Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

Sometimes when Melvyn was bored with the company he was in, or was drunk, he would let the conversation roll along seriously for a time and then would drag it away like one of those birds pretending to trail a broken wing so that predators should not find its nest.

He would say 'Did you know Stalin was a woman?'

Someone would say 'No.'

Then he would say something like 'At the fifteenth Party Congress, when Trotsky went to have a pee, he noticed that Stalin was in the Ladies.'

I would try to think of something to say like 'Perhaps Stalin wanted a shit.'

Melvyn would say 'Oh very good, ducky, you're learning.'

I thought — But what exactly is Melvyn's nest from which he wants such conversations to be diverted?

Then there was one evening towards the end of the first term when we were on our own and Melvyn was drunk; he had spent two days in London. He did not talk to me about what he did in

London. I would think — He has got himself tied up by guardsmen? He has been making contact with his political friends?

He said 'I want to tell you that there is nothing more disgusting than innocence, ducky.'

I said 'Who is innocent?'

He said 'You and Trotsky.'

This was shortly after the time when Trotsky had been banished by Stalin from Russia and was being blamed for most of the things that were going wrong in that country. It was only just being admitted by Communists that there was anything wrong in Russia, and there had to be a scapegoat.

I said 'Why is it innocent to talk about the millions that seem to be starving in Russia?'

He said 'I hope you are not one of those people who are starry-eyed about Russia. They have only had a year or two of their five-year plan, after all. Industrial production is up three hundred percent, electrification four hundred percent, agriculture and consumer goods — well, don't be taken in by that, they're not all starving.'

I said 'But what exactly are you saying?'

He said 'What exactly am I saying! That is what I call innocence! That is what I am saying!'

I said 'They're putting the blame on to Trotsky because they know the five-year plan is going to fail.'

Melvyn said 'Of course the five-year plan is going to fail! What on earth would happen if it succeeded: have you thought of that? You think you can transform a society by a five-year plan succeeding? You can't. It has to fail. Then people can be blamed, yes: people in Russia have to be disciplined. They have to be made to be afraid. How do you think people could be made to change if the five-year plan succeeded?'

I said 'You mean, Stalin is trying to transform human nature by making people afraid?'

'In order that there will be a society in which people need not be afraid.'

'You think you can eliminate fear by making people afraid?'

'History's not so innocent as you, ducky.'

'I don't think history's innocent.'

'Good for you.'

'You think people in Russia know what they're doing?'

'Doing what — '

144

They know that they want the five-year plan to fail?'

'Who's said anything about the five-year plan going to fail? I've not said anything about a five-year plan going to fail!*

I said 'I see.'

He said 'You see what?'

I said 'You mean that no Russian leader could ever say, even to himself, that he wanted the five-year plan to fail, because if he did, psychologically he wouldn't be able to do what he wants, which is to embark on a reign of blame and terror.'

Melvyn said 'Didn't I say you're learning, ducky!'

I thought — Melvyn really does know more than me?

Then — But of course if one could learn to be tough and subtle with oneself, then one wouldn't need blame and terror?

I seldom talked to Melvyn about the work I was doing in Cambridge. I was studying mathematics; which was a prelude, I supposed, to specialising in physics. I do not remember what work Melvyn was doing: English? History? In spite of what seemed to be his committment to Marxism, he gave the impression of his work being of no importance. I said to him once 'But you mean Marxists, if they are serious, must have an inkling that they are engaged in something quite different from what they have to say they are doing.'

He said 'Don't be too sharp, ducky, or you'll catch yourself where it matters.'

I said 'It's quite like mathematics.'

He said 'Have fun with your mathematics, ducky!'

The most influential mathematician and theoretical physicist at Cambridge at this time was Paul Dirac: his exploratory work was held to be on a level with that of Bohr and Heisenberg on the Continent. I went to some of his lectures: he was a quiet, passionate man who spoke of things that were indeed, he seemed to suggest, just beyond one's grasp; they were like leaves, like shadows. But that there were such things as leaves and shadows meant, as it were, that there was some sun. Some of Dirac's mathematics I did not wholly understand: but in one or two publications at the time he tried to put into laymen's language some of the wider implications of what he thought he was discovering. This was quite a common activity amongst eminent scientists at this time: it was only later that they seemed to withdraw again into the fortress-jargons of their special disciplines.

What I understood Dirac to be implying was -

The laws of physics control a level of reality of which our minds by their nature cannot form an adequate picture: we deal with the world of appearances mainly through intuition. When an object we are observing is small, we cannot observe it without disturbing it, so that what we are observing is not the object but the results of the disturbance. When an object is big, we can say we observe it because the disturbance is for practical purposes negligible, but then what we are observing is inevitably to do with appearances. Two sorts of mathematics are required for a description of reality: classical mathematics, which concerns objects which are big and by means of which we can talk about cause-and-effect between them because this is how intuitively we see appearances; and a new form of mathematics which concerns objects which are small and in which we cannot talk about objective cause-and-effect because of the disturbances caused by the observer. Thus for human consciousness there is something that essentially cannot be pinned down at the heart of matter — and this is not to do with inadequacy of technique, but is built into the relationship between consciousness and language and matter. This is not to be regretted: it is a realisation necessary for understanding.

I had a friend at this time who was called Donald Hodge. Donald was older than me; he had come to Cambridge to study physics, but for the moment was trying to grapple with philosophy. Donald had orange hair and small steel spectacles of which the side-pieces were joined to points near the bottom of the rims. He and I would go for walks together by the banks of the river. In the winter the backwaters of the river became frozen so that there were the footprints of birds on the snow that lay on the surface of what had once been water. Donald and I discussed the relation between philosophy and what seemed to be being suggested by physicists.

Donald said 'But it seems to me that physicists are confused about what is the nature of language.'

I said 'But mathematics is a form of language.'

He said 'But when you say you cannot observe something but can only observe the effect of your observation — what else is it, indeed, that you ever think you are observing?'

'But a different form of mathematics is required to describe this.'

'But you make up a mathematics — '

'But you make up a language.'

Donald and I walked by the frozen water. I thought — We go

round and round: but sometimes, almost without our noticing, something gets through.