BOOKS
431
is what permits us to say that an experiment succeeds or fails, that a theory
is verified or disproved. In his paradoxical
cour~,
Calas confuses the
most elementary distinctions. And to what end? Simply to assure the
"obedience" of masochistic fact to the ·"command" of sadistic intention?
It is much more than that.
Calas
and
his
colwrts are out to destroy the
emire
world.
I make this assertion in all seriousness, and I am not merely referring
to the reduction of reality to a function of sadistic desire. Mr. Calas is not
against everything; nor do I take literally his threat to "flood the world
with our poems." I am speaking, rather, of that concert of ego-projection
which, in literature, has been the most ominous product of the
petite
chapelle.
By the world I mean here
1
to borrow the poetic definition of a
modern logician, "everything that is the case." Unfortunately most of the
propositions which thus compose the world, even our non-Euclidean one,
are so banal as to make a stench in the nostrils of the Romantic RebeL
This personage, whose vested interest is his individuality, is therefore
inalterably opposed to everything that is the case! Having transferred his
rebellion to the realm of the Word, he firmly and courageously pursues
what he calls his "insight"-truth being allowed to fall where it may. The
important thing is
to have ideas;
and since it is discussion which reveals
those time-worn ideational structures 'upon which all originality is based,
far better to
command
one's ideas than to discuss them. Marx stood Hegel
on his head-Calas sets him right again; democracy, he tells us, "is after
all but a regime in which discussion and explanation drown inspiration."
. . . Is it not difficult, in this light, to un.derstand the surrealist animus
against technique? Surely Calas must know that some very effective tech–
niques have been developed, in our scientific age, whereby "inspiration"
is able to silence discussion?
But let us not ascribe to literature the gravity, or the frivolity, which
it assumes in the
petite chapelle.
The enormity of Mr. Calas' intention is
equaled only by the inconsequence of its results.
Let
him destroy the
world! The genial and patient American reader, who loves banality and
longs for an academy, will build it all up again.
And now that Calas has bared his darkest plot, I
ani
compelled to
confess that I have not done justice to his book. There are, after all, the
chapters o"n the baroque, the amusing "envoi" to New York, the curious
spiritualized descriptions of Portuguese things and places, all interwoven
with omens, subtle humor and sociological pattern-work. But, alas, there
is also the story of "lphigenia," the little Portuguese girl who lost both
her legs in an automobile accident. Calas suggests that this child may yet
know love, in fact might supply some surrealist with an interesting mis–
tress.
Patience,
said Panurge. "The Portuguese must get over their fear
or blood, and develop their roads so that car accidents will increase the
number of their Iphigenias." On this unhappy bravado our patience ends.
Confound the wiseguy!
H.
J.
KAPLAN
