Love and Mr. Murry
Katherine Mansfield and Other Literary Portraits. By John Middleton Murry. (Peter Nevi11. 12s. 6'd)
WHEN Mr. Murry can detach himself from his subject, when he can stand back and view it with an objective eye, his criticism is often admirable. For this reason his The Problem of Style has always struck me as the test of his critical writings. When he deals with figures and personalities, and especially with people he feels to be near to himself in actual relationship (as Katherine Mansfield Or D. H. Lawrence) or temperamental affinity (as Blake or Keats)— then comes the danger. His tendency then is always to project his Own thoughts and emotions, even his own plans for humanity, upon his unfortunate subjects, until the moment comes when the reader has to ask himself whether he is reading autobiography or criticism.
It is therefore with a feeling of some discomfort that one opens a new volume of Mr. Murry's writings with the title of Literary l'ortraits. Nor is that discomfort allayed by a glance at the page of contents. Katherine Mansfield, Keats (three times), Richard Pillary, Max Plowman—these are all-too-suitable subjects for Mr. Murry's gift of self-projection. It is curious, again, to note how al his writings he comes back repeatedly to the same personalities, 'lever satisfied with his exploitation of them in the past, as though he feels restless so long as one shred of their imagination, one fibre 'Of their emotional life, remains unhandled. Mr. Murry might in Pity remember a line from one of his favoured poets, Blake: "Wilt thou stretch out the fibres of my soul like stalks of flax to dry in the sun ? "
And the dead horse, flogged too often, is now beginning to show itrong signs of corruption. In time past Mr. Murry could at least ,handle a supple and persuasive style. But now style has gone bad on him.
On the other hand, when Mr. Murry gets hold of a
iubject with which he can feel no particular affinity his criticism s often acute and spirited. The long essay Coleridge and Words- v orth is a good example. Mr. Murry finds it difficult to identify himself self with either of these poets ; Wordsworth is too solid and
too cold an intellect, Coleridge's mind is too subtle and his emotions too diffused. But the situation is interesting to Mr. Murry—the tuation of Coleridge's spoilt marriage, of his and Wordsworth's ilt friendship. Thus a balance is attained between the interest
d the detachment, and the critic's faculty can get to work. Mr. 4urry's conclusion, that Coleridge in the "Dejection Ode" was witing Wordsworth to share his own despair strikes me as extra- ordinarily well reasoned and documented ; and his contrast between e essentially passive character of Coleridge's nature-description and ordsworth's "active universe" is a real contribution to critical eory. It illuminates the work of both poets. In George Chapman, ain, Mr. Murry finds an essentially unsympathetic figure, and cause he is able to set him over against a sympathetic one- akespeare--his essay has depth and balance. But in Keats and elley—too dangerous a juxtaposition—we return to " criticism " of this order: "Maybe it is a defect in my own heart ; but that simple vibra- tion never comes to me from Shelley. There is love in him, deep, burning and impassioned love ; but it is love of a different kind from that which I need. I say ' need ' advisedly, for I fear that if I had written poetry it would have been poetry of the Shelley kind: abstract, intellectual, metaphysical. But my heart demands something different."
And so on and so on. "Love is a word which modern critics are chary of using," Mr. Murray tells us in his first essay on Katherine Mansfield. For that chariness he abundantly makes up in this volume ; and reading his effusions--" This power and alchemy of love in Shakespeare. . . . Coleridge was incapable of a particular and personal love. . . . The imaginative love of the poet, and the personal love of the man. . . . There is to me no more grievous history than this of Coleridge. It leaves me sad and miserable, for truly I love the man. . .. The Coleridge I can love unreservedly is the Coleridge before he met the Wordsworths. . . . It would have been more satisfying if De Quincey had been able altogether to conform his conduct to his love. . . . The love that is the beginning of all life is not the same asAthe love which is the consummation of human living "—one can only mutter, "again with William Blake,
"Grown old in Love from Seven till Seven times Seven, I oft have wish'd for Hell for Ease from Heaven."
BERNARD BLACKSTONE.
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