Honesty About Classics

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 300, 18 December 1937, Page 8 (Supplement)

Honesty About Classics

8y... CYRANO

IN some respects this is a more honest age than the Victorian. It is more honest about sex and bodily functions and relations between parents and children. I think—though here it is more difficult to teli it is also more honest about like 9 and dislikes in literature. There is less lip service to the English classics and a wider disposition to say straight oxrt that ono doesn't lixe this or that book «I,ar-od in the literary histories. Shakespeare himself provides an example. In the nineteenth century there developed what Bernard Shaw has called bardolatry. Tho Shakespearean corpus was almost sacred. Now critics say quite rude things a I>ou t a pood deal of his work. Tho ethics of "Tho Merchant of Venice" are riddled, and a distinguished playwright gives us a sequel to the play in which the only characters worthy of admiration are Portia, whoso husband has proved a loose fish, and Shylock. But the men who shoot these arrows are just as enthusiastic as any of theiir predecessors about the best of Shakespeare, and their willingness to admit che«fiiLly that the hero has warts strengthens tti effect of their appreciation. It is also coming to be recognised that there is no moral turpitude involved in not being able to reafl with pleasure well soy "The Faerie Queen," or Richardson's novels, or Boswell's "Life of Johnson," or "The Excursion," or Juno Austen, and, indeed, that men or women who bnlk at these books may have excellent taste in general. Books Worshipped, But Read By Few Volt.aiTe said something to the effect that a clan'sic was a book that was worshipped but not read. There is a good deal of truth in the saying. There are a large number of books that time has ranked as classics which are little read in their entirety, or fail to appeal to a considerable number of educated people. They are read by students and writers and through them they fertilise culture, but numbers of people who can fairly be called well read would have to confess that they don't take to thern. Tho "Listener" recently published an illuminating series of confessions on this subject. Mr. Robert Lynd had just met a man who raid he had never been able to read Bos well; "and he seemed to be surprised when I -told him that there was nothing astonishing in this, and that indeed it would be * great misfortune if human beings were eo mechanically alike in their tastes that they all enjoyed reading the same books." Mr. Lynd points out that Johnson himself spoke contemptuously of "Gulliver's Travels," and that a critic of such wide sympathies as Lamb couldn't read Gibbon. Andrew Lang said he couldn't imagine being friends with a man who didn't like Scott or Dickens. If some of us old-fashioned folk are going to make Scott a test of friendship we won't enjoy the society of many of tho younger set. I myself worship both men, but ono of my oldest and best friends, while a fanatical Rcott-ite, is lukewarm about Dickens. "Can't read hiin," said Arnold Bennett of Dickens, laughing cheerfully at his disability. That laughter counts for a good deal. It means "I can't read Dickens, but I realise that I miss something." Can't Get Through "The Faerie Qaeene" There is a lot of entertainment in this series of confessions, and they may give courage to those who, like Mr. Lynd, can't get through "The Faerie Quecne." 1 How many can? But, perhaps, half of our favourite poets would not have been the poets they were, if "The Faerio Queene" had not been written, and all of us know the lines about rest after toil, port after stormy seas. Mr. Lynd can't read Richardson, but ho has friends who consider "Clarissa" one of the most absorbing novels in the language. Rose Macaulay doesn't enjoy most of Burns, and if the obscure may link itself with the distinguished, neither do I. She doesn't like Rabelais or "Don Quixote," both acclaimed classics, not by one country, but the world. Tn Rabelais she finds "jokes about nnsty smells, dirt, and being sick." I've tried to read Rabelais and failed, despite the fact that Browning, whom I worship, found him jolly. To me he 1 is dull. I've had "Don Quixote" on my 1 shelf for many years, but I've never read liim through. Mr. Julian R. Yeat- j rrian, co-author of the very diverting "IO(i(> and All That." feels no urge to reattemnt to rend Chaucer, Shakespeare, 1 Defo'-. or Dickens, but he likes the ( Woodforde Diaries, the Past on Letters, i a. book on hounds, and "The Golden i Bough." t

Some Judgments By Sir Hugh Walpole Sir flujrh Walpole eun't read TJabelais in either I'Yeneh or K)i<.'li,sli, but also can't illlit;rino anyone who jrives himself i little I imp mid patience finding Boswcl] dull, or !V|i\x. or Evelyn or any honest, n mI nbinjrra pher, or any lively letter- writer. *1" li i t "impossible to Hiui'ir'nip" attitude i« rather donfjerous. mvo nMother friend with admirable "f th<- best ~,-ivate lil'iii'U'a I know. He can't enjoy W. W. .. ,i< ~, , a . Mr. Lvikl knows novelists who ' ' appreciate ,W Austen. It S r H„X ' n ° P. art, ™ ,arl y to read that 0 er ' nt 7 S P ° n(,rK,k a :: :■ ■! ' ~ t Pd _ wn and that while DnniH Dprnn'la" i« "#\f ?» imrcnil'iMe. "Middfrmarch" i e one ■no*i-readable novels in the lan-ua-e th"' 'if ' , " 0,,lnr( ' 11 " hijrh amoiij* " . i 1),,t 1 no desire h "r, »'»' irirt. iia 1 Homola for examinations, l,„t le,' )"''' \ X f P "" ral r °nsent, pretty I; .hI. A p.ne.. of painstaking construc- ! lOn • u liereas "Middle",' , ir.i.,l, is severe on Geor 1 1 i reditb, the unpopularity of whose

novels he declares to be undoubted and deserved. "The Egotist" and "Richard Feveral" are dead from the waist down, and the others are dead altogether. There are, however, quite enough good Meredithians left to raise a fairly loud chorus of protest. Twenty-five yeaxs ago Meredith was the vogue, and assured immortality -was given to him. Reaction is inevitable, but ft is quite probable that before very long there will be a swing back in bis favour.

Present-day Books As an appendage to this application of honesty to the classics there is the question what books of our own time are likely to be classics to the future. Defining a classic ae a book that survives at least a hundred years beyond its own time and fashions, Walpole prophesies a kind of classicism for Bennett's "'Old Wives' Tale," Walter de la Mare'e "Listeners," Trevelyan's description of the Battle of Blenheim and Edmund. Blunden'a "Undertones of War." Some of the younger generation would vote for James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.

Honesty is the root of the matter. If a man is unable to appreciate a classic he should say so. There is, however, the cant of false depreciation, as well as that of false appreciation. Fashion sometimes decrees that for smartness' sake one should throw bricks at so and so. There arc very few men or women who have not their blind spots in literature and art. What can be said with some certainty is that if a person has a whole string of blind spots, then his taste is not good. One would say, for example, that if a man did not like Shakespeare or Milton or Keats or Tennyson or Wordsworth (I don't mean all of what they wrote, but the best of it), he was not a lover of poetry. One must guard against condemning a book simply because it does not please us. One should be able to judge or accept the worth of a book while deriving only moderate

pleasure from it. I am prepared to admit that "The Vicar of Wakefield" is a great novel, but I don't particularly want to read it again. "The Pilgrim's Progress" does not excite me, but I can believe the report* of its influence. I can 6ee in a dim way the greatness of "Don Quixote," though mostly at second hand, but I don't suppose I shall ever finish it. This is particularly so with books available to most of us only in translation. Dante is the moet conspicuous illustration. His

influence on the world has been immense t and profound. A learned friend of mine puts Dante first among the secular forces that have moulded him. This man, however, reads Dante in the original. Many of thoso who have tackled Dante without thie advantage will agree with Mr. Lynd that the "Divine Comedy" is (in translation) for the most part a weary wilderness of reading. That, however, does not give one the right to scoff at it.

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