ALDOUS HUXLEY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23002, 3 October 1936, Page 21

ALDOUS HUXLEY

AN INTERESTING ADDRESS The concluding meeting of the University Literary Society for this year was addressed- by Miss H. Johnson on ‘'Aldous Huxley.” Intellectually, Miss Johnson said, Huxley was reminiscent of Voltaire; emotionally, of Bunyan. He was to be regarded as primarily a moralist. His methods were varied —from the amusing picture of futility in “Antic Hay,” the playful satire of •Crorne Yellow,” to the harsh laughter of “ Those Barren Leaves,” the brilliantly destructive satire of “Brave New World,” and now the constructive criticism of his lectures on Pacifism, the reflective part of “Beyond the Mexique Bay,” and his rather unfortunate attempt at constructive criticism in “Eyeless in Gaza.” In one of his earlier essays Huxley Iliad said, “It is very good for most of us to be made uncomfortable." That seemed precisely what he set out to do. From “ Brave New World it appeared that he preferred discomfort in the world even to the abolition of hunger, poverty and disease, if the abolition of these were to mean the decay of feeling and of art. At the beginning of “ Testing Pilate he scourged those whose main aim in life was to have what they were pleased to call a “good time.” In his latesi novel, “ Eyeless in Gaza,” he was concerned with the problem of peace. In “ Beyond the Mexique Bay ” he had said that peace had to be first established in men’s hearts. Beavis, in "Eyeless in Gaza,” said that personal pacificism began with trying to cultivate the difficult art of loving people. Most people are detestable. They were detestable because we detested them. If we liked them they became likeable. We were all, so we were told, capable of love for all men, but had artificially restricted it by _ means ot conventions of hatred and violence. At the end of the book, Beavis faced the question which Huxley was probably asking himself to-day, “ Why are you such a fool? Why do you go and saddle yourself with convictions and philosophies? Why not go back to looking on from your private box and making commentaries? ” In the earlier books there was a detached irony, “from a private box. The detached irony became harsh in “Brave New World,” and now evidently Huxley felt that ironical detachment would no longer do. He felt compelled to leave his private box. He had taken part in the Pans Ccmgress of Writers last year, a meeting designed to protect intellectual freedom. He had lectured for such bodies as the Federation of Progressive Societies and Individuals. All along, however, he was primarily concerned with society, and its evils. This social criticism came to us through layers of sophistication, an almost repellant intellectual cynicism, and an amazing erudition: yet in as vigorous and as crushingly direct a style as anyone had ever used to write English.

Huxley was now 42 years old. His work consisted of a few early volumes of poetry, five novels, half a dozen volumes of short stories, a further half dozen volumes of essays, a very interesting anthology, several travel books, and his satirical picture of Utopia, “ Brave New World.” _ His immediate ancestry had a certain interest. He was the grandson of the famous Victorian, Thomas Huxley, one of the stalwarts of freethought in the smashing days of Charles Bradlaugh, the son of Leonard Huxley, who had acquired a mild literary reputation as his father’s biographer; and a brother of Julian Huxley, the famous biologist, who was also a writer of some distinction. On his mother’s side, he also had literary connections. His mother was Julia Arnold, a niece of Matthew Arnold and a sister of Mrs Humphrey Ward. He had been educated at Eton, leaving at the age of 17, because of an affliction of the eyes which had Heft him almost blind for two or three years. This, he said, had prevented him from becoming “ a complete English public school gentleman, and added that Providence was sometimes kind when it seemed to be harsh. The speaker doubted, however, if any number of years at Eton could have made him what he feared, for, although blindness had cut him off from those around him, he would aiways have been a being apart. It had been decided for him that he should become a doctor, but the weakness of his eyes had prevented that. As soon as he could read with the aid of a magnifying glass, he had gone to Oxford, where he had taken his degree in English literature. He had been there for the first two years of the war, and for the remaining two had cut down trees, worked in a Government office and taught in a school, which last occupation had neither made him happy nor inspired him with enthusiasm. . . ~, ,„ . , In 1919 he had joined the editorial staff of the “Athenaeum,” under John Middleton Murry, but had regarded this journalistic work as drudgery. Articles or dramatic, musical and art criticism, articles on house-decoration and architecture, and reviews of novels had poured from his pen. That experience on the “Athenaeum, he said, had taught him that, however little one might know about the subject, it was always possible to write an article about it, fully assured that half an hour’s preliminary study would make one know ten times as much as almost any reader. .. , Huxley, Miss Johnson continued, spent most of his time, especially the winter, in Italy, with only occasional visits to London and Paris, because he preferred stihshine to literary company. He had travelled in France, Holland and Italy in a Citroen car, and more extensively in India, Malay, Japan, China and the U.S.A. Quite recently, in 1933, he had visited both South America and Mexico. After giving a detailed and interesting account of Huxley’s novels, the speaker passed on to consider his philosophy. To the philosophers, she said, if they took any notice of him, Huxley must be something of an "enfant terrible.” In his essays, “Do What You Will,” which were concerned, though only incidentally, with the French philosopher Pascal, the author assaulted philosophy with a view to showing that it was all moonshine. Goodness, Truth, Beauty, the concerns of philosophy, he was convinced, were only personal, subjective ideas, not absolutes. Men provoked their fancies to the rank of universal truths, and still imagined that they knew something about the thing-in-itself. Science was no truer than common sense or lunacy. For the Beauty, Truth, and Goodness of philosophy, Huxley would substitute only one thing—Life. He maintained that we must develop every side of our being and live to the fullest extent of all our faculties. C. E. M. Joad had written an interesting but quite destructive criticism of this philosophy, which Miss Johnson had found thoroughly convincing. She felt, however, with Huxley as with D. H. Lawrence, that even if it was wrong ohilosophy it needed to be said and was good in its effect. Huxley’s style as a writer was essentially clear and direct. He was imoatient of roundabout ways of speaking. whether the offender were the writer of the advertisement for a summer cruise calling a ship a “giant hostess.” or Shelley calling the skylark “blithe spirit.” Over-emphasis, protesting too much, was Huxley’s idea of vulgarity in literature. Brilliant conversation formed a large part of his novels and this was always presented very directly, without the usual ' iresome “He said.” . The thing that distinguished him from all other writers was his amazing power of intellect. This, of course, was never sufficient to make a great writer. It was because his earlier novels and his short stories evinced mly this power that they were not 'reat. He had, however, acquired omething else, which seemed to the speaker to be due to his contact with Lawrence. His erudition had not been made such an integral part of his works as had that of James Joyce. Miss Johnson’s address was followed by a very interesting and animated discussion.