St. George and the Dragon
By IAIN HAMILTON THE week-end before last I attended two meetings at which the present state of " culture " in Britain was the prime concern. One, on the Saturday, was the annual meeting of the English Association, and the other, on the Sunday, was a Communist conference. I fancy that I was the only person to attend both, and to notice- certain similiarities which might have shocked those concerned with either.
At the English Association Mr. A. L. Rowse thundered in his presidential address against what he considers to be the present decadence. (The title of his lecture was " A New Elizabethan Age ? ", and before he had gone half-way the mark of interrogation had expanded, as it were, into such a string of exclamatory signs as cartoonists use to signify amaze- ment, incredulity and indignation.) At the Communist meet- ing, the subject of which was " The Use of Britain's Cultural Heritage in the Service of Peace and National Independence," Mr. George Thomson, Professor of Greek at Birmingham University, dealt equally harshly with the decay that he sees around him. To hold up the present to scorn, Mr. Rowse compared it first with the age of Elizabeth Tudor and then with that of Victoria. To do the same, Professor Thomson compared it first in particular with the Eastern Utopias and then in general with that " Socialist culture " which we are all one day to enjoy. The romantic historian and the dialectical materialist, St. George and (if one may say so without offence) the Dragon, have this in common—a detestation of the present.
From the pinnacle of an idealised past Mr. Rowse derides what exists. From the dead level of an idealised future Professor Thomson does likewise. As for the object of their concern, the artist, who inhabits the present in a fuller sense than most human beings, well might he cry to both from the bottom of his 'heart: ' Fiddlesticks ! " What, he would be well justified in asking, do their speeches have to do with me ? On the basis of their respective orations during the week-end before last, it seems evident that both Mr. Rowse and Professor Thomson are in love with abstractions—one from time past and the other from time future—whereas the true artist's concern, whatever his subject may be, is with the concrete and the present, with the real world as heart and mind together know it.
Mr. Rowse suggested in his speech that it is not surprising, things being so appalling, that the finest writers have in one way or another turned their backs on the world; and among these finest writers he places with confidence Mr. Graham Greene, Mr. Evelyn Waugh, the Sitwell trio and Mr. John Betjeman. He complains also that there is far too much- criticism today, that there are far too many clever people pick- ing things to bits. Considering Mr. Rowse's short list of talent, one might be forgiven for thinking that, contrary to his con- tention, some further extension of the critical spirit would be desirable. Professor Thomson is rather more logical (in his way) when he attacks " bourgeois " writers in general, and in particular, to take as his short list, Rudyard Kipling, Mr. Arthur Koestler, Mr. T. S. Eliot and Mr. J. B. Priestley. But on the Sunday Professor Thomson used the same word in connection with Mr.-Eliot as Mr. Rowse had used on the Saturday. To St. George and the Dragon alike, Mr. Eliot appears as the " poet of despair." Professor Thomson spoke of his " croaking in genteel despair." Mr. Rowse. suggested. in less offensive terms, that his reputation and popularity are in proportion to the accuracy with which he mirrors the despair of the age.
Now it is proper for Professor Thomson to attack Mr. Eliot and to speak sneeringly of his " genteel despair," for here Professor Thomson is serving a political end, and all is grist to the small-grinding mill of Marxism. Mr. Eliot has made known his lack of sympathy with Communism, so be is plainly a Fascist lackey and hyaena, and not worth considering as a writer. One does not look for criticism, in any full and liberal sense, from Professor Thomson. Anyone familiar with the strait gate, through which the intelligence is forced by the acceptance of Communist faith could have written down a good part of Professor Thomson's lecture before its delivery It was more disturbing to hear Mr. Rowse, who certainly would not have felt himself at home in Professor Thomson's eager and obedient audience, indulging in the easy phrases about despair and the best writers turning their backs on the world and the prevailing intellectual decadence and so on, for all the world as if in illustration of the Marxist thesis—and without bothering to offer cold proof of his assertions.
In what, precisely, does Mr. Eliot's " despair " consist ? Mr. Rowse said nothing to convince this listener at least that it is anything more than the (as I believe) fallacious view which sprang in the first place from the book-reviewers bafflement at a poem that appeared more than thirty years ago—The Waste Land. What sort of literary criticism is it that could label The Four Quartets a poem of " despair " ? Or The Waste Land itself, for that matter, which was subject to much misinterpretation ? But Mr. Eliot is not responsible for his misinterpreters, academic or otherwise, just as Mr. John Betjeman is not to blame for his being pushed forward into the ranks of the finest contemporary writers. And it is not Mr. Graham Greene who suggests that Mr. Graham Greene is turning his back on the world. One had not gathered any- thing of this sort from Mr. Greene's books.
What is the difference between Mr. Rowse's description of his batch of writers as men turning their backs on the world and Professor Thomson's description of their work as " the literature of the graveyard " ? Mr. Rowse would, I gather, have his writers set to the task of glorifying the particular idea of England which he treasures. Professor Thomson would have them glorifying the particular idea of the Soviet Union and the New Democracies which he treasures, and, until the triumph of a " Socialist culture " nearer home, reviling the servile capitalist-lackeys of the present State. one would certainly prefer Mr. Rowse's abstraction to Professor Thom- son's, just as one prefers the reality of England to that of Russia, but that is not quite to the point here. I, who listerie,d to both Mr. Rowse and Professor Thomson in the space of one week-end, would have writers shut their ears to St. George and to the Dragon as well, and go their own way as best they can, doing the work they have to do.
" What is freedom ? " Professor Th,omson, like Shelley, asked; and he illustrated its opposite with Shelley's definition of slavery : " `Tis to be slave in soul . . . . To be all others make thee." This, in a Communist conference devoted to the " use of Britain's cultural heritage in the service of peace and national independence," was the crowning irony. Listening to Professor Thomson clumping away on his treadmill, I thought of Dr. Leavis's comment on another Marxist critic : " Like most Marxist critics who undertake to explain art and culture, he produces the effect of having emptied life of content and everything of meaning." It would be as pointless as it would be presumptious to commend to Professor Thomson the critical writings of Dr. Leavis. However, he is by no means least among those who might with profit be consulted by historians about to speculate on " a new Elizabethan age ? "
And lastly, since Mr. RoWse quoted Yeats in defence of his arguments, perhaps I may end by offering a couple of texts from the same poet. One for Mr. Rowse and all others who look back with longing and forward with distaste.
" All things fall and are built again, And those that build them again are gay. And one for Professor Thomson and all others' who look back with distaste and forward with longing : " Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot ! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again ! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on." It may surprise or displease politicians and academics, but your true artist knows a thing or two.
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