The Egoist

Published Monthly The Egoist No. 8.—Vol. V. SEPTEMBER 1918. Sixpence. Editor: Harriet Shaw Weaver Assistant Editor: T. S. Eliot Contributing Editor: Dora Marsden CONTENTS PAGE Philosophy: The Science of Signs. XVI. Our Philosophy of the "Real" (continued). By D. Marsden ........ 101 "Tarr." By T. S. Eliot......105 Early Translators of Homer. II. Andreas Divus. By Ezra Pound . . . . . . .106 PAGE The French Word in Modern Prose. XII. Jean-Richard Bloch. By Madame Ciolkowska . . 108 Charity and Grace in the Work of May Sinclair. By Jean de Bosschère . . . . . .109 Vision. By Mary Butts......111 The Meditation of a Lover at Daybreak. By Herbert Read........111

XVI. OUR PHILOSOPHY OF THE " REAL " (continued) IV. Space and Substance By D. Marsden VIII (81) HOW closely our theory binds together the facts of reality and time we have already indicated. Time we defined as the potentiality for organic movement slowly accumulated in, and impregnated upon, the organic tissues, and bequeathed both as to capital and interest from organic form to form. We pointed out that the human organism, with its mechanism adapted for symbolization, brought with it the power to differentiate simple time into the complexities of past and future time, and that it is indeed only with working with this fact as a basis that the activity of realizing together with the whole notion of reality has arisen. Only when these two new wings of time had furnished the stage necessary if the interwoven activities of speech and manual construction were to pursue their transforming career did the conception of making ideas real assume form. (82) Now just as an explanation of reality which failed to reveal the latter's relationship to time would perforce be concerning itself only with the more superficial bearings of the subject, so would an explanation of reality which failed to relate the latter to the ideas of space and substance be limited to the merely formal difficulties of the subject. As a matter of fact, the ideas of time, space, substance, and reality, together with that of intellect, combine to make a schematic logical whole, and the actual meaning of "explanation" in relation to them consists in the orderly setting forth of their complementary relationship towards one another. (83) It is in this fashion that it follows that, defining time as the total motor-potentiality of any organism, space and substance prove definable as two out of the three motor-modes into which the totality of time principally exhausts itself. The third motor-mode is that newly evolved motor-activity relative to symbolization which collectively forms the intellect. The supervention of the latter being happily coincident with a specialized development of the spatial power in the form of hands, their co-incident action has proved responsible—in a fashion we have already described—for that unique form of activity called realizing which has reacted with such amazing fruitfulness in the transformation and development of substance. Any explanation of reality therefore involves every one of these terms. In sum: space, substance, and intellect are three modes of time, and reality is an important, though secondary, compounded effect arising out of their coincident operations. (84) Having now indicated these larger relationships of our subjects, we may limit ourselves in our present study to their more circumscribed aspects: When we defined all forms of experience as forms f feeling, and then defined feeling as forms of movement in the tissues of the experiencing organism, we committed ourselves to a definition of space and substance no less than of any other experiential form. Hence, allowing these definitions, all subsequent consideration of space and substance will be limited to a detailing of the specific differences characteristic of the particular motor-forms composing them. It is upon a consideration of such a limited scope that we have to be understood as entering here. (85) Circumscribed, however, from the outset as we thus are by our most elemental definitions, the conceptions of space and substance still remain so primary that any survey of them will keep us in the region of our most fundamental vital facts. Our first step, therefore, will be to recall the definition which at an earlier stage we gave of the term life ##102 THE EGOIST September 1918 itself. Life we described as a power to establish a complex motor-system consisting of an organism plus an extra-organic fringe; that is to say, of a "me" plus a "not-me": or of a self plus a correlated world. The contradictions seemingly involved in these paradoxical conditions we sought to resolve by insisting that the vital unit or universal was the ego rather than the organism. In this universe, the organic body itself constitutes only the active creative nucleus, while the effects of its creative activity fall into two great categories of organic movement, i.e. sensations and action proper, according as they spring from the one or other of the organism's two main motor-modes: the substantial and the spatial respectively. (86) The first category, i.e. that of sensations, consists of motor-forms enacted in localized organic areas upon tissues interiorly connected with the localized sense-organs lying just within the organic surface. In their total effects, these comprise the sense-forms of substance with the secondary qualities of sound, colour, and scent. Along with the characteristics of these sense-forms just enumerated, however, we have to associate that of projectivity: a sense-aspect which is very readily overlooked on account of its unvarying incidence with each and every sensory form. For while sensory effects are produced by movements within the organic body, the prime feature admitting of discrimination from their total complex is that of projection beyond the organic body. It is this feature which occasions the externality relative to that body common to all sensory phenomena. The very genius of the dual-aspected activity which we call living resides in this power to produce, by means of a mechanism within the body, sense-effects which appear as projected beyond it. Thus an organism proves itself an organism by the exercise of the power to possess itself of an external world. Considered in absolute detachment from its external world, an organism is therefore a pure contradiction. As the organism is, so its world is. A world is precisely the expression of what is essentially organic in any organism, and the world-fringe element in the egoistic universe bears an exact relation to the creative power of the nucleus which not only experiences it but creates it. (87) This conception of a vital unit comprehending at once both the organic body and its related external world is, to our mind, the sole one logically capable of accommodating all the vital facts: the sole one capable of resolving the baffling antinomies which crop out in every attempt to render into a logical statement the riddle of existence. Among the first-fruits of its competence is its suggestion of an adequate word-scheme, into which may be translated the otherwise altogether baffling facts of space. (88) Of the three great orders of organic movement we have now indicated one: those localized sensory movements which yield the projected sense-forms "occupying" space. The second order consists of movements of the organic nucleus acting as a whole: or rather acting so as to move the external surface of the organism, as a whole or in part, in such a manner as to alter the relative position of the organic nucleus towards its projected sensory fringe. The second order of movement thus forms a kingdom of motion within a kingdom. It is the spatial order of movement, as distinguished from the sensory substantial order. Of the two kingdoms, neither takes precedence in time over the other. In the history of vital effort both are equally involved. Both require to be recognized as operating in the bare fact of life, and both require place in the latter's definition. Even in respect of sensory forms whose range of sensation is limited to the simplest form of contact, the revealing of this sensation consists precisely in forward or backward movements of the organism viewed externally. If the sense-form is one for which the organism has an affinity, the body moves externally with a view to the sensation's prolongation or intensification. If it is one to which it is antipathetic it moves so as to ensure the sensation's diminution or cessation. It is in this way that we hive to regard the spatial power of movement as the organism's auxiliary, or reactive mode, by means of which judgment is effected upon the substantial creations themselves, since it serves either to intensify and prolong them, or to furnish an avenue of escape from them. The complementary character of the two modes is to be emphasized. Such emphasis must not, however, blind us to the fact that each is absolute in itself. The spatial activity, for instance, is not able to annihilate, override, or efface the products of the substantial activity. All that it can do is to negotiate and manoeuvre them, and under certain procedures, which the intellect and the hands have made possible for the human organism, to transmute them. IX (89) The idea of space took its origin in men's minds as the spontaneous logical translation of the limited power of the organic nucleus to negotiate sensory forms, either by moving through them or round them. The idea sprang up betimes in man's cultural history, and came by its most indelibly marked features at a time when man was more habituated to the acceptance of sense-forms at their face value than he is now. There was, accordingly, about his notion of space neither mistiness nor uncertainty. When his body on its external surface was able to move, he said there space existed. When such progress was blocked by sensory forms he said there existed no space. As a matter of fact it has to be acknowledged that he associated his term space with the medium through which his limbs moved, rather than with the movement itself. We, however, shall claim that an intelligent and coherent account can be rendered of space only when the term is applied to the bodily movement itself. Space, we shall say, is organic movement precisely as these sensory surroundings themselves are, but that it is limited as to its expression to movement of the nucleus-body among its sensory surroundings, while the sensory forms are composed of movement passing over the interiorly situated tissues, which connect up with the sense-organs lying just within the surface. Organic movement will, therefore, be responsible not only for the "contents" of space, i.e. the sense-forms themselves, but also for what the ancients called the "containing vessel" of such contents, i.e. space itself. (90) Now with this simple but important modification of the popular notion of space we are provided with a conception which the philosophic mind could accept as comporting logically with all related vital facts, and which would meet every requirement of the space with which the geometrician deals. It is advisable here, however, to dwell for a moment on the latter. The geometrician has managed to invest the subject of space with a certain formidableness by specializing not directly on space but on what he would term the spatial properties. Let us see what, according to our theory, these properties may be. Space exists, let us say, whenever the organic body finds itself capable of moving relatively to its sensory surroundings. "Perfect" space therefore would be represented by conditions where such movement would be absolutely unhampered as, for instance, in a frictionless or obstacle-free vacuum, which would leave the organic energy undiminished by its own exercise and capable of maintaining and continuing itself perpetually if it so desired by virtue of the inertia of an established movement unslowed-down by friction. It is not, however, from any such idea of a "perfect" space that our idea of space has originated. Our notions of space have sprung up just ##September 1918 THE EGOIST 103 because of the existence of highly insistent limitations upon these externalized movements of the body. Man has concentrated his attention upon his purely relative freedom of external movement because he has to contend with so many obstacles which impede it. Everything which is of interest to us in our space is born out of the "lie" of sense-effects which tend to negate our space. The interest of our organic movements of the second order resides in the fact that they have shape and pattern imposed on them by the products of organic movements of the first order. That is to say, the character of the sense-forms impose definite features upon our external bodily motions. We can only move thus and thus precisely in accord with the value of a ratio represented by the substantial strength of our sensations in comparison with our power of spatial movement. (91) Hence, though the forms of our externalized movements are imposed by the character of sensory forms, they nevertheless remain the properties of our external movements. They are indeed spatial properties correctly so called, being the properties of our action, i.e. our space, rather than the properties of our substantial forms. However, because they appear in unvarying correlation with the substantial forms, we have come to associate them even more readily with the sense-forms than with space. What we, however, in rough-and-ready way call the spatial properties of substance are actually the free bodily movements which can be taken in closest proximity to them. They are those edges and surfaces which constitute the uttermost limits of spatial movement in relation to opposing substances. They are the lines of movement which show the least possible deviation from the organic body's track of motion in a straight line: the line, that is, which is shortest, and therefore the most economical of organic energy. (92) It is upon surfaces and edges: these lines of space abutting upon sensory substances: that the attention of the geometrician has fastened. In order to economize in the amount of energy spent in the tracing of those turning movements substantially imposed upon the human organism and more particularly upon the latter's most mobile external organ —the hand, and those refinements upon the manual model—our instruments of measure, concentrated scrutiny has been trained upon these free paths most nearly contiguous to the sensory blocks. To systematize their many forms, and reduce their multiple and complex "routes" to simplicity and order, quite the heaviest artillery of the mental forces has been directed upon their analysis and synthesis. The generalizations thus drawn constitute the sum of our geometrical knowledge. This knowledge, be it reiterated then, is knowledge about the external movements of our bodies, and the kind of deflected movement in any given sensory milieu to which they have revealed themselves as subject. (93) With such a defining of space and its properties we should have no difficulty in understanding what is implied by the ascription to space of a "three-dimensional" character. Space being the path of the organism's externalized movements, it is obvious that space will have as many dimensions as there are possible directions of external bodily movement. The number of dimensions, therefore, can be determined by making direct appeal to our externalized motor-experience. The findings resulting from such an appeal show that there are three main directions: up and down; to and fro; in and out. For example, let us consider the directions open to external movement available for the most mobile human limbs— the arms. Looking upon the shoulder-sockets as the centre of a sphere about which each arm turns, the latter can be conceived as capable of assuming positions and moving through an area approximating to that of a half-sphere: the possible movements of both arms thus constituting the whole sphere. Now the number of directions in which one may strike outwards from the centre of a sphere is of course infinite, but if we confine ourselves to the main directions we see that there are three: those represented by the movements through the three plane surfaces whose diameters co-exist at right angles to each other. It is the directions represented by these diameters which constitute the three "dimensions" of space. It would indeed vastly reduce the awesomeness of the matter on its metaphysical, and even its mathematical, side if the three spatial dimensions were frankly spoken of as the three main directions. It would then be clear that while the number of directions open to bodily movement would be infinite, the number of main directions— i.e. directions along the diameters of a sphere at right angles to each other —is limited to three, while every other conceivable direction would admit of description in terms relative to these. A fourth dimension to space is inconceivable for the prosaic reason that we cannot make such a direction: we cannot strike out into it, and it seems to us, therefore, that the learned mathematicians who propound a fourth dimension for space—and even higher—are confounding two things which are quite distinct and different. They are confounding space itself and its qualities with their own dazzling prowess as computators in dealing with even heightened complexity of calculation relative to the quantities of space. (94) The complementary conception to space in this interpretation of it is, of course, that of substance. Absolute space would be the power in an organic nucleus-body to move itself bodily without any obstruction, hindrance, or friction of any kind. Such an absolute space we can imagine and symbolize, but cannot in any way possess knowledge of, inasmuch as the idea involves the negation of the very sense-forms whose experiencing forms one factor in the dual activity which constitutes knowing. Whenever we experience space it is a limited space: external movement opposed by some form or other of that sensory movement which constitutes substance. It is precisely in terms of this opposition that we have to define substantiality. A substance is a sensory— that is to say a projected—form which presents hindrances to the free movement of the organic nucleus, the limbs of this nucleus, or the artificial instruments constructed in imitation of limbs. Since not all sensory forms are equally efficacious as obstacles—their substantiality being indeed a very highly variable quantity—the organism finds itself able to plot out by means of its movements a sensory panorama, through some items of which run highly free paths of space, and comparatively free paths, but about certain of which the paths are so definitely and obstinately blocked that they proceed to turn round instead of going through the substance should further progress be desired. The type of such a " block " is obviously the solid. (95) In these circumstances the primitive organism evolved not only the notion of space but a notion of thinghood to correspond. Roughly, space was where there were highly free paths of movement, and things were those sensory forms which definitely blocked such paths. Hence, at the outset, things would be exclusively solids and space would come to be regarded as the realm where there existed no solid. The realm of no-thing, and therefore of space, would be coterminous with that of no solid, while that of something (i.e. some solid thing) would be the realm in which the solid refused a way to space. (96) Now the scientific progress of man can be described as a progress in which the idea of thinghood has broadened out from the primitively exclusive one of a solid to the comprehensive one which includes anything capable of making an impress even upon our most exquisitely delicate measuring-instruments. Here, as elsewhere, the increased show of sensitiveness ##104 THE EGOIST September 1918 presented by our measuring-instruments produces revolutionizing results. As a result of the latter's use, the domain of no-thing dwindles, being encroached upon by that of some-thing, until it has shrunk to vainshing-point. The idea of some-thing broadens into the extensive notion of a mailer comprehending any obstacle which can either put up the smallest resistance or impart the slightest propulsion to body, limb, or instrument. Moreover, the scientist feeling the trend of this progression towards the negation of no-thing has bettered it, passing beyond his actually sensed observatories into the realm of speculation, and has postulated an imaginary matter, an ether, which by definition tills all space, and even permeates all substance, so as to fill up the chinks existing between molecule and molecule. This logical invention has indeed been of such assistance to him in the way of actual sensory findings: for instance, in his inquiry into the behaviour of radiant energy: that he has confidently set his instruments to work to discover its existence as a form of resistance, and it is to his very great surprise that it has never materialized. But leaving speculation alone we can still assert that as far as our spatial experience goes, nowhere is there no-thing; everywhere there is some-thing. The "containing-vessel" of space primitively regarded as tenanted by comparatively widely separated solid, or partially solidified, blocks conies to be regarded as a closely packed continuum, the formerly recognized solid tenantry being considered as particularly involved, and tightened knots existing in the all-pervasive substance. Substance is thus the warp of the universe athwart which space must interweave itself according as it can. Where it is challenged, frustrated and turned aside by the knotted warp, a sensory pattern sketches itself out with which space has to come to terms. (97) Let us now note what is observable relative to the constitution of this matter when the latter is subjected to a close analytic scrutiny. First, however, let us note what is meant by "analytical scrutiny" of such forms. What is meant is the subjection of these latter to mutual onslaughts upon each other under conditions specially arranged by the spatial movements of the organism. As the outcome of picked arrangements contrived by the hand at the instance of the intellect, one (or more) sensory form plays upon another (or other) sensory form to the end that the sense-form shall lose that inexorableness of disposition which at its face value it presents to what we may call frontal spatial onslaughts. As the outcome of these schemed juxtapositions, sensory forms are made so to betray one another as to render up the secret of their mechanism and movement. By such devices the mind-guided, spatial activity speedily brings about the transformation, and even the disintegration of sensory forms. With matter thus reduced, the possibility begins to present itself with increasing insistence to the intellect that it is open to it to use the spatial movement of the organism in order to convert all sense-forms to conditions where they will obey the organic will. The possibilities residing in the realizing activity begin to show themselves capable of transposing the centre of gravity of vital power from the sensory order to that of the spatial as animated by the intellect. As between the spatial and sensory motor-orders, the balance weighed heavily towards the sensory, but with the advent of the third, the intellectual motor-order, with its amazing alliance with the spatial, with a view to the exploitation of the sensory, the balance begins to tip unmistakably in the reverse direction. Herein resides everything that is significant and essential to the meaning of the real. (98) We have just been concerned to characterize the features of the analytic operation, but let us now look at the sensory products resulting from that operation. We have contended that space and substance are both modes of organic motion, and have reduced all difficulties in the way of proving space a motor-mode by the simple, if drastic, expedient of transferring the term from its popular acceptation in which it stands for the areas covered by the organism's external motions to the movements themselves. Such an expedient will not serve us, however, in respect of substance. As definite blocks to spatial movement, there is no gainsaying or doubting its identity, and therefore no possibility of any mere transference of labels. Either must sensory analysis prove the blocks to be movement or the entire contention fails. In such circumstances the theory derives support, all the more emphatic from the fact that the analytic progress of science reveals matter to our scientific instruments as forms of motion. What any philosopher bold enough to stand by faith upon his logical formulae alone might have asserted, the scientist has now to propound as the sensory resultant of his analytic manœuvres. Sense-forms he asserts are modes of motion. Well, the philosopher can agree; but to what source is such motion to be referred? For the scientist this motion is an unrelated fact allied to nothing: a mystery. The philosopher, however, remembering his formulae, those intellectual frameworks into which all his known relations and facts must fit, will perforce relate it to that fount of motion with which he is the most intimately acquainted: the sole source with which he can associate motion which is self-initiable: the sole source of the type which can accurately be regarded as originative. These sources are the experiencing organic forms themselves. (99) One last observation before we break off from our study of reality in order to take up what is indeed a continuation of it in a consideration of the nature and objective of truth. Until the human level is reached it is possible to look upon the organism's spatial and substantial motor-modes as two fairly equally developing domains of activity. On lower levels indeed, where all action is instinctive, the two modes appear so intimately and equally yoked together that neither admit of being experienced separately. Bather, the movements combine to form a unit experience. In such circumstances, development in each is inevitably co-ordinated. When, however, the intellectual, the third and newest mode of organic movement, supervenes, embodying everything that is significant in both the antecedent modes, and yet differing from them in being infinitely more economical and untrammelled than either, a directing-force has emerged capable of separating the warp of the universe from its weft, and of further weaving them together according to the dictates of a total organic preference. Apparently this innovating weaver of organic powers has no fundamental preference of its own as between the two forces it commands; but because, of the two, the external one alone is the executant, it follows that whether that which the mind conceives relates to the sphere of sensation or to that of action, it has to call upon the externalized bodily movement for its realization. As it happens, this externalized movement has been able to assemble many simple and ingenious devices which have made our sensory creations bloom forth into a bewildering multiplicity and richness of form. The transforming effects of a lens, the high sensitivity of a photographic plate, and the exquisite delicacy to minute degrees of pressure of certain substances when geared together to form a balance, furnish instances. (100) Now there is a very definite sense in which the sensory wealth and diversity accruing from the manipulation of its forms by the combined forces of intellect and space produces a depressing effect upon the organic forces as a whole. The effect results from the disparity created between the substantial forces and the remaining two: and this, notwithstanding ##September 1918 THE EGOIST 105 the fact that the former forces have come by their augmentation through the agency of the latter rather than by any strength inhering in themselves. As an instance of what is meant there are the facts of astronomy. It is not too much to say that the human mind is literally bullied by the wealth of astronomical phenomena. When men read of some new telescope which is able to bring at a stroke a hundred million new suns into their ken, although this instrument is man-made, they remain unmistakably depressed. What is its meaning? It is the sense of the existing powerlessness of the spatial power to bring men into anything approaching intimate connexion and contact with the new substantial elements. Man's universe has so swiftly expanded that he is overwhelmed with his impotence to overrun and reduce it. The intellect is no longer able to hold an even rein over the necks of the forces it commands. The result is strain and discouragement. Now this state of affairs, developing particularly in respect of astronomical forms, has its origin in a particular transparently spatial capacity: in a comparative powerlessness of the organism to effect complete bodily movement in one of its main dimensions, that of height. While the body may move indefinitely in the direction of length and breadth, its power to move in that of height has been—until this last moment of history—only one degree removed from total incompetence, while it is in this very direction that creative sensory appliances, such as telescope and spectroscope, have been able to achieve most signal triumphs. Hence that feeling of being master of his fate and destiny which man has had in connexion with sensory forms with which he could bring his body into intimate contact has contrasted vividly with his feelings of insignificance and impotence, faced with the sensory "occupants" of an interstellar "space" almost hopelessly remote. This impotence of one of the organic modes is the true meaning of the wistful awesomeness of such "space." Its true correction is the growth of power in the lagging mode: a growth which has indeed already begun. The possibility begins to dawn that the polar feats of endurance on the terrestrial sphere will one day be repeated in, shall we say, expeditions to Sirius and other outposts of the universe. On the day when the intellect—through the agency of the constructions of the hand—is able to impose this correction of balance between the spatial and substantial powers, the articulate vital spirit embodied in man will feel somewhat less impotently arrogant in claiming the universe as his emanation, and his bodily habitation its true centre. "TARR" THE fact that Mr. Wyndham Lewis is known as a draughtsman and painter is not of the least consequence to his standing as a prose writer. To treat his writing as an outlet for his superabundant vitality, or a means on his part of satisfying intellectual passions and keeping his art healthy, cannot lead to accurate criticism. His prose must be judged quite independently of his painting, he must be allowed the hypothesis of a dual creative personality. It would be quite another thing, of course, to find in his writing the evidences of a draughtsman's training—the training to respond to an ocular impression with the motion of a line on paper; the special reaction to vision and especially the development of the tactile sense, recognition of emotion by the physical strains and movements which are its basis. It is already a commonplace to compare Mr. Lewis to Dostoevski, analogy fostered by Mr. Lewis's explicit admiration for Dostoevsky. The relationship is so apparent that wto can all the more easily be mistaken in our analysis of it. To find the resemblance is nothing; several other contemporary novelists have obviously admired Dostoevsky, and the result is of no importance. Mr. Lewis has made such good use of Dostoevsky— has commandeered him so efficiently for his purposes—that his differences from the Russian must be insisted upon. His mind is different, his method is different, his aims are different. The method of Mr. Lewis is in fact no more like that of Dostoevsky, taking Tarr as a whole, than it is like that of Flaubert. The book does not comply with any of the accepted categories of fiction. It is not the extended conte (Cantelman's Spring Mate is not on the pattern of either Turgenev or Maupassant). It is not the elaboration of a datum, as Madame Bovary. From the standpoint of a Dostoevsky novel Tarr needs filling out: so much of Dostoevsky's effect is due to apparent pure receptivity, lack of conscious selection, to the irrelevances which merely happen and contribute imperceptibly to a total impression. In contrast to Dostoevsky, Mr. Lewis is impressively deliberate, frigid; his interest in his own personages is wholly intellectual. This is a peculiar intellectuality, not kin to Flaubert; and perhaps inhuman would be a better word than frigid. Intelligence, however, is only a part of Mr. Lewis's quality; it is united with a vigorous physical organism which interests itself directly in sensation for its own sake. The direct contact with the senses, perception of the world of immediate experience with its own scale of values, is like Dostoevsky, but there is always the suggestion of a purely intellectual curiosity in the senses which will disconcert many readers of the Russian novelist. And there is another important quality, neither French nor Russian, which may disconcert them still more. This is Humour. Humour is distinctively English. No one can be so aware of the environment of Stupidity as the Englishman; no other nationality perhaps provides so dense an environment as the English. The intelligent Englishman is more aware of loneliness, has more reserves, than the man of intelligence of any other nation. Wit is public, it is in the object; humour (I am speaking only of real humour) is the instinctive attempt of a sensitive mind to protect beauty against ugliness; and to protect itself against stupidity. The older British humour is of this sort; in that great but decadent humorist, Dickens, and in some of his contemporaries it is on the way to the imbecilities of Punch. Mr. Lewis's humour is near to Dickens, but on the right side, for it is not too remote from Ben Jonson. In Tarr it is by no means omnipresent. It turns up when the movement is relaxed, it disappears when the action moves rapidly. The action is in places very rapid indeed: from the blow given by Kreisler in the café to the suicide is one uninterrupted movement. The awakening of Kreisler by the alarum-clock is as good as anything of the sort by Dostoevsky; the feverish haste of the suit-case episode proceeds without a smile. Bertha's impression of Kreisler is good in the same way: She saw side by side, and unconnected, the silent figure drawing her and the other one full of blindness and violence. Then there were two other figures, one getting up from the chair, yawning", and the present lazy one at the window—four in all, that she could not bring together somehow, each in a complete compartment of time of its own. It is always with the appearance of Tarr, a very English figure, that Humour is apt to enter; whenever the situation is seen from Tarr's point of view. Humour invests him. He impressed you "'as having inherited himself last week, and as under a great press of business to grasp the details and resources of the concern." Bertha's apartment, with the "repulsive shades of Islands of the Dead" is as it appeared to Tarr. Humour, indeed, protects Tarr from Bertha, from the less important Anastasya, from the Lipmann ##106 THE EGOIST September 1918 circle. As a figure in the book, indeed, he is protected too well: "Tarr exalts life into a Comedy," but it remains Ms (private) comedy. In one scene, and that in contact with Kreisler, Tarr is moved from his reserve into reality: the scene in which Tarr is forced out of Kreisler's bedroom. Here there is another point of contact with Dostoevsky, in a variation on one of Dostoevsky's best themes: Humiliation. This is one of the most important elements in human life, and one little exploited. Kreisler is a study in humiliation. I do not understand the Times when it remarks that the book "is a very brilliant reductio ad absurdum not only of its own characters, but of its own method." I am not sure that there is one method at all; or that there is not a different method for Tarr, for Kreisler, and for Bertha. It is absurd to attack the method which produced Kreisler and Bertha; they are permanent for literature. But there is an invisible conflict in progress all the time, between Tarr and Kreisler, to impose two different methods upon the book. We cannot say, therefore, that the form is perfect. In form, and in the actual writing, it is surpassed by Cantelman's Spring Mate. And Inferior Religions remains in my opinion the most indubitable evidence of genius, the most powerful piece of imaginative thought, of anything Mr. Lewis has written. There can be no question of the importance of Tarr. But it is only in part a novel; for the rest, Mr. Lewis is a magician who compels our interest in himself; he is the most fascinating personality of our time rather than a novelist. The artist, I believe, is more primitive, as well as more civilized, than his contemporaries, his experience is deeper than civilization, and he only uses the phenomena of civilization in expressing it. Primitive instincts and the acquired habits of ages are confounded in the ordinary man. In the work of Mr. Lewis we recognize the thought of the modern and the energy of the cave-man. T. S. Eliot EARLY TRANSLATORS OF HOMER By Ezra Pound II. ANDREAS DIVUS IN the year of grace 1906, '08, or '10 I picked from the Paris quais a Latin version of the Odyssey by Andreas Divus Justinopolitanus (Parisiis, In officina Christiani Wecheli, M,D,XXXVIII), the volume containing also the Batrachomyomachia, by Aldus Manutius, and the "Hymni Deorum" rendered by Georgius Dartona Cretensis. I lost a Latin Iliads for the economy of four francs, these coins being at that time scarcer with me than they ever should be with any man of my tastes and abilities. In 1911 the Italian savant, Signore E. Teza, published his note, "Quale fosse la Casata di Andreas Divus Justinopolitanus?" This question I am unable to answer, nor do I greatly care by what name Andreas was known in the privacy of his life: Signore Dio, Signore Divino, or even Mijnheer van Gott may have served him as patronymic. Sannazaro, author of Be Partu Virginis, and also of the epigram ending lianc et sugere, translated himself as Sanctus Nazarenus, I am myself known as Signore Sterlina to James Joyce's children, while the phonetic translation of my name into the Japanese tongue is so indecorous that I am seriously advised not to use it, lest it do me harm in Nippon. (Rendered back ad verbum into our maternal speech it gives for its meaning, " This picture of a phallus costs ten yen." There is no surety in shifting personal names from one idiom to another. Justinopolis is identified as Capodistria, what matters is Divus' text. We find for the "Kekuia" (Odys. xi): " At postquam ad navem descendimus, et mare, Nauem quidem primum deduximus in mare diuum, Et malum posuimus et vela in navi nigra: Intro autem oues accipientes ire fecimus, intro et ipsi Iuimus dolentes, huberes lachrymas fundentes: Nobis autem a tergo navis nigrae prorse Prosperum ventum imisit pandentern velum bonum amicurn Circe benecomata gravis Dea altiloqua. Nos autem arma singula expedientes in navi Sedebamus: hanc autem ventusque gubernatorque dirigebat: Hums at per totum diem extensa sunt vela pontum transientis: Occidit tunc Sol, onibratae sunt omnes vise: Haec autem in fines pervenit profundi Oceani: Illic autem Cimmeriorum virorum populusque civitasque, Caligine et nebula cooperti, neque unquam ipsos Sol lucidus aspicit radiis, Neque quando tendit ad cœlum stellatum, Neque quando retro in terram a ccelo vertitur: Sed nox pernitiosa extenditur miseris hominibus: Navem quidem illuc venientes traximus, extra autem oves 20 Accepimus: ipsi autem rursus apud fluxum Oceani Iuimus, ut in locum perveniremus quern dixit Circe: Hie sacra quidem Perimedes Eurylochusque Faciebant: ego autem ensem acutum trahens a foemore, Foveam fodi quantum cubiti mensura hinc et inde:25 Circum ipsam autem libamina fundimus omnibus mortuis: Primum mulso, postea autem dulci vino: Tertio rursus aqua, et farinas albas miscui: Multum autem oravi mortuorum infirma capita: Profectus in Ithicam, sterilem bovem, quae optima esset, 30 Sacrificare in domibus, pyramque implere bonis: Tiresiae autem seorsum ovem sacrificare vovi Totam nigram, quae ovibus antecellat nostris: Has autem postquam votis precationibusque gentes mortuorum Precatus sum, oves autem accipiens obtruncavi: 35 In fossma fluebat autem sanguis niger, congregatae-que sunt" Animae ex Erebo cadaverum mortuorum, Nymphaeque iuvenesque et multa passi senes, Virginesque tenerae, nuper flebilem animum habentes, Multi autem vulnerati aereis lanceis 40 Viri in bello necati, cruenta arma habentes, Qui multi circum foveam veniebant aliunde alius Magno clamore, me autem pallidus timor cepit. Iam postea socios hortans iussi Pecora, quae iam iacebant iugulata saevo aere, 45 Excoriantes combuere: supplicare autem Diis, Fortique Plutoni, et laudatae Proserpina?. At ego ensem acutum trahens a foemore, Sedi, neque permisi mortuorum impotentia capita Sanguinem prope ire, antequam Tiresiam audirem: 50 Prima autem anima Elpenoris venit socii: Nondum enim sepultus erat sub terra lata, Corpus enim in domo Circes reliquimus nos Infletum et insepultum, quoniam labor alius urgebat: Hunc quidem ego lachrymatus sum videns, miser - tusque sum aio, 55 Et ipsum clamando verba velocia allocutus sum: Elpenor, quomodo venisti sub caliginem obs- curam: Praevenisti pedes existons, quam ego in navi nigra? Sic dixi: hie autem mihi lugens respondit verbo: Nobilis Laertiade, prudens Ulysse, Nocuit mihi dei fatum malum, et multum vinum: ##September 1918 THE EGOIST 107 Circes autem in domo dormiens, non animadverti Me retrogradum descenderc eundo per scalam longam, Sed contra murum cecidi ast autem mihi cervix Nervorum frac ta est, anima autem in internum descendit: 65 Nunc autem his qui venturi sunt postea precor non praesentibus Per uxorem et patrem, qui educavit parvum existentem, Telemachumque quern solum in domibus reliquisti. Scio enim quod hinc iens domo ex inferni Insulam in iEaeani impellens benefabricatam navim: Tunc te postea Eex iubeo recordari mei Ne me infletum,.insepultum, abiens retro, relinquas Separatus, ne deorum ira nam Sed me combure con armis quaecunque mihi sunt, Sepulchramque mihi accumula cani in litore maris,75 Viri infelicis, et cuius apud posteros fama sit: Haecque mihi perfice, figeque in sepulehro remum, Quo et vivus remigabam existens cum meis sociis. Sic dixit: at ego ipsum, respondens, allocutus sum: Haec tibi infelix perficiamque et faciam: 80 Nos quidem sic verbis respondentes molestis Sedebamus: ego quidem seperatim supra sanguinem ensem tenebam: Idoluni autem ex altera parte socii multa loque-batur: Venit autem insuper anima matris mortua? Autolyci filia magnanimi Anticlea, 85 Quam vivam dereliqui iens ad Ilium sacrum, Hac quidem ego lachrymatus sum videns miseratus que sum aio: Sed neque sic sivi priorem licet valde dolens Sanguinem prope ire, antequam Tiresiam audirem: Venit autem insuper anima Thebani Tiresiae, 90 Aureuni sceptrum tenens, me autem novit et allocuta est: Cur iterum o infelix linquens lumen Solis Venisti, ut videas mortuos, et iniucundam regionem? Sed recede a fossa, remove autem ensem acutum, Sanguinem ut bibam, et tibi vera dicam. 95 Sic dixi: ego autem retrocedens, ensem argenteum Vagina inclusi: hie autem postquam bibit sanguinem nigrum, Et tunc iam me verbis allocutus est vates verus: Eeditum quaeris dulcem illustris Ulysse: Hanc autem tibi difïicilem faciet Deus, non enim puto 100 Latere Neptunum, quam iram imposuit animo Iratus, quem ei filium dilectum excaecasti: Sed tarnen et sic mala licet passi pervenientis, Si volveris tuum animum continere et sociorum." The meaning of the passage is, with a few abbreviations, as I have interpolated it in three cantos (Poetry, The Future, and in Lustra, larger edition, pub. A. A. Knopf, New York). "And then went down to the ship, set keel to breakers, Forth on the godly sea, We set up mast and sail on the swart ship, Sheep bore we aboard her, and our bodies also, Heavy with weeping; and winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas, Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess. Then sat we amidships—wind jamming the tiller— Thus with stretched sail we went over sea till day's end. Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean, Came we then to the bounds of deepest water, To the Kimmerian lands and peopled cities Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever With glitter of sun-rays, Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven, Swartest night stretched over wretched men there, The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place Aforesaid by Circe. Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus, And drawing sword from my hip I dug the ell-square pitkin, Poured we libations unto each the dead, First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour. Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death's-heads, As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods. Sheep, to Tiresias only; black and a bell sheep. Dark blood flowed in the fosse, Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, Of brides, of youths, and of much-bearing old; Virgins tender, souls stained with recent tears, Many men mauled with bronze lance-heads, Battle spoil, bearing yet dreary arms, These many crowded about me, With shouting, pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts. Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze, Poured ointment, cried to the gods, To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine, Unsheathed the narrow sword, I sat to keep off the impetuous, impotent dead Till I should hear Tiresias. But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor, Unburied, cast on the wide earth, Limbs that we left in the house of Circe, Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other. Pitiful spirit, and I cried in hurried speech: 'Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast! Cam'st thou a-foot, outstripping seamen?' And he in heavy speech: 'Ill fate and abundant wine! I slept in Circe's ingle, Going down the long ladder unguarded, I fell against the buttress, Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus. But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied, Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-board, and inscribed: "A man of no fortune and with a name to come." And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.' Came then another ghost, whom I beat off, Anticlea, And then Tiresias, Theban, Holding his golden wand, knew me and spoke first: 'Man of ill hour, why come a second time, Leaving the sunlight, facing the sunless dead, and this joyless region? Stand from the fosse, move back, leave me my bloody bever, And I will speak you true speeches.' And I stepped back, Sheathing the yellow sword. Dark blood he drank then, And spoke: 'Lustrous Odysseus Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas, Lose all companions.' Foretold me the ways and the signs. Came then Anticlea, to whom I answered: ' Fate drives me on through these deeps. I sought Tiresias,' Told her the news of Troy. And thrice her shadow Faded in my embrace." It takes no more Latin than I have to know that Divus' Latin is not the Latin of Catullus and Ovid; that it is illepidus to chuck Latin nominative participles about in such profusion; that Romans did not use habentes as the Greeks used êxovres, etc. And nos in line 53 is unnecessary. The point is that ##108 THE EGOIST September 1918 Divus' Latin has, despite these wems, its quality; it is even singable, there are constant suggestions of the poetic motion; it is very simple Latin, after all, and a crib of this sort may make just the difference of permitting a man to read fast enough to get the swing and mood of the subject, instead of losing both in a dictionary. Even habentes when one has made up one's mind to it, together with less obvious exoticisms, does not upset, one as "the steep of Delphos leaving." One is, of necessity, more sensitive to botches in one's own tongue than to botches in another, however carefully learned. For all the fuss about Divus' errors of elegance Samuelis Clarkius and Jo. Augustus Ernestus do not seem to have gone him much better—with two hundred years extra Hellenic scholarship at their disposal. The first Aldine Greek Iliads appeared I think in 1504, Odyssey possibly later. My edition of Divus is of 1538, and as it contains Aldus' own translation of the Frog-fight, it may indicate that Divus was in touch with Aldus in Italy, or quite possibly the French edition is pirated from an earlier Italian printing. A Latin Odyssey in some sort of verse was at that time infinitely worth doing. Raphael of Volterra had done a prose Odyssey with the opening lines of several books and a few other brief passages in verse. This was printed with Laurenzo Valla's prose Iliads as early as 1502. He begins: "Die mihi musa virum captae post tempora Troiae Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes Multa quo que et ponto passus dum naufragus errat Ut sibi tum sotiis (soeiis) vitam servaret in alto Non tarnen hos cupiens fato deprompsit acerbo." Probably the source of "Master Watson's "English quantitive couplet, but obviously not copied by Divus: "Virum mihi die musa multiscium qui valde multum Erravit ex quo Troiae sacram urbem depopulatus est: Multorum autem virorum vidit urbes et meutern cognovit: Moltos autem hie in mare passus est dolores, suo in animo, Liberans suamque animam et reditum sociorum." On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to believe that Clark and Ernestus were unfamiliar with Divus. Clark calls his Latin crib a composite "non elegantem utique et venustam, sed ita Romanam, ut verbis verba." A good deal of Divus' venustas has departed. Clark's hyphenated compounds are, I think, no more Roman than are some of Divus' coinage; they may be a trifle more explanatory, but if we read a shade more of colour into àôéo-cpaTos oïvos than we can into multum vinum, it is not restored to us in Clark's copiosum vinum, nor does terra spatiosa improve upon terra lata, evpvbelrjs being (if anything more than lata): " with wide ways or streets," the wide ways of the world, traversable, open to wanderers. The participles remain in Clark-Ernestus, many of the coined words remain unchanged. Georgius Dartona gives, in the opening of the second hymn to Aphrodite: " Venerandam auream corona m habentem pulchram Venerem Canam, quae totius Cypri munimenta sortita est Maritimae ubi illam zephyri vis niolliter spirantis Suscitavit per undam multisoni maris, Spuma in molli: hanc autem auricurae Horae Susceperunt hilariter, immortales autem vestes induere: Capite vero super immortali coronam bene constructam posuere Pulchram, auream: tribus autem ansis Donum orichalchi aurique honorabilis: Collum autem molle, ac pectora argentea Monilibus aureis ornabant ..." etc. Ernestus, adding by himself the appendices to the Epics, gives us: " Venerandam auream coronam habentem pulchram Venerem Canam, quae totius Cypri munimenta sortita est Maritimae, ubi illam zephyri vis molliter spirantis Tulit per undam multisoni maris Spuma in molli: hanc autem auro comam religatae Horae Susceperunt hilariter, immortales autem vestes induere: Caput autem super immortale coronam bene constructam posuere Pulchram, auream, perforatis autem auriculis Donum orichalci preciosi: Collum autem molle ac pectora Candida * Monilibus aureis ornabant ..." etc. "Which things since they are so" lead us to feel that we would have had no less respect for Messrs. Clarkius and Ernestus if they had deigned to mention the names of their predecessors. They have not done this in their prefaces, and if any mention is made of the sixteenth-century scholars, it is very effectually buried somewhere in the voluminous Latin notes, which I have not gone through in toto. Their edition (Glasgow, 1814) is, however, most serviceable. THE FRENCH WORD IN MODERN PROSE XII. JEAN-RICHARD BLOCH: ... et Cie JEAN-RICHARD BLOCH is the nearest equivalent I know to George Meredith. It would almost be possible to balance a page from Meredith against a page from . . . et Cie. But Meredith remains the more complete master, as yet, if not the more interesting. If, while I was looking through the first two chapters of . . . et Cie, I had been told by some bystander that I should reach the last of the 340 pages or so (400 words to a page) without another stumble I should have been surprised. For this narrative about a business adventure, as detailed as Robinson Crusoe itself, has a repellingly Teutonic stolidity of approach. Subtract the introductory scenes and the almost as ungainly and quite unnecessarily and unexpectedly sybilline oration at the close, and you have a book important and engrossing. It is the history of a family of Alsatian Jews: weavers, who, choosing for France after the first Franco-German War, emigrate out of their native province, now annexed, across the frontier, there to start life and business anew, characteristically intent (characteristically Alsatian and characteristically Jewish) upon prosperity. Their united wind-in-the-face career with the ultimate stagnation accompanying a limited if difficult goal, forms the main raison d'être of a romance wherein the business passion takes the place of the, in fiction, more usual love passion. Nevertheless, grafted upon this more novel theme is a love episode of a rare quality, the " heroine " of which is the flower of the whole composition, a girl "Gove" who has a place in the ranks of striking feminine characters. A feature of this curious book is, that while enabled by his own descent to give the most intimate views of the Jewish psychology (incidentally also of Jewish and Alsatian customs and other distinctive traits), * Reading àpyv p€o«riv, variant apyvpeoio-n', offered in footnote. In any case orgailea is closer than Candida. ##September 1918 THE EGOIST 109 the attitude of this Zangwill in French literary annals is that of an impartial outsider and looker-on. M. Bloch delineates character with a tart originality. The men are made clear by their actions; the women (witty Helene Le Pleynier, Königin Sarah and the rest) insinuate their presence more passively, more obliquely. Comme toute la vie doit passer à travers la femme pour se perpétuer, elle sait quelque chose de plus que nous dans le domaine obscur. The women answer to that theory. They weigh heavily on events without directing them. The men in this book are enamoured of their trade, and as the women live for their mankind the "factory" is their raison d'être too: Il fallait des pièces de drap dans le magasin, non seulement pareequ'un magasin vide glace le client, mais surtout parce-qu'il fallait s'entourer au plus vite de cette odeur, de ce toucher et de ce spectacle si nécessaires à la vie. Everything lives that comes into contact with life if it be intense enough. It is this great and insufficiently recognized truth on which Bloch's book is founded. The Simlers' business was one of their various religions, the " family " was another: La fabrique, la famille, il n'y a pas de différence, ce sont deux aspects de la même chose. M. Bloch does not squeamishly idealize or attenuate his characters. They can be frankly and avowedly coarse in manner, and physically unprepossessing. Brusque contrasts illustrate the combined matter-of-factness with the artistic emotions of the Jewish temperament. From the description of a menu (with recipes), M. Bloch will pass without interval to analysing the "Waldstein" sonata. I cannot be sure whether he intended to convey this impression or whether these ungraduated oppositions are the consequence of his own innate racial tendencies. Probably there is a combination of accident and design. The book is swollen with metaphor, much of it very fine. M. Bloch's use of adjectives also deserves comment. Simplicity is not Bloch's way: Enfin, au moment où une écailleuse syllabe, proche parente du mot ruine, se débattait entre les favoris d'Hyppolyte, et tentait de franchir le seuil disloqué de ses lèvres, la tornade, que les plus avertis guettaient de loin, se leva et les enveloppa. Yet his prolixity at its most prolix is not tedious because it is always full and compact. Like Balzac, but a rational Balzac, Bloch is versed in a great variety of topics. He plays with figures, is sensitively comprehending of the psychology of children and women; he will explain the cause of feminine domination in France, the rôle of women in Jewish families—he seems to possess a master-key to a world of subjects. Such profusion might, very easily, have entailed confusion. Here it does not. . . . et Cie is a well-sustained, orderly composition. The characters are all good portraits, the minor ones as well as those more in the foreground—the little hunchback Blum, for instance, is striking. Certain scenes are replete with life, the first introduction between Hélène and Joseph, the succeeding love scene with its suppressed demonstration, the adventure of, and after, the Moulin de la Galette, the soliloquies of the boy Louis, which in themselves mirror various scenes, these chiefly, but many other pictures are magnificent achievements. M. Bloch is prolifically careless of opportunities for plot and facile dramatic effect. Half a dozen books might have grown out of this one. Every now and again a chance is, happily, deliberately and disdainfully squandered. Its relation to the 1870 war and its connexion with Alsace make topical reading of this book which, although only issued in 1917, was in the publishers' hands in 1914, and contains the following most timely observation: "Listen," says the millionaire uncle from the other side, "America still needs you French [let us bracket: Europeans] as much as you need her. What she has to learn from you will take her a century. What she has to teach you, in trade, in business, will take you ten years to learn when once you set about it." Nothing more apt has been said since it became particularly apt. Muriel Ciolkowska CHARITY AND GRACE IN THE WORK OF MAY SINCLAIR By Jean de Bosschere THE unifying factor in the work of May Sinclair is its humanity. The emotions of the heart are controlled by the intelligence, but ever and again we find the heart claiming its unalienable rights, and it is then that the author produces her finest work. It is not sentimental, but there is about it a naked truthfulness quite free from that rhetoric which is the evil tradition of most writers in dealing with emotions. And every one of Miss Sinclair's books is fragrant with the flower of poetry. I have not set myself the task of showing what a great poet is latent in this novelist; but it is relevant to insist upon the fact before passing on to consider the peculiar qualities of the illumination displayed in her pictures of modern life. Miss Sinclair approaches humankind with commiseration and solicitude, and since everything in this world is in a state of equilibrium, her solicitude and her love bring her intuition and charity. Through her love she reaches visions of the rarest reality. She manages, by virtue of the wholeness and confidence of her gift, to see the world without a veil. There is only one world and one reality, and that is the image we make of it imaginatively. See the world as it is, say the rhetoricians. That is meaningless. The world varies according to the way we look at it. The world is only what we ourselves are. There is no relationship between the carpenter's world and the world of the professor. There may be sometimes, in politics and in religion, a certain identity of vision, but these ephemeral understandings do not concern the authentic world. Only the world that is in ourselves is known to us. We can conceive of no other with any reality. Every time that a man, even a mediocrity, is depicted; whenever we are shown the honest portrait of a philosopher, a madman, or a mediocrity such as Banny Bansome,* or of a determined constructor such as Jevons, * we fasten upon the delineation with an eager passionate instinct—the instinct of direct communication with the man. It is always the secret hope of a personal revelation that attaches us to a loyal narrative. The multitude of the characters appearing in May Sinclair's work is proof enough that she has penetrated into all hearts. But she specially inclines towards two types, first, the humble and then the creators, poets or writers, living on the proceeds of their art. She must from the first have had some presentiment of her own strength. Her early figures are good outline sketches of those which appear later on; and if these early figures lack in force and emphasis, it is due to lack of practice in waiting. A writer does not master his medium all at once. But already in The Divine Fire she has acquired the * The Combined, Maze. By May Sinclair. Hutchinson, London, 1913. f Tasker Jevons. Bv May Sinclair. Hutchinson, London, 1916. ##110 THE EGOIST September 1918 master's certainty of touch. The personality of the hero is indicated in a few strokes. One does not desire the smallest elaboration or retouching. Her grasp of her characters is always so powerful as to give one at first the impression that it is purely intuitive. But this impression does not linger. It is swept away by recurrent evidence of close analysis, a meticulous examination of the atom s forming the whole. It is of course true that even the greatest gifts will not allow a novelist to write his books as if they were chapters of ancient history. There are hours when he is in infinite communion with the character that has presented itself to him, and there are weeks of emptiness and lack of contact. In a word, the history of a man's life is not to be written coldly. The novelist shares the experience of his characters and is more dependent upon them than one would suppose. May Sinclair, like all great artists, must await her hours of grace. It is only then that her characters come near enough to be drawn. And it is then that she is a poet. A good novelist is always a very good poet. That she is a poet, and the poet of pity, her many incomparable figures proclaim. She shows us misery, egoism, unhappiness, minds narrow or sick—all bathed in the intense humanity which is the atmosphere of her books. For none of them has she a single word of condemnation. As to the divine moments of perfect vision, she herself has often described them. There are times when her vision is so intense that she seems to see the whole of life as in a dream. It is that power that I am attempting to indicate in this essay. ... It is she herself, too, who reveals to us through her characters something of her love and respect for her art. She puts it before everything. And it is indeed just this unfailing love which calls down the recurring hour of grace. In this hour, this state of intuition and inspiration, her characters appear to her all at once. She rediscovers herself and recaptures her material at the same time. "Great creation of character," says Suarès, "is a passionate differentiation of the soul of the creator." This fever of creation is perceptible throughout the work of May Sinclair. There may be here and there pages that are less well written; but there are none without the inner light, the very breath of art. And this is the origin of her talent. There is no talent without genius. It is grace or inspiration, in addition to the discipline of work, which gradually develops the writer's talent. Without this gift one may write, but one will never create a style. There is no distinctive stylism in May Sinclair's writing; but harmony and precision of form is born naturally of the sentiments and the ideas that she expresses. In this way, without artifice, her talent has become prodigious. It is not a congeries of theories and mannerisms somehow contrived together. It is simple in a way that may not be called facile. The unity of her style defies even the closest analysis. Its elements are poured into a clear, fine mould. To have a just idea of the inner beauty and force of her style, one must consult her later books, the first pages of Taslcer Jevons, for example, or certain passages, perhaps the most enchanting of all, in The Three Sisters. In Taslcer Jevons, the very fabric of the book is inspiration from end to end, so that it seems as if there were no construction. It is life laid bare with an unfailing and even violent charity. This constancy, this infallibility of touch, itself produces the harmony of the book. Books like The Three Sisters and Taslcer Jevons are a proof that the abundance, the apparent confusion ' of The Divine Fire and The Creators is the result of the tireless domination of the clear spirit of the author. There is no real confusion in The Divine Fire and The Creators, but a mind which absorbs everything; treating with equal power both the diversity of detail and the salient figures. It is for this reason that each one of the early novels of May Sinclair is a tissue of good novels. In this fear of omission, this burning desire to say and to express everything, I can see a fine honesty, a prodigious fecundity and above all a beautiful candour. One discovers that the author, in the fever of waiting, forgets her readers and forgets their demand for simple reading, for reading that shall not be too tiring. She has therefore not bowed to her public; she has extended her material, writing three novels at once, or rather one in which three are found interlaced. Five or six books written round a common centre—forming together an incomparable work—each tell the story of a single life. But in this extension of material nothing of the author's characteristic depth, nothing of the lucid ardour of the investigation has been sacrificed. Great force has the effect of simplicity. In its presence, everything seems easy and "natural." The apparent absence of construction is felt even in the way events succeed one another. A novel composed according to classical rules is familiar even before we have read it through. There are fixed conventions as to the presentation of the hero, the foreshadowing of a marriage, the prevision of a death. In May Sinclair's work, these things happen as they do in life. The steering of such works demands an infinite amount of artistic originality, of prudence and of foresight. The invisibility of all effort is the measure of a great force and it brings us a priceless satisfaction of the mind. In The Three Sisters, for example, it seems as if the author is as ignorant as we are ourselves of the way things are going; she even seems unprepared for the changes worked by time, and the necessity for introducing a fresh characteristic registering a defacement, a shadow, a nuance of development comes to her with the freshness of actual experience. By virtue of this quality of unexpectedness some of her novels may be classed with the romans d'aventure which seemed in France, before the war, to be once more coming into favour and are certain always to be invincibly captivating. The faculty of not giving one's characters away is, like many others, the product of intelligence. Have I not insisted that intelligence is simply a human soul? But it is necessary. There are many gifted people who are without intelligence; and there are almost as many writers who have neither intelligence nor gifts. For a proper comprehension of individual depth, the vision it brings and the understanding it permits, intelligence is fatally necessary. Dostoevsky had two of the three gifts that are said to be indispensable to the novelist. If he had had all three in equal measure he would have been the equal of Shakespeare. From the point of view of the three essentials—gift, intelligence, and poetic faculty—The Three Sisters stands out as a type. It is a masterpiece, as Taslcer Jevons is a masterpiece from the point of view of the creation of character. The representation of friendship takes a prominent place in Miss Sinclair's work; friendship and sacrifice. In The Creators, in the midst of a group of women mad with the passion for sacrifice (which they confound with the love of humanity), Laura sacrifices herself to her father in a horrible life, cold and arid, threaded with frightful dreams. It is hell, with a madman. When her father dies, her instinct for service and for self-abnegation drives her to Protheros, a genius without the capacity of pleasing the crowd. He dies between Laura and Pose, another of the multitude of silent self-sacrificers who appear in Miss Sinclair's novels. Her marriages, again, seem to be made by the same ardour for pain. Her people seem to marry at the instigation of the spirit of torture. It is true. But on the other side of the balance is her immense pity. "Am I," says Gwenda, "to go on giving the whole blessed time? Am I never to have anything for myself?" "There never is anything," some one answers, "for anybody but what they give. Or what they take from somebody else. You should have taken. You had your chance." ##September 1918 THE EGOIST 111 Here, for the moment, met by this cry of terror, her pity cannot be vanquished. Nevertheless— though many pages of quotation would be required to demonstrate it—charity, pity, and grace bathe, almost exultantly, all her scenes. And her representations of friendships give friendship at its utmost —attachments persisting through years of trial and of happiness. At the end of Jane Rolland, for example, Jane says to her friend: "You're right. I can't do much without you. I am not perfectly alive when you're not there. And I can't get away from you—as I can get away from Hugh. I believe I remember every single thing you ever said to me. I'm always wanting to talk to you. I don't want—always—to talk to Hugh. But— I think more of him." Her deep tenderness shines out steadily in the representations of the intermingling of different classes. In three or four of her books we meet men and women coming from different social ranks who fall in love and marry. The heart alone is capable of guiding the novelist through the labyrinth of complex sentiments in the souls of these contrasted types. Such contrasts are yet another of the salient characteristics of her work. It is in her last book that social inequality in marriage is most finely treated. Tasker Jevons is the son of obscure folk; Viola the daughter of very considerable people, her father a minor canon of Canterbury. In her presentation of Tasker Jevons May Sinclair reaches the summit of analytical insight. It is done, however, with subtlety and one is not conscious of the workmanship. Taslcer Jevons is her best known novel. There is only the action and the commentary on the action. Yet by these means she has built up, uncontestably, a character so far unknown to fiction. Tasker Jevons is restrained from crime by his goodness of heart, which is also the motive of his attachment to Viola—a young girl who is portrayed with an almost incredible insight. One may summarize the way in which the atmosphere of tenderness bathes the novels of May Sinclair: the good she endows with her own sentiments; the bad she sees pitifully and mercifully. A poet, even in his laughter, derives his art from his own suffering. A novelist draws it, even when he is representing demons, from the all-embracing vastness of his charity. It is this charity which draws down upon the novelist the grace of inspiration.

VISION A TORRENT of silk poured between overhanging breasts and spread upon the carpet in a troubled sea. Vast skirts stood out over the surf, vertical lunar cliffs at the point of collapse. The core of flesh beneath moved like a troubled worm, and above the unsubstantial walls eyes watched a gilt hoop hung from a pole, the late circumference of a dead macaw. The wire was worn pale where the horny feet had gripped and shaken. To the eyes, meditation his similitude locked there, till the fantastic banners of crest and tail contracted into a mouse—like image of enamelled solidity—a chinoiserie of the imagination —suspended by tiny feet under the outer rim. A tail like a bronze whip followed the line of the circumference. Hickory, dickory, dock. The eyes followed the ascent. It climbed the golden rim, and crept over the farther side at even pace—a tiny demon on the noble disk of the sun. "In whom is no variableness, neither shadow, of turning." The weak eyes gleamed, and at the sigh of pleasure the light cliffs were shattered and reshapes. The mouse-image stooped and shook, then whirled about the rim. From the fury of its revolution there showed only a halo of shaken light about the hoop. The eyes blinked and accepted. The mouse ran out of the dancing air and hung upside down under the rim. They stared. It began another turn, infinitely slow, and another whereon it appeared immovable. Time in the fantastic room moved like the strokes of a gong. "Get on with it!" The squeal was swallowed in the infinite silence proceeding from the mouse. It rose, passed, and returned. It leapt and accomplished the circle, a returning ship with cloven time pouring from its bows. It leapt again and paused, checked by an observant star. The rim glittered and was not shaken. "It is the soul upon its journey to perfection." With shameless levity the mouse ran down. Again shot up and the hoop trembled. It stopped, suspended by tiny feet. The brown tail followed the circumference. The mouse returned. The image of: that horror recommenced its upward crawl sub specie œtemitatis. The torrent of coloured silk, the glittering cliffs crashed down. Upon the wriggling body the pendulous breasts touched the knees. The eyes strained up. The mouse climbed the zenith. "'In whom is no variableness,'" then wailing —"but it always comes back to the same place. What is the good if it always comes back to the same place? It can't mean that. Cruel, cruel, cruel." The mouse that shall run from everlasting to everlasting attenuated in significance. Projected on the opening panels of a screen an angel in Wattsian deshabille conducted a creeping soul up the ascent of a mountain. At telescopic distance on the receding folds a black speck circumscribed a black hoop. The crashing silks swelled. The angel smiled and pointed up. The little soul pattering along behind sat back on its haunches. A fat white star featured slick on the screen, its spherical nature obscured by long theosophic points. The eyes tranquillized into rapture. The star's circumference grew till it included its irradiation. It became a threepennybit melting at the core. A thin bright hoop hung in the heavens. The angel disintegrated till it put forth the plumage of a mackaw. The little soul went down on all fours and began to grow a tail and the bright bottom of a mandril. The star's circumference grew and slid across the diagonal of the screen. The eyes wept, and through the liquid veil they ceased to distinguish these things. The scarlet lids closed. A telephone bell jarred on the table. The clashing silks built up again the shell of the body's complaisance. Mary Butts

THE MEDITATION OF A LOVER AT DAYBREAK I CAN just see the distant trees And I wonder whether they will Or will not Bow their tall plumes at your passing In the carriage of the morning wind: Or whether they will merely Tremble against the cold dawnlight Shaking a yellow leaf to the dew-wet earth. Herbert Bead

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