- •Pilgrim's regress
- •Preface to third edition
- •Did the instructors really mean it?
- •He hears of Death and what his elders pretend to believe about it
- •Everyone except John cheers up on the way home
- •Greed to recover Desire hides the real offer of its return
- •Ichabod11
- •Sin and the Law torment him, each aggravating the other
- •In hand she boldly took
- •Which can explain away religion by any number of methods
- •"Evolution" and "Comparative Religion"
- •And all the guess-work which masquerades as "Science"
- •He abandons his religion with profound relief
- •The Moral Imperative does not fully understand itself
- •John decides that Aesthetic Experience is the thing to pursue
- •For a moment it seems to have kept its promise
- •And would finally turn into Lust, but that in the nick of time
- •Ichabod22
- •The "modern" literary movement offers to "debunk" it
- •The poetry of the Machine Age is so very pure
- •The poetry of Silly Twenties
- •The "Courage" and mutual loyalty of Artists
- •It was a low-brow blunder to mention the most obvious thing about it
- •If Religion is a Wish-Fulfilment dream, whose wishes does it fulfil?
- •Its pretentiousness and cold frivolity
- •Its hatred of all systematic reasoning
- •Its ignorant and dilettante scepticism
- •Its unacknowledged dependences
- •These "sensible" men are parasitic
- •Their culture is precarious
- •Take away its power of commanding labour
- •And the whole thing collapses
- •In the presence of these thought traditional morality falters
- •Vertue is Sick
- •It is friends with the World and goes on no pilgrimage;
- •It is fond of wildflowers
- •Idealist Philosophy rejects the literal truth of religion
- •It is dangerous to welcome Sweet Desire, but fatal to reject it
- •Ignorantia
- •Its supreme mode of temptation is to make all else insipid
- •19 Leah for rachel refers to Genesis 29, where Jacob was tricked by his uncle Laban into taking Leah for his wife, rather than her sister Rachel, whom Jacob had really wanted.
- •24 Non est hic "He is not here." Vulgate for Luke 24:5-6
- •43 Archtype and Ectype words used by Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, XXX-XXXI, to mean "original" and "copy".
- •44 Esse is Percipi - "to be is to be perceived", Berkeley: Principles of Human Knowledge.
- •115 Exoteric and esoteric what is for public consumption, and what is for private consumption; for everybody, and for the inner few.
- •123 Monism the doctrine that matter and mind are one and inseparable--the philosophical corollary of pantheism, which sees God and uncreated Nature as indistinguishable
- •159 Limbo in traditional Christian belief the place where babies who die before baptism go and live forever in a state of natural happiness.
The "Courage" and mutual loyalty of Artists
that it was not the Island. And presently he saw people who looked rather like his father, and the Steward and old Mr. Halfways, dressed up as clowns and doing a stiff sort of dance. Then there was a columbine, and some sort of love-story. But suddenly the whole Island turned into an aspidistra28 in a pot and the song was over.
"Priceless," said the Clevers.
"I hope you liked it," said Gus to John.
"Well," began John doubtfully, for he hardly knew what to say: but he got no further, for at that moment he had a very great surprise. Victoriana had thrown he mask away and walked up to him and slapped him in the face twice, and hard as she could.
"That's right," said the Clevers, "Victoriana has courage. We may not all agree with you, Vikky dear, but we admire your courage."
"You may persecute me as much as you like," said Victoriana to John. "No doubt to see me thus with my back to the wall, wakes the hunting lust in you. You will always follow the cry of the majority. But I will fight to the end. So there," and she began to cry.
"I am extremely sorry," said John. "But---"
"And I know it was a good song," sobbed Victoriana, "because all great singers are persecuted in their lifetime--and I'm per-persecuted--and therefore I must be a great singer."
"She has you there," said the Clevers, as Victoriana left the laboratory.
"You mustn't mind her being a little bitter," said Gus. "She is so temperamental and sensitive, and she has suffered a great deal."
"Well, I must admit," said one of the Clevers, "now that she has gone, that I think that stuff of hers rather vieus jeu29.
"Can't stand it myself," said another.
"I think if was her face that needed slapping." said a third.
"She's been spoiled and flattered all her life," said a fourth. "That's what's the matter with her."
"Quite," said the rest in chorus.
The swamp-literature of the Dirty Twenties
CHAPTER TWO
A South Wind
"Perhaps," said Gus, "someone else would give us a song." "I will," cried thirty voices all together: but one cried much louder than the others and its owner had stepped into the middle of the room before anyone could do anything about it. He was one of the bearded men and wore nothing but a red shirt and a cod-piece30 made of the skins of crocodiles: and suddenly he began to beat on an African tom-tom and to croon with his voice, swaying his lean, half-clad body to and fro staring at them all, out of eyes which were like burning coals. This time John saw no picture of and Island at all. He seemed to be in a dark green place full of tangled roots and hairy vegetable tubes: vegetable but human. And the dark green grew darker, and a fierce heat came out of it: and suddenly all the shapes obscene image which dominated the whole room. And the song was over. "Priceless," said the Clevers. "Too stark31! Too virile." John blinked and looked round; and when he saw all the Clevers as cool as cucumbers, smoking their cigarettes and drinking the drinks that looked like medicines, all as if nothing remarkable had happened, he was troubled in his mind; for he thought that the song must have meant something different to them, and "If so," he argued, "what very pure-minded people they must be." Feeling himself among his betters, he became ashamed. "You like it, hein32?" said the bearded singer. "I -- I don't think I understood it," said John. "I make you like it, hein," said the singer, snatching up his tom-tom again. "It was what you really wanted all the time." |
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"No, no," cried John. "I know you are wrong there. I grant you, that --that sort of thing -- is what I always get if I think too long about the Island. But it can't be what I want."