writing, home

'I sit there, wondering about this, never sure if our barbarism denotes vigour or decay.'
---A.B.

Strong natures, slave mentalities and all that. One is surprised that after all the violence and the bloodshed of the last century anyone would want to talk in that way. The surprising thing remains that for a society that prides itself on 'historical consciousness' how so much is easily and wilfully forgotten. If there is one lesson-and perhaps there isn't-then it's this: human goodness has to be learnt, nurtured and cannot simply be assumed to flow automatically from our "nature".

To paraphrase Kenneth Clark: gentleness comes to the north via the south, the east.

There are lines here that you savour for the flow, but when you write them down you start to question the meaning. One can be lulled into switching off by the intonation of words...

'It was only gradually that I came to appreciate how tolerant he was, and gentle, and lacking in any respect for the form of things.'

Does a 'lack of respect for...' induce kindness, tolerance or does it inevitably lead to a type of dogmatic and harsh and 'ungiving' attitude to others?

As always with A.B. you feel he is wise-within given limits, and perhaps wisdom resides in the very 'knowingness' of one's capacities to understand and express certain things.

'In those days Peter could tap a flow of mad verbal inventiveness that nothing could stem...there is no suggestion that he is going to mend his ways in any permanent fashion. He goes on much as ever down the path to self-destruction, knowing that redemption is not for him-and it is this that redeems him.'

Again, on initially reading this it came across as much gentler, humane than it does when torn out of context like this. Only part of us, one feels, applauds such single-mindedness; the other part recognizes it for what it often is: bloody mindedness.

'In him morality is discovered far from its official haunts, the message of a character like Peter's being that a life of complete self-indulgence, if led with the whole heart, may also bring wisdom.'

Again, rather like a fool, I was drawn to these sentiments, somehow thinking that even if they didn't make complete sense to me they could plausibly pass as a way of life for someone else. And there's always, I suspect, a more than grudging admiration for a person who knows their own mind and what they want in life, as there is for someone who doggedly pursues a particular path knowing full well that even if they do not achieve what they set out to do they would nevertheless have accomplished something as great by following their own lights.

~~~

You are in no mood for dipping today; nor for finishing Rabbit which, to be honest, is pretty mediocre. The time for epigrams, aphorisms and grand statements may have come to an end.