82
PARTISAN REVIEW
advocates of that code mistake his problem which is not one of
perversity but of conversion: how to turn the cumulative disad–
vantage of history into a moderate kind of advantage; how to ap–
pease the furious crimes of past ages which still agitate in his blood–
stream. There are times when the advent of another wave of bar–
barians- those convenient purgers of the past--seems to offer a
solution, but velleities of this sort cannot last. For he knows, deep
down, that the dreaded and hoped-for barbarian will turn out to
be but a sanguine, and sanguinary, species of Alexandrian, moved by
passions which the better elements of the age have been patient
enough to examine, and prudent enough to put by. Even more likely,
he is a mere fiction:
Some people have arrived from the frontier; j
They said there are no Barbarians any more}
and to entertain fictions
is, to the Alexandrian, the unpardonable sin.
I have said earlier that the Alexandrian, contrary to the claim
of his detractors, does not reject life; I should add now that he loves
it insatiably, and "quite naturally so, for he has never been alive."
The film of the past, including his own, rushes furiously past his eyes
and
his
fondest wish is to stay it: at thc risk, even, of being quite
overwhelmed by the frozen dumb show. This wish must remain bar–
ren of fulfillment, for history, as we have seen, though it extends
endlessly away from him in either direction cannot contain him; nor
can he in any way be said to have a share in its actions.
7
The
"proud heir"-proud because standing apart, as does the bridge
from the river- is bound to feel cheated of a fortune that he has been
reluctant to examine for its worth and so shall never resign. For,
with history gone, what would be left? He is no mystic, though like
Eliot he may try that mask among others; nor can he return to
those lapsed doctrines which by removing history's sting kill its power
as well- the power it has, and will always maintain, over the imagina–
tion.
7 In one sense, then, history h as a supreme meaning for the Alexandrian;
in another, no meaning at all. Some time ago an engineer in Los Angeles de–
vised a very complicated machine which, while functioning to perfection, ful–
filled no fun ction whatever. I quote from the Italian newspaper where the story
appeared:
"Si tratta di
UII
straordillario colIgegllo che ha chiesto al suo costrut–
tore allni di ricerche e che si compone di piu di 700 Peu.i tra pulegge, bielle,
ruote, catene e ingranaggi perfettamente oliati. L'apparecc hio si mette in marcia
e si arresta a volonta, ma all'in/uori di questa non compie alcun lavoro utile.
Non rierce neppure a produrre rumore."
In his darker hours the Alexandrian
might view history as such a machine; the only difference being that, unlike
Mr. Walstrom's construction, history manages to produce a great deal of noise.
