OXFORD AND GERMANY
929
and if I am conscious of it how can it be unconscious?" was
his
an–
swer to Freud. "Yes sir," I dared, "but what about dreams?" "Well,"
with a pitying smile, and a deep propulsion of the ble. . es of his but–
tocks into the groaning back of his wicker chair, "No doubt there may
be parts of my dreams which I do not remember when I am awake.
But if and when I do remember them, then they become conscious."
"Have you ever read
The Fantasia of the Unconscious
by D. H.
Lawrence, sir?" "No I haven't. But I did once read something by D.H.
Lawrence. Something about the lotus growing out of the navel." He
pulled his pipe out of his mouth and suddenly gave a brilliant and
almost boyish smile. "That seems to me
ex traordinarily
funny:
the
lotus growing out of the navel':'
Then he chuckled to himself for
a few moments for my benefit.
We were earnest, solemn, self-dramatizing; but however much
we wished to be, it seemed impossible for us to be
serious,
because
Oxford, by cutting away all the connections of the spiritual activity
within itself with the world outside, had deprived us of the convincing
sense of our own identity outside Oxford. The greatest achievements
of Oxford men, unless they had at some period cut themselves com–
pletely away from Oxford, filled me with dismay, and a certain ad–
miration. I suppose the highest literary achievement of the century
which is the product of a lifetime absorbed in the ideas and environ–
ment of Oxford, is Robert Bridges' poem
The Testament of Beauty
where great powers of invention have been used to create a new
style which yet seems quite archaic; where sensuous contemplation of
nature from Boar's Hill produces the refined yet slightly indecent
im–
pression of a man having a platonic love affair with the universe,
where the thought (despite the clarity and purity with which it is
expressed
in
the language) is enclosed in the atmosphere of the best
Senior Common Room conversation or a brilliant paper on Beauty
written for Greats.
If
one compares Bridges with Joyce, or with
Lawrence, one sees the petrifying effects of an isolated culture which
has no communication with any experience outside the life of the
University; which sees the outside world very clearly but unreally,
as though in Lady Shalott's mirror; which produces as thought and
works of art little brittle crystals instead of bread of life.
Although we felt inferior to the best that Oxford could produce,
we felt that best to be a living death of all we most cared to become.
