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PARTISAN REVIEW
void. His project is to destroy. His notion is that peace lies in an
equalization of the pressures within and without him. His favorite
sound is silence. Here is a piece of a manifesto by Henry not incl uded
in
Genius and Lust:
I use destruction creatively, perhaps a little too much in the German
style, but aiming always towards a real, inner harmony, an inner
peace-and silence. I prefer music above all the arts, because it is so
absolutely sufficient unto itself and because it tends towards silence. I
believe that literature, to become truly communicative (which it is
not at present), must make greater use of the symbol and the
metaphor, of the mythological and the archaic. Most of our literature
is like the text-book; everything takes place on an arid plateau of
intellectuality. Ninety-nine percent of what is written-and this goes
for all art products-should be destroyed. I want to be read by less
and less people; I have no interest in the life of the masses, nor in the
intentions of the existing governments of the world. I hope and
believe that the whole civi lized world will be wiped out in the next
hundred years or so. I believe that man can exist, and in an infinitely
better, larger way, without "civilization."
Norman's project is a pole away (wherever we might want to
locate his accomplishment).
It
is to transform the world into a plenum
of contending forces. Nothing less would be the "revolution in the
consciousness of our time" he set out to accomplish. Henry emptied
the world of consolations. Norman's task is to fill it again - with mind,
magic, meaning, with gods and devils that include each other, the
point being that whatever exists without contradiction becomes a
cancer, cells cloning themselves unto dissolution. And the most
nourishing contradictions are internal. Norman's chosen stations are
at the "root" and the "edge" (two of his favorite words), rather than at a
center that is everywhere, its circumference nowhere. He wants to fill
the middle ground with such meaning that it matters to the universe
whether a man is cowardly or brave, to fill it with such connections
that root and edge tug each other's hearts. Norman cannot or will not
live in absurdity and despair, the elements of Henry's natural condi–
tion. The books in which he figures are assays of reclamation, rescue,
and repair. He wants to rescue politics from the bureaucrats, New York
from the pols, the moon from the technocrats. He wants
to
appropriate
the magic of Blacks, the mana of Mafiosi, the courage of heavyweight
champs, the
virtu
of Henry and Old Hem. And why not? The goal is
megalopsychia,
largeness of spirit, which derives from a sympathetic
identification with what you are not and which is to be distinguished
from megalomania. And, in any case, by now we have come
to
take
