Dividing asunder of All Souls and spirit
Peter Levi
HIDDEN JOURNEY by Andrew Harvey Bloomsbury, £14.99, pp.240 All Souls is a pinnacle which is usually attained awfully early in life. Some people get bored with it. Once the young persons with the honours of their undergraduate careers still fresh upon them have been singled out at the rate of one or two a year to be Prize Fellows, they may do more or less what they like with their time, for about seven years. Still, it is a good adddress to apply from, for jobs elsewhere, and the Prize, Fellows 'sometimes pursue surprising courses. It. is, however, extremely rare to be or to become a poet. Andrew Harvey not only is one or has become one, but he has gone on for many years without drying up. He has also led an academic life of rather unusual brilliance: on madness in Shakespeare and on death in epic poetry he has given lectures I recall vividly after 15 years. I found his Journey in Ladakh a remarkable book, and in Steles by Victor Segalen, translated by Andrew Harvey and lain Watson, I have really revelled, though without being quite certain that Segalen was not their invention. His Macedonian Songs, translated with Anne Pennington, was another astounding success. You could hardly be more brilliant as a young man, or more gleefully immodest in the variety of your interests, or less likely to succeed in Oxford or Cambridge.
The Ladakh book was Peacockian; it consisted largely of conversations in which Andrew was all the characters. (No reader appeared to notice this but my wife). In
this quality it has something in common with Bruce Chatwin's Songlines. They are both, to some extent, magicians, but Andrew is Anglo-Indian and a more com- mitted conjuror, and in the work under review he turns himself inside out. In prose which is almost wholly clear and crisp, he goes into himself, his nature (sexual and religious), and an extremely rum experi- ence he has of an Indian girl who turns out to be divine and messianic. There is noth- ing to be done about this: it is all set down in terms of everyday life: it is and is not real, is and is not fiction. Are one or two of the characters Peacockian, one or two of the situations didactic allegories? There is no one to tell us. He mentions LSD, but the book is not about drugs. Bits of diary, and a few pieces of life which I know independently of the book, have been chewed up into the mixture. The only criticism to make is that if this is a work of fiction he has gone too far - no one will accept it - but as a work of religion, plain- ly as it speaks, it is not plain enough.
Whether you like it or not is a most per- sonal matter. It is certainly astonishing and gripping and memorable, and creates hope, though not, I think, the hope for mankind which the author entertains. It may be unkind to give away the climax, but to do so may save as much perplexity as it creates. Towards the end, when the visions are becoming mighty visionary, and the purifications tiring, chapter 12 begins :
That night, 29 November, I dreamed of walk- ing with Mr Reddy on the sands of Maha- balipuram. We were laughing and holding hands, like children. He said, 'Take your shirt off. You will be surprised.' 1 took my shirt off. On my left side I had grown one perfect breast.
I should add that Mr Reddy, a businessman gently irradiated by comedy, is my favourite character.
At the back of The Spectator among the classified advertisements there is one that expresses interest in Arthur Machen. In the Fifties there was a movement to revive him but I fear his reputation has dwindled to a flickering candle-light among the occult books. Will that happen to Andrew Harvey - as it has done, more or less, to the Powys brothers, and to Corvo? Unfairly so, one should notice, in all these cases. Machen's prose was splendid and his trans- lation of Brillat-Savarin should be reprint- ed. Corvo could be extremely funny, and the history of his lifetime would be duller without him. This strange book of Andrew Harvey's is worth thinking about. It is at least fresh and clever. There are a few touches of narcissism (Bruce Chatwin's prevailing fault) and incautious phrases such as a soft glory of white light,' but the whole story is carried off as nearly as possi- ble faultlessly. What you believe about God probably lies outside the area of this book, but you will end up believing in the girl. I only wish he had not printed her photo-
graph in colour for his frontispiece.
Harvey's subtitle is 'A spiritual awaken- ing,' and the epigraphs are from Rurni, who was translated so well by him in the past that I can no longer distinguish their tones, and from The Golden Ass. Apuleius says
I approached near unto hell, even to the gates of Proserpina, and after that I was rav- ished throughout all the elements, and I returned to my proper place: about midnight I saw the sun brightly shine.
That sounds a process he would greatly enjoy. And yet in all literature how many accounts of such a thing have been con- vincing? More in modern than in older writing I suspect. One has one's doubts about Augustine's smoothly burning rhetoric: it is like a cigarette when one wants a cigar. But visionary accounts have been better since Rimbaud; Blake, for example, is preposterous because he tells lies for fun. This book does not quite pre- tend to be the record of a life, although it is autobiographical. It just looks as if the closest Andrew Harvey can get to telling - or it may be to knowing - the truth about himself is fiction. I cannot imagine what he is going to write next; it is like wondering what comes after the Apocalypse. The story he tells here is to most people quite unacceptable, so I admire his skill in treat- ing it and his courage in publishing it. One writes in some ways in order to change oneself.
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