THE GOOD EARTH

Southland Times, Issue 22915, 13 June 1936, Page 13

THE GOOD EARTH

Health as the Foundation of Great Writing

(Specially Written for The Southland Times.)

(By

M. H. HOLCROFT.)

Surprisingly few biographers have (studied the work of poets and authors in relation to physical health. The general rule has been to accept disease as an intruder; whereas in the lives of creative workers the increase of ailments can often be traced to the expenditure of nervous energy, and is the price of invention. We see men like Scott and Macaulay, naturally productive and eager for work, being overcome by a creeping disability. They fight against the ills of the body with a patient cheerfulness: there are few writings more penetrated with a quiet, indoor heroism than the Journal of Sir Walter Scott in those latter times of tragic decline. Creativeness returns, but the flame no longer burns clearly. The cramped handwriting grows all but illegible, and honest Cadell shakes his head over the script of “Count Robert of Paris,” and sees that the Waverley Novels are almost done. On the other hand is the position of Heine, bed-rid-den for weary years with a nervous disease that would seem to strike inwards towards the very source of productiveness, and yet able, almost to the end, to dash off a task that still glows into poetry.

In spite of certain pathologists who have traced the course of genius from morbid conditions of the body, I think it is still safe to consider health as the indispensable foundation of great work. There are dark things in Shakespeare; but the prevailing impression of his drama is an abundant healthfulness. Goethe, too, is a universal genius whose life and work seem to reproduce the bloom of a physical wholesomeness. In an age addicted to stuffy rooms and a minimum of exercise, he had a way of ranging the woods and fields by day or night, of sleeping under a bush wrapped in his cloak and of pondering the mysteries of nature under a starlit sky Above all, he was a lover of cold water. And the quality of this robust and glowing health has been preserved in his writings, making possible much deep thought and breaking into song with a bird-like spontaneity. Carlyle saw this same inestimable gift of health in Scott, and unhesitatingly pronounced it to be the foundation of his greatness. Body And Mind. Carlyle was the man to understand these things. His own life was made difficult by dyspepsia, and he knew—none better—that expression becomes painfully slow when the nerves are occupied with faulty digestion. With men of Carlyle’s stamp, however, 'there is a toughness of fibre that endures to the end; and although, as time goes on we are shown a strong intellect in a state of warfare with its physical background, the creative impulse is never altogether subdued by the ills of the flesh. The power of words is a visitation within minds that are prepared by their native growth and the action upon them of outer circumstance. Every great writer is an instrument, and the tragedy of imperious minds has been their dependence on bodies that grow weak or diseased and oppose increasing obstacles to the flow of expression. Carlyle was strong enough to go forward into great works, although his physical ills added much shadow to his later writings and stole away the undertones of laughter that rumble and erupt through the pages of “Sartor Resartus.” But there are many writers who struggle with an insufficient strength. They aspire towards the perfect health which shines through all great writing, and there are times when the light seems at last to be breaking over them. But too often the effort has taken the residue of strength, and another name is added to the long list of those who

never quite carry the promise of youth into a lasting achievement. Not many people realize that authorship is a constant drain upon nervous energy, and that strong bodies are needed for the framework of strong minds. Poets are often burly fellows. The first genuine poet I met in the flesh stood six feet in his stockings, and looked like an Australian stock-rider. Wordsworth was strong; and in his younger days Scott could lift a blacksmith’s anvil with one hand and hold it at arm’s length. Byron was a cripple, but his body was well-formed and developed, and although Trelawney scoffed at his pretensions as a swimmer it is undoubtedly true that he swam the Hellespont and was proud of his feats in the water. They were great walkers in those days. The letters of Crabb Robinson are full of information about walking tours undertaken by the Lake poets; and even Keats—who was only five feet high, and proportionately slender—went off with Charles Brown to tramp through the highlands of Scotland. There is also the story of Keats’ historic encounter with the butcher-boy, thought to be apocryphal by some critics, but not incredible to those who know anything of the sudden energy which comes with the mental nervous temperament.

A mature genius shows to the world an olympian calmness which is really the finality of self-control. Much turbulence may have shown itself in youth and early writing; but the long discipline leads to the co-ordination of faculties and the mastery of passions that have seemed to be set hopelessly in conflict. The potential genius who never reaches this calm strength of self-command sometimes leaves behind him the evidence of his struggle: a journal or a batch of letters, or the lovely imagery of a fragment like Maurice de Guerin’s “Centaur.” Earth-Hunger. It is among writers of this class that we find most often that peculiar intensity of sense experience which seems to be the direct result of disease. A passionate devotion to beauty and an almost unearthly awareness of things ot the earth—as if everything were seen from the margins of life —are to be found in Maurice de Guerin, in Marie Bashkirtseff and in Katherine Mansfield. These three were consumptives. Barbellion’s disease came nearer to Heine’s, and appeared to be nervous in origin; but he also had that earthhunger which sounds from the writings of those who feel that their time is short.' There are passages in “The Journal of a Disappointed Man” which seem to have caught the unearthly beauty that surprises us on a day of unseasonable warmth, suspended precariously in the depths of winter. The sunshine of late afternoon comes with a yellowing glare among the trees and shines down a brazen sky; the grass lights up to a strange, extravagant green. A touch of fever is in the warmth; we know that it is scarcely real, and is passing even as we reach towards it. We read the writings of these people with admiration and pity. They are condemned to be snatched away from this scene which engrosses them with its loveliness, and the voice of their despair echoes after them in pages that will live far beyond the span of normal life. We feel again that untimely chill, and turn impulsively from it towards the sunlight. With a feeling of relief we go back to the healthy and substantial ones of literature. “Shakespeare over all!” exclaimed a French doctor with whom I talked of books in a Tunisian villa. “He had la sante.” And he was right.