6 DECEMBER 1930, Page 27

Le plaisir aristocratique de deplaffe

Messas. CnArro AND WINDUS have sent us three nice little books which are the first-fruits of a new series called " The Dolphin Books." They have charming covers with the most engaging dolphins playing on them, and will, no doubt, make perfect minor presents for distant but intelligent relations this year.

Of these three first books, Mr. Huxley's is the most interest- ing. If we devote most of our space to him, however, it must not be thought that either Mr. Mottram's sound and characteristic short story, or Mr. Aldington's sensitive render- ing of the Akestis are anything but excellent.

In Vulgarity in Literature Mr. Huxley is at the top of his essay writing form. It probably annoys Mr. Huxley very much when he hears people say that he is " fundamentally " an essayist. Nor, after all, is it quite fair, for there is nothing in his essays to compare in range and scope with his novels. Yet, probably for the simple reason that the essay is infinitely the less complex and easier form, he has often a mastery of it which he lacks in the realm of fiction. One turns the last page of some of his papers with that feeling of having learnt something, which is the real justification of the essay. One has learnt something, not in the sense that one has acquired a number of new facts, though that is usually true, but in the sense that one has had opened out anew process of analysis : some tiny corner of the illimitable territory of the human spirit has been mapped. It would be impossible to summarize the discoursive argument of the present paper. In a sense, the conclusion is that vulgarity in literature is simply unawareness, insensitiveness on the part of the author. But thus to summarize is to rob utterly the content of meaning in Mr. Huxley's pages. It is perhaps in his digressions, many of which are not really digressions at all, that Mr. Huxley excels. He is speaking of the ideal worlds re-created by the classic writers. In particular he makes the point that the French audiences roared with laughter when they saw Othello acted, because such an every- day article as a handkerchief could not possibly be mentioned in a tragedy :— " Artistically, the abolition of handkerchiefs and all that hand- kerchiefs directly or indirectly stand for has certain advantages. The handkerchiefless world of pure mind and spirit is, for an adult, the nearest approach to that infinitely comfortable Freudian womb, towards which, as towards a lost paradise, we are always nostalgi- cally yearning. In the handkerchieflesa mental world we are at liberty to work things out to their logical conclusions, we can guarantee the triumph of justice, we can control the weather and (in the words of those yearning popular songs which are the national anthems of Wombland) make our Dreams come True by living under Skies of Blue with You."

But he himself belongs, he tells us, to the other school of realist writers and he will, it seems, protest vigorously when classified amiss :—

" At a dinner party in Paris not long ago I found myself sitting next to a French Professor of English, who assured me in the coarse of an otherwise very agreeable conversation, that I was a loading member of the Neo-Classic school, and that it was as a leading member of the Neck-Classic school that I was lectured about to the advanced students of contemporary English literature under his tutelage. The news depressed me. Classified, like a museum specimen, and lectured about, I felt most dismally posthumous. but that was not all. The thought that I was a Neo-Classic preyed ',Pon my mind—a Neo.Classic without knowing it, a Neo.Classio against all my desires and intentions. For I have never had the smallest ambition to be a Classic of any kind, whether Neo, Pulite°. Proto or Eo. Not at any price."

Mr. Huxley will always remain a "museum specimen ". capable of answering the professor back when he finds himself under the wrong label. He will, we trust, continue to shock his readers by what he calls his " investigations into certain phenomena " which he has " reported in plain English and

in a novel." His defence of the duty of a writer to shock his readers is admirable, but incidentally, it seems, to shock is, for him, a pleasure. It is, in the phrase of Baudclaire, " k plaisir aristocratique de deplaire." The only people, however, whom the present volume is likely to displease are indis- criminating admirers of Edgar Allan Poe and the more aqueous parts of Dickens. To everyone else it will be a delight.