Blasting and Bomardiering

by Wyndham Lewis

  In any estimate of the immediate future of the arts in Europe, in any prognostication, the political factor must be the key-pin of your prophecy. And there, I am afraid, the artist can take very little comfort.

  What do we see, when we gaze out upon the political scene? We see two hostile ideologies contending for the mastery of the world—Communism and Fascism. Both advance their policies (they cannot do otherwise) in a paralysing atmosphere of martial law. And the constraints, the pseudo-religious intensity, of these systems, do not lend themselves to the relaxations of the senses, nor to the detached delights of the intellect, whatever else may be claimed for them.

  Chirico, the 'official' painter of Fascist Italy, is a better type of painter than those encouraged in Communist Russia. In return for a pastel of a gladiator, once a month, it is probable that the Blackshirt Emperor would allow you great latitude in your choice of subject.

  But neither the imperialism of the Soviets, nor the Spartan programmes of Germany or Italy, leave much room for any thought but that of action. And Action, as a religion, is apt to set up a climate as unsuitable for artistic pursuits as the most narrow of thoecratic regimes. If we were called upon to fight a new Ice Age, there would be no place for civilization among the encroaching icefields. We should be absorbed in problems of frostbite, scurvy, and circulation.

  And human nature—not Nature this time—has brought us to Ice Age conditions. The mass stupidity and helplessness of men, with all the power of machines to back it, threatens us with a new 'scourge of god', and we certainly shall have to put aside our books and pictures. And every time this happens, in the history of our race, we take them up again, when the dark age is over, with less assurance and with less genius.

  As to what has happened to pictorial art in contemporary Russia, the exhaustive book of illustrations recently produced by The Studio is qualified to enlighten us. Page after page we see picture after picture of the most inconceivable dullness. Eighty per cent of the illustrations are of works which might have been exhibited forty years ago or more in any of the semi-advanced ('Secession') exhibitions in Northern Europe, and which we encounter in great quantities in all the principal continental and American museums. It is as if England had become a communist republic, and twenty years after the happy event the London exhibitions were full of Friths, Clausens, Herkomers, and Jaggers, with a left-wing comprising a few G. R. W. Nevinsons and a few bucolic posters by Mr. Paul Nash.

  The fact of the matter is that a militant bureaucratic oligarchy, whether of Left or Right, is exceedingly 'bourgeois'. If there must be 'art', let it be a propagandist photograph, they seem to say, or a picture of a pretty girl—for the Commissar and the Stockbrokers are brothers under their skin. That is life! All the rest is literature—or 'intellectualism'. As to criticism—a 'criticism of life', or any other sort of criticism—that is the

  last thing they want and of course one does not blame them.

  So all the so-called 'revolutionary' artists—who have been regarded by the Royal Academician as the 'Reds' of the painting world—as 'bolsheviks' of art—turn out to be anything but persona grata with the highpriests of Social Revolution. They are 'anarchists', merely. And if there is one thing any good communist dislikes more than another it is an anarchist.

  But the immediate future must more and more be controlled by these two antagonistic political principles. And looked at purely from the standpoint of the artist, neither promises the requisite conditions for an improvement in the position of the arts.

  Beyond this epoch of political upheaval, what is in store for men? We need not urge our prophetic souls any further than the limit of these struggles—that bourne is quite sufficiently far off. As far as it is possible to compute, it is unlikely the arts will again enjoy such a period of favourable calm as was experienced by those artists who came upon the scene between the French Revolution and the 'Great War' (of 1914-18). That is the gist of the matter.

  Now that we have got our bearings in time and space a little co-ordinated, we can return to the period of Adam and Eve, before I flitted down the Mews with Miss Sitwell under my arm. That is when I went to Paris with Eliot, where the three principal members of the Pound Circus came together.

  CHAPTER IV

  First Meeting with James Joyce

  James Joyce had come to Paris from Zurich. In the summer of 1920 I went there with Thomas Stearns Eliot. We went there on our way to the Bay of Quiberon for a summer holiday, which his wife said would do him good. We descended at a small hotel, upon the left bank of the River Seine. It was there I met, in his company, James Joyce for the first time. And it was the first time that Eliot had seen him, too. Joyce was the last of my prominent friends to be encountered; last but not least.

  It had been agreed before we left London that we should contrive to see Joyce in Paris. And Eliot had been entrusted with a parcel by Ezra Pound (as a more responsible person than myself), which he was to hand to Joyce when he got there. We did not know at all what it contained. It was rather a heavy parcel and Eliot had carried it under his arm, upon his lap, as it was too big to go in a suitcase.

  At that time I knew very little indeed about Joyce. He 'conveyed nothing' to me, I was in the same position as the white-coated doctor I mentioned in my introductory remarks— except that I did not, in my person, resemble James Joyce in any way, whereas certainly the doctor did, and yet had not even heard of his double.

  Beyond what Ezra Pound had told me, which was mostly apologetic (the good Ezra assuming that I should laugh at him for his over-literary respects and genuflexions) I knew nothing. That was the situation. It was in consequence of this that in our subsequent intercourse Joyce and myself were often talking at cross-purposes.

  I had not read The Portrait of the Artist nor Dubliners.

  Exiles and Chamber Music I had never heard of, Ulysses had not, of course, yet made its appearance. But Joyce, on the other hand, had, I am persuaded, read everything I had ever written. He pretended however not to have done so.

  In very marked contrast with Joyce I was indifferent as to whether he had followed the fortunes of Tarr and Kreisler or not. There was no arrogance at all in my indifference. But, as it is easy to suppose, since their author assumed I had read all his books (Ulysses included although it had not been published) but was pretending like himself to have forgotten, things were at first very involved. Bad jams occurred in the dialogue, in both directions.

  It does not follow that a couple of authors, when they come face to face need meet as 'authors'. But aside from everything else, James Joyce was in a superlative degree the writer of books, the champion Penman, and breathed, thought and felt as such. We had been starred together on many occasions. He saw me as a Penman, too, and as a champion—one I expect he thought he could easily 'put-to-sleep'. It was quite impossible, under these circumstances, to encounter Joyce otherwise than as one of a pair of figures in the biography of a big Penman— I, of course being the interloper. For the biography would be one devoted to him, not to me. And finally why I on my side was indifferent was of course because I had no feeling for history. I was in fact a chronological idiot. A burlesque situation!

  But this light comedy was sufficiently curious for it to be worth while to go into yet more detail. Some pages of the 'Portrait' I had read, when it first appeared as a serial in the Egoist, a paper edited by Miss Harriet Weaver. But I took very little interest. At that time, it was of far too tenuous an elegance for my taste. Its flavour was altogether too literary. And as to its emotional content, that I condemned at once as sentimental-Irish. Even now, for that matter, I feel much the same about The Portrait of the Artist, with the important difference that I have obliged myself to read a great many more books, in the meanwhile, many of which suffer from the same shortcomings, as I see it. So I do recognize the Portrait of the Artist as a Young

  Man to be one only of a large class, and of its kind a very excellent example.

  On my side my first meeting with James Joyc
e was (at first) devoid of any particular interest. I found an oddity, in patent-leather shoes, large powerful spectacles, and a small gingerbread beard; speaking half in voluble Italian to a scowling schoolboy : playing the Irishman a little overmuch perhaps, but in amusingly mannered technique. Soon I was prepared to be interested in Joyce for his own sake. I took a great fancy to him for his wit, for the agreeable humanity of which he possesr sed such stores, for his unaffected love of alcohol, and all good things to eat and drink.

  What should have been a momentous encounter, then, turned out to be as matter-of-fact a social clash as the coming together of two navvies, or the brusque how do you do of a couple of dogs out for a walk. The reason: just my inveterate obtuseness where all that is historic and chronological is concerned. It is because I cannot see things as biography. I have not got the Barretts of Wimpole Street mind. My insensitive-ness in this respect is to blame if all this part of my narrative is literally flat, like a Chinese or a Japanese picture.

  I have gone ahead like this, outrunning the physical, to take all surprise out of these happenings, as a preliminary disinfection. Also I have hoped to drive home the fact that I have nothing up my sleeve, in these harmless exercises.

  Returning, however, to my narrative of the physical encounter. T. S. Eliot—need I say the premier poet of Anglo-Saxony? —T. S. Eliot and myself descended at a small hotel. The Eliot fan will appreciate this way of putting it. He will see I know my Eliot. The hotel was nearer to the quays of the Seine than to the central artery of the Saint Germain quarter. It was the rue des Saints Peres, or it may be the rue Bonaparte: no matter, they are all the same. Our rooms were the sort of lofty, dirtily parquetted, frowsily-curtained, faded apartments that the swarms of small hotels in Paris provide, upon their floors of honour. These small hotels still abound.

  T. S. Eliot ringing for the chasseur, dispatched a petit bleu to James Joyce. He suggested that Joyce should come to the hotel, because he had a parcel, entrusted to him by Ezra Pound, and which that gentleman had particularly enjoined upon him to deliver personally to the addressee; but that it would likewise be a great pleasure to meet him. This was accompanied by an invitation to dinner.

  An invitation to dinner! I laugh as I write this. But at the time I did not know the empty nature of this hospitable message, seeing to whom it was directed!

  The parcel was then placed in the middle of a large Second Empire marble table, standing upon gilt eagles' claws in the centre of the apartment. About six in the evening James Joyce arrived, and the Punch and Judy show began.

  Joyce was accompanied by a tallish youth, whom he introduced to Eliot as his son. Eliot then introduced me to Joyce. We stood collected about the shoddily-ornamented french table, in the decor of the cheap dignity of the red-curtained apartment, as if we had been people out of a scene in an 1870 gazette, resuscitated by Max Ernst, to amuse the tired intelligentsia— bowing in a cosmopolitan manner to each other across Ezra's prize-packet, which was the proximate cause of this solemn occasion.

  When Joyce heard my name he started in a very flattering fashion. Politely he was galvanized by his historic scene, and then collapsed. It was as if he had been gently pricked with the ghost of a hat-pin of a corsetted demirep out of the Police Gazette, and had given a highly well-bred exhibition of stimulus-response. Suppose this exhibition to have been undertaken for a lecture (with demonstrations) on 'Behaviour', and you have the whole picture. He raised his eyebrows to denote surprise and satisfaction at the auspicious occasion; he said Ah! Wyndham Lewis civilly under his breath, and I bowed again in acknowledgement, at the repetition of my name. He then with a courteous haste looked around for his son, who was heavily scowling in the background, and effected an introduction. His son stiffened, and, still scowling, bowed towards me with ceremony. Bringing my heels together, unintentionally with a noticeable report, I returned the salute. We all then sat down. But only for a moment.

  Joyce lay back in the stiff chair he had taken from behind him, crossed his leg, the lifted leg laid out horizontally upon the one in support like an artificial limb, an arm flung back over the summit of the sumptuous chair. He dangled negligently his straw hat, a regulation 'boater'. We were on either side of the table, the visitors and ourselves, upon which stood the enigmatical parcel.

  Eliot now rose to his feet. He approached the table, and with one eyebrow drawn up, and a finger pointing, announced to James Joyce that this was that parcel, to which he had referred in his wire, and which had been given into his care, and he formally delivered it, thus acquitting himself of his commission.

  'Ah! Is this the parcel you mentioned in your note?' enquired Joyce, overcoming the elegant reluctance of a certain undisguised fatigue in his person. And Eliot admitted that it was, and resumed his seat.

  I stood up : and, turning my back upon the others, arranged my tie in the cracked Paris mirror—whose irrelevant imperfections, happening to bisect my image, bestowed upon me the mask of a syphilitic Creole. I was a little startled: but I stared out of countenance this unmannerly distortion, and then turned about, remaining standing.

  James Joyce was by now attempting to untie the crafty housewifely knots of the cunning old Ezra. After a little he asked his son crossly in Italian for a penknife. Still more crossly his son informed him that he had no penknife. But Eliot got up, saying 'You want a knife? I have not got a knife, I think!' We were able, ultimately, to provide a pair of nail scissors.

  At last the strings were cut. A little gingerly Joyce unrolled the slovenly swaddlings of damp British brown paper in which the good-hearted American had packed up what he had put inside. Thereupon, along with some nondescript garments for the trunk—there were no trousers I believe—a fairly presentable pair of old brown shoes stood revealed, in the centre of the bourgeois French table.

  As the meaning of this scene flashed upon my listless understanding, I saw in my mind's eye the phantom of the little enigmatic Ezra standing there (provided by our actions, and the position of his footgear at this moment, with a dominating stature which otherwise he scarcely could have attained) silently surveying his handiwork.

  James Joyce, exclaiming very faintly 'Oh!' looked up, and we all gazed at the old shoes for a moment. 'Oh!' I echoed and laughed, and Joyce left the shoes where they were, disclosed as the matrix of the disturbed leaves of the parcel. He turned away and sat down again, placing his left ankle upon his right knee, and squeezing, and then releasing, the horizontal limb.

  With a smile even slower in materializing than his still-trailing Bostonian voice (a handsome young United States President, to give you an idea—-adding a Gioconda smile to the other charms of this office) Eliot asked our visitor if he would have dinner with us. Joyce turned to his son, and speaking very rapidly in Italian, the language always employed by him, so it seemed, in his family circle, he told him to go home: he would inform his mother that his father would not be home to dinner after all. Yes, his father had accepted an invitation to dinner, and would not be back after all, for the evening meal! Did he understand? To tell his mother that his father—But the son very hotly answered his father back, at this, after but a moment's hesitation on account of the company: evidently he did not by any means relish being entrusted with messages. It was, however, with greater hotness, in yet more resonant Italian, that the son expressed his rebellious sensations when the imperturbable Jimmie handed him the parcel of disreputable footwear. That was the last straw—this revolting, this unbecoming packet. Having exchanged a good number of stormy words, in a series of passionate asides—in a good imitation of an altercation between a couple of neapolitan touts, of the better order— Joyce, pere et fils, separated, the latter rushing away with the shoes beneath his arm, his face crimson and his eyes blazing with a truly southern ferocity—first having mastered himself for a moment sufficiently to bow to me from the hips, and to shake hands with heroic punctilio. This scene took place as we were about to leave the small hotel.

  CHAPTER V

  Fir
st Meeting with Ezra Pound

  As I have decided to get these principal introductions over first, I will postpone the sequel to my tale of the pair of old shoes. I will go back to an even remoter scene, in the Vienna Cafe in New Oxford Street, in order to give you my first reluctant glimpses of Ezra Pound.

  I say reluctant, but that is too active an expression. Perhaps I should say it was with a complete passivity on my side, tinctured with a certain mild surliness, that acquaintance with Ezra Pound was gradually effected. But once it was in being, not in spite of quite, but with no assistance from, myself, I enjoyed that acquaintanceship immoderately. This theatrical fellow, as he first seemed to me, I found to be 'one of the best'. I still regard him as one of the best, even one of the best poets.

  On the first two occasions on which we met I did not speak to him: on the second occasion he addressed a few remarks to me, but I did not reply. I did not consider it necessary to do so, he seemed in fact to be addressing somebody else. I mean that what he said did not appear to be appropriate, or to have any relevance—as a remark addressed to me.

  'This young man could probably tell you!' was I think what he said, with great archness, narrowing his eyes and regarding me with mischievous goodwill.

  There had been some question of the whereabouts of a kidnapped or absconding prostitute. Ezra was already attributing to those he liked proclivities which he was persuaded must accompany the revolutionary intellect. And he had been told that I was a 'rebel'. That I was, undoubtedly: but it did not occur to him that I might not be a conventional rebel, for Pound was all for convention, as he was all rebellion.