCIS: I almost do,
although, to be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that such abstract writings
would constitute the ultimate literature, since, without meaningful sentences,
they would be a bore to read.
GERALD: You
are speaking more from an egocentric than from a post-egocentric
point-of-view. As it happens, there are
three main approaches to art, of whichever kind, in the post-dualistic age. In the first approach one can be
post-egocentric in the sense of free from self-aggrandizing penchants for
aesthetic finesse and embellishment.
One's work will accordingly be somewhat simplistic in construction and
seemingly slapdash or careless in appearance.
It will be a literature approximating more to D.H. Lawrence than to
James Joyce, with a fairly high degree of spontaneity. In the second approach, however, one can
create in the post-egocentric context of disrupting and discrediting the
natural world, whether this is the external world of nature or the internal
world of the subconscious. With the
former one gets Expressionism in one degree or another. With the latter ...
Surrealism in one degree or another.
Perhaps where the development of a truly abstract literature is
concerned, one would be a proponent of this anti-natural type of
post-egocentric creativity, so that the meaninglessness of one's sentences was
largely designed to discredit and disrupt the subconscious as a means of partly
freeing man from its influence ... in the interests of superconscious
development. But in the third approach,
which I believe applies most especially to myself, one's commitment to
post-egocentric writings would be with intent to explore and expand the superconscious, and for that it would be necessary to
retain meaning, in well-ordered sentences, as one sought to elucidate spiritual
progress. This is the highest type of
post-egocentric creativity because wholly forward-looking, and a good example
of it can be found in the mature novels of Aldous
Huxley, which aspire to the status of religious literature on a transcendent
plane. In painting, we find Mondrian generally signifying the same thing, and, in
music, Michael Tippett has displayed a consistently
transcendental bias. One can only
suppose that, eventually, this third type of post-egocentric creativity will
completely eclipse each of the others, as evolution tends ever more deeply into
the superconscious.
FRANCIS: Thus a kind of
creative hierarchy exists, on the post-egocentric level, which stretches from
the simplistic and/or slapdash to the transcendental via the expressionist
and/or surreal, and such an hierarchy might well be reflected in
twentieth-century literature by the novels of D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Aldous Huxley respectively; in twentieth-century painting
by the canvases of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Piet
Mondrian respectively; and in twentieth-century music
by the works of John Cage, Karl-Heinze Stockhausen,
and Michael Tippett respectively.
GERALD: In general, I think that would be approximately correct,
even given all the creative changes which any one artist may undergo. But post-egocentric art, in whatever context,
has yet to develop to the full, and when it does you can rest assured that the
attainments of most of the leading artists of the twentieth century will appear
comparatively moderate. Only the next
civilization will be radically post-egocentric.
In fact, so radically post-egocentric as to be wholly superconscious.
FRANCIS: That I can
well believe!
