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Title: Experiments (1925)Author: Norman Douglas* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.: 0300311.txtEdition: 1Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ASCII--7 bitDate first posted: March 2003Date most recently updated: March 2003Production notes: Italics in the book are indicated in this eBook by "_"Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online athttp://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html---------------------------------------------------------------------------A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBookTitle: Experiments (1925)Author: Norman DouglasCONTENTSARABIA DESERTATHE CORRECT THINGBLIND GUIDESAT THE FORGEEDGAR ALLAN POEBELLADONNANOCTURNEINTELLECTUAL NOMADISMTHE LAST WORDA MAD ENGLISHMANQUEER!ANACREONTICPOSTSCRIPT: A PLEA FOR BETTER MANNERSARABIA DESERTA
 
[_Arabia Deserta_ By Charles M. Doughty. With an introduction by T. E.Lawrence. New Edition.]Not long ago there was sent me a recently-published French book aboutMorocco--_Marrakech_, by the brothers Tharaud, then already in itstwenty-fifth edition. What did I think of it? And why could we notwrite such things in English?Well, I thought it good, despite that unseasonable militaryatmosphere--decidedly good of its kind; the story grows livelier andimpressive towards the end. Moreover, thank Heaven, it exhales butfaintly the familiar odour of Parisian patchouli; there are someluminous and suggestive metaphors and a moment of real tragedy. Forthe rest: head-work, self-conscious glitter, a virtuosity bordering onthe precious. One detects only the frailest link of human sympathybetween the authors and the scenes they describe. A wealth ofoutlandish customs and figures has been noted down by the pen of ascrupulous journalist and then distilled into elaborately-tintedphrases. It is almost wearisome, all this material, where so much isseen, so little felt. I recall, for instance, that suffocating chapter"La Place Folle." "Qu'il est donc malais," say the authors in one
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place, "de peindre avec justesse le charme de l'Orient! A inventorierces beauts ... on a l'air d'un pdagogue." Exactly! An artist should
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never "inventorier." Why therefore this endless cataloguing in_Marrakech_? Why? Because the authors, as Frenchmen, were unable todo what they should have done--unable to make their readers reallyfeel the life they depict. Your Gaul is a centripetal fellow, a badnomad. His affinities with foreign folk are only skin-deep--aestheticrather than constitutional. One suspects that, while gadding abroad,he is pretty frequently homesick. One knows it. He will tell you sohimself.As to writing such things in English, the feat is not impossible. Wemust try, first and foremost, to be more logical, to rid ourselves ofthat lamentable haziness, of those iridescent flashes of thought andfeeling that can be struck out of a single word; we must learn, inshort, to content ourselves with a vocabulary such as our neighbourspossess. Cut down to a quarter of its size that preposterousdictionary of ours, throw on the scrap-heap all those mellow verbalforms, and consign the residue into the hands of a conscience-strickenAcademy that shall stereotype the meaning and prescribe the properusage of every item--the thing is done. There will be no morehalf-tones, no more interplay of shades. We shall step from twilightinto sunshine. For what is the chief secret of French precision? Lackof words. To be sure, their writers are mostly professionals--_gens dumtier_; they know how to handle those few words.
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That is why, generally speaking, they produce such mediocre travelbooks.The _homme de lettres_, of whatever nationality, is handicapped inthis department; he can never more attain to a jovial heedlessness ofexpression. His schooling militates against it; he knows for whom hewrites; he has learnt to play to the gallery. The personal note (animpersonal travel-book is a horror) becomes him ill; there is apt tobe something spectacular and meretricious in the work. This appliesparticularly to Frenchmen. Having an old-established literary
 
tradition of what is good and bad--how to compass the one and avoidthe other--they shine at objective narrative. When they write, as theysometimes do, in the first person, they often fail to ring true; artdecays into artifice; it is as if, accustomed to producing fictionalcharacters in their tales and romances, they would now read fictitiouscharacters into themselves. Or else, as in _Marrakech_, they leave amere blur so far as personality is concerned. The ideal author oftravel-books is the inspired, or at least enthusiastic, amateur. Onewould not take it amiss, furthermore, were he obsessed by some hobbyor grievance, by idiosyncrasies and prejudices not common to the restof us. And it goes without saying that he must be gloriouslyindifferent to the opinions of his fellow-creatures. Can professionalsever fulfil these conditions? No! They should therefore never attemptto write travel-books. They have lost their innocence.It was at a friend's house near a green English village, in the heartof a green English summer long ago--years before the abridged editionof _Arabia Deserta_ appeared--that I became acquainted with theoriginal Doughty. And these, you may instantly divine, are theconditions most favourable to an appreciation of his merits. Thatgaunt Odyssey reads mighty well in comfortable England. Amid verdantfields and streamlets, and opulence for the body, and a sense ofimmemorial tranquillity, how pleasant it is to conjure up visions ofthe traveller's marches under the flaming sky and of all his otherhazards in a land of hunger and blood and desolation! I opened thefirst volume not quite at the commencement, and remember taking somelittle credit to myself (one was younger, in the middle 'nineties) forpersisting to read to the last word of the second.A tough, elemental, masculine performance. _Man muss sichhineinlesen_, as the Germans say. The author himself calls his book"not milk for babes." Far from it! Stuff to be humbly and patientlymasticated--an unwelcome occupation to our democratic age which, amongother symptoms of senility, has lost the use of its teeth and nowdraws sustenance, ready chewed and half digested, pepsinised, out ofthe daily Press. Open _Arabia Deserta_ where you please, and you findyourself stumbling among thought-laden periods that might have beenhacked out of Chaos by some demoniac craftsman in the youth of theworld. Strange, none the less, how that sense of anfracuosityevaporates. The theme, by subtle alchemy, justifies the style. Thoseharsh particles of language--so it seemed to me--were wondrouslyadapted to mirror the crudeness of Arabian landscape and character.Be that as it may, I felt, on closing the book, as one who has beenforcefully led through all the harassments of a dream--a weary,lingering dream; one of those that refuse to relax their hold upon theimagination, haunting our daylight moments with a vague presentimentof danger and disquietude. Here is no glint of mirth, no mockery; aspirit of sombre truthfulness broods over the scene. The book isoppressive by weight of thought and length of text. That might well beappropriate from an artistic point of view. Nothing short of elevenhundred pages could do justice to this toilsome, nightmarish epic. "Ipassed this one good day in Arabia; and all the others were evilbecause of the people's fanaticism." One good day in two years! Noris it a featureless monster, like Pallas' Russian travels. Awell-jointed monster, on the contrary, of spiky carapace anddeliberate gait--pensively alert, harmonious.
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