Read Online Imaginary Toys by Julian Mitchell - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Julian Mitchell
Ads: Link
radical Europe could give her a sense of purpose. It could at least try. It would probably be as unsuccessful as the original American settlers, but it would at least give Europe something to do in a world where she has ceased to lead. But there is no need for Europe to be censorious. Americans are quite self-critical enough already. (All that phoney breast-beating sociology.) We get a false impression in Europe, we see Americans over-anxiously advertising their country. They are bad travellers from the ad-man’s point of view. They are gluttons for our culture, but ashamed of their own. But theirs is living and ours is dying, if not dead. (Is this true? True enough.) What Europe could do is lead America towards a realization of the liberty and equality that are asserted so grandiloquently on her postage stamps, but are banished from a large section of her population. Europe could create an ideal, instead of filling a space between two competing powers. Europe needs a function.
America’s problem is illustrated by the Eisenhower administration. A general is put in the White House, but he can give no orders because there is no one to tell him his objectives. If only Europe would think, instead of torturing colonists, trying to match the great powers’ fire-power, pretending that it is still 1900. But is there any hope of a radical flourish from Europe? If one lived only in the universities one might think so. If one spent all one’s holidays on protest marches one might even feel certain. I only wish I couldfeel there was some hope. But De Gaulle, Macmillan, Adenauer. The right continues to thrive on a diet of flags, national anthems, royal babies, economic prosperity, private atomic tests, colonial mayhem. I will not believe that human beings are so craven, so selfish, as to have feelings and consciences only when poor. And yet radicalism has been submerged beneath full employment and the massive production of consumer-goods. (Or has it?)
It is immoral to hope, with the Communist, for a slump. In doing so one is expressing the utmost contempt for the human race. I would have people treat each other with charitableness. They should not need hell or hunger to drive them to it. Is this too idealistic? If I am wrong, then my politics founder completely. The humanitarian has no use, he is not dealing with real men, but men as he wants them to be. The dictator is right. Men are beasts. What do I want? I want every man and woman to have the opportunity to develop his and her self to the fullest possible extent. The one saying of Christ that is rock-like: ‘more abundantly’. The same message occurs in the unlikeliest places—Pater, Henry James. Neither of those would approve of my kind of radicalism. But the spirit is there. The Renaissance, Strether’s speech to little Bilham in The Ambassadors. And in the poets, almost at random. But how would the poets have liked the politics of the second half of the twentieth century? But one does not, mercifully, find the message only in literature. If one did, one would give up altogether.
Current feeling: the shortness of time and the immensity of space and the unlimited amount of human suffering.
Current philosophy: a responsible hedonism.
4
Charles Frederick Hammond
While we drifted up and down the river, or lay half-asleep at the bottom of the punt, the afternoon we escaped from the problems of our different loves, the afternoon that made Jack think I was some kind of Casanova, and Elaine was a fickle bitch, we had one of those nice rambling conversations, without any particular beginning and with no specific end, but which have a definite centre round which one can comfortably circle. I mean, we never actually talked about Margaret and Jack in an analytic way, we meandered round them, recalling incidents and phrases, mulling over them, musing, as though we were in a spaceship circling a planet without ever landing on it, just looking at its different surfaces. Of course, we
America’s problem is illustrated by the Eisenhower administration. A general is put in the White House, but he can give no orders because there is no one to tell him his objectives. If only Europe would think, instead of torturing colonists, trying to match the great powers’ fire-power, pretending that it is still 1900. But is there any hope of a radical flourish from Europe? If one lived only in the universities one might think so. If one spent all one’s holidays on protest marches one might even feel certain. I only wish I couldfeel there was some hope. But De Gaulle, Macmillan, Adenauer. The right continues to thrive on a diet of flags, national anthems, royal babies, economic prosperity, private atomic tests, colonial mayhem. I will not believe that human beings are so craven, so selfish, as to have feelings and consciences only when poor. And yet radicalism has been submerged beneath full employment and the massive production of consumer-goods. (Or has it?)
It is immoral to hope, with the Communist, for a slump. In doing so one is expressing the utmost contempt for the human race. I would have people treat each other with charitableness. They should not need hell or hunger to drive them to it. Is this too idealistic? If I am wrong, then my politics founder completely. The humanitarian has no use, he is not dealing with real men, but men as he wants them to be. The dictator is right. Men are beasts. What do I want? I want every man and woman to have the opportunity to develop his and her self to the fullest possible extent. The one saying of Christ that is rock-like: ‘more abundantly’. The same message occurs in the unlikeliest places—Pater, Henry James. Neither of those would approve of my kind of radicalism. But the spirit is there. The Renaissance, Strether’s speech to little Bilham in The Ambassadors. And in the poets, almost at random. But how would the poets have liked the politics of the second half of the twentieth century? But one does not, mercifully, find the message only in literature. If one did, one would give up altogether.
Current feeling: the shortness of time and the immensity of space and the unlimited amount of human suffering.
Current philosophy: a responsible hedonism.
4
Charles Frederick Hammond
While we drifted up and down the river, or lay half-asleep at the bottom of the punt, the afternoon we escaped from the problems of our different loves, the afternoon that made Jack think I was some kind of Casanova, and Elaine was a fickle bitch, we had one of those nice rambling conversations, without any particular beginning and with no specific end, but which have a definite centre round which one can comfortably circle. I mean, we never actually talked about Margaret and Jack in an analytic way, we meandered round them, recalling incidents and phrases, mulling over them, musing, as though we were in a spaceship circling a planet without ever landing on it, just looking at its different surfaces. Of course, we
Similar Books
