Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [234]
‘The Lydian part begins again on the other side,’ he explained, as he wound up the machine. ‘Then there’s more of this lively stuff in A major. Then it’s Lydian to the end, getting better and better all the time. Don’t you think it’s marvellous?’ He turned to Rampion. ‘Isn’t it a proof?’
The other nodded. ‘Marvellous. But the only thing it proves, so far as I can hear, is that sick men are apt to be very weak. It’s the art of a man who’s lost his body.’
‘But discovered his soul.’
‘Oh, I grant you,’ said Rampion, ‘sick men are very spiritual. But that’s because they’re not quite men. Eunuchs are very spiritual lovers for the same reason.’
‘But Beethoven wasn’t a eunuch.’
‘I know. But why did he try to be one? Why did he make castration and bodilessness his ideal? What’s this music? Just a hymn in praise of eunuchism. Very beautiful, I admit. But couldn’t he have chosen something more human than castration to sing about?’
Spandrell sighed. ‘To me it’s the beatific vision, it’s heaven.’
‘Not earth. That’s just what I’ve been complaining of.’
‘But mayn’t a man imagine heaven if he wants to?’ asked Mary.
‘Certainly, so long as he doesn’t pretend that his imagination is the last word in truth, beauty, wisdom, virtue and all the rest. Spandrell wants us to accept this disembodied eunuchism as the last word. I won’t. I simply won’t.’
‘Listen to the whole movement, before you judge.’ Spandrell reversed the disc and lowered the needle. The bright heaven of Lydian music vibrated on the air.
‘Lovely, lovely,’ said Rampion, when the record was finished. ‘You’re quite right. It is heaven, it is the life of the soul. It’s the most perfect spiritual abstraction from reality I’ve ever known. But why should he have wanted to make that abstraction? Why couldn’t he be content to be a man and not an abstract soul? Why, why? ‘ He began walking up and down the room. ‘This damned soul,’ he went on, ‘this damned abstract soul—it’s like a kind of cancer, eating up the real, human, natural reality, spreading and spreading at its expense. Why can’t he be content with reality, your stupid old Beethoven? Why should he find it necessary to replace the real, warm, natural thing by this abstract cancer of a soul? The cancer may have a beautiful shape; but, damn it all, the body’s more beautiful. I don’t want your spiritual cancer.’
‘I won’t argue with you,’ said Spandrell He felt all at once extraordinarily tired and depressed. It had been a failure. Rampion had refused to be convinced. Was the proof, after all, no proof? Did the music refer to nothing outside itself and the idiosyncrasies of its inventor? He looked at his watch; it was almost five. ‘Hear the end of the movement at any rate,’ he said. ‘It’s the best part.’ He wound up the gramophone. Even if it’s meaningless, he thought, it’s beautiful, so long as it lasts. And perhaps it isn’t meaningless. After all, Rampion isn’t infallible. ‘Listen.’
The music began again. But something new and marvellous had happened in its Lydian heaven. The speed of the slow melody was doubled; its outlines became clearer and more definite; an inner part began to harp insistently on a throbbing phrase. It was as though heaven had suddenly and impossibly become more heavenly, had passed from achieved perfection into perfection yet more deeper and more absolute. The ineffable peace persisted; but it was no longer the peace of convalescence and passivity. It quivered, it was alive, it seemed to grow and intensify itself, it became an active calm, an almost passionate serenity. The miraculous paradox of eternal life and eternal repose was musically realized.
They listened, almost holding their breaths. Spandrell looked exultantly at his guest. His own doubts had vanished. How could one fail to believe in something which was there, which manifestly existed? Mark Rampion nodded. ‘Almost thou persuadest me,’ he whispered. ‘But it’s too good.’
‘How can anything be too good?’
‘Not human. If it lasted, you’d cease to be a man. You’d die.’
They were silent again. The music played on, leading from heaven to heaven, from bliss to deeper bliss. Spandrell sighed and shut his eyes. His face was grave and serene, as though it had been smoothed by sleep or death. Yes, dead, thought Rampion as he looked at him.