Conrad Aiken - Blue Voyage

“Yes, that’s true, that’s a nice illustration for it. Everybody does worship gold—”

“I made a mistake!”

“That wasn’t fair !”

“She reneged !”

“But what I say is, if they don’t want to travel the same road with me, let them go their own way.”

“That’s what I say to my son, who joined the Christian Scientists. He’s always after me—”

“ —Episcopalian, they call it in America—”

“Well, that’s the reason, you see, why I didn’t want to play for anything.”

“ Anything, that’ll keep you in touch with God, that’s the great thing. But they all want to go their own way, nowadays. You can’t prevent it — it’s no use is it? trying to prevent it. But so long as they keep in touch with God, that’s the great thing.”

“—Christ, I mean.”

“Well, I never played it much, I just started.”

“They don’t deny Him. But they say He’s not the Son of God.”

“ —beginning —”

“They say that Christ was a good man . The only thing they deny is His Kingship . But what do we mean, I ask you, by Christ? Have you stopped to think about that? That’s a point of very great importance. Is there any reason why we should reserve the title of Christ only for the one individual that was known as Jesus? There have been many Christs since Jesus of Nazareth. There was Saint Francis. There were some of the Popes, too, good and holy men. There was Moody and Sankey. There was Spurgeon. In what way was Spurgeon not deserving of the name of Christ? He gave his life to God — look at all those wonderful words and thoughts of his. And these are only a few. There have been many Christs — some of them lowly people that were never heard of in history. How many have been put on the rack for their faith in God? No man can say. There have been many Christs; and there will be Christs again.”

“We couldn’t have made a whole lot, could we?”

“The ace of diamonds was all I had.”

“Nine of trumps—”

“You have to follow suit, you see.”

“What’ll you do?”

“One spade.”

“One spade.”

“Ha ha ha! You have to say something different from her! You don’t follow suit in the bidding !”

“Well, if you’ve got one spade you’d better hold on to it!”

“They’re playing euchre, is it?”

“Miss Kennedy? No. She wasn’t a bigot. She might see things in a different light from what you do. But that isn’t bigotry. Because you’re Church — and she’s Chapel — does that give her the right to call you a bigot? No. Miss Kennedy was a Unitarian, and a God-fearing woman. You might not agree with her, but that wouldn’t make her a bigot.”

“Well — I try to fathom all these things—”

“It’s the way they’ve been brought up, that’s it, isn’t it, Mrs. Covey? They reverence God in their own way. And it seems good to them, just like your way seems good to you. It’s all in the way you’ve been brought up when you’re a child.”

“Well — that’s true, of course — and my husband is right where he says we should all strive to be tolerant — but just the same there’s some things that’s hard to understand or be tolerant of. I’ve had a good deal of religious experience, for after being brought up as a Churchwoman, when I married I became a Wesleyan. And then, singing as I did — I used to sing a lot — I went about a good deal to different sects and societies, and saw a good many different points of view. But some of the Catholic ideas, now, I cannot think they are good. And this although my best friend, a woman I’ve known all my life, died a Catholic. To my idea, the way they use the crucifix is wrong, like a kind of idolatry. For them, their crucifix is just a kind of talisman, to protect you. Just a talisman. And then the way they worship the mother of Christ — that’s another thing that seems to me uncalled for. I used to ask Mrs. Jennings, ‘Why is it you worship the mother of Christ as if she was a god? She was only a mortal woman like you or me.’ And of course, that’s just why it appeals to them. They have her there to represent all the mothers … Lots of my friends have been Catholics.”

(I could see, watching them out of the corner of my eye, that Cynthia and the fair-haired girl were turning, hesitating, there at the top of the companionway, as if at a loss. Should they come down, approach me? Try in some way to catch my eye?… They wavered, Cynthia was biting her lip — they vacillated, waiting perhaps for some sign from me — and then, receiving none, departed slowly forward and did not return. I believe that Cynthia knew that I had seen her. Yes. She knew; knew from the stiff unseeing way in which I stood and stared, staring meaninglessly, with awkward profile, at the wholly uninteresting sea. Good God. My folly and weakness are abysmal. Why must I behave in this extraordinary fashion? Ask dad, he knows ! Ask Clara, the Negro nurse! Ask Mr. Greenbaum, the Latin teacher, who watched me through the crack of the door to see if I was cribbing! Ask that slattern under the arc light, in November, 1909, who caroled at me “Does your mother know you’re out?” Ask the burly Italian in the Apennine train, who said, when I had dismally failed to shut that infernal broken window (and the smoke was pouring in) “ Poco bravo !” Ask that detestable red-faced redheaded vulgar master (tuberculous, too) who superintended when I was given the water cure, aged seventeen! And the God-impersonating baseball coach who would never trust me with a chance on the first nine!.. Ask them all. And ask my dipsomaniac great-grandfather, my charming imaginative fibbing mother, my sensual analytic father, and the delirious wallpaper pattern on my nursery wall. Behavior is a function of environment . Selah! I wash my hands of it. But I don’t want to behave like this? Or do I? Is it metaphysically — or physiologically — possible to will the good and achieve the evil? to desire, and not to accomplish? and thus to become something which one had not willed? Cynthia’s conception of Demarest is not Demarest’s conception—)

“Well!”

“Well!”

“Now I should like to ask you a whole lot of questions.”

“Ask, and it shall be given unto you.”

“May I inquire what it is you write?”

“Plays. Also an unfinished novel or two. And a few poems.”

“Have any of them been produced?”

“Published, but not produced. That’s the difficulty. Or rather—”

“I dare say you’re too highbrow. Is that it?”

“No. The trouble is deeper than that. In fact, so deep that it’s hard to analyze. I’ve often made the attempt, never with much satisfaction. Not that it matters very much. Ha ha! I always say that, at this point, and of course it’s precisely that that matters … the fact that I say, and do often believe, that it doesn’t matter, I mean.”

“Not enough faith in yourself, perhaps.”

“No, not exactly that — though that’s a part of it. It’s more general — a sneaking feeling that the whole thing is a snare and a delusion.”

“I don’t get you. You mean the world in general?”

“No — though I often suspect that too; but that’s not just what I mean. No, the sneaking feeling I refer to is a feeling that the arts — and perhaps especially the literary arts — are a childish preoccupation which belongs properly to the infancy of the race, and which, although the race as a whole has not outgrown, the civilized individual ought to outgrow.”

“Hm. I see. Or I don’t see!”

“No reasonable person any longer believes in magic — but many of the ideas and words and fetishes, which we inherit from the age of magic, still survive in debased forms: mascots, lucky pennies, charms, lucky numbers, fortunetelling, and so on. Well, when we begin as children to use language, we use it as a form of magic power to produce results. We learn to say ‘more’ because when pronounced it will actually get us more. And, we never wholly lose this early conviction (though it becomes overlaid and unconscious) that some sort of virtue or power resides in language. When we like a passage in a poem or tale we refer to it as ‘magical.’ We thus indicate unconsciously the primitive origin and nature of the arts. Art is merely the least primitive form of magic … But all this relates chiefly to the linguistic side of the literary art. There is also the other side, that part of it which it has in common with the other arts — the psychological content, the affective and emotional necessity out of which it springs. You know Freud’s theory that the ordinary dream is a disguised wish-fulfilment or nexus of them? Well, the work of art performs exactly the same function. Some of these esthetic critics say that content, so to speak, doesn’t matter at all; they talk of the ideal work of art as one in which everything has become form, and of the ideal critic as one in whom there is no confusion of the emotions aroused in himself (by the work of art) with the work of art itself. That error seems to me perfectly extraordinary! And yet it is a very common one. For of course this pure form, and pure contemplation, are both chimeras; there ain’t no sich animals. What is the pure form of a potato? The minute you leave out its potatoishness you leave out everything. Form is only an aspect of matter, and cannot be discussed apart from it. You can isolate the feelings and emotions which give rise to a play, but you cannot entirely isolate its form, for its form responds to these. Can you conceive of a play which would be entirely meaningless, one which was not only unintelligible, but which also aroused no feelings? Impossible. Language is reference. And its reference is dual: it refers to facts — as the word potato refers to a tuber — but also it refers to feelings; for every individual will have, as the result of his own particular experiences, his own particular cluster of feelings about the potato. Do I make myself clear?”