Dr. O’Brien’s Essays And Criticisms

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31089, 18 June 1966, Page 4

Dr. O’Brien’s Essays And Criticisms

Writers and Politics. Essays and Criticisms. By Conor) Cruise O'Brien. Chatto) and Windus. 259 pp. The author of “Writers and Politics” was very much in the news five years ago when he was acting as the representative in the Congo of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Before that time, however, using the pseudonym Donat O’Donnell, he had already made an interesting position for himself as a literary critic. His best-known work of this kind was “Maria Cross,” a study of the imaginative patterns to be discerned in representative texts of Roman Catholic writers like Bloy, Claudel, Bemanos and others. The territory explored in “Maria Cross” was a difficult one, and the author’s achievement was considerable. The methods of what has come to be called “The New Criticism” were applied with confidence. Indeed with authority. The essays in “Writers and Politics," however, are quite different Only occasionally will readers discover the same quality of authority here. Perhaps the best example is the essay on Camus, entitled “Monsieur Camus Changes His Climate.” Having shown how Camus, in his last work, seems to have moved away from moral indignation towards “a salutary disgust and a kind of quietism,” O’Brien goes on to suggest that by doing this, Camus has undermined the morale of “the progressives.” “Most of the capital of the intellectual left has long been rewardingly invested in moral indignation, and now Mr Camus, having transferred his own capital to an unspecified destination, engages in inflationary manoeuvres. The shareholders are justifiably incensed.” The most entertaining moment in the book, however, comes in a review of Whittaker Chambers's “Cold h Friday.” Chambers mentions ■ as a fact the declension of the I Russian word “Tsargrad” ■ “through all the nine B inflections of tte Russian noun.” ~

In manner recalling the congressional inquiry that involved Alger Hiss, Dr O’Brien brings both Whittaker Chambers and the Russian noun before the committee of the House of Congress. He writes the dialogue:— Mr Nixon: Mr Chambers, do you know the Russian noun? Mr Chambers: I do. Mr Nixon: How many inflexions does it have?

Mr Chambers: Nine. Mt Mundt: Thank you, Mr Chambers, for that frank testimony, very different from some of the witnesses we have had here today. Mr Nixon: Mr Noun, does Mr Chambers know you? Russian Noun: It depends what vou mean by “know.” Mr Nixon: That’s not a very satisfactory answer. How many inflexions do you have? Russian Noun: Six—you could call It seven, if you include the archaic vocative. Mr Stripling: Make up your mind. What is it? Six or seven? Russian Noun: It depends whether you count the vocative. You see— Mr Mundt: We re wasting our time: I’ve had enough of these evasions. Have you a relative called Tsargrad? Russian Noun: Yes—as a matter of fact he’s considered rather unusual —he’s declined fully. In both components. Rather jolly really. Mr Nixon: You say Mr Chambers doesn’t know you. Yet he has already—quite spontaneously—testified to this committee about this little detail, which could hardly be known by someone not on intimate terms with your family. How do you account for that. Mr Noun Russian Noun: Well, vou see. I didn't exactly say he didn’t know me. We have met on a couple of occasions— Mr Mundt: Now we're beginning to get somewhere. Can you still not remember how many inflections you have* In fart, the brightest and probably the most chararteristic passage in “Writers and Politics” occur in the bookreviews, particularly those contributed to the "Spectator.” One of the best of these deals faithfully with the life of Victor Hugo written by Harold Nicolson. Dr. O’Brien keeps on discerning resemblances between Victor Hugo and a steam engine. ■‘And always words, millions o» words, gushed out of him, scalding hot and at high pressure, like steam out of his boiling century.” (Incidentally a curious twist is given to the simile in that final phrase.) He also takes At wieked pleasure in Victor

Hugo with Mr Gladstone, and completes an unexpected triad by bringing Adolf Hitler into the picture. “Gladstone and Hugo had the souffle, the mastery of language, and the legend-focusing personality that could confer a formal order on a general release of emotion. In the case of an orator, it has been held that this faculty was daemonic and annunciatory of disasters to come. The road to Nuremberg, on this view, begins at Midlothian. The relevant metaphor, for the age, is still that of ‘letting off steam’: that was, in part, the function for their nations, and in their very different ways, of Hugo and of Gladstone. It is hardly wise to regard the process with suspicion because another nation, in a later day, blew up the boiler.” It is worth noticing that the passage begins with “souffle,” “breath.” a rather gentle word, no doubt figuratively used for “inspiration,” and ends with hot air in its most expansive form. Another section, with similar bright snatches, is that which deals with Irish literature and Irish affairs. Dr. O’Brien writes perceptively about the two authors who collaborated to describe the experiences of an Irish Resident Magistrate. He does not have much to say about the English “ascendancy”; but what he does say is to the point. His tribute to Somerville and Ross is indeed just “If their writing is not part of the literature of Ireland, then Ireland is a poorer place than many of us believe it to be.”

The papers on the United Nations and the developing countries are uneven in tone. They read like addresses, which in fact is what some of them are. Those which the author delivered as ViceChancellor of the University of Ghana, though more impressive than such things sometimes are, have hardly sufficient general interest to deserve reprinting. Dr. O'Brien might have been better advised to envisage another volume In which his special interest in political theory could be isolated and more elaborately treatf |.