CHAPTER
SEVEN
Consisting of roast
lamb and assorted vegetables, dinner provided a slight reprieve from the
ideological tension and mutual antipathy which had sprung-up between the two
men in the lounge. But only, alas, a
slight one! Although their conversation
was somewhat muted by preoccupation with food, the close proximity into which
they had been thrown by the relatively small circular table at which they were
sitting caused them to feel psychologically uncomfortable, especially Peter
Daniels, who felt the physical closeness to his ideological rival as a kind of
humiliation and personal betrayal. But
for the women, he would have got up from the table and sat himself down, plate
in hand, on one of the spare chairs the far side of the dining-room (which in
any case wasn't a particularly large room), in order to be delivered, in some
degree, from the oppression of social intimacy with his political enemy. Indeed, he would have refused to eat dinner
altogether! But, of course, such a
refusal would hardly have pleased his hostess, who had put so much effort into
getting it ready, and so he was obliged to resign himself, like Matthew, to the
rather trying situation which circumstances had forced upon him. Taking refuge, as far as possible, in the meal
itself was the only solution, it seemed, to present itself to either man's
imagination.
Yet the women, though scarcely on the best of terms with each
other, were not prepared to allow the occasion to sink into a boorish silence,
interrupted only by the mundane sound of chewing and swallowing, but made an
effort to lift it above the merely bestial level by indulging in a little
sporadic conversation, Gwen especially doing her best to raise the atmosphere
slightly, her sociability doubtless owing something to the fact that she had
not been present throughout the greater part of the male-dominated conversation
in the adjoining room.
Nor altogether surprisingly, the principal subject of their
conversation was the new school term and the likelihood of their having to work
harder then than during the previous one, which, despite the summer exams,
seemed to them more like an anti-climax to the year. Linda Daniels, in particular, was especially
anxious to improve the quality of her teaching next term, since she felt that
it had somehow suffered from her generally poor health in recent months, while
Gwen, though not over-complacent about her own past teaching record, was
confident that her talents would stand the test of time and be adequately
rewarded when the next batch of examination results were due, come Christmas.
The men listened in solemn silence, rather bored by the topic
under discussion yet secretly grateful, all the same, for something external to
cling-on to and relieve them, slightly, from the psychological pressure of
their mutual antipathy. Matthew might
have questioned Linda Daniels about her teaching of physical education had he
not been constrained to silence by the brooding presence of her husband, who seemed
equally disinclined to ask questions of Gwen.
All in all, dinner transpired to be more of an ordeal than a pleasure
and, when it was over, both men were relieved to drift as far apart as
possible, even if this meant they were obliged to enter into conversation with
the women instead.
However, it wasn't about school life that Matthew talked, as he
found himself being escorted back towards the lounge by Mr Daniels' attractive
and curiously-interested wife, but about art and, in particular, his art, upon
which he proceeded to enlarge to the extent that circumstances would
permit. It was evident that the women
were determined to prevent a repeat performance of the bourgeois/proletarian
antagonism by keeping the men apart (not that they had any desire to remain
together!), Gwen likewise having battened-on to Peter Daniels' arm and escorted
him in the opposite direction from Matthew, so that they would be out of harm's
reach.
To be sure, this arrangement soon proved to the mutual
satisfaction of both parties. For it
wasn't long before, warming to Linda's curiosity and spurred-on by the wine he
had dispatched at table, Matthew forgot about his antipathy towards her husband
and immersed himself in the subject to-hand - one that was always most dear to
him, since the focal-point of his life's endeavour. He explained how he was striving to make his
art more transcendental by using minimalist techniques and exploiting the
application of synthetics, like acrylic, nylon, and plastic, in order to
divorce it still further from natural origins or influences.
Linda listened attentively.
She recalled what he had said earlier, about the synthetic nature of his
art, and inquired a little more deeply into some of the subjects he had touched
upon - namely, the fact of the superconscious and its relation to the inner
light. She was also curious to learn who
his chief influences were, who he particularly admired.
Matthew deliberated with himself a moment, as though the answer
to this question required a meticulous mental sifting through dozens of
possible names, before replying: "Of the painters, I think probably Ben
Nicholson and Piet Mondrian have had the greatest influence on my development,
especially the latter, whose Neo-Plasticism I particularly admire. He was very spiritual, you know. Very committed to reflecting the effects of
urban environments on the psyche, to making his work as internal and abstract
as possible. And, of course, he was a
mystic to boot - a theosophist. From the
modern viewpoint, a tremendously significant and important artist! Not one of your anti-science and
anti-technology types, by any means. Nor
a traitor to evolution and bourgeois apologist, like certain other so-called
modern artists. Very much a believer in
the big city and its spiritualizing effects upon our lives. Very much an artistic leader."
"Yes, I do know a thing or two about him actually,"
Linda revealed, smiling appreciatively.
"He painted a work entitled Broadway Boogie-Woogie, didn't he?"
"Correct. One of his
most complex and famous works, paying due tribute to
"And what about Ben Nicholson?" she asked, anxious to
keep the conversation on the same rails.
"How did he influence you?"
"Well, in pretty much the same way," the artist
replied, "that's to say, by being so transcendentally abstract and
pertinent to the times. I particularly
admire his relief work, especially the more formalized and geometrically
congruous examples of it constructed largely in the 'thirties; though it has
had less overall influence on me than his minimalist still-lives, which were to
set the tone, to some extent, of my meditating figures, in which only the bare
outlines, executed in acrylic on a monochromatic ground, are allowed to emerge. That gives them a kind of transparency which
emphasizes the spiritual over the material, you see. Makes them pertinent to the superconscious
and therefore to transcendentalism. If I
were more egocentric, on the other hand, I would undoubtedly have filled them
in with various corporeal elaborations and embellishments, so they'd look more
like traditional portraits of seated figures.
But such a procedure wouldn't really have established me as a modern
artist, or enabled me to consider myself one of the spiritual antennae of the
race. It would simply have shown that I
was backward, lagging behind the times, and therefore not entitled to consider
myself a genuine artist. For such an
artist is less a person who can paint well or elaborately, displaying all manner
of complex techniques, than a person who is relevant to the age and best
capable of illustrating the nature of that age.... Which is why, in my opinion,
an artist like Ben Nicholson is greater than, say, Stanley Spencer, who, though
possessing a technical facility that suggests true greatness, lacks real
relevance and is effectively anachronistic.
At times, you would hardly think he lived in the twentieth century,
especially where his Christ
at Cookham works are concerned. Yet
there could be no doubt in your mind that Ben Nicholson did. For most of his work is appropriately
abstract and therefore indicative of a society biased towards the
superconscious. Thus, bearing in mind
the criterion of relevance, one can only conclude Nicholson to be the greater
artist. Indeed, I'm inclined to regard
him as the finest British artist this century, bearing in mind his sustained
commitment to transcendentalism."
"Even finer than Graham Sutherland?" Linda queried.
"Certainly more consistently abstract than Sutherland,"
Matthew opined, "which isn't to say that the latter's work is relatively
inconsequential. On the contrary, I'd
place it above
"I'm afraid you've gone a little out of my depth,"
Linda confessed, feeling slightly puzzled.
"I know there's a kind of jaggedness to some of Sutherland's works,
if that's what you mean."
"Yes, at times a rather fearsome jaggedness," Matthew
confirmed, smiling weakly. "Which
fact doubtless owed something to his experiences as a war artist, a recorder of
the frightful destruction which assailed
"How d'you mean?" Linda asked, with a puzzled look on
her pretty face.
"Well, I mean whatever rebels against the rise of
technology and science, the expansion of the city, and other related phenomena,
considering such developments pernicious to the welfare of mankind, is
essentially bad art," Matthew responded almost matter-of-factly. "For it misleads people by giving them
the impression that things are either worse than or not as good as they really
are; that instead of progressing, we're indulging in a kind of suicidal
regression which it's in the interests of art to point out and, if possible,
correct and/or stem - assuming it were still possible for people to respond to
it in terms of a desire to correct and/or stem.
I mean, there's inevitably a point at which such pessimistic art becomes
merely fatalistic, with no other motive than to record the degree of that
fatality, in relation to society, as the artist perceives it. Perhaps it's mostly like that? I don't know.
But one thing I am sure of is that such art is bad, because it has
turned against the age rather than accepted it, and accordingly refused to see
the changes which have come about as manifestations of evolutionary
progress. One gets the impression that
the artists concerned are either too stupid to recognize progress when they see
it or, alternatively, are bourgeois apologists, hirelings of a reactionary
establishment who regret the decay of traditional, egocentric values. Whatever the case - and they may even be both
- their art isn't what I would regard as a reflection of the age but, rather, a
distortion and denigration of it, and that's bad! It can cause a lot of confusion in people's
minds, and not only directly, by attacking the modern world, but indirectly, by
turning away from it. A truly great
artist, however, can only be loyal and relevant to the age, not reactionary or
anachronistic. He doesn't seek oblivion
in some imaginary Golden Age of the past, or endeavour to resurrect certain
aristocratic values long after they've ceased to have any applicability to the
times, but forges ahead, content in the knowledge, like Mondrian, that life is
gradually changing for the better, remaining faithful, again like Mondrian, to
the exigencies of evolution, and not either stagnating in a stasis of perpetual
dualism or reverting to a context of pre-dualistic sensual and material one-sidedness. The true artist is ever the advocate of his
age, not a rebel against it! And if the
age demands that art becomes a reflection of truth rather than a propagator of
truthful illusions or illusory truths, well then, truthful his art must be, no matter
how anti-traditional it may appear to the philistines!
"The representative art of the past hundred years,
including that of the novel," he went on, growing in confidence,
"testifies to the mounting influence of the superconscious at the expense
of the subconscious. It aims at truth
and light, not their negation. In
literature it takes the form of Flaubert and Zola rather than Huysmans or
Wilde. It adopts a scientific
detachment, an impersonality and impartiality towards the facts under
surveillance. That humility and
painstaking patience before the phenomena of existence which is the hallmark of
the true scientific temper - what is that if not a reflection of our mounting
allegiance to the superconscious at the expense of mere egotistical self-indulgence? Was it something that Descartes or Leibniz
really understood? No, they lived in an
egocentric age which was as much governed by illusion as by truth. They wouldn't have understood the patience
and self-effacing intellectual humility of a Pasteur or a Darwin. Still less would they have approved of the
literature of Flaubert or Zola or any of the other great moderns. Admittedly, they might have approved of
Tolkien in some measure, but that's only because he was one of the most
unequivocally illusory writers who ever lived, an exponent of bad art, or art
that defies the transcendental preoccupation with truth which characterizes our
age and propagates a species of illusion which stands out like a literary sore
thumb in the march of evolutionary progress!
Just as politics has its Hitlers, so literature has its Tolkiens. It also has its D.H. Lawrences and John
Cowper Powyses. But that, I think, is
really quite another story!"
"In what way?" Linda eagerly wanted to know, becoming
puzzled.
"Oh, in a variety of ways actually," Matthew rejoined,
pulling a wry face as though to indicate his distaste for the subject. "I mean, from the viewpoint of relevance
to the age, D.H. Lawrence was a very bad artist, a deplorable novelist. His rebellion against science and technology,
post-Christian transcendentalism, the city, and so on, was thoroughly misguided
and unenlightened, eventually leading him to a kind of neo-pagan acceptance of
nature and belief in sex as a mode, nay, the principal mode of salvation, like
Wilhelm Reich, his rather more sophisticated German counterpart. Whether in regard to The Plumed Serpent
or Lady Chatterley's Lover or, indeed, half-a-dozen other novels, one is
led to the conclusion that he was one of the most reactionary and worldly
writers of his time. The very fact that
he ended-up virtually worshipping the 'dark gods of the loins', or whatever it
was, speaks for itself. Instead of being
among the ideological antennae of the race, as a genuine artist should be, D.H.
Lawrence became a kind of tail to it, a down-dragging influence who related to
pre-dualistic criteria, as germane to a pagan age, in which the senses
predominate, under the auspices of subconsciousness, in response to the
sensuous presence of untrammelled nature.
One could hardly be more anti-modern than him, not even if one were
intent upon propagating a philosophy of nature-worship, or Elementalism, like
John Cowper Powys, who, to judge from his elementary books, wasn't the most
genuine of artists either!"
"Wasn't he the one who wrote In Defence of
Sensuality?" Linda tentatively
commented, recalling to mind the only J.C. Powys title she knew.
"So I recall," Matthew admitted, a faintly ironic
smile appearing on his thin lips in response to Linda's prompting. "Hardly the kind of book to have
appealed to someone like Mondrian, who was truly modern. But Powys was essentially a bourgeois
anachronism with a strong admiration for people like Rousseau and Wordsworth,
and consequently much of what he wrote is irrelevant or contrary to the trend
of evolution, including his paradoxical belief in a two-faced First Cause,
which he would have us all ambiguously responding to in an appropriately
grateful or defiant manner, depending on our circumstances at any given time! Not quite the religious viewpoint that Aldous
Huxley grew to endorse, is it? But,
then, artists of Huxley's calibre are few-and-far-between anyway, so one can't
be particularly surprised!
"For every genuine and truly modern artist," Matthew
continued, unconsciously slipping into a terminology more congenial to himself,
"there seems to be at least a dozen sham ones - men who lack both the
nerve and the ability to come properly to terms with their age. Powys and Lawrence are simply two of the more
conspicuous examples of bad artists, and not simply because of what they wrote but also in
terms of how they wrote. I mean, the most significant
twentieth-century novels aren't those which tell a story, and thus promulgate
fictions in one context or another, but those which are overtly
autobiographical and/or philosophical, and thereby attest to the swing of the
literary pendulum from illusion towards truth.
To produce fictions, in this day and age, is contrary to the dictates of
transcendentalism and liable to result in one's being branded an
anachronism. A novelist who gives us
something approximating to traditional literature, with plot, characterization,
long descriptive passages, narrative, and so forth, is equivalent to a painter
who produces representational canvases, or a composer whose music is tonal and
harmonic, or a sculptor whose sculptures are figurative. He isn't truly contemporary, for his head is
full of traditional criteria and it's precisely those criteria which, in their
classical objectivity, are no longer relevant.
By not relating to the foremost developments of the age he reduces
himself to the level of an anachronistic dilettante, and consequently whatever
he does is of little evolutionary import.
His storytelling, accomplished or otherwise, will simply make for bad
art or, rather, for no art at all, insofar as former criteria of literature no
longer apply - except, that is, in the popular context, where they both
intimate of cinema and to some extent serve the insatiable hunger of the film industry
for narrative productions. As a victim
of atavistic inheritance or historic class-fixation, his work will simply be
out-of-place. It may be as good as if
not better than novels used to be when the canons of illusion applied. But that won't alter its irrelevance to the
present by one jot! At best, one can
congratulate him for his ability to emulate past masters, his antiquarian
capacities, but hardly anything else - least of all his refusal or inability to
satisfy the demands of contemporary art!
For, these days, the artist is very much, to repeat, a man of inner
truth and light, not their objective negation!"
"Which is presumably what you are?" Linda concluded
sympathetically.
"I hope so," said Matthew, blushing. "At least I try to be such as much as
possible, though only, of course, within the spheres of painting and sculpture,
which are my principal concerns. As to
literature, I don't apply myself, since unable to practise three professions
simultaneously. But I had a friend who
was a novelist and a very progressive one, too!
He used to write more philosophically than autobiographically, but he
also experimented with a variety of radical techniques, including a species of
verbal abstraction which aimed at depriving his work of intelligibility."
"How d'you mean?" Linda queried, not altogether
unreasonably in the circumstances.
Matthew hesitated a moment before replying. For he was obliged to stifle a degree of
amusement at his late-friend's expense.
"Well, he wanted some of his writings to directly parallel, so far
as possible, the development of abstraction in painting and music, since he
believed that, due to commercial pressures, literature had fallen behind the
other arts in this respect," the artist at length responded. "For instance, he would write sentences
like 'This munching got or placing use cat to their run taken over shoes,' or
something of the sort. I can't remember
his exact verbal constructions but, anyway, words were arranged in such fashion
as to avoid all sense or, at any rate, as much sense as possible."
Linda had to giggle at the mention of this, which sounded
somehow crazy to her. "You mean to
say he used a kind of automatic writing technique!" she doubtfully
exclaimed.
"No, since he often deliberated over his choice of words
for hours on-end," Matthew revealed.
"After all, when you write automatically you still find yourself
making some kind of sense here and there.
Familiar words and phrases hang together. But he wanted to reduce meaning as much as
possible in order to be thoroughly abstract, and this he systematically
endeavoured to do, though mostly in short poems, which were really Mallarmé ten
or twenty times over, so to speak. Not
the sort of thing that would have appealed to Tolstoy, who failed even to make
any sense of Mallarmé, but arguably compatible with a kind of avant-garde
abstraction which the French poet seems to have anticipated. Anyway, before his death - he was killed in a
road crash early last year - my late-friend was working on what he called an
avant-garde supernovel, using this abstract technique of his, which he regarded
as more radical than anything James Joyce or William Burroughs had ever
done. Had he lived to finish the work,
I'm confident it would have been the most revolutionary example of literary
abstraction ever penned or, rather, typed.
Yet such wasn't to be the case, and, so far as I know, the world still
awaits a novel which purports to make as little sense as possible."
"Maybe that's just as well!" Linda commented, offering
Matthew a wry smile.
"Well, however nonsensical the idea may seem," he
rejoined, "it has a certain contemporary relevance, insofar as similar if
less radical experiments have already been made. Yet, in a way, the idea of breaking-up
meaningful language is no less significant than breaking-up or transcending
representational form in art or diatonic melody in music, and corresponds to
the same post-egocentric urge. I, for
one, wouldn't be at all surprised if we abandoned language altogether, in the
future, and resorted to pure awareness and non-verbal contemplation as a means
to enlightenment. After all, if early
man, grovelling in the dirt of prehistoric survival, was beneath language, not
having evolved to a civilized framework, why shouldn't late man be above it,
having evolved beyond such a framework and, thanks to his mastery of the
machine, entered a non-verbal epoch primarily dedicated to the attainment of
spiritual salvation. It seems a
perfectly credible contention to me, at any rate. And I'm convinced it would have seemed no
less credible to Aldous Huxley, who was an advocate of pure contemplation, or
'cleansing the doors of perception' through the removal of verbal
distractions. For the trend of evolution
is certainly in the direction of spiritual salvation, as our growing allegiance
to the inner light adequately attests, and, as such, it's to our advantage to
transcend the constraints of language in due course, since it has no relevance
to 'the peace that surpasses all understanding', i.e. intellectuality."
"No, I guess not," Linda conceded doubtfully. "Though it seems unlikely that we'll
outgrow our verbal preoccupations for some time yet, even if certain
avant-garde writers are anxious to break up language at present."
"Oh, I quite agree," Matthew admitted, smiling. "Yet that isn't to say the attempts
which are currently being made to transcend such preoccupations are without
justification or meaning. They're
essentially symptomatic of a long, slow process of de-verbalization upon which
the modern world would seem to be embarked, not arbitrary indulgences imposed
upon society out of mere whim or in consequence of a fad. They're bound to have a significant influence
upon our future development. For the
more godlike we become, the less need we'll have of language. If the beast is beneath speech, then the god
is very much above it. And modern man is
closer to becoming godly than to remaining beastly."
"Yes, though some modern men are evidently less far removed
from the beastly than others," Linda Daniels averred, jerking her head
back in the general direction of her husband, across the far side of the room.
Matthew automatically smiled and nodded his head in tacit
confirmation of Linda's suggestion, which left him agreeably surprised and even
flattered. He hadn't expected her to be
quite so sympathetic to himself and contemptuous of her husband, and was
somewhat relieved to discover that his preconceptions about her, in regard to
Peter Daniels, had been proven inaccurate.
Indeed, judging by the interest she had shown in his art, it was
difficult not to conclude that Linda was a very different type of person from
her husband, much more culturally and temperamentally akin to himself. He was certainly intrigued by her and glad to
have someone intelligent and sympathetic with whom to talk for a change,
someone who, unlike Gwen and even Mrs Evans, suggested a wavelength similar to
his own. And he was well aware, as he
sat opposite her, no more than three feet away, that she was a more attractive
woman than Gwen, not to mention Gwen's mother, who, though far from
unattractive, was probably a little past her prime.
Yes, he liked the look of her richly plaited hair, dark-brown
eyes, aquiline nose, and nobly shaped lips, which suggested refined
sensuality. He also liked her dark-green
satin minidress, which was eye-catchingly décolleté, and the ample contours of
her breasts, which were not without a certain seductive charm for him. And then, too, her voice had a pleasing
resonance, a feminine depth and huskiness to it which was far from devoid of
sensual overtones. All things considered
(or, at any rate, as much of her as he could see), she struck him as of
superior physical quality to Gwen and much too good for the reactionary fool to
whom she was married.
He wondered how she had got herself hitched to him in the first
place, though he had no intention of asking her about it while Peter Daniels
was still in the flat, even if at a fairly safe distance from them both, and
with the suggestion of being too engaged in conversation with Gwen to be in a
position to overhear anything. Still,
there was always the possibility that he could find out in due course, say,
through inviting her over to his flat or studio one evening. After all, if she was as interested in his
art as she appeared to be, why not invite her over to scrutinize it close-up,
and thus have the opportunity to discuss art in more congenial
surroundings? Particularly since, according
to what he had already learnt about her, she was something of an artist
herself, with distinct leanings towards abstraction and the avant-garde in
general?
Yes, it would be refreshingly tonic to have a kindred spirit to
address, if not undress. He was always
on the lookout for understanding, and Linda Daniels, with her attentive nature,
seemed more than adequately qualified to provide it, even if she was less of an artist than
a schoolmistress. At least she had a
progressive disposition, which was more than could be said for a fair number of
professional artists - sculptors no less than painters. Yes, he would definitely invite her over!
