The Good Old Form
A Cupful of Tears : Sixteen Victorian Novel- ettes. Selected by Martin Seymour-Smith. (Wolfe, 25s.) INTRINSIC knowledge of others is the novel's marvellous gift. The nineteenth-century novel, imitating, translating, occasionally transfiguring human beings, developed a comprehension of. character often more `real' than the 'actual. Tow have actually met Pierre Bezukhov would prob- ably have been dismally misleading. Now, in less optimistic society, the traditional significance of `character' is questioned both in literature and out of it. Politically, there is the baffling ten- dency to judge a man not by his actions but by his theories. Hinimler may ultimately be remem- bered for having repeatedly professed his hatred of cruelty. Character develops from practical responsibilities and moral choice: if these dwindle it can decline into play-acting or the herd.
In literature the solid reassuring boundaries have been undermined not only by complex though still unproved speculations about Time and Identity, but also by the abnormal behaviour of `reasonable' people during the wars. `The old stable ego' which Lawrence wished to demolish falls into disrepute amongst `advanced' writers, with humans capably disguised as fragments, types or objects. (Similarly, faced with a photo-0 graph from Vietnam, a young art-critic exi-' citedly pointed out to me the telling relationship of the line of charred faces to a pool of shadows beyond.) The demolition is not new. Podsnap's dinner-guests are less animated than the furni- ture, but are shown as a high-spirited minor foretaste of a Sartre protagonist, in Mr. Harvey's words, helpless in a totally contingent world of objects.
This denial of the stable ego provokes fascinating experiment, but surely remains a hypothesis. Specialised opinion notwithstanding, I find it untenable in certain specific cases: both Napoleons, for example. Mr. Harvey confines himself to strictly literary instances. He first con- siders, then rejects, the autonomous conception of literature (a poem, MacLeish says, should not mean but be) and concerns himself with mimesis, the imitation of nature by art, in judging which we also judge and extend ourselves. A temperate writer, however, he asks for a critical armistice between the two. His is a clear-cut plea for the p `loose baggy monsters' of the Novel of Charac- ter, as against `the hard, jewel-like object' of Non-Character that is having so much claimed for it. The former, it could be argued, en- courages day-dreams, wish-fulfilment, fantasy, obstructing the author's moral vision, distorting the whole in favour of the parts, impairing value judgments.
Against this Harvey sees the Pierres, Dorotheas, Ahabs, even the Esther Summersons deriving from purposeful, confident control over Inner and outer existence, from which the anti-novel makes an interesting variant but scarcely an ad' vance, with small evidence to suggest that greater technical complexity and experiment shoW deeper wisdom, more convincing moral vision, more mature insights than those of Dickens, Mann, George Eliot, James, Tolstoy. Rather, they are attempts, sometimes desperate, to keep pace will the death of liberalism. This argument entails discussion of the various ranges, of Character, the interplay of Protagonists (Ahab, Castorp), Cards (Charlus, Quilp), Ficelles (Starbuck, Hen'ii
rietta Stackpole) and mere background Gestures. Thence to the examination of techniques, the role of the narrator, reliable or unreliable: Marlow, Marcel, Summerson, Clamence, Goly- adkin: also the questions of Freedom and Causality, of Identity, persistent or intermittent, the discrepancy between 'musical' and 'conven- tual' Time (The Magic Mountain). He recognises the provisional quality of judgments, observing that in criticism there is a fairly easy transition from is to ought. His own writing suggests delight in his subject rather than a nagging duty.
Mimesis, he admits, can degenerate into 'slices of life,' illustrating rather than creating, corrupt- ing every reality within reach. The more grotesque side of realist fiction is shown by Mr. Seymour- Smith's perfunctorily introduced and ill-chosen novelettes. Titles are revealing. Bravely Borne, In the Shadow of the Cross, Little Meg's Children, Nobody Loves Me, The Prodigal's Re- turn, Myrtle's Hero. ('No, no, no! Oh, how I misjudged you, you—braver than the brave!') They confirm the view that fine feelings make bad art.
Here indeed is a stable world, of assertion without evidence: the redemptive powers of dead or suffering children, the necessity of mis- sionaries, squires as symbols of generosity, the soothieg validity of the After-Life and of teleological Nature, the watchfulness not only of God but of Jewish moneylenders. Distrusting the spontaneous, craving stoic purpose and ritual gesture, they resemble Soviet iconography: itlfLenin meets Gorky for the eighty-ninth time.' Instead of live, wilful people we get moral Opinions. But if this publication is intended as a gesture of our own superiority, it does not wholly succeed. Sincerity is not always more boring and sentimental than the meretricious. The stories here are more abominably written than most Contemporary best-sellers, but no more ridicu- lous. Indeed, with their clumsy concern for human love and redemption, rather less so. That art should make people better is no more ludicrous than that it should try to make them Worse, however hard this particular collection tries to deny it.
PETER VANSVITAR
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