PART II, ARTICLE IV: EMERSON AS UNREQUIRED READING, SECTION III

Emerson would make the hourglass of history disappear if he could because the grains that have fallen through that hourglass have not fallen into the kind of heap that he likes to look at. He fears that the next heap of grains will look the same as the last heap, and so his solution is to make that first heap disappear so that what happens has nothing in history to reprove it. That’s my theory. His paradise is a world in which whatever one does will not effectuate its natural results; or if it does, recourse to history for the purpose of admonishment will not be adverted to. But he cannot entirely believe in his wish. Who can be fully convinced that a worldview can prevent facts from causing logical, inexorable effects? Or that history can be so effaced that no one brings it forward to censure someone? A kind of nirvana is needed to leap into. This is why Emerson tries to transcend. By the style he employs, he tries to infuse power into his words to convince himself and others that transcending is possible to do. Poets like Wordsworth have tried, by the use of sheer style, to transcend. Even contemporary 21st century musicians have admitted trying the same. They try to believe that Art is capable of accomplishing some sort of Redemption from whatever it is they shrink from or tremble to think about, be it present personal unease, or the unhappy future that impenitent sinners suspect might be their lot to one day endure forever. On page x of the Introduction we read, “We are now men and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.” The Emersonian Man is just another breed within the species of Humanistic Man, advancing in his private effort to redeem himself from the upshot of history. Not only by his cryptic communication does Emerson try to transcend. He tries to do it by well placed capital letters on certain words. The same thing may be observed in the fiction of Joseph Conrad. Some Christian writers use capital letters for emphasis and beauty. But that is not the same thing, for their compositions point to an actual redemption for man and an extant transcendent Godhead to make it happen. Emerson eggs himself on in spite of gnawing doubts that God has not and will not give to man the superhuman capabilities that are necessary for self-transcendence. The truth is that man stays inside his little bubble of life and reaps repercussions from history until God calls his soul to eternity to wait and see what the final judgment has in store, which will be based on nothing less than history and man’s reaction to it. In other words, that Jesus died a satisfactory death for the sins of others is a historical fact; whether the sinner has faith in him or not will decide whether the sinner will be judged or not for unbelief and sinful deeds. “History does have meaning; the past brings forth the present and the present influences the future. Something happens in history because of a previous effect…Cause-and-effect does exist, not only in science but in meaningful, significant human events…Just as Joshua stood in judgment against the Amorites when their iniquity was full, Jesus will come in flaming judgment on the world when the iniquity of the era of the Gentiles is full” (Francis Schaeffer, Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History, pp. 148, 151.) This, mainly, is what Emerson tried to believe was ‘alien to the spirit of Christ.’ This is why even the Trinity-denying Unitarian Church was too ‘creed-oriented’ for him. The man did not like the flow of biblical history: how it had flowed from the past into the present, and how it was about to flow from prophecy into the future.   

Emerson’s capitalization convinces me that in his essays he is trying to believe, and trying to make us believe, in his unbelievable postulate concerning the ability of man to be his own and sole solution.  Capital letters to begin key words do not always evince the hubris of an outrageous proposition, though, as I have already alluded to. Take James Killen, for example, Emerson’s contemporary scholar on the other side of the Atlantic, a man who truly deserves to be republished and read: “It may be that the complex mechanism of Jehovah’s Providences can only be rightly appreciated by those Seraphic Spirits who have had long experience of the Almighty’s proceedings” (James Killen, The Inhabitants of Heaven, p. 303.) This much can be said from reading both the immediate context and Killen’s book at large, as compared with Emerson’s History: Killen’s capitals are used to embellish substance; Emerson’s capitals are used in place of or even as substance. The writings of Octavius Winslow and Beilby Porteus could be quoted to shame Emerson some more and to the same purpose.

PART II, ARTICLE IV: EMERSON AS UNREQUIRED READING, SECTION II

Emerson belittles history into meaning nothing but what suits the reader’s biography, which approach is nothing less than denying that history contains the facts that it does contain. But why does he do this? Ralph Waldo Emerson was of strict Puritan stock. Many of his forefathers were ministers. He too became a minister for a period of time. Will not the facts dogmatically passed down from the Puritans to their successors become the worst thorn in the side of that descendent who has decided against the implications and conclusions of these facts? What better way to deny God his right to rule over the soul than to dismiss the wheel of Providence that rolls through the history that all souls are born into at his own prerogative and for his own purpose and pleasure? Emerson must have been nagged by the history that his eminent Christian ancestors bequeathed. Rebelling against reality, he must have felt the need to throw this history off his conscience. It seems that by the impulse of his temperament and the use of his talent, he dreamed up an esoteric view of history in order to evacuate it of facts, which is a process, I guess, of making history transcendental. Emerson was a transcendentalist and an idealist. Transcendentalists posit that ultimate reality is either not knowable and/or that through self-generating insight man may determine or discover his own higher reality irrespective of evidence that may be gathered through experiment or experience. As for idealists, they believe that only what is mental is knowable; they may go so far as to deny the existence of material bodies; and they attempt to view the world as they think it should have been and should be instead of what it has been and is. These philosophies are, then, nearly synonymous; they are Platonic, or impractical; and they are inimical, or hostile, to a historical view of the world. So Emerson’s method of treating history is to orate whatever he does not like about it into oblivion through an opaque communication. “Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a fact” (p. 6.) Are these words not full of hope that the future will not be similar to the past that he hates? Did the mores of the times he lived in prevent him living like he would or from pursuing the future that he wanted to indulge? It sounds like it. Apart from how history affected him personally and how history turned out, what could he have had against history being told except that the teaching of it might result in, or at least hint at, a future that he dreaded?

PART II, ARTICLE IV: EMERSON AS UNREQUIRED READING, SECTION I

Ralph Waldo Emerson is widely regarded by secular academics as a sage. For this reason, his name is uttered by them with awe. His writings have a mystical feel. But their sense is as misty as their style is solid. Knowing this already through radio hosts, their guests, and from former attempts to read his material, I nevertheless was, because of the otherworldly, archetypal character of his composition, determined to try reading him again. 

My title is borrowed from Irwin Edmon’s Introduction to a collection of Emerson’s Essays. From reading the first essay alone and from seeing that the others show the same lack of substantive content, I think the title may be taken seriously instead of rhetorically and that the writings of Emerson may be neglected without any material ignorance being sealed to one’s fate. By neglecting Emerson, there would be the prospective loss of some commentary that we might add, in some conversation that we might have, about an influential writer. We could humbly leave such commentaries to others, however, and then recommend instead, by the occasional remark, authors who provide more substance in their matter, and who are, therefore, more deserving of time and notice. 

The essay that I chose to read among the twenty in the collection is the first one, called, History.  

What was Ralph Waldo Emerson like? He did not like doing math or geometry; he found his Unitarian church too creed-oriented for his taste; and, most informingly, he regarded any adherence to form as ‘alien to the spirit of Christ’ (p. xviii, Biographical Note.) He was an Idealist and, weirdly but compatibly, a Transcendentalist. Knowing even this much—which is a lot—about his nonobjective propensities could never prepare the reader for an essay on history that is a polemical exercise against its existence. He is subtle about it; but that is his thesis. He wants history entirely out of mind. A thesis such as that is nothing less, almost, than stupor mundi (the marvel of the world.) This ‘historical’ essay is no more about history than fables are actual accounts. He names many places where pivotal events of the first rank took place. On just one page he mentions Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Rome, Gibeon, London, Paris, New York, Egypt, Gaul, England, Greece, Palestine, Italy, Spain, the Islands, and even the Garden of Eden. But all we are told about these places is that they ‘are passing already into fiction’ and that history is a subjective matter that is in ‘our private experience…only Biography’ (p. 6.) What he means by history becoming biography is impossible to fully tell. But the statement is a disdainful remark against the facts of history as they stand—facts that tend to make an individual uncomfortable. He says that the student of history should “esteem his own life in the text…not suffer himself to be bullied by kings and empires…He must attain and maintain that lofty sight where facts yield their secret sense” (pp. 5, 6.) Emerson wants all students to read history with a selfish eye—to read history as if the only thing that should be learned from it is something about the reader. 

His view of history is conditioned by his transcendentalism and idealism. From his towering, condescending perspective, history is both looked down upon and reconceived. And is this not what students are being taught to do in the 21st century by their activist professors? Writers like Emerson are responsible for generating this negative education. His approach comes down to looking at history through the prism of private experience, or scruples and dreams, and thereby dismissing some facts and twisting others in order to make history serve whatever worldview the reader, or the teacher of readers, prefers.  

One gets the impression by all the places mentioned in the essay that Emerson must have been a great traveler. He must have been a great reader too. Just on page 27 are found the names of Napoleon, Talbot, Henry VI, Columbus, Newton, Laplace, Davy, Gay Lussac, Handel, Watt, Fulton, Whittemore, and Arkwright. But all we learn from all of this namedropping is that Columbus must have been an explorer; Newton and Laplace, astronomers; and Handel, a composer. By the little bit of intelligence that is communicated, we suspect that some of the others might have been physicists and builders. But the information that is proffered is made so ambiguous that we cannot know for sure what the remaining persons did unless we look up the facts of history for ourselves. It may be that the essay is a demonstration of Emerson’s transcendental approach to history. There is good reason for the reader to doubt that the author of the essay is in possession of any worthwhile knowledge since he teaches nothing by his namedropping except how worthless his approach to history is. It is likely that Emerson knew next to nothing about the persons mentioned and the events that redounded to make their names memorable. Why believe a theory of how history should be interpreted (supposing we could grasp more than mere slivers of said theory) when we have a reasonable suspicion that the theorist does not know any more than the reader does about the subjects that he applies his theory to? I counted sixty-nine names in the space of thirty pages, but learned virtually nothing about anyone. Because of this vacuous recitation, anyone newly acquainted with Emerson must regard him as a writer who took no time to learn about any of the topics or persons that he subjected to his inscrutable theory. Many of the historical characters that he recites the names of have had nothing at all to do with any outstanding event. Is it perhaps because Emerson too busily consumed the empty additives of Hercules, Phoebus, and Orpheus that we find no speck of riboflavin in his History? No wonder his writing is called ‘mere spirit’ in the Bio (p. xxiv.) It never touches ground and it never materializes into thoughts that may be carried away. Is a philosopher not supposed to be something of a historian when philosophizing about what history is and means? If he gives us no good reason to trust his opinions, no knowledge or insight concerning noteworthy events and the personalities responsible for making them so, should his work be highly esteemed, scarcely regarded, or else brushed aside? Emerson knew just enough about history to make him detest the fact that history contains facts. Because he speaks of facts encumbering, tyrannizing, and dominating (p. 24), it is clear that he detests history. He is not enigmatic enough to be misunderstood on that point. “I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is,” he complains. Then further on, “How many times we must say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople!” (p. 29.) Mr. Emerson must think that the French Revolution, which centered in Paris, is nothing but ‘a shallow village tale.’ How wretched to have to mention it! There can be no doubt that his objections are rants against the existence of facts, for the man who wants history written in such a way that facts may be reduced to symbols (p. 29) must hate what literally happened. “What is history good for?” he seems, with sophisticated scorn, to ask. “I hold it to be the especial office of history, that virtuous actions be not buried in oblivion, and that men feel a dread of being deemed infamous by posterity for their evil words and actions” (Tacitus.) This is what history is good for. But history is good for even more than this: “We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old” (Psalm 44.1.) Spurgeon calls this ‘the story of God’s mighty acts.’ That is what history, at its best and highest, is good for. From that sermon: “Turn ye back then, to ancient records, and remember what God hath done. Will ye not remember what he did at the Red Sea, how he smote Egypt and all its chivalry, and covered Pharaoh’s chariot and horse in the Red Sea?” Anyone who undervalues history is a fool; and he who doesn’t read it is ignorant, as well as, in effect, ungrateful. Emerson’s detestation of history makes him dislikeable. Knowledge of history is a necessary pursuit. It is for avoiding past mistakes and for learning what to imitate in order to improve, succeed, and glorify God.

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION XIII

Words cleverly set can produce atmosphere. Atmosphere can be affecting. Persuasion can affect the will. Content can transmit a message that can change lives. But language does not have power in and of itself. Composition is a mode of communication that is used to inform, entertain, uplift, and convince. But no matter how well a book is composed and no matter how magnificent it is, it does not possess, and never will, an ambition of its own. The author is the ambition. Through exquisite phrasing, some writers try to infuse composition with power. That this or that person’s words are powerful is a rhetorical truth, not an actual one. If an argument convinces, if a story moves, if a phrase lifts or thrills, it is the writer that has done it. Composition is impersonal. The craft is impersonal. Secular authors, however, do not reason this out. Many of these authors treat writing as worship; and entrancing composition may cause a reader, they think, to be redeemed, liberated, or saved in some way that is never defined. Their works cannot save any more than they can, though. It is certain that, because words are impersonal, the composition (idol) that authors worship will never actualize a metaphysical salvation for the soul—the only salvation, in the end, that matters. If that could have been done, it would have been done, and someone would have convincingly testified of it being done. Even the word of God is not a power unto itself. When something is accomplished by God’s word, it is because God has spoken it and because God has willed to cause something by it. Creation was spoken into existence by a word from God. The word of God is called ‘thy’ word. It is the word of God that is quick, powerful, and sharp. It is ‘thy’ word. Psalm 119 is an exultation on ‘thy’ statutes and ‘thy’ judgments. The Bible is holy because it is God’s word. The emphasis in the ‘word of God’ is God—on what he says or reveals. A word, even from God, has no inherent, independent life, will, or strength. Otherwise, every eye that has ever read a word from the Bible would have been opened in a spiritual sense. Any person reading ‘be ye holy’ would instantly be holy. “The Scriptures, without the Spirit, are at best only a dead letter, unefficacious and unanimating” (Thomas Charles, Spiritual Counsels, p. 62.) Or, as Thomas Boston puts it, the word of God must be ‘impregnated’ with the Spirit of God in order to be the means of regeneration (Thomas Boston, Human Nature in its Fourfold State, p. 204.) Since Jesus Christ, who is the Word incarnate and who had the Holy Spirit in all his fullness (John 1; 3.34), did not convert everyone he preached to, it is easy to understand that the word of God, on its own and without the Holy Ghost, will convert no one. Myriads of writers of mortal words are in a vanity quest to do what even God does not do with his unerring word and what Jesus Christ the Word did not do by his flawless preaching. Literature is often an end unto itself; certain of its authors try to provide for the reader an admission into a higher plane of experience through it, which effort comes down to a presentation of literature as religion. We should beware that the next text that we read might be nothing less than an essay to rise higher by a written word than the ceiling that God has set for his own.

The emphasis on form is on the decline, and may die out entirely on account of the progressive identity agenda, which ethos has come about through busybodies looking for meaning on the heels of their being sated with hedonism. The literati highbrows have been trying for decades, and on into the 2020s, to keep only that fiction in view that is written to permanently erase white men from the scene and from memory. Writers who are male, white, and even moderately virtuous are persona non grata; and characters that are white and male must be depicted as malevolent, whether through misogyny, homophobia, racism, or even xenophobia. These are the rules to which authors looking for recognition more than anything else, conform. Form is giving way to tone. The staccato form of an Ondaatje is about the last wry face that form can wear. It is time for tone to have its way—to fill up its measure of iniquity. Every identity, be it biological, geographical, or imaginary, that is not male and white is elevated, pointed at, and bowed to: women, blacks, Indians, foreigners, immigrants, aliens, and persons of non-existent genders. This is what the CBC’s Writers and Company is about week after week, and it has been progressively like this for years and years, maybe from its beginning. Pulling the pin from the white masculine tractor that has pulled literature up the hill since the time of Chaucer or before, has already resulted in a ditched wagon though. Literati socialites will not achieve lasting fame as long as they create narrative worlds that are without truth and goodness or as long as they continue to peck away for the sake of flat-line form or hostile tone; it won’t help them establish fame because that which is unreadable is irrelevant; thus, their books, although still in infancy, are almost never read. Those of us who still believe that truth, goodness, and beauty are always relevant and must always be connected—we have been writing our own narratives, and we will continue to do so, drawing on the examples of writers who composed masterpieces long prior to the madness that contemporary prigs pretend, maybe even believe, is normal, or innovative in some good sense. If our narratives will not cut the mustard, we will still know that the postmodern scythe will not cut a single dandelion, and that we can all go back to the 19th century and before to see how acres of mustard are swathed by the Paul Bunyans of literature. 

Whatever it is that we read, we must read heedfully; and to be able to read heedfully, we need to read first what is most worth paying attention to, and then some of the rest. The infallible Bible is the judge of theology and philosophy; conservative literary criticism, informed by faithful theology and Christian philosophy, is the judge of all literature; and the fiction classic is the judge of what aspires to displace it or be equal to it. The fiction classic, however (like Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter), because of its subtlety and poignancy, is more dangerous, if subversive, than today’s literary fiction (like the stories of Alice Munro) and pulp fiction (like Harlequin romances, Westerns, and Stephen King novels) can ever be. And that is, mainly, what should be remembered from this unfettered critique of all things fiction.

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION XII

The overvaluation of form is not confined to the boundaries of any one epoch or any one philosophy. It is not confined to existentialism; neither is it limited to any one century, though the overreach came into its own in the twentieth. The temptation to use style and the atmosphere produced by it as the end was keenly and fearfully felt by certain 17th and 18th century Christians. From a thick dictionary on poetry that I have retained a photocopied page of, I read this on the right hand column: “The Puritan plain style—in lit. as in architecture, dress, and worship—bespoke a deeply ambivalent suspicion of art as false, deceptive, seductive: an appeal to the carnal and the irrational, a portrayal of a fiction as a truth. In Of Poetry and Style, Cotton Mather could still inveigh in 1726: ‘Be not so set upon poetry, as to be always poring on the passionate and measured pages. Let not what should be sauce, rather than food for you, engross all your application…Let not the Circean cup intoxicate you. But esp. preserve the chastity of your soul from the dangers you may incur, by a conversation with muses that are no better than harlots.’ The ‘food’ was the nourishing meat of Scripture and nature, the ‘sauce’ the steamy smothering of style and artifice, meter and metaphor. What the Circe-muse fed you could turn you into a swine.” No one familiar with Puritan literature can have failed to notice that the Puritans—these holy geniuses—were the masters of metaphor and rhythm. It is well-known that because of their giftedness they were often admonished by their professors and peers to crucify their style on the cross of content. This did not mean that they were to shun the use of art. It is obvious from their sermons and treatises that they did not do so. What they did was subject every artistic device to the purpose of showing up Scripture Truth. They did not suspect art ‘as false,’ but guarded against a false use of art. To fulfill their commitment to God, they molded each figure of speech into a homely dialect that even the milkmaid and the chimney sweep could understand. Every bit of composition was drafted for the sole purpose of illuminating objective truth. Form was allowed its part, just as color is permitted by the painter to beautify the subject on the canvas. Color alone should not be suffered to stand for content, as in works of modern art. Unless a literary work is made to serve a noble cause, which can only be done by making form the handmaiden of content, the author commits a form of idolatry. 

Some authors even confess their idolatry of literature. Katherine Mansfield’s (1888-1923) avowal of her pursuit after perfect composition is the spookiest that I have ever read: “Lord! Lord! It’s my only desire—my one happy issue…Work. Shall I be able to express, one day, my love of work—my desire to be a better writer—my longing to take greater pains. And the passion I feel. It takes the place of religion—it is my religion—of people—I create my people: of ‘life’—it is Life. The temptation is to kneel before it, to adore, to prostrate myself, to stay too long in a state of ecstasy before the idea of it. I must be more busy about my master’s business” (Gary Geddes, The Art of Short Fiction, p. 226.) This is idolatry to a self-made world; more particularly, it is idolatry to the act of creating: it is idolatry to form. And since she is the former of the form that she speaks too highly of, then her idol, really, is herself. ‘My master’s business’ is just her turn of phrase for ‘my Father’s business,’ which is borrowed from the life of Jesus; and her Father is Art, the Artist, and Herself. Her master is herself as artist, though on a deeper level she is the devil’s child. And, as might be expected, her use of the word ‘Lord’ is a vain use. Biographical information reveals that this woman was elated at the increasing decadence of modern society at the advent of the 20th century. In the spirit of the ‘new morality’—which movement means ‘anti-traditional immorality’—she became pregnant by the man she cheated on her husband with, was comfortable as a lesbian; and, according to a site called Spartacus International, referred to herself as ‘very much a female of the underworld.’ I cannot find this last reference anywhere else but on that site. Whether she described herself as an agent of the underworld or not, it is an apt description of her, considering her illicit conduct. The stories that I have read by her are not cheap or vulgar. She wrote, however, during a time when England was still on the moral leash of Queen Victoria, which held on for many years past the queen’s death in 1901. The few stories that I have by Mansfield are not much more than relationship scenes or sad vignettes, which doesn’t say much in defense of content. Her overemphasis on tone and form is ahead of its time. It does not exemplify the 19th century that spawned her. Writers born near the close of that century usually carry into the next a moral burden. Her stories do not manifest this, though it should be conceded that Her First Ball can give rise to an awakening on the brevity of youth and that her craft surpasses that of writers who are being celebrated almost a century after her death.              

Many writers who are not as forward and honest as Katherine Mansfield are as guilty of worshipping their own works as Mansfield was of worshipping hers. Like her, their number one priority and chief end is to discover the how-to of transmitting the perfect delivery, which Mansfield calls, ‘my Eternal Question.’

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION XI

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.)

PART II, ARTICLE III: AN UNFETTERED CRITIQUE OF ALL THINGS FICTION, SECTION X

But how is it in the life and occupation of the writer? If a writer were to discover that sense of transcendence that he or she had been striving to cause by form, would the discovery satisfy? The experiences of ecstasy and rapture that are related by Virginia Woolf in A Sketch of the Past are natural parallels to the supernatural experiences of Spirit-filling and Spirit-Baptism. They are not wrong, only qualitatively inferior: earthy more than heavenly. She came by them through nature, or by the divine footprint in nature. They are not mystical in a bad sense. When she declares her inability to adequately describe experiences of being (her ecstatic experience and then her experience of rapture) and of non-being (the mundane part of each day), she means that she is unable, especially, to convey experiences of the former category. She acknowledges that Austen, Trollope, Thackeray, Dickens, and Tolstoy have probably conveyed both. In a chapter called The Stream of Consciousness in Forces of Modern British Literature, William York Tindall speaks of Woolf’s estimate of Joyce and his Ulysses: Joyce reveals the ‘flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its messages through the brain.’ But, according to Tindall, Woolf thinks Joyce’s ‘light is too brilliant, its focus too precise’ (p. 199.) Joyce ‘deals in flow, to be sure,’ continues Tindall in his interpretation of what Woolf thought of Joyce and his craft, “but he lays pipes for it. Avoiding the plumbing, she will make use of his stream” (pp. 199, 200.) Does all of this not tell us, if Tindall is trustworthy, that Woolf granted that the apotheosis had already been achieved by several writers, and that she saw it at least falteringly in Joyce too, except that in his case she resorted to accusing him of faults in order to justify her leaping into his stream to try and complete what she believed he had at least begun to swim in? What is secular redemption through fiction good for since Woolf committed suicide in despair? What actual redemption is there for Virginia Woolf if her suicide led to abiding anguish in hell? She had the impudence (in her essay, I am Christina Rossetti) to criticize the strict faith and pious life of that good Christian poetess; but then she drowned herself in a fit of despair. Virginia Woolf is still remembered and read, but she is not getting anything out of it—not, certainly, the joy of having been redeemed to receive a promise of eternal life, which is precisely the portion bestowed upon the Christian faithful, of whom Christina Rossetti is one. And here is what Virginia Woolf has on earth, according to Byron’s poetic paraphrase of something that Persius wrote: “To have, when the original is dust,/A name, a wretched picture and worse bust.” (D. L. Macdonald, Poor Polidori, p. 158.) Her original frame has gone to dust, and the picture that is usually chosen to represent what she looked like is less than a pretty picture. Polidori, incidentally, is an almost entirely forgotten writer, and another suicide.