Yours,
Jack
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
[The Kilns]
Sept 1st. 1933
My dear Arthur,
I have no right to complain that I have not yet heard from you. Nor have I much to say on my own account: but I think I will write a little just to feel that we are keeping the channel open.
W. and I are heartily sick of the summer, the others not. The pond is sinking lower and lower and all sorts of stones and roots that ought to be covered are projecting—it seems almost an indecency. The water is getting dirtier and warmer and bathing has been abandoned. Flowers and vegetables are withering and the ground is so hard that a short walk leaves you footsore as if you had been walking on pavements. This morning we woke to coolness and thick mist and spangled cobwebs. I thought it was the first day of autumn and felt the old excitement. But it was all a cheat and by the time we came out of church it was another blazing day—pitiless blue sky, sun hammering bleached white grass, wasps buzzing, dragon flies darting, and Mr Papworth panting in the shade with his tongue out.
Which reminds me—I am so sorry to hear about your Paddy. I couldn’t lay my hands on your letter when I was writing last—I knew there was something in it I hadn’t dealt with but couldn’t remember what. How heartless you must have thought me. I now have your letter and can fully sympathise. It is always hard luck when you feel that other people have hidden facts from you till it is too late. I don’t now agree—how heartily I once would have—with any idea of ‘trying to forget’ things and people we have lost, or indeed with trying always and on principle to exclude any kind of distressing thought from one’s mind. I don’t mean one ought to sentimentalize a sorrow, or (often) scratch a shame till it is raw. But I had better not go on with the subject as I find my ideas are all in disorder. I know I feel very strongly that when in a wakeful night some idea which one ‘can’t stand’—some painful memory or mean act of ones own or vivid image of physical pain—thrusts itself upon you, that you ought not to thrust it away but look it squarely in the face for some appreciable time: giving it of course an explicitly devotional context. But I don’t fully know why and am not prepared to work the thing out. Anyway, this only very faintly arises out of what you said—and it won’t bring the poor beast back to life!
I have just re-read Lilith49 and am much clearer about the meaning. The first thing to get out of the way is all Greville Macdonald’s nonsense about ‘dimensions’ and ‘elements’—if you have his preface in your edition.50 That is just the sort of mechanical ‘mysticism’ which is worlds away from Geo. Macdonald. The main lesson of the book is against secular philanthropy—against the belief that you can effectively obey the 2nd command about loving your neighbour without first trying to love God.
The story runs like this. The human soul exploring its own house (the Mind) finds itself on the verge of unexpected worlds which at first dismay it (Chap. I-V). The first utterance of these worlds is an unconditional demand for absolute surrender of the Soul to the will of God, or, if you like, for Death (Chap. VI). To this demand the soul cannot at first face up (VI). But attempting to return to normal consciousness finds by education that its experiences are not abnormal or trivial but are vouched for by all the great poets and philosophers (VII My Father’s MS). It repents and tries to face the demand, but its original refusal has now rendered real submission temporarily impossible (IX). It has to face instead the impulses of the subconscious (X) and the slightly spurious loyalties to purely human ‘causes’—political, theological etc (XI). It now becomes conscious of its fellow men: and finds them divided into ‘Lovers’ (= ‘Hearts’ in our old classification) and ‘Bags’ or ‘Giants’ (= ‘Spades’). But because it is an unconverted soul, has not yet died, it cannot really help the Lovers and becomes the slave of the Bags. In other words the young man, however amiably disposed towards the sweet and simple people of the world, gets a job or draws a dividend, and becomes in fact the servant of the economic machine (XII—XIII). But he is too good to go on like this, and so becomes a ‘Reformer’, a ‘friend of humanity’—a Shelley, Ruskin, Lenin (XIV). Here follows a digression on Purgatory (XV-XVII).
With the next section we enter on the deepest part of the book which I still only v. dimly understand. Why do so many purely secular reformers and philanthropists fail and in the end leave men more wretched and wicked than they found them? Apparently the unconverted soul, doing its very best for the Lovers, only succeeds first in waking (at the price of its own blood) and then in becoming the tool of, Lilith. Lilith is still quite beyond me. One can trace in her specially the Will to Power—which here fits in quite well—but there is a great deal more than that. She is also the real ideal somehow spoiled: she is not primarily a sexual symbol, but includes the characteristic female abuse of sex, which is love of Power, as the characteristic male abuse is sensuality (XVIII-XXIX). After a long and stormy attempt to do God’s work in Lilith’s way or Lilith’s work in God’s way, the soul comes to itself again, realises that its previous proceedings are ‘cracked absolutely’ and in fact has a sort of half-conversion. But the new powers of will and imagination which even this half conversion inspires (symbolised in the horse) are so exhilarating that the soul thinks these will do instead of ‘death’ and again shoots off on its own. This passage is v. true and important. Macdonald is aware how religion itself supplies new temptations (XXX-XXXI). This again leads to another attempt to help the Lovers in his own way, with consequent partial disaster in the death of Lona (XXXII-XXXVII). He finds himself the jailer of Lilith: i.e. he is now living in the state of tension with the evil thing inside him only just held down, and at a terrible cost—until he (or Lilith—the Lilith-part of him) at last repents (Mara) and consents to die (XXXVIII-end)
I hope this has not bored you. I am so excited about it myself that for the moment I can hardly imagine anyone else being bored: but probably I have done it so badly that in the result nothing survives to be excited about. For one thing, I have emphasised the external side too much. Correct everything above by remembering that it is not only helping the Lovers outside against the Bags, but equally the Lover in himself against the Bag in himself.
You will be surprised to hear that I have been at the Cinema again! Don’t be alarmed, it will not become a habit. I was persuaded into going to King Kong51 because it sounded the sort of Rider Haggardish thing that has always exercised a spell over me. What else I have done I hardly know. Read Plato’s Gorgias, and am reading a long Histoire de la Science Politique (!!) by Janet52—surprisingly interesting. Almost everything is, I find, as one goes on.
You say nothing about Harrogate—was it nice? I have missed our annual meeting a good deal. I remember you at least once a day whatever happens and often in between, and wish we could see more of one another. I wonder if the time will ever come when we shall? And would it work if we did? I often feel that you are the one who has changed. This seems absurd when I have changed from atheism to Christianity and from The Crock of Gold53 to, say, the history of political science! But I feel all my changes to be natural developments of the original thing we had in common, and forget that of course they seem natural to me because they are mine, while yours, doubtless equally natural, can never seem so to me to the same extent. I don’t know how I come to be writing about this and writing it so badly. I had better stop.
Any news of your MS yet? I have tried to keep myself this time from getting too wrapped up in my own book’s success and think I have partially succeeded—just as well, too!
Yours
Jack
TO