Auberon Waugh on the Music of Time

In Oslo (or so I have been told) there is a huge park, arranged in great avenues of giant

statues, all nude, cold and capering in tlfe brumous air. Every day, coachloads of travellers arrive from all the three corners of Scandinavia to inspect this stupor mundi. The statues look down on an endless sea of gaping, nordic faces. The most wonderful thing about this spectacle, visitors are told, is that it is all the work of one man—Mr Gustav Vigeland. From early manhood until the autumn of his life he chipped away at these nude fantasies, quite undiscouraged by those who said he was wasting his time, that he had already done enough, that the bottom had fallen out of the market in stone effigies of naked giants.

Perhaps not many admirers of Mr Powell's Music of Time series also admire the work of Mr Vigeland. If so, I hope at least they will not take offence at my comparing the two. Rather, they should reflect with humil- ity on the very real pleasure which Mr Vigeland's work has caused to many hun- dreds of thousands of Norwegians, Swedes, Danes and Finns, who flock like Russians past the tomb of Lenin, or Americans past splinters of moon-rock in the Peabody Insti- tute. Powell's devotees are no less devoted, and his achievement will be scarcely less stupendous if and when he completes it.

Publication of the tenth in Mr Powell's series of twelve novels putting the contem- porary scene in its place seems as good an occasion as any to urge him to give up the scheme while there is still time. What might have seemed a good idea twenty years ago must surely have gone stale by now. Mr Powell is only sixty-five. If he lives to

seventy, he will get his cll in any case. No- body can really suppose that the philistine

hacks in Downing Street who award literary honours will notice whether he has finished The Music of Time or whether he has moved to something else; they have already in- dicated that he is thought to be an honour- able sort of chap by the surprisingly early award of a CBE.

My anxiety that he should abandon The Music of Time derives from an awareness that at sixty-five he is unlikely to have more

than two original works of fiction in him. His

early novels—Afternoon Man, From a View to a Death—caused and continue to cause immense pleasure, and The Music of Time

has now reached such a point as to be almost completely incomprehensible to anyone like the reviewer who has a memory like a sieve and is reluctant to refresh his memory to the extent of re-reading nine, ten, or eleven novels on each occasion.

Mainline Powellites only need to be told that the Master has produced another book.

For them, reviews are at best superfluous, at

worst grossly impertinent. They will be de- lighted to learn, then, that the new book differs in no appreciable way from its pre- decessors. If their appetite needs further whetting, I can only say that I think there is a new character—that is to say, I can't re- member him in any other book, althdugh

am not prepared to he dogmatic about it— called Francis X. Trapnel. He runs away with

Pamela, wife of Widmerpool (now a Labour mr). But Mr Powell makes less and less pre- tence that his novels in this series stand on their own. One needs an obsessive memory to understand half of what happens. Perhaps volume twelve will include an index for quick reference. Those who had hoped that the whole saga was going to be tied up, that fascinating and significant patterns- would begin to emerge, must be disappointed, at any rate so far as volume ten is concerned. We have left the army and are back in liter- ary London with a left-wing periodical called Fusion edited by our old friend 'Books-do- furnish-a-room' Bagshaw.

Volume ten, as I have said, is almost com- pletely incomprehensible by itself: A more stringent criticism of all the later novels in this series might be that incomprehensibility makes for boredom: the elegant style be- comes mannered and ponderous, the subtle references become merely irritating.

However, if like Mr Gustav Vigeland, Mr Powell is determined to persist in this matter, one can only applaud his humour, tenacity and realism, hope they get us into the. Common Market and wait until one is old and bed-bound before reading through the twelve. Meanwhile, of course, books do furnish a room, and Mr Powell's ingenious method of persuading us to buy his works, rather than take them out of a library one by one may even pay off. But at what a cost?

How refreshing it would be to describe a poor novel as extremely promising in the certainty that one was right. My use of the conditional word in discussing what is des- cribed as Vladimir Nabokov's first novel dpes not stem from any doubt of its virtues. Mary is a slight but enchanting tale about some Russian émigrés living in a Berlin lodging house in 1924. It claims to have been written in 1925, and this is where the doubt creeps in. If anyone can show me either the Russiab editions of 1926 or the German one of 1928 I will withdraw my reservations, but until then I shall continue to suspect some Nabokovian practical joke.

There is something about Mr Nabokov's elaborate preparations for his critics which might give any reviewer paranoia. Some- times, as in his brilliant and stupendous

masterpiece Pale Fire, he invites his readers to join the fun. At other moments, as in the boring rubbish of Invitation to a Beheading and, worst of all, Ada, he is content to snigger alone. It is a pity, I agree, that the Eng. Lit. industry in America is quite so humourless and unintelligent but .I am still happiest when Mr Nabokov gives us straight the product of his literary genius, as in the sheer delight of Pnbt or Lolita than when he is merely concerned to make a tool of the small academic world he inhabits.

Apart from the possible joke of its origins, Mary is straight, clean, and delightful in every way. The hero Ganin (we never learn his real name) discovers that the wife of a fellow lodger, Alpyorov, is his former mis- tress and true love. The wife is about to join them after escaping from Russia, and Ganin plans to intercept her and run away.

I shall not play Mr Nabokov's game for him by giving all my reasons for doubting that the book was written in 1925. It has none of the feel of a prior novel, being much too unpretentious, despite two (suspect) de- liberate mistakes: on page 75 where he re- veals that the hero never saw Mary again— which somewhat destroys the suspense—and on page 50 where there is an unnecessary reference to an automatic pistol, which never materialises. I will rest my case on two quotations: on page 53 one of the Emigres, says: 'We should love Russia. Without the love of us emigres, Russia is finished. None of the people there love her.' On page 91, writing of the abominable revolution, Nabokov writes: 'There was something touching and wonderful about the way their letters managed to pass across the terrible Russia of that time—like a cabbage white butterfly flying over the trenches.'

Both very pretty passages, but neither is appropriate, I suggest, to the attitude of Russian Emigres after only four or five years' absence. In the second case, they would have reason to know that the Russia of 1924 was every bit as terrible as the Russia of 1919; in the first they would still be busily schem- ing for their return, not mourning the perm- anence of their absence in these terms.

Be that as it may, the book is a delight to read. If it amuses Mr Nabokov to pretend that his work is written posthumously or translated from some Greek papyrus, or con- cedes instructions in code for a game of ping- pong, I can only say that in this case it is worth the price.