I died naked!) My elder protagonist to be one who (exactly in the same manner of Faust, paraphrasus of the circumstances, dog and all) sells himself to the devil (a publisher, entrepreneur) to forge paintings. And to find P—’s protagonist sending the letter to Ersilia signed Faust. Well.
But you will see the whole thing clearly enough to understand that it cannot be simply this disconcerting discovery and relinquishing of ideas. Because there they are anyhow, and not new. And so one is forced to say ‘style’? That word! And what ridiculous arguements, wasteful discussions it brings forth. I remember one, in which I had commented on what a fine style in David Hume; my antogonist started immediately with saying that Hume did not try to write in a style, but the style came about as he wrote writing to say what he had to say. You see where this arguement is going. Two people without style arguing on the same side against eachother; still I would try to say that, now that Hume is through, one reads him and sees an excellent style, after the fact. Glenway Wescott a fine stylist; and Rebecca West extraordinary: (so extraordinary, that once during the most recent war I was working on the New Yorker, and one of her pieces, a report on a trial for treason, described with such wondrous style a room in Lords, &c &c, that we could not eventually make out which room she meant: she did not once say, the fact simply wasn’t there in all of that style.) And a preoccupation with style for itself is admittedly ruinous.
Penned in, in your letter (of writing): but it is fun, isn’t it . . . well that was compleatly disconcerting, effacing, happy, infuriating. I don’t know, when it begins to be fun then I know myself badly enough to immediately hold it suspect. You know, the temptations? Well, to be clever, for one. That is one of the worst, and how it kills. Then to preach and prophesy (Remember, it was I who told you this . . .); the tangent of going off and having fun for its own sake, no matter that it contributes nothing (though some do it infuriatingly well); and then the absolute necessity of making a characters’s experience his and not one’s own, and that is certainly one of the most difficult requisites. To discriminate, perhaps that is the most important. Here is a line of Katherine Mansfield’s, you may recognise it, from a book review of about 25years back: —These are moments that set the soul yearning to be taken suddenly, snatched out of the very heart of some fearful joy, and set before its Maker, hatless, dishevelled and gay, with its spirit unbroken. (Now allow this presumption, simply for the sake of the hypothesis) That if I had written that I can imagine being very doubtful about it; but here I found it (the collection of reviews called Novels and Novelists) with fantastic pleasure, could not put it down, was troubled that it should be buried in an old book review. Or if I had been sure of it, should have wanted it published prominently, as mine, perhaps a little edition by itself. You see how ‘lamentable’ this is, will not do.
It is enthusiasm that I mistrust.
Presumption may not be the worst of sins (though it is when I think of it) but it is pretty bad. So there is the worry of pretentious and presumptious work. But I could no more sit down and write When the mountain fell (Ramuz) than . . . well, the usual things people say, ‘fly’ for instance. Do you know the trouble I am in, right now, that any part of this letter may sound pretentious? I started a novel in Mexico last winter, it was an allegory, and Good and Evil were two apparently always drunk fellows who gave driving lessons in a dual-control car. Well, writing that was fun, so damn’ much fun that it took me five months to realise how pretentious it was, and there is a kind fellow at an agency in NY (Harold Matson’s) who wanted me to finish it, he wanted to sell it. Thank God a couple of publishers said no thanks &c and I came to Panama, to write an honest novel. Right now that is what he thinks I am doing. Oh dear.
In the Canal Zone I have done a great deal of ‘thinking’ (I want it to be) about our country, which depresses me but must not to the point of simply saying oh dear. (And then I came on this, in James, 1:23,24) For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. And Paul to the Corinthians, 8:11 Now therefore perform the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also out of that which ye have.) At any rate, this Zone is all wrong, a transgression because of its sterility. Now (for a while) I am free of the concrete-buster and the air-hammers shaking me to pieces, and the crane, though all of that was good, to do work, it was the enforced idleness that was bad, being paid to be idle was horrible. It is terrifying that people can live here and for years, they bring up their children here and the children are empty boxes too, they usually stay, and so many of them are pale and I cannot love pale people in a sun country. Bloodless somehow, the Panamanians have blood, and the west indians who are niggers and are held off with disapproval and low wages but the Americans have radios, you can walk up a street past the house after house the same colour (that is the regulation, they are grey) and hear every radio playing the same programme, the mechanical-laugh programme from the States, the movies do well also new cars running around like crazy with the wives who are also some of them the young pretty ones pretty slick articles, but not when they stay and stay, then they are dumpy and sad and all the same colour but no one has told them they are sad so they do not know they are but talk to eachother instead. And no one goes into Panama except he is a man and then for the reasons that any sailor is glad to make a port, and as wearily ready to leave it.
To get to the war. Two years ago I wrote (badly) a story of a man who is devastated by a dream of Armageddon—with no idea that H. G. Wells had written a (bad) story called “A Dream of Armageddon”—and I have been worrying it since. Reading the prophesies in the Great Pyramid, or Nostradamus, and in Ezekial and Revelation. And have been obsessed with the idea of Armageddon coming in 1949. That we will live to see Good & Evil defined in battle? And then to have followed (with the lazy layman’s eye, I confess) the developments in political geography since, and now. This thing (it is still just a thing) that I am trying to work on now ends with that; and so I have put myself under this insane press of time, that it must be done before, just before, this final violence comes. That we must choose, there is the trouble. And how are we equipped? All of the thesis of despair in “That is not what I meant at all” (and the Kaiser, after the other war—as Lawrence quotes him in Women in Love—This is not what I meant, this is not how I meant it to come out at all . . .) That intentions are most wasteful of the energies we spend, I believe. Except perhaps bitterness, somehow bitterness is the worst, the least pardonable, the most culpably wasteful.
When there was a civil war in Spain, the young Americans who wanted to fight the Good Fight went to fight Fascism, beside the Communists. And now see us. What is it? that in these countries without a middle class there is material only for the extremes, and that only the extremes war? Here is Costa Rica. Where does one fight? Or is it two evils, which will not abide one another? These are not precious thoughts, and the precious will have to think them and choose. And after there will not be one small voice saying, That is not what I meant.
There is such an accumulation. Did you have the feeling, early when you were writing, a novel, say, that you must get everything in? Everything. And where will this fit? . . . and this? Idea, and incident, and image. It is as though (I thought last night, thinking how should I say to you what it is like) one were in deep water, and this accumulation bobbing all around, as far as can be seen but all within reach; and that one may grab at any of them to present, to say Look, does this not prove me worthy? and another to swim firmly past them, through the water, while another still (and this somehow a woman) not for a moment recognising the water, but at intelligent leisure take this, and that, perfectly chosen, while further on one may float among it all on his back and the eyes closed, while his considerate (civilised) neighbor drowns with silent dignity. And as though I were in the middle of mine, beating the water into a foam but not waves, shouting Whoopee, Look! Look! at all these things of mine, they are mine, take any that you want. (They are mine.) And then, with Mr Eliot, the moment of silence, I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing for me.
I have tried to write you honestly. And have justified the lengthiness by believing that you will read it all, if you were good enough to spend the time for me that you did in the letter you sent to me. Of course, there are other things, of vulgarity and reason, and Salvation wearing a political face (mostly stolen from Mann). And if it has seemed upset, I have quit