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VARIETY
233
Noyes brings very considerable tal–
ents to this job. He is an expert on
esthetics, for he can detect no ves–
tige of form or of verbal power in
Ulysses
or in , A
la Recherche du
Temps Perdu;
on ethics, for the
flaming assertions of personal re–
sponsibility to mankind which were
the essence of Joyce and Lawrence
are to him anti-Christian and a
root-cause of fascism; and on the
limits which artistic form cannot
legitimately, without proscription
on moral grounds, transcend.
I do not think that in the face
of
thes~
pretensions it is irrelevant
to examine the pretender's achieve–
ment. I doubt if a free vote among
writers here, traditionalist and ex–
perimental, to determine the iden–
tity of the worst living English poet
would show any serious opposition
to Noyes' title.
If
he or Elton or a
committee of a hundred Noyeses ·
and a thousand Eltons could have
written one line of
Dubliners
or
Swann
it would be less of a pill to
swallow. Elton blames the bitter–
ness of non-fighting men who are
ashamed of themselves; I blame
the rancor of poetasters who see
praise accorded to work they can–
not understand. What makes me
hopping mad is the assumption
that there is a limit beyond which
experiment is wicked in itself, and
also the facility with which the real
abyss-and it is a deadly one-is
blithely put down to Joyce and .his
"decadence." It is true that we are
in an age of 'vicious second child–
hood, or half-witted sadism-wit–
ness Warsaw, Lidice, Hamburg,
Berlin-and we were warned by
every one of the artists whom these
two clowns are kicking. But no!
"I happened to be present at Kip–
ling's funeral. ... None of the
'literary' world was there, though
there were one or two good writers.
But the Abbey was packed from
end to end with
men:
men who
had done things, who had built
ships and governed countries: men
with ·minds of their own."
I think the pogroci is beginning,
and it will go on. The very badness
of the middle-class conscience over
the Great Anti-Fascist Crusade for
Badoglio, Savoy and Toryism will
keep it going. Within a few days
of Noyes, a letter appeared in the
Times
signed by twelve painters,
protesting that CEMA was using
public money to send decadent
modern art on tour, and even dar–
ing to employ lecturers to teach
people to like it. The decadent art
is presumably Piper, Moore, Ravil–
ious, Spencer, Nash and the rest.
The most interesting thing about
this letter, as a replier pointed out,
is that its signatorie.s have an aver–
age age of over seventy. We shall
see. What amazes me is that no–
body has yet announced that the
Jews are behind the whole dirty
business. That is the revelation to
come; anti-Semitism has not yet
joined hands with the purists but
it will.
To wind up, a personal experi–
ence that may amuse you and
which is not irrelevant. I was sum–
moned by the BBC a few weeks
ago to confer on the p_ossibility of
my giving a book talk. I was most
civilly interviewed, after an expla–
nation that I must not be too high–
brow-"of course,
if
you were talk–
ing to India it would be different,
but we have no intelligent public
here." I was aske'd to name some
books and did so. "But," said the
interviewer, "you've not mentioned
any war books." I explained that I
felt I had better keep off them on
policy grounds. Why? Because I
was a pacifist. The interviewer's
jaw dropped. "This is terrible–
we probably can't use you at all–
there's a directive against people-
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