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    Aristasian fanzine.

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    Aristasian fanzine.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    137 views11 pages

    The English Magazine 7

    Uploaded by

    Marianne Martindale
    Aristasian fanzine.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 11
    The English Magazine ‘uspicium meliois evi Bolume 6, joe the Groen Df Brown Beer, Opium anb Prejudice [A vaLuEn correspondent (all our correspon dente are valued, of course) wrote to us some litle time ago to eritcise our eriticioms of the modern world. While not, I think, in disagree ‘ment with them, his point was that, as people ‘who have seceded from that svorld, we are not jn position to criticise in detail such things as Us "mass-media”, its popular musie and s0 forth. Particularly on the subjed of the broad cafting services, we are admonished to the effet that in order to be in a postion to judge ‘them Fairly, we should have to subject ourselv- fs to a degree of continual immersion in them ‘which would be unpleasant to us, and would probably leave us rather diferent in outlook than we are at present. Such an immersion ‘would not, of course, “convert” us to the modern outlook, but it mult certainly have a Subtle effet upon us, and perhaps rob us of @ degree of innocence” and of some part of our Sovereign mental independence of the world ‘hich those tervices, represent—or bette embody, ereate, or even constitute. This, of ‘course, in why wa take the liberty of Eirongly Ssdvising our readers to detach themselves as Tar af possible From such influences, Which cannot fall to produce subtle changes in even the moft intelligent, Independent. and critical recipient. Aga, in the ease of modern popular ‘sie, how ean we ertlse it without Fnowing i well enough to underStand it from within, rather than merely from hearing it as snatches of barbaric noize Forced momentarily upon us in some public place? Are not such erticisms properly described as prejudices? “This argument (hough T do not for a mo- mont impute tit the slickness and dishonetty ‘hich might be implied by the comparison) i= reminiscent ofa rather neat double-bind dat ing from the time before the issue of porno raphy had been confused by the emergence of 2 Teft€t-Feminift Puritan lobby, when all good Progressives were unreservediy in favour of very species of smut. The double-bind went 5s follows: whenever some one had the hardi hood to Rtand up in public and declare oppo. sition to pornography, he would be asked by ome smirking representative of the New (no¥ tbeolescent) Orthodoxy: "But have you your~ self at this moment in time (they used to talk like that] read a ressonable amount of porno: (graphy? Ifthe answer was "yee", the rejoin Ser was:™'So you claim the right to read it and ake up your own mind; how can you deny the ie right to others?” If the answer was 1, the rejoinder was "Then how can You presume to condemn what you do nat know?” “This line of reasoning, though accepted and repeated in good faith by many honeSt men, is tntirely spurious. Its a sort of logial contd fenee-trck, rather like the neat methods of Sceming ts count aut ten pounds in change when there are only eight, employed by unscrupulous inarket-traders, The trick resides in the mis pplication of an argument and the begging of av question; in the treatment of = matter of Principle as iFit were # matter of tate. ‘Some years ago, the manufacturers of Guinness’ ftout (a beverage so venerable that wwe Feel joRifed in mentioning the brand 2) isgued an advertisement. showing 2 battle of the boverage accompanied by the fol- ing wording enclosed in inverted com re nover tried it because 1 don’t lke ‘This, as you will perceive, is another form of the same argument. The beer-maker is accus~ Ing those who rejed his ale without tral of bind prejudice: and he Ie. quite within his ight to do s0 Gn terms of fogie at any rate, if fot in terme of courtesy) for whether oF not ‘One takes Guinness’s Rout is (unless one has tlgned the Pledge) a mattor of taite and not of principle. Apply the seme argument to opium, however, or to arsenic, and you immediately see the fallacy. I have never taSted either ‘plum or arsenic, but T have no hesitation in ‘tvising those over whom Ihave not authority, nd commanding those over whom I have, not to take them. Tam aduated not by prejudice, but by knowledge—by knowledge of what these subStances are and what they do; and it {s clearly a fallacy to suppose that such know: ledge can only be attained by direct personal experience: That is tru of matters of taite but not all matters ean be reduced to matters of tafte, A"proselytising ophim-eater might ‘sy: But you have never tried it If you tried Htyou might Hike it" To which the wise man Page 122 vill reply:—""Indeed 1 might, which is all the more reason for not trying it." "Now modern popular musio—and in parti- cular, that variety efit called "rock" —is Tike opium, and not like Guinness's Stout, 1 is a Species of music direfted tothe Stimulation of the lowebt elements in man’s soul. Let us a tend for'a moment tothe words of a liberal ac tdemis who has considered the matter deeply’ ‘Young people keow that rock bas the beat of senual Incrcourse an enormous todutryeult~ Ivates the tate forthe orgadtc Mate of feeling providing conirant Rood of fresh maveil ge Woracious appetites. Tae fords lplielly od explicitly describe bodily es that satisfy Sexoal deste and treat them aa 4 only tatoral pu'youtie culmination for children who Jo nat Yet have the alightey imagination of Tove, tar= Heese er a mach mre poe ‘ed ‘than pernography on Youngster Worldview if balanced ‘onthe. sexual flerum What were ones uoconsciout or hall-consctous childish rceentmenta become the new Serpture nd then comes the fonging for the classless, projulcestree,confi@less oniveral wociety thal EeStessly remite from Uberated consciousness “ene ae there get there ap at, fd a amasmy, hypoertesl version of Brotherly fever Sich pollted sources loove in a muddy ream where only moaGters can swim. . Now thing nobler slime, profound, delicate, taStful green decant can nd place ta tuch tableaux. ‘There is place only for the Intense, changing, ‘rude atd fmmedate which Tocqueville warned ‘ould be the charter of democratic at, combin= [ith a pervasiveness, importance and content Regond Fetquovle' wiidett imagination. “The. phenomenon is both aflounding. and io- Aigetibles and le tardy noticed, routine and hab {cal Boe eo hit repre tt» oe cletj' beft young and thelr beBt energies should Bae Secup2d People of Tture evilstions wil Wonder thie and nd ton incomprehensible at Wwe do the cafe syftem, witch-buming. area, TEnabaliam and gladatorial combats. fe may well ethat a noclety greateBtmadnons sens ortn~ stots? “The case of modern broadcaSting is similar {fa lltle subtir; even though it may contain few things which are civilised and dece medium GF we may borrow that term) hole ig pervaded with the outlook, the tisance, the Stench ofthe modern world. Quite “part from the content of this or that particule Programme, there is the jargon, the promun- lation, the whole manner and bearing, the Allan Bloom, The Closing ofthe American Mind “Thar gt of ones ante” forms of ode tuusle, but these are invariably” pervaded by the pose, feseid;sou-unstrnging quulty kacwn (for thermach-folt want of better word as groosh. ‘The Engl Magayine ‘Bolume eat of face and the caSt of mind of the fextreme modern mentality; there is @ world of Implicit assumption in the entire Sle of p Sentation-—in the use of image and colour and found, which is immediately apparent upon Comparison with older fms or older wireless Sind television produdtions. And these things, precisely becaure they are subtle and implicit Father than overt and explicit, are more insid- fous in their infence than the afiual content of the programmes, Even if conscious criticism and underftanding were a defence againft be- ing subtly infuenced—which it is not—these linderlying effe&ts move too quickly for such friteism to be possible; a few moments of ‘Sound and colour may be the result of half a Gay's work by a team of five men and would take a thort egsay preceded by serious consid tration to analyse and expose ‘Our contention i, that there is such a thing as the modern spirit, that this spirit is essen tially corrosive of himan warmth and tradit onal value, of order and of delicacy, of beauty fand of depth; that this spirit is implicit in very note of modern music and every second fof modern brosdeafting; that it takes a thou~ Gand routes through the senses to the mind both conscious and subconscious. The much ‘dmired period-pieces produced by the British television companies, for example, which are fften cited as something that i of positive good {in modern broadeaSting, always, in a hundred ‘ays, place a modernit gloss upon the paSt— znot merely an ideologieal gloss which may even, cozasionally, be absent, but-a Stylistic floss, reflesed in Stance, speech, mannerism, Camera-angles, timing, and many other details, ‘ll of which subtly impart the moderni vision OF life, even while seeming. to impart—even ‘while partially imparting—quite another vision. ‘And one does not have to teep oneself in such ‘productions in order to perceive this FaS— fn the contrary one perceives it all the more Clearly and accurately when one does see only few minutes of them with an eye which Is hormally Reeeped inthe Sms of the 1930s. Here indeed is another counter to the pre~ judice argument. It assumes that we must Know a thing belt if we are. intimately fequainted with but that is only partly true Tong exposure may deaden isto what ie False for wrong in a thing: continual repetition may make the absurd seem commonplace, the Outrageous seem respectable, the demented Seem partly sane, At. Professor Bloom Says!—"'This phenomenon is both aftounding tnd indigeible, and fs hardly noticed, routing fnd habitual.” OF how many modern pheno Bolume S ‘mena might that not be said; and how many thinge which would in any other society be regarded as aftounding, indigeBtible and quite {nad are now accepted however unwilingl)— {85 commonplace, not because there has been fany real shift in attitudes, but because the Dreadeafting services are monopolized by a tiny. minority of grinning ‘degenerates who have made it their life's work tirelessly to hammer out a selected round of insanities and inanities night after ight, week afer week, year after year after year. How, for example, could “anti-sexism” fal to be booted off the tage of life except in a world dominated by the endless, unanswerable voice From the corner? ‘According to Heisenberg’ Uncertainty Prin ciple, there is a certain class. of phenomena ‘which cannot be observed without the very at Of their observation altering the phenomena themselves, There is snother class of pheno fmena which cannot be experienced. at close ‘quarters over a period of time without that ‘ery fad altering the observer. To the opium- tater who tells us that if we do not become ‘2ddiGed to opium, os opinion on the subject fs worthless, we ‘mut reply thet if we do ‘become addicted to opium, our opinions on all fubjects will be sorthiess. Ic would. be {tretching a point much too far to apply the fame didwum to. broadeafting and. modern frusic, but in ot view it it By no means an txaggeration to say that the opinions of one ‘who remeins unspotted of these influences are of considerably more value upon the matter than those of one who does not "Yet even this is moc the crux of the mates ‘The erux isan este of principle. Let us return o'the queltion asked of the opponent af pornography: "How can you condemn what you So not know?" The answer to this question is imple: If Xt is wrong to use titerature and Pidlures for the abBtradt Rimulation of per erted carnal desires, then it is wrong. One ‘may, from a legal point of view, need to exam Ine this or that work to determine whether it fs pornographic, but the fat that pornography {e Wwrong per se is a matter of principle. One tay agree or disagree with that peinsple; but that fe the principle upon which the opponent OF pornography builds his case, It is not a fatter of taste or of individual foible, but of ‘whether pornography fe right or wrong. ‘Our ease is Hdentical, only we are speaking of modernism rather than pornography. IF ‘modernism exi8ts end is an evil and if that Spirit fx inherent in modern music 25 a whol And in modern broadcasting as a whole, then i follows that modern broadealting and. music The GnglpMagayine Page 123 are carriers of evil It 1s not necessary toexam~ ine every modern song in detail, nor every modern programme. IF we know, for example, That Marsism ie, wrong in theory and evil in pradtce, then iis not necessary to liften care Filly to the words of each individual Marxist theoretician before refedting them. If we di believe in the principles of Calvinism, then it enol necessary to Study the precise nuances of vary Calvinift preacher before saying that. we fire in general disagreement with him. The Marxi8t might of course, espouse tradivonali8t and aridtecratic dodtrines; but only by ceasing to be a Marxift, The Calvinift may come (© Delieve in free will; but only by ceasing to be 2. Calvini&. Similarly, modern music might Feturn to innocent rhythms and uncorrupting harmonies, but only by ceasing to be modern, Modern broadcasting may one day become bation of decency and truth and beauty and honour; but then it will no Tonger be modern Droadcafting as te now underftand the term “There may aeem tobe the oseasional except ton, There may be the occasional plece of music ‘hich is at leat inoffensive; there may be the Decasionel programme whichis of real and fdulterated merit (although, the more one iso intes oneself from the general pervasiveness of such things, the more glaringly obvious is the underlying eorrupton of even the moft pparently- innocuous examples); but such ex ‘ceptions are certainly rare and in any ease, are fot culturally modem—JuSt a5 a contemporary traditional painting is not ealled moder ar. ‘The word “prejudice”, if used in its fri etymological sense, merely means the judge tment of a thing before the event eis a prejud= ites in this sense, to say that the sun till rise tomorrow, or that the Winter will be cooler than the Sommer, of that a babe of eighteen ‘months is unlikely to write a treatise on binom~ {al theorem which will have a European vogue Th this sense, and in thie sense only, may it be called a prejadice to 2ay that modern music fand broadeadting are utterly corrupt without Reeping one's sent one o the other We have no longer in any country literature as (reat as the literature ofthe old world ond that {because the newspapers all bids of second= rate books, the preaccupation of men with all binds of practical changes, have driven the living Imagination out of the world. T have read hardly fay books this summer but Cervantes and ‘Boc- taccio and some Greck plays. T have felt that these men, divided from one another by so many hundreds of years, had the same mind. It is we who are different WiR YEATS: Hage 124 The Engl Magayine Bolum & ‘was Rtrong because It could Feel the secret Senstity Thoughts upon Feelings ‘Extracts from alter bythe young poet Louis Glendusa On the morning before I left, Miss Tea talked to me about Vitorian sensibility, 1 Swooning after receiving a shock, people Boing into high fevers and becoming delirious be~ cause of an emotional “upset, men dying through wounded honour, and soon. This Is ‘exemplified by the charatiers in any 19th cen~ tury novel (Wuthering Heighes is an extreme example, but slmait every novel would give fone oF two inftances), who were sensitive to fany number of things which would mat be no- ticed by a modern beast-person, who felt more ‘deeply and more “passionately” the slighteit changes in their moral oF physical surround ings, or felt infindively Wf anything were 0 of place. In the lat century men would woop St 2 piece of music or # poem—today they ‘would merely find it “intereRting? and identify tas a forerunner of something like ‘Surrealo- welrdo-iso. Many men (though not all) were prepared to fight duels to defend their honour fr promote a cause they believed in. The mod- fer mind, which ean never see the symbolic or Spiritual significance of anything, cannot look beyond the bloodshed eaused by duelling to the Rrength of charafter and magnanimity ‘common in society where many mon would bbe prepared to. die rather than have their honour tainted. “Death with honour is better than Ife with shame” as it says ka Le Sorte Strthwr—but “modern people underStand tether “honour nor “shame” and think that nothing is more important than physical sur- rival, in ft they do not see how a person's ‘moral or mental health ean be more important than his physical health. The core of Vitorian Sensibility ve that'8 person's health depended fom bis mental ftate-—if he had. suffered un- happiness or disappointment his delicate roth-century health would be corresponding] ected. Today a person's happiness depends ‘on nothing more than his animal health—"rade Nealt’ isan extraordinarily appropriate term id the typical modern person thinks It Is ‘weakness to feel deoply over something. Tifa it is the modern world which ts weak, because it does not Feel, The Vietorian world pulses of life, it could sense the special signi- Beance of the smalleR things. Tt knew that the intensity of life, and not ite duration, was the Jmportant thing. OF course not everybody in the. Viflorlan ‘age felt. deeply—but in. the modern age it 1s Impossible for anyone to do 0, unless they separate themselves from it Ererything is quick-moving, garish and Tow, like. the eledironie images which are tverywhere, there is so much noise and move~ iment and litle eandale and cheap excitements that any one who knows no other life would find it impossible to have deeply-flt emotions ‘on anything, to have any concerns which laBted more than a few moments. Nobody can put ‘down roots, because the sell is too shallow. A person's heart can only mature’"in silence and low time”—he can only feel if he has an ob Jolt for his Feelings, something he can attach Fimself to, which will need to be Rem and ur changing. Slower commanications, 2 greater Senge of tradition and an ability to concentrate find contemplate srere the things which en- bled the Viglorians to feel, and thus to live No wonder Catherine became delirious during Heath's absences--in the solation and profound concentration in which she had boon reared, she had only one thing to fx her hap= pinese’ ony and thus was more Ukely to be Ewayed from ecftasy to despair. Today she ‘would feel nothing ofthis, as she could drown, hher sorrows in a television programme. No wonder Edgor Allan Poe was haunted by a se- Flee of" perfeét women” s0 that his emotional turbulence eventually became too much for his health--he lived in an age when such ardent Yearning was porcile (in foe, fashionable. Hie di not have any of the innumerable mod fen half pleasures to gratify (bat fs, to ruin) his feelings on. A modern person would say that at Tealt these people vould not be Un~ hhappy, today—this fe the fundamental error ina which modern civilisation has fallen. They ‘do not realise that one can only be happy —in adh, one can only liveif one is prepared sometimes to be unhappy ut as msdern people cannot Feel deeply, 30,34 they cannot think deeply. One of the reasons: that Fhave thought about so many things (that FRnot an idle boaBt—sometimes 1 fear I. shal Bolume € ilence and calm (and often solitude). All great Works of Hterature require intense brooding and imaginstion—often to an excessive de free, but this is one of the prices exafted for the rection of ‘works of genius. Modern people are afraid (o think and thus afraid of Silence. Teamazes me how every time I enter a ‘oom with a modern type he immediately turns fom some musie—they are afraid of the things a Silent room might inspire in them, oF perhaps oo impatient to wait For inspiration. is Tack of depth in thought and feelings what makes modern man so repellently hy ter {eal and shallow-minded and facetiout—par

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