Anna Kavan: I Am Lazarus

Kavan's time working with soldiers suffering from ‘effort syndrome’ can be seen to shape the stories in ways that extend further than her representations of war-shocked men. The intimacy of psychological distress and physiological feelings that characterizes the syndrome surfaces in her representations of the effects of war throughout this collection. Kavan described in a letter to her lover Ian Hamilton her feelings on returning to Blitz-torn London with few possessions and fewer friends:

And then the awful force of inanimate things: a broken umbrella on the steps of a blitzed house, a barrage balloon on the ground in an empty park in the rain. It's very ridiculous that those things should make you feel as if your heart were broken up in small pieces. (14 February 1943)

This letter usefully calls attention to the peculiar status of inanimate objects in Kavan's wartime London — that is, their awful force. In these stories familiar, comfortable and quotidian things become strange and absurd; their poignant incongruity skews into a complicity in the horror. Kavan's heartbreak recalls the symptoms of war neurosis in her patients — for her the evidence of war brings on the symptoms of a metaphorically broken heart, just as war brings on the psychosomatic symptoms of the same thing in ‘effort syndrome’. The strange happenings in Kavan's fictional London manifest the psychological trauma of war.

Kavan's war years were scarred by bouts of ill health, depression and the loss of her son, but they were also some of her most adventurous, creatively prolific and politically engaged. In I Am Lazarus she offers a profound critique of social conformity and represents the experiences of those who are marginalized and dispossessed, inside asylums and out in a hostile world. In her peculiar and fantastic fictional worlds, madness and war initiate a radical dissolution of the boundaries between bodies and emotions, people and things and the city and its inhabitants. Edwin Muir best captured the essence of these stories and their power to move when he wrote that ‘we do not know the world in which these things are happening, and yet we feel their truth, and feel that they are telling us something which could be told in no other way’ (Listener , 5 April 1945).

Victoria Walker

Anna Kavan Society

2013

THE English doctor had not particularly wanted to visit the clinic. He distrusted foreigners and their ways, especially their medical ways. He distrusted anything he did not understand. In particular he distrusted this insulin shock treatment there had been such a fuss about. Why should putting imbeciles into a coma make them sane? It didn't make any sense. He did not think and he never had thought that there was a cure for an advanced dementia praecox case like young Thomas Bow.

The English doctor was not a very good doctor. He was middle aged and frustrated and undistinguished and he would never have been consulted by the rich Mrs. Bow if she had not happened to buy a country house near the village in which he practised.

When Mrs. Bow had heard that the doctor was taking his wife for a motor tour on the Continent for their summer holiday she had suggested that he might call in to see her son if he should be anywhere near the clinic. The doctor realized that a suggestion from Mrs. Bow was practically a command. No one understood better than he did the importance of keeping on the right side of a wealthy patient. Besides, it would sound well when he visited his colleagues at home after the trip. He imagined himself drinking a glass of sherry with old Leigh and casually talking about it. ‘Oh yes, I had a look round the Dessones clinic when I was over there. One must keep in touch with modem developments, you know.’

The English doctor thought about these things as he walked with the superintendent in the grounds of the clinic. He also thought of the time nearly a year ago when Mrs. Bow had told him that she had decided to send her son to this continental place someone had told her about. The doctor had opposed the idea. It was a useless expense. It couldn't possibly do any good. But she was determined. Well, she had plenty of money, so what did it matter? A pretty penny it must be costing her too, he thought. The thought gratified him. He glanced at the beautifully kept gardens. The grounds were really magnificent, the watered lawns green in spite of the dry summer, every tree pruned to perfection, the borders brilliant with flowers.

Out of the blue foreign sky the sun lavishly and impartially poured itself upon the two doctors, the handsome grey-haired superintendent with his white coat, the Englishman in his hot looking tweeds.

‘Wonderful place you've got here,’ the visitor said in the ungracious English way that made the remark sound patronizing.

The superintendent spoke English and four other languages with complete fluency. He gracefully signified his appreciation of the other's approval. He had exactly estimated the unimportance of his companion but it was his policy to treat everyone with polite attention. This was one of the secrets of his success.

‘We're very proud of Mr. Bow,’ he said. ‘He's an outstanding example of the success of the treatment. He responded wonderfully well from the start and I consider him a quite remarkable cure. In a few months he should be well enough to go home. We're just keeping him under observation now.’

The English doctor began for the first time to think about Thomas Bow whom he was to see in a few moments and whom he had last seen hopelessly insane. He wondered how he would see him to-day. They walked on. Behind stood the big main building, white like a smart hotel with striped awnings and window boxes bright with scarlet geraniums. In front were the workrooms, the studios, where the patients were employed at various handicrafts.

The superintendent opened the door of a well-lighted room with a long table at which men and women were working. The sun came through the windows and shone on their hands moving over the table. Some of them were talking. There was a little froth of talk in the room which bubbled away into nothingness as the door opened. A man in an overall was in charge. He had a good humoured face with freckles across his cheeks. He stood behind one of the patients showing him what to do. The different pairs of hands, large and small, rose and fell over the table.

‘Quite a hive of industry, you see.’ The superintendent was bland.

The Englishman looked uneasily at the faces and at the hands which seemed to be rising and falling of their own volition in the banded sunshine above the table.

The superintendent stepped up to the table.

‘Good morning, Mr. Bow. I've brought you a visitor.’

A young man of about twenty-two, very neatly dressed in a grey suit, was sitting there with a strip of leather held in his hands. He had a pale, full, rather nice-looking face and dark hair brushed very smooth. His nose was aristocratic. He was well-built, on the big side; a little fleshy, perhaps. He looked squarely at the two doctors out of flat hazel eyes.

‘You remember me, don't you?’ the English visitor said, giving his name.

He held out his hand and after a slight pause the other man put down the piece of leather and shook the hand. He did not smile.

‘Glad to see you looking so fit,’ said the doctor, bringing into action his falsely hearty professional tone. He unobtrusively scrutinized the young man who sat stiffly correct in his place at the sunny table, holding the strip of leather again.

‘What are you making?’ the superintendent asked him.

‘A belt,’ said the patient, and smiled.

He liked making the belt and so it pleased him to have someone notice it and he smiled.