The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [404]
BY OLD WOMEN OF EITHER SEX. (Dear D.H.L. so wrong, so right, so great, may his ghost breathe on us all!)’
He puts down his glass with a little clock and sighing runs his fingers through his hair. Kindness is no excuse, I tell myself. Disinterested goodness is no exoneration from the basic demands of the artist’s life. You see, Brother Ass, there is my life and then the
life of my life. They must belong as fruit and rind. I am not being cruel. It is simply that I am not indulgent!
‘How lucky not to be interested in writing’ says Darley with a touch of plaintive despair in his tone. ‘I envy you’. But he does not, really, not at all. Brother Ass, I will tell you a short story. A team of Chinese anthropologists arrived in Europe to study our habits and beliefs. Within three weeks they were all dead. They died of uncontrollable laughter and were buried with full military honours! What do you make of that? We have turned ideas into a paying form of tourism.
Darley talks on with slanting eye buried in his gin-sling. I reply wordlessly. In truth I am deafened by the pomposity of my own utterances. They echo in my skull like the reverberating eructa-tions of Zarathustra, like the wind whistling through Montaigne’s beard. At times I mentally seize him by the shoulders and shout:
‘Should literature be a path-finder or a bromide? Decide! Decide!’
He does not heed, does not hear me. He has just come from the library, from the pot-house, or from a Bach concert (the gravy still running down his chin). We have aligned our shoes upon the polished brass rail below the bar. The evening has begun to yawn around us with the wearisome promise of girls to be ploughed. And here is Brother Ass discoursing upon the book he is writing and from which he has been thrown, as from a horse, time and time again. It is not really art which is at issue, it is ourselves. Shall we always be content with the ancient tinned salad of the sub-sidized novel? Or the tired ice-cream of poems which cry them-selves to sleep in the refrigerators of the mind? If it were possible to adopt a bolder scansion, a racier rhythm, we might all breathe more freely! Poor Darley’s books — will they always be such pains-taking descriptions of the soul-states of … the human omelette?
(Art occurs at the point where a form is sincerely honoured by an awakened spirit.)
‘This one’s on me.’
‘No, old man, on me.’
‘No. No; I insist.’
‘No. It’s my turn.’
This amiable quibble allows me just the split second I need to jot down the salient points for my self-portrait on a rather ragged cuff. I think it covers the whole scope of the thing with
admirable succinctness. Item one. ‘Like all fat men I tend to be my own hero.’ Item two. ‘Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.’ Item three. ‘I always hoped to achieve the Elephant’s Eye view.’ Item four. ‘I realized that to become an artist one must shed the whole complex of egotisms which led to the choice of self-expression as the only means
of growth! This because it is impossible I call The Whole Joke!’
Darley is talking of disappointments! But Brother Ass, dis-enchantment is the essence of the game. With what high hopes we invaded London from the provinces in those old dead days, our manuscripts bagging our suitcases. Do you recall? With what emotion we gazed over Westminster Bridge, reciting Words-worth’s indifferent sonnet and wondering if his daughter grew up less beautiful for being French. The metropolis seemed to quiver with the portent of our talent, our skill, our discernment. Walking along the Mall we wondered who all those men were — tall hawk-featured men perched on balconies and high places, scanning the city with heavy binoculars. What were they seeking so earnestly?
Who were they — so composed and steely-eyed? Timidly we stopped a policeman to ask him. ‘They are publishers’ he said mildly. Publishers! Our hearts stopped beating. ‘They are on the look-out for new talent.’ Great God! It was for us they were waiting and watching! Then the kindly policemen lowered his voice confidentially and said in hollow and reverent tones: