BOOKS OF THE DAY
A Poet Abroad
European Witness. By Stephen Spender. (Hamish Hamilton. 10s. 6d.)
MR. SPENDER has written what he modestly describes as a " con- ventional Travel Book " about his visits to Germany and France in the summer of last year ; " it consists of the information, the de- scriptions of scenery, the accounts of personalities and the general reflections which are usual in Travel Books." What is unusual, however, in European Witness is that its author is a poet with an exceptionally sharp eye both for country and for human nature ; that its scenery is a fantastic landscape of ruin and destruction, its men and women as ruined as the land they inhabit, and its general reflections those of a creative writer who has thought passionately and sometimes profoundly about his subject. The visit to France is really only an interlude, intended to illuminate by contrast the travels in Germany, as it were a brief glimpse of Heaven which will light up the abysses of Hell. Only like most poets Mr. Spender finds more inspiration in Hell than in Heaven. His praises of France are insipid and superficial compared with his descriptions of Germany. One is almost tempted to say that he is " a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it."
One's first impression of Germany in defeat was one of immense material destruction, of the great dead cities that lay at the end of every dusty road, the jagged edges of shattered steeples pointing above the cornfields on every horizon, the endless vistas and avenues of devastation. It was a masterpiece that could only have been achieved through complete control of technical and scientific method. To appreciate this masterpiece fully it was not enough merely to look at these ruins. One had to live among them, walk among them on a fine summer's day and savour the sweet smell of corpses, breathe the infected air heavy with the dust of acres of rubble, watch the rats growing fat and sleek among the debris and the baby in the garden growing quieter and yellower every day until its face had the smooth consistency of old wax. Then at length one was overcome by the intense physical nausea, so vividly described by Mr. Spender, which is compounded of homesickness and disgust and is the uncontrollable reaction of human nerves to human life that has reverted to a state of savagery.
Mr. Spender saw these things and, unlike most people's, his vision was not fogged by political prejudice. He had eyes and he used them to see ; and since he looked first and judged later, his book is a model of good reporting and is full of common sense and wisdom about the Germans. He saw that the ruin of Germany is not con- fined to bricks and mortar ; her people also are ruined, and Hitler and Goebbels did more permanent damage to Germany than the R.A.F. He had excellent opportunities of talking to Germans, and made good use of them. His records of people and conversations give a vivid insight into the state of mind of millions of Germans tdclay : their cynicism and sentimentality, their nihilism and respect for power, their irresponsibility, their immaturity and, above all, their utter isolation from the rest of Europe and the world. They are people who provoke infinite pity and infinite d.sgust. It is to Mr. Spender's credit that he refrains from both extremes of feeling, and is able to extend understanding and even sympathy to the Germans without extenuating any of the crimes they have committed. Indeed, it is one of the great merits of his book that he looks on the Germans from the point of v ew not of conqueror or conquered, but of a genuine European. Oddly enough, however, he has less charity for the occupation forces, and exercises greater malice on the friends than on the enemies of Europe.
Mr. Spender is not content merely to register impressions. De- feated Germany inevitably provokes questions and demands judge- ment ; one cannot avoid asking, Who is responsible? Who are the gulty? What is to be done? For Mr. Spender these problems culminate in the single question, What is a Nazi? It is difficult to be sure of his answer, though he appears to accept Jung's theory that the whole of the German people and their leaders were " demoniacally possessed," and he develops this theory with great force and imagination. Yet his reflections on this theme reveal some curious inconsistencies. At moments he seems to accept Jung's thesis ; at others he seems to believe that the German leaders them- selves were the demons by whom the German people were possessed. And at this point one becomes aware of a curious gap in Mr. Spender's experiences. There are no Nazis in European Witness. Mr. Spender never seems to have met any. The result is that h's analysis of Nazi psychology has none of those fresh and immediate intuitions which enrich the rest of his book. Mr. Spender's Nazi is an elaborate literary creation, constructed out of elements drawn from Goebbels, Hitler, Dostoevsky, Ernst Jiinger and his own obses- sions and phantasies ; it is curiously artificial, ponderous, cerebral and—what is the word ? yes, Teutonic. And for this fiction, hero, demon and devil, he shows the same kind of partiality as Milton showed for Satan.
Now there were and are some millions of Nazis in Germany, and it is strange that Mr. Spender never talked to any of them. They would all be flattered to read his portrait of themselves. Yet the Nazi is neither daemonic nor diabolic. He is short and fat, carries a leather despatch case and even among his ruins he presses his trousers neatly every night. He is a human being who is entirely at the mercy of social and economic conditions ; and one is inclined to think that whenever and wherever these conditions degener- ate below a certain level he turns and rends himself in panic. He is far more frightening than Mr. Spender's demons ; moreover, he exists. Mr. Spender will not agree with this because he has a genuine and sincere liberal optimism that will not allow him to think so badly of human nature ; though in recce-Tense he suffers from nightmares. Let us hope that Mr. Spender )s right ; and in the meantime we should thank him for the best piece of reporting
Previous page
