256
viously hedged off and separated
from the rest.
Circumstances combined to make
me attach too much importance
to my opinions. For my views as
critic, as journalistic observer, and
as amateur politician, were all in
demand, and sometimes the pres–
sure to express them was not just
economic, but came from events
themselves, such as the need to
take sides against fascism.
I
found that my own views,
however strongly held, bored me
as soon
as
they were uttered.
I
rea–
lized that they concerned things
which other people could express
better, or that they arose out of the
irritation of the moment, like an
angry telegram. The effect of pub–
lishing too many opinions was like
an inflation of the currency of my
reputation, not only for others but
- which was more serious-for
myself. Before
I
published a line
I
felt a kind of awe at the idea of
my own writing. Later
I
lost a
good deal of this, and only recent–
ly have
I
determined to act so as
to regain it. My resolution was
rather banal; to take much great–
er pains over everything, including
journalism, and to publish no
poems for several years, so that
I
could in a way isolate my poetry
from my other activities.
There is something about the
literary life which, although it of–
fers the writer freedom and honor
enjoyed by very few, at the same
tim!! brings
him
a cup of bitter–
ness with every meal. There is too
much betrayal, there is a general
atmosphere of intellectual disgrace,
writers have to make too many
concessions in order to support
themselves and their families, the
successful acquire an air of being
elevated into public figures and
therefore having lost their own per–
sonalities, the unsuccessful are too
spiteful and vindictive and cliquey,
and even the greatest, when they
are attacked, reveal themselves of–
ten as touchy and vain. I think
that almost every writer secretly
feels that the literary career is not
worthy of the writer's vocation.
For this vocation resembles that
of the religious, and yet few writers
reflect this in their way of living.
Perhaps though, the writers be–
long to an order which is not only
plunged into the world, but ac–
tually belongs to it and has to do
so. Literature has its purists, both
in work and life, but it would
grow devitalized with more than
a few of these in each generation,
and some of the greatest writers
(Dostoevsky, Balzac, even Yeats)
have involved themselves in con–
troversy and journalism.
If
success is corrupting, failure
is narrowing. What a writer really
needs is a success of which he
then purges himself. The writer's
life should, in fact, be one of en–
tering into external things and then
withdrawing himself from them.
Without entering in, he lacks ex–
perience of the world; and if he
cannot withdraw, he is carried
away on the impulse of literary
politics, success, and the literary
career.
