The following passage from Woolf’s sketch demonstrates what underlies this stubborn campaign of hers to bottle the magic that she bore witness to in the literature of others: “Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth…But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.” She means here, I think, that form (of words, of music) is the truth and that artists who create form become gods of a sort. Artists are themselves ‘the thing’ that they are trying so desperately to describe. In any case, when she adds the exclamation, ‘certainly and emphatically,’ to the third denial in that excerpt, is she not betraying her desire that there be no God? “Certainly and emphatically there is no God,” she says. Should this not remind us of what the Bible says the fool declares in his heart (Psalm 14)? Writers, especially novelists, cannot help narrating their wishes in their writings. And so, of course, because she has made herself believe that words and writers are ‘the thing,’ Woolf feels that “by writing, I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else” (Virginia Woolf, A Sketch of the Past.)
This arrogant mindset pervades whatever professes to be literary fiction today. And, because of the failure of novelists to nail ‘the thing’ down, or because of their persistence in trying to nail it down as well as, or even better than, they believe that has already been done, the pursuit must have no end; the vain pursuit leads to no end of efforts. When an absolute standard that is external to self is denied, it should be no surprise that the novelist (who creates his own worlds) will say, “And being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet….” (D. H. Lawrence, Why the Novel Matters.) What the novelist is really looking for in the creation of his worlds is an absolute—even when, just as Lawrence does in this essay of his, he denies that he seeks one. He seeks an absolute, a fixed point of reference, a universal law, but what kind? “It’s no good inventing Thou Shalt Nots!” (Ibid.) He wants an absolute word that will redeem him and absolve him of guilt, but at the same time will let him go on sinning and not pressure him to conform morally. Since there is no such absolute, he is destined to be in as futile a quest as the imagined proverbial monkeys must be engaged in who are consigned to tapping on typewriter keys until they come up with a classic. Without absolutes, literature’s aims and ends become: pleasure; insincere questioning; endless, pointless description; and the attempted liberation from dissatisfaction and despair, as long as this liberation is not anything close to the redemption provided by God through Christ. Unrestricted freedom of expression is necessary when the non-condemnatory, non-judgmental absolute is always looked for but never found. Moral relativity: what is true for you is not necessarily true for me—is put forth as an excuse to justify describing without discretion and for practicing the sins that are narrated. This is coming close, perhaps, to the sort of liberation that is sought. Any absolute that might lessen pleasure or restrain liberation from morality, like a preachy proverb, must be forbidden. The nirvana that their literary redemption would bring them to would be a paradise fit for a libertine. The fairyland that they would be propelled to would have for its engine the subjective power of art; and this fairyland, if they could get themselves there, would be a carnal world where guilt, shame, fear, pain, and second thoughts no longer vex. But this world cannot be reached, for it does not exist; the only world where guilt and shame no longer disturb the soul is a holy one, not a carnal one. The morally permissive absolute, which is non-existent, must be arrived at through the existential leap; what these authors contrive is the form by which this unsuccessful leap is continually attempted; and when form is focused on at the expense of content, what is ugly, godless, and vile is apt to creep in. Novelists would like an eternity of youth and peace by which to reach for their chimerical beatitude, if haply they might seize the vision, enter into it, and enjoy a libertine’s unending paradise. But not exactly, for their paradisiacal dream come true would be to have an eternity to look for it. “The ‘brand of Cain’ business, don’t you see. That’s all right. I was ready enough to go off wandering on the face of the earth” (Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer.)
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