How the very best DWEM's saw themselves
Peter Levi
THE LANGUAGE OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY by John Sturrock Cambridge University Press, £35, pp.312 For many years I have confusedly exag- gerated John Sturrock's intellectual pow- ers by thinking he was the genius behind the old Times Literary Supplement in Arthur Crook's day, when it was still read- able, and the also stylish and friendly enemy of the new novel, and rider of the diminishing surf of the new criticism in France, and also the editor of Brecht's translated poems in English, and at Winchester with Robert Conquest; in fact I thought he was the same as John Willets. I do not even remember which of them it was I once met, except that he had a mod- est, impressive charm. This finely pointed study sorts out the confusion, though it does not diminish the admiration. It is as sharp and exact as a perfectly prepared pencil, though it is unlike other academic studies. John Sturrock has stalked his sub- ject long and secretly, and he wastes no time about pouncing. He has studied auto- biography and the way it is constructed through a daunting series of centuries and languages, rather in the manner of Auer- bach, the sage most people first encoun- tered at least in this country through clever old Auden. This is a serious book, admirably well written, making its points briefly and clearly.
The pattern he educes from his exam-
ples is so engaging that the immediate objection arises, might one not have a more jolly time and produce a more amus- ing, less intellectual book, by taking differ- ent examples? Why not Lady Fanshawe instead of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who was something of a mooncalf after all, in spite of his prose and his verse? Why not Basho, or Pius II, or Nijinsky or Sassoon? Basho is the subtlest and lightest of all autobiographers, and perhaps of all poets. The only travel essay to match his must probably be Mandelstam's about Armenia. Sassoon was an important influence on young people in the thirties and forties and later, and now his autobiographies can be judged against his real and startling diaries. Then why not Gorky, and why not Tolstoy? Why not the Archpriest Avakkum? John Sturrock's team are more strictly central to what we are taught is European tradition: Augustine, Dante, Abelard, Petrarch, Tere- sa, Descartes, Vico, Hume, Gibbon, Rousseau, Goethe, Stendhal, Newman, Nabokov, Sartre, Leiris.
The heart may sink before it reaches Descartes, and interest may expire with Nabokov. Nor are these all the writers mentioned: Alfieri for example gets the full treatment, even his association with the Countess of Albany, Bonny Prince Char- lie's wife, comes into a footnote, though not the fact that they used to take tea with Bertrand Russell's grandmother, whom Russell knew quite well. That furnishes a pleasing historical link if one knew Russell, and swiftly bridges the apparent gap between Mao Tse Tung, who was once Russell's pupil, and the 1745 rebellion. But what we are told about Alfieri and his memoirs sets his intrigues and passions with their consequences and also his con- sciousness in a satisfactory tension with Goethe's in the same period. Goethe man- ages as usual to be most interesting while he preserves his supremacy as the champi- on of frauds. His heart pulses in harmony with the cosmic heart, and the planets work for him: he was even born on the stroke of noon, whereas Wordsworth, a fraud of sim- ilar stature I think, died on the stroke of noon as the cuckoo-clock in the kitchen uttered the first of its twelve 'cuckoos' on Shakespeare's birthday.
The mind boggles at such a paragon as Goethe; Auden alone of moderns was able to deal with him with a straight face. Still, the old impostor serves to introduce Stend- hal, who learnt drawing at Grenoble, 'the bourgeois setting for his childhood his hatred for which lends a bracing malevo- lence to his autobiography.' The exposition of his autobiographical stance in terms of his account of his drawing professor is car- ried out with fluency and precision and must be read complete. Time after time, but particularly in this chapter, John Stur- rock gets inside the skin of his victims and out again with a wonderful ease. Stendhal is not in my view a fraud like Goethe, but he is a dexterous liar: probably only the writing of fiction sets him free as an artist.
If one could unlink these brief critical essays, each would make the perfect intro- duction to a reprint of its book. They are closely linked together, yet not so closely that you lose anything much by skipping an author you dislike. He is fair even to Tere- sa of Avila from his point of view, though he does not realise the towering greatness of Luis de Leon. From Stein, Nabokov and Sartre I gave myself a rest, in order to try to take Leiris with the seriousness which is his due. This repayed me, and the most preposterous claims seemed for a moment credible.
It must after all be conceded that this hero's youthful poetry was no good and his venom about his father's ignorant bad taste lacks the force of revelation. The father was a stockbroker, Leiris was born in 1901, and he was psycho-analysed. Readers of The Spectator will be rather gleeful than alarmed to hear his 'cure' went on for 50 years. His autobiography shows how he fell short of the manly ideal (who he?) except in the bravery of admitting his failure. Meanwhile he worked in Africa as an ethnographer, and in 1934 published a book about those years. The expedition had not turned him into a Boys' Own explorer, and more journeys since have led to more disappointments. Perhaps he is still worried about being too young for the trenches in 1914. I did not think much of his poetical puns and I did not believe in his understanding of the truth about lan- guage, although even where this chapter appeared on the point of dissolving into piffle, it held me, and I found myself liking Leiris more and more as a comic figure. Of Leiris as of a certain Cardano I have never read a word: possibly if one did one might as easily like him less as admire him more. But John Sturrock has written a transpar- ently lucid and convincing book. He is probably right to see the works of Leiris as failed poetry, a failure to write a poem. Poor fellow. Those of us who do write poems are fortunately shielded by nature from contemplating the depth of our fail- ure; to destroy that shield is the fruit of analysis no doubt.
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