MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON T has long been a matter for regret that we should be accorded only one life upon this earth, that we are unable to transmit perience, that the transference of knowledge should be so
complete, and that the constitution of the human brain and body does not permit continuous or useful labour for more than twelve hours in the twenty-four. How profitable it would be if our mental energies could be maintained at full pressure for eighteen consecutive hours, if the week consisted of twelve days, the month of fifty, the 'ear of six hundred. The tiny handful of working hours which is `bouchsafed to us is no more than a pocket of half-pence ; I should Wish for pounds and pounds, a huge balance in the time-bank upon Which I could draw enormous cheques. Only then would it be :oossible for me to add to my accustomed avocations the delight oT studying Chinese ceramics, the Roman occupation of Britain, the octrines of the Essenes, botany, conchology, and the currency problems of the Byzantine Empire. The educational ideal of knowing Something about everything and everything about something is not filways attainable even if one possesses the memory and the energy of Leibnitz or Descartes. It is a commonplace to assert that the Irnore one reads the less one seems to know. The areas of my own ignorance stretch across the map of my mind like the vast land masses of Siberia and Brazil: the areas of my knowledge are little specks upon that map, just Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark, with Herm thrown in as a small private playground. When one is young one imagines that one will visit before one dies every single uncharted territory in the world of knowledge ; but when one passes middle age, one knows that one will not in fact explore the Antarctic or the Polar sectors, or even the waters of the upper Amazon. There comes a stage even when one winces away from subjects which, however delectable, are beyond the bank-balance of available time. There come moments even when one is saddened, when looking at a library catalogue or even at the list of contents in a monthly review, by the large number of subjects about which one knows nothing, about which one is far too old to learn.
Such defeatism is a thing to be seized by the throat and strangled until the horrid life within it ceases to pulse. Conversely, the tendrils of curiosity which twirl within one, the small seedlings of appetite for further information which sprout even in the elderly soul, should be nursed and petted and watered and bedded out. One cannot hope to become a specialist, or even a gifted amateur, in some new branch of knowledge ; yet if one has no time to get to know a thing, one certainly has time to get to know something about a thing ; and it is that " something about " which keeps the mind elastic, exuberant and fresh. It is a mistake to restrict one's energies to those subjects which either fall within the routine of one's profession or to which one has for years devoted much attention. There should recur moments when one ceases to be excited by what one knows and becomes excited by what one doesn't know ; when one leaves the Channel Islands for a short Continental tour. It is helpful, of course, to realise one's own limitations, and not to spend one's holidays visiting areas which one could not temperamentally appreciate or understand. I well know that, were Ito spend time on music, higher mathematics or logic, suffering and not satisfaction would result. But what a delight it is to escape from the narrow room of one's own knowledge or avocations, and to dabble (since dabble is the word) with outside matters about which one knows absolutely nothing at all. These reflections have been brought home to me by the stimulus I have derived this week from dabbling in the rock paintings of the Dordogne.
* * * I know nothing about palaeolithic man. I am very vague about the Ice Age, and without the help of a chart I am unable to remember the correct order of the Aurignacians and the Magdalenians, or to fix, even within ten thousand years, the respective periods of the Heidelberg, the Neanderthal and the Cro-Magnon man. But I have been reading this week a beautifully illustrated book about the caves at Lascaux. It is written and illustrated by M. Fernand Windels and published by the Centre d'Etudes et de Documentation Pre- historiques of Montignac-sur-Vezere. I had already heard from friends who have visited the locality that the Lascaux caves are one of the wonders of the world. This accurately illustrated volume enables one, even at a distance, to recapture the astounded excite- ment of the first discoverers. It was on September 12th, 1940, when France lay stunned under the fierce blows of the Third Reich, that some schoolboys from the little town of Montignac were walking with their dog in the woods of the manor of Lascaux near their home. The dog disappeared through a fissure caused by a fallen pine-tree ; they could hear him barking underground. They wriggled through the aperture and found themselves in a domed cave ; they could see by the light of a torch that the roof and walls of the cave were covered with enormous paintings in brown and ochre and red. They ran back to the town and informed their teacher, M. Leon Laval. He went back with them to the cave, bringing with him a stronger torch. It was in this manner that the rock paintings, which had been preserved in their original state under a glaze of stalactite formation, were rediscovered after some twenty to twenty-five thousand years.
Monsieur Laval, who had long interested himself in the rock paintings of the Vezere valley, realised immediately that here was a find of supreme importance. He got into touch with the Abbe Breuil, the greatest living authority upon palaeolithic art. The caves have now been rendered of easy access to visitors ; the paintings have been photographed and catalogued ; and many most curious problems have been raised. It is clear that the several paintings date from different periods, and many of them (for no apparent reason) are in the nature of palimpsests, having been painted over former pictures that were already there. By comparing the older with the later pictures it is possible for the expert to recognise a marked development of style, especially in the treatment of hooves, antlers and horns. It is suggested that between the earlier and the later pictures an artistic development extending over a thousand years may have intervened. The later paintings, which are often of enormous size, are of high artistic quality ; there are pictures of horses which recall those of early Chinese paintings ; there are endless pictures of bulls and bison ; there is a startling frieze depicting five stags swimming a river ; but the reindeer and the mammoth are not there. In and out of the legs of these huge animals small symbols and signs have been scratched ; here a gridiron or a chess-board, there a tent or trap, and there a palmette which may signify the feathers of an arrow. Are these symbols part of the sympathetic hunting magic of which the cave was as it were a temple ? Or are they tribal marks ? Even the Abbe Breuil can give no answer. The colours, it is surmised, were blown upon the surface through a tube, and this accounts for the stippled effect. Among the more familiar animals there figures a strange unicorn with dappled thighs. And in a pit in the inner cave there is an elaborate design of a rhinoceros,. a wounded bison, a man with a bird's head and beside him a bird-headed staff or totem pole. It is not possible, after all these thousand years, to interpret this diagram.
* * * * I am glad to hear that Monsieur Windels' book will before long be published in this country. It arouses all manner of new curiosities. Why were fish not included in this hunting magic ? Was it because they were so easy to catch ? Why are the feet of the deer sometimes represented, as at Les Trois Freres, in the shape of human hands ? Why are human beings when depicted always disguised in the masks of birds or beasts ? Why did the artists paint over the pictures which already existed and not on the many blank spaces which remain ? Why ? Why ? Why ? In the silence of the Lascaux caves these paintings remain fresh under their crystalline covering asking unanswerable questions.
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