A study in lost causes

PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN

So passed', in the passing of a day, Of mortal life the leafe, the bud, the flowre, Ne more cloth flourish after first decay That earst was sought to decke both bed and bowre, Of many a Ladie, and many a Paramowre : Gather therefore the Rose, whitest yet is prime, For soone comes age, that will her pride deflowre: Gather the Rose of love, whitest yet is time, Whitest loving thou mayst loved be with equal! crime.

This is perhaps the finest stanza on the theme of youth and decay in the literature of England, of Europe, of the world. The sombre and haunting rhythm of the first four lines, the dying fall of the fifth, the brave contrast as Spenser then gathers strength and pace to deliver, with triumphant scorn, the only pos- sible human protest—all this makes for an advocacy of present pleasure unequalled in power by any poet except possibly by Horace in his Ode to Spring.

Yet between Horace and Spenser there is one very important difference: whereas Horace is expressing his own personal credo, Spenser is putting his magnificent words in the mouth of the enemy; to be more precise, they are being chanted by one of the choir of 'lascivious boyes' who adorn the establishment of the vile En- chauntresse. Hither have come Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, and his friend, the Palmer, with the duteous intention of stopping all the fun, which they proceed to do, quite simply, by smashing the place up 'with rigour pitilesse.' Later on they exchange smug con- gratulations; but so wooden and commonplace are their lines, by comparison with the lascivious chorister's, that one has the impression Spenser just isn't trying any more. Virtue has won (as of course it had to), but Spenser, while pur- porting to rejoice in the victory, dismisses it with a great yawn of boredom.

There is a somewhat similar situation in Milton's mask, Comus. Here Comus, a near relative of Spenser's Enchauntresse, is trying to seduce the Lady. Milton equips him with several telling arguments and some of the subtlest blank verse in the language:

Why should you be so cruel to yourself, And to those dainty limbs which Nature lent For gentle usage and soft delicacy. . . . . . . Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded.

What has the Lady to say to all that?

To him that dares Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words Against the sun-clad power of Chastity, rain would I something say, yet to what end?

To what end indeed? Quite clearly, Comus has won the debate hands down by his superior poetry and logic; and he is only cheated of , his reward by the Lady's two stodgy brothers, who turn up in the nick of time and wreck everything (like Sir Guyon) by the crude appli- cation of force majeure. Milton, like Spenser,

then announces his approval in an eminently forgettable passage, and the reader puts down the book with a shrug of contemptuous in- difference for the heroine, still so tediously intact.

The more one reads of the English classics, the more one finds that this is a common and even a prevailing pattern. Although lip-service in plenty is paid to the accepted morality and religion of the day, these passages are merely

derisory when compared with those which are

written, with high art and loving care, to cele- brate all that is morally subversive. True, sub- version usually fails in the end; but such con- clusions (so often dependent on the sheer brute force or superior numbers which conventional virtue can always command) are no more con- vincing than those clumsy devices employed by the film industry to catch out the villain in the last five seconds and so to give formal

satisfaction to the censor. No doubt about it : in almost every genre, certainly in epic, drama

and the novel, the Devil or his creature (though seldom accorded top billing) has the longest and strongest parts.

Paradise Lost, for example. Here Satan has the best words passim, whereas God and the

Son go through a smarmy and repetitious double routine in which even their syntax is inferior to that of the Adversary. As for their final vengeance on Satan, it reads as a dis- tasteful piece of bullying. Again, to take drama, whose sympathies are not with the smitten

Falstaff? Or who would not concede that Gaveston makes a better case, in his marvellous opening speech, than all the right-minded• barons together during the whole of the rest of the play? And yet again, to come nearer our own time, let us now consider the novels of Anthony Trollope.

For Trollope is working in the same tradi- tion. There are the same obligatory tributes to standard morality; the same fondness and skill in describing its exact opposite; and the same inexorable victory, in the end, for the massed powers of righteous retribution. Take

the Vesey Stanhope family in Barchester Towers. No sooner do they appear than

Trollope starts to explain and accuse their enormity. `The Hon and Rev Dr Vesey Stan- hope' is an absentee cleric who will tolerate absolutely anything 'except inattention to his dinner.' His daughter Charlotte 'had aided her father in his indifference to his professional duties' and was 'a pure freethinker.'

Another daughter has contracted an infamous marriage ('she probably had no alternative') with a greasy Italian nobleman who deserted her inside six months; and as for Ethelbert (Bertie), the only son, he has spent years scrounging off the rest of the family under the pretence of being an aspirant sculptor. What a seedy and wretched crew, says Trollope: un- believers and corrupters every one.

But this said, and the meed required by popu- lar morality duly paid, Trollope then calmly displays the Stanhope family as the most charm- ing and amusing people in all Barsetshire. Though minor characters, they steal some of the best scenes, they send up clerical hypocrisy in all directions, and, when the inevitable

disaster threatens, the children at least face up to it with an easy and humorous courage. It is plain that Trollope, however firm in his theoretical disapproval, relished and loved each one of them.

Now, the several writers whom I have so far mentioned are superficially alike in that, while they are all suppmtedly condemning evil. they all present it as very attractive. But if we look closer, there is an important distinction to be made: between those in whom the pas- sages of condemnation are just perfunctory formalities (to appease the middle-class reader) and those who really mean to condemn, how- ever dully they write in so doing.

Thus Marlowe, on the one hand, whatever the politic lip-service he paid to Christianity, in fact considered the vices he described so seductively to be permissible and even desirable. There is no real ambiguity here. Milton, on the other hand, although he makes his champions of evil speak quite as persuasively as Marlowe's, had a deep and sincere hatred of it. This latter, of course, is much the more puzzling state of affairs. For whereas Marlowe's motivation is direct and easily understood, how do we explain the enthusiasm of Milton in arguing a cause he detested, and his apparent inability to justify, by his art, the true cause of his beloved virtue?

The easy answer, of course, is that vice, however much you hate it, is seldom boring, while about virtue it is almost impossible to write a single interesting line. Superficial as this answer is, there is a lot to be said for it. Consider poor Milton when he is trying to write about Adam and Eve's innocent sexual con- gress before the Fall. This is the best he can do:

. . . Straight side by side were laid,

nor turned I ween,

Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites Mysterious of connubial love refused . . .

Not up to standard. But now consider what happened when they had eaten the apple:

Her hand he seized, and to a shady bank, Thick overhead with verdant roof embow'red, He led her nothing loth; flow'rs were the couch, Pansies, and violets, and asphodel, And hyacinth. . . .

Yet simply to say that virtue is a bore to write or read about is too easy an answer, if only because it isn't the whole truth. Virtue is indeed a bore in vactto. so to speak, but not, as we all know, when it is in conflict with its enemies. Virtue embattled with vice can be a thrilling theme, and here was Milton's obvious chance. Even if he couldn't crack up virtue for its own sake, why couldn't he boost it for its interest as a contestant against evil? Well, he tried to do just that. Then why, one asks, did he fail?

The answer lies in two words used earlier in this essay: force majeure. We know, oh dear, how well we know, who is going to win. God. Adam and Eve may succumb, but this is only a minor setback : we know that in the end God, who has the big battalions, is certain to conquer Satan. The only interest left, therefore, is in how many good blows Satan will slip in before he goes down for the count, in what local triumphs (like the tempting of Eve) he can score against the impossible odds From every point of view, whether sporting, strategic or poetic, the only chance of worthwhile struggle or ex- citement is to be had from siding with Satan.

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav'n.