“well. what did he say?”
“oh, nothing; he made a great opportunity. he didn’t like the stories.”
“remarkable!”
“i did it all the wrong way. when i accepted their invitation i wrote that i was bringing down some translations of the loveliest short stories i had ever read.” i was suddenly proud, in lyons, of remembering “short stories” and excited about having something written to show him at last. the sentence felt like an entry into their set.
“if he did not agree with this i pity him.”
“i don’t know how it would have been if i had said nothing at all.” he might have said look here this is good stuff. you must do something with this.
“i tell you again this man is superficial.”
“he said the sentiment was gross and that they were feeble in construction.” waiting, in the window seat, with the large fresh light from the sea pouring in from behind across the soft clear buffs and greens of the room; weaving for alma, with the wonder of keeping him arrested, alone in his study, with his eyes on her written sentences, a view of the london life as eventful, enviable leisure; the door opening at last, the swift compact entry of the
little figure with the sheaf of manuscript, the sudden lifting jubilance of the light; the eager yielding to the temptation to enhance the achievement by a disclaiming explanation of the difficult circumstances, the silencing minatory finger—wait, wait, you’re taking it the wrong way—and at last the high-pitched, colourless, thinking voice in brief comprehensive judgment; the shattering of the bright scene, the end of the triumphant visit, with a day still to pass, going about branded as an admirer of poor stuff.
“that is no opinion. it is simply a literary finessing. i will tell you more. this judgment indicates an immense blindness. there is in andrayeff a directness and simplicity of feeling towards life that is entirely lacking in this man.”
“mm. perhaps the russians are more simple; less” ... civilised.
“simplicity and directness of feeling does not necessarily indicate a less highly organised psychological temperament.”
“i know what he meant. andrayeff does try deliberately to work on your feelings. i felt that when i was writing. but the pathos of those little boys and the man with the chinese mask is his subject. what he does is artistic exaggeration. that is art. light and shade;” ...... a ‘masterly study’ of a little boy ....?
“very well then. what is the matter?”
“no, but i’m just thinking the whole trouble is that life is not pathetic. people don’t feel pathetic; or never altogether pathetic. there is something else; that’s the worst of novels, something that has
to be left out. tragedy; curtain. but there never is a curtain and even if there were, the astounding thing is that there is anything to let down a curtain on; so astounding that you can’t feel really, completely, things lie “happiness” or “tragedy”; they are both the same, a half-statement. everybody is the same really, inside, under all circumstances. there’s a dead-level of astounding .... something.”
“i cannot follow you in all this. but you may not thus lightly deny tragedy.”
“he also said that the translation was as good as it could be.” ..... you’ve brought it off. that’s the way a translation ought to be done. it’s slick and clean and extraordinarily well englished......
“well? well? are you not satisfied?”
“then he said in a contemptuous sort of way, ‘you could make from two to three hundred a year at this sort of thing.’”
“but that is most excellent. you should most certainly try this.”
“i don’t believe it. he says that kind of thing.”
“he ought to know.”
“i don’t know. he said in a large easy way you’d get seven or eight guineas apiece for these things, and then do ’em in a book.”
“well?”
“everybody would be doing it if it were so easy.”
“you are really remarkable. a good translation is most rare; and particularly a good english translation. you have seen these tolstoys. i have not
met in german or french anything so vile. it is a whole base trade.”
“the public does not know. and if these things sell why should publishers pay for good translations? it’s like machine and hand-made embroidery. it does not pay to do good work. i’ve often heard translations are badly paid and i can quite understand it. it could be done in a factory at an immense pace.”
“you are right. i have known a group of poor russian students translate a whole book in a single night. but you will not find cynical vulgarisation of literature anywhere but in england and america. it is indeed remarkable to the foreigner the way in this country the profession of letters has become a speculation. never before i came here did i meet this idea of writing for a living, in this na?ve widespread form. there is something very bad in it.” miriam surveyed the green vista, thinking guiltily of her envy and admiration of the many young men she had met at the wilsons’ who were mysteriously “writing” or “going to write,” of her surprise and disappointment in meeting here and there things they had written ...... don’t, miss henderson .... don’t take up .... a journalistic career on the strength of being able to write; as badly as jenkins. editors—poor dears—are beleaguered, by aspiring relatives. she thought out now, untrammelled by the distraction of listening to the way he formed his sentences, the meaning of these last words ..... it spread a chill over the wide stretch of sunlit grass; in the very moments that were passing, the writing world was going
actively on, the clever people who had ideas and style and those others, determined, besieging, gradually making themselves into writers, indistinguishable by most readers, from the others, sharing, even during their dreadful beginnings, in the social distinctions and privileges of “writers,” and all of them, the clever ones and the others, quite untroubled by any sense of guilt, and making, when they were all together, a social atmosphere that was, in spite of its scepticism, and its scorn of everyday life, easier to breathe than any other. but being burdened with a hesitating sense of guilt, unable to be really interested in the things clever people wrote about, being beguiled by gross sentimentality because of its foreign dress and the fascination of transforming it, meant belonging outside the world of clever writers, tried in their balance and found wanting; and cut off from the world of innocent unconscious determined aspirants by a mysterious fear.
it was mean to sit waiting for life to throw up things that would distract one for a while from the sense of emptiness. sitting moving about from place to place, in the dress of the period. being nowhere, one had no right even to the dress of the period. in the bottom of the lake .... hidden, and forgotten. round the far-off lake were feathery green trees, not minding. she sat imagining their trunks, filmed over with the murk of london winters, but all the more beautiful now, standing out black amongst the clouds of green. there were trees in the distance ahead, trees, forgotten. she was here to look at them. it was urgent, important.
all this long time and she had never once looked. she lifted her eyes cautiously, without moving, to take in the wide belt beyond the stretch of grass. it was perfect. full spring complete, prepared and set there, ungrudgingly, demanding nothing but love; embanked between the sky and the grass, a dense perfect shape of various pure colour, an effect, that would pass; but she had seen it. the sharp angle of its edge stood out against a farther, far-off belt of misty green, with here and there a dark maroon blot of copper beech.
“whatever happens, as long as one lives, there is the spring.”
“do not be too sure of this.”
“of course, if the world suddenly came to an end.”
“this appreciation of spring is merely a question of youth.”
“you can’t be sure.”
“on the contrary. do you imagine for instance that this old woman on the next seat feels the spring as you do?”
miriam rose unable to look; wishing she had come alone; or had not spoken. the green vistas moved all about her, dazzling under the height of sky. “i’m perfectly sure i shall always feel the spring; perhaps more and more.” she escaped into irrelevant speech, hurrying along so that he should hear incompletely until she had firm hold of some far-off topic; dreading the sound of his voice.
the flower-beds were in sight, gleaming in the gaps between the tree trunks along the broad walk .... ragged children were shouting and chasing
each other round the fountain. “i must always here think” he said as they passed through the wicket gate “of this man who preaches for the conversion of infidels, jews, christians, and other unbelievers.”
she hurried on preparing to face the rows of saturday afternoon people on the chairs and seats along the avenue, their suspicious english eyes on her scrappy, dowdy, out-of-date english self and her extraordinary looking foreigner. her spirits lifted. but they must be walking quickly and talking. the staring self-revealing faces must see that it was a privilege to have converse with anyone so utterly strange and far away from their english life.
“i’m not interested in him” she said as they got into their stride.
“why not?”
“i don’t know why. i can’t fix my thoughts on him; or any of these people who yell at crowds.” not quite that; but it made a sentence and fitted with their walk.
“it is perhaps that you are too individualistic,” panted mr. shatov. there was no opening in this for an appearance of easy conversation; the words were leaping and barking round her like dogs.
but she turned swiftly leading the way down a winding side path and demanding angrily as soon as they were alone how it was possible to be too individualistic.
“i agree to a certain extent that it is impossible. a man is first himself. but the peril is of being cut off from his fellow creatures.”
“why peril? men descend to meet. are you a socialist? do you believe in the opinions of mediocre majorities?”
“why this adjective? why mediocre? no, i would call myself rather one who believes in the race.”
“what race? the race is nothing without individuals.”
“what is an individual without the race?”
“an individual, with a consciousness; or a soul, whatever you like to call it. the race, apart from individuals is nothing at all.”
“you have introduced here several immense questions. there is the question as to whether a human being isolated from his fellows would retain any human characteristics. your great buckle has considered this in relation to the problem of heredity. but aside of this, has the race not a soul and an individuality? greater than that of its single parts?”
“certainly not. the biggest thing a race does is to produce a few big individualities.”
“the biggest thing that the race does is that it goes on. individuals perish.”
“you don’t know that they do.”
“that is speculation; without evidence. i have the most complete evidence that the race survives.”
“it may die, according to science.”
“that also is a speculation. but what is certain is—that the greatest individual is great only as he gives much to the race; to his fellow creatures. without this, individuality is pure-negative.”
“individuality cannot be negative.”
“there speaks the englishwoman. it is certainly england’s highest attainment that the rights of the individual are sacred here. but even this is not complete. it is still impeded by class prejudice.”
“i haven’t any class prejudice.”
“you are wrong; believe me you have immensely these prejudices. i could quite easily prove this to you. you are in many ways most exceptionally for an englishwoman emancipated. but you are still pure-tory.”
“that is only my stamp. i can’t help that. but i myself have no prejudices.”
“they are so far in you unconscious.” he spoke with extreme gentleness, and miriam looked uneasily ahead, wondering whether with this strange knowledge at her side she might be passing forward to some fresh sense of things that would change the english world for her. english prejudices. he saw them as clearly as he saw that she was not beautiful. and gently, as if they were charming as well as funny to him. their removal would come; through a painless association. for a while she would remain as she was. but even seeing england from his point of view, was being changed; a little. the past, up to the last few moments, was a life she had lived without knowing that it was a life lived in special circumstances and from certain points of view. now, perhaps moving away from it, these circumstances and points of view suddenly became a possession, full of fascinating interest. but she had lived blissfully. something here and there in his talk threatened happiness.
he seemed to see people only as members of
nations, grouped together with all their circumstances. perhaps everything could be explained in this way.... all her meaning for him was her english heredity, a thing he seemed to think the finest luck in the world, and her free english environment, the result of it; things she had known nothing about till he came, smiling at her ignorance of them, and declaring the ignorance to be the best testimony .... that was it; he gave her her nationality and surroundings, the fact of being england to him made everything easy. there was no need to do or be anything, individual. it was too easy. it must be demoralising .... just sitting there basking in being english.... everything she did, everything that came to her in the outside world turned out to be demoralising .... too easy ... some fraud in it..... but the pity she found herself suddenly feeling for all english people who had not intelligent foreign friends gave her courage to go on. meanwhile there was an unsettled troublesome point. something that could not be left.
“perhaps,” she said, “i daresay. but at any rate, i have an open mind. do you think that the race is sacred, and has purposes, super-man you know what i mean, nietzsche, and that individuals are fitted up with the instincts that keep them going, just to blind them to the fact that they don’t matter?”
“if one must use these terms, the race is certainly more sacred than the individual.”
“very well then; i know what i think. if the sacred race plays tricks on conscious human beings,
using them for its own sacred purposes and giving them an unreal sense of mattering, i don’t care a button for the race and i’d rather kill myself than serve its purposes. besides, the instincts of self preservation, and reproduction are not the only human motives .... they are not human at all....”
