Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  Gogol has an imaginative creativeness that is overwhelming. As a satirist he has few equals, and his purely technical equipment is enormous. But of passion he has not a trace. Aksakov, Turgenev, Herzen, Chekhov, diverse as their separate geniuses are, they are alike in lacking this particular level of emotion. In the work of Dostoievsky and Tolstoi it is as though Russian literature suddenly closed its fist, and the whole literary organism was affected; there was a new tenseness, a gathering together of resources, a radically tightened nervous tone. With the moralists Russian realism reached its most fervent and glorious phase.

  From the viewpoint of artistic merit it would be absurd to compare the new Southern writers with the Russians. It is only in their approach to their material that analogies can be drawn. The first real novel (this does not include old romances) to be written in the South did not appear until after 1900, when Russian realism was already on the decline. Barren Ground, by Ellen Glasgow, marked the beginning of an uncertain period of development, and Southern literature can only be considered to have made its start during the past fifteen years. But with the arrival of Caldwell and Faulkner a new and vital outgrowth began. And the South at the present time boils with literary energy. W. J. Cash in The Mind of the South says that if these days you shoot off a gun at random below the Mason-Dixon line you are bound by the law of averages to hit a writer.

  An observer should not criticize a work of art on the grounds that it lacks certain qualities that the artist himself never intended to include. The writer has the prerogative of limiting his own scope, of staking the boundaries of his own kingdom. This must be remembered when attempting to appraise the work now being done in the South.

  The Southern writers have reacted to their environment in just the same manner as the Russians prior to the time of Dostoievsky and Tolstoi. They have transposed the painful substance of life around them as accurately as possible, without taking the part of emotional panderer between the truth as it is and the feelings of the reader. The “cruelty” of which the Southerners have been accused is at bottom only a sort of naïveté, an acceptance of spiritual inconsistencies without asking the reason why, without attempting to propose an answer. Undeniably there is an infantile quality about this clarity of vision and rejection of responsibility.

  But literature in the South is a young growth, and it cannot be blamed because of its youth. One can only speculate about the possible course of its development or retrogression. Southern writing has reached the limits of a moral realism; something more must be added if it is to continue to flourish. As yet there has been no forerunner of an analytical moralist such as Tolstoi or a mystic like Dostoievsky. But the material with which Southern literature deals seems to demand of itself that certain basic questions be posed. If and when this group of writers is able to assume a philosophical responsibility, the whole tone and structure of their work will be enriched, and Southern writing will enter a more complete and vigorous stage in its evolution.

  Isak Dinesen: Winter’s Tales

  IN THE WORLD OF NATURE, a sudden variation of type is an event of greatest interest to scientists, who call the result of this phenomenon a “sport.” In the world of literature a similar mutation has no definitive name, but it is a rare and wonderful occurrence and such a book is not soon forgotten. In the year 1934 a literary sport of this type was a book by an unknown European writing under an assumed name. The book was a collection of stories so entirely unique in their very intention that among contemporary works they had a strangely anachronistic effect; the book was reminiscent of nothing written in this century, and to make analogies and comparisons one had to think back to Boccaccio, or perhaps to the German romantics. For to begin with, the author had reverted to a medium of expression that in these days is almost obsolete, the most ancient and the purest form of fiction: the tale. Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen, is a group of exquisite, weird, almost strangely brilliant stories; their appearance marked the debut of an extraordinary talent.

  The second book by Isak Dinesen followed about four years later, and those who had expected a similar performance were surprised, but hardly disappointed. Out of Africa, a book concerning the years that the author lived on a coffee plantation in British Kenya, is a simple and tender personal document, written with a controlled and elegiac severity altogether different from the dark Gothic recklessness of the tales. Meanwhile, the identity of the author had been revealed; Isak Dinesen is the pen name of a Danish woman, who writes in English.

  Winter’s Tales is in suite with her first book. Traditionally, the tale has a dual purpose: to delight and to point a moral. Isak Dinesen unquestionably fulfills the first of these requirements. She is lavish with the use of the tale-teller’s chief stock-in-trade, the delight of astonishment. Masquerade, trickery, swift twists of fortune are only the cruder kinds of astonishment. The real surprise is in the writing itself: the unexpected, slightly archaic word combinations, the tightrope grace of the sentences themselves. She writes of the green beech forests in Denmark in the month of May, or of a young scribe looking out into the snowy Parisian night beneath the shadow of Notre Dame—and immediately the image has come alive within the matrix of its proper atmosphere.

  The second purpose of the tale, the moral point, may need some explanation. For the morality of the tale is odd and arbitrary, having little or no relation to ordinary everyday ethics, and determined solely by the tale-teller himself. In the true tale the characters are bound in the end to get what is coming to them; however, the justice is an erratic justice. Thus in the first story of this new collection, “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale,” the young protagonist rescues a falcon caught in the rigging of a mast, and because of this action he is later spared punishment for a murder he has committed. The tale-teller assumes the responsibility of God, and grants to his characters a moral freedom accountable only to the author himself. And furthermore, he ensures the characters the necessary worldly power to use this freedom; therefore, the characters of the tale are traditionally the aristocratic and the royal, if not in the flesh. Isak Dinesen writes of foot-loose travelers, of despots and a king, and of “that fascinating and irresistible personage, perhaps the most fascinating and irresistible in the whole world: the dreamer whose dreams come true.” It is this quality of headlong freedom and recklessness that gives to the characters of Winter’s Tales their suave and often crazy charm.

  Each of these eleven tales is a graceful and finished story. “Sorrow Acre,” perhaps the best, deals with the tyranny and defeat of an old lord by a victim more powerful than he. “Peter and Rosa” is an idyll of two young dreamers. “Alkmene” tells of a slightly mad young girl who went to town to watch a public execution. However, there is no story in Winter’s Tales of quite the same freakish brilliance as the best of the Seven Gothic Tales. Perhaps this slight sense of disappointment is due to the fact that, having already once entered the imagination of Isak Dinesen, as a traveler enters a foreign land, the delight of surprise on a return visit is not too keen. But by any standards, except the precedent that Isak Dinesen has set for herself, these are tales of the highest excellence.

  Isak Dinesen: In Praise of Radiance

  IN 1938 I VISITED some friends who have a fine bookstore in Charleston. The first evening they asked if I had read Out of Africa, and I said I hadn’t. They told me it was a beautiful book and that I must read it. I turned my head away and said I was in no state for reading, since at the time I was just finishing my novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. I had imagined that it was a book about big-game hunting and I do not like to read about animals killed just for sport. All during the weekend there were references to Out of Africa. On Sunday, when I was leaving, they very quietly put Out of Africa in my lap, without words. My husband was driving so I was free to read. I opened to the first page:

  I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the
daytime you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful and the nights were cold.

  The geographical position, and the height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not its like in all the world. There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet, like the strong and refined essence of a continent. The colours were dry and burnt, like the colours in pottery. The trees had a light delicate foliage, the structure of which was different from that of the trees in Europe; it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal layers, and the formation gave to the tall solitary trees a likeness to the palms, or a heroic and romantic air like full-rigged ships with their sails clewed up, and to the edge of a wood a strange appearance as if the whole wood were faintly vibrating. Upon the grass of the great plains the crooked bare old thorn-trees were scattered, and the grass was spiced like thyme and bog-myrtle; in some places the scent was so strong, that it smarted in the nostrils. All the flowers that you found on the plains, or upon the creepers and liana in the native forest, were diminutive like flowers of the downs—only just in the beginning of the long rains a number of big, massive heavy-scented lilies sprang out on the plains. The views were immensely wide. Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility.

  We started driving in the early afternoon and I was so dazed by the poetry and truth of this great book, that when night came I continued reading Out of Africa with a flashlight. I kept thinking that this beauty and this truth could not go on, but page after page I was more enchanted. At the end of the book, I knew that Isak Dinesen had written a great dirge of the Continent of Africa. I knew that sublime security that a great, great writer can give to a reader. With her simplicity and “unequalled nobility” I realized that this was one of the most radiant books of my life.

  The burning deserts, the jungles, the hills opened my heart to Africa. Open to my heart, also, were the animals and that radiant being, Isak Dinesen. Farmer, doctor, lion hunter, if need be. Because of Out of Africa, I loved Isak Dinesen. When she would ride through a maise grassland, I would ride with her. Her dogs, her farm, “Lulu,” became my friends, and the natives for whom she had such great affection—Farah, Kamante, and all the people on the farm—I loved also. I had read Out of Africa so much and with so much love that the author had become my imaginary friend. Although I never wrote to her or sought to meet her, she was there in her stillness, her serenity, and her great wisdom to comfort me. In this book, shining with her humanity, of that great and tragic continent, her people became my people and her landscape my landscape.

  Naturally, I wanted to read her other works, and the next book I read was Seven Gothic Tales. Instead of the radiance of Out of Africa, the Tales have a quite different quality. They are brilliant, controlled, and each gives the air of a deliberate work of artistry. One realizes that the author is writing in a foreign language because of the strange, archaic quality of her beautiful prose. They had the quality of a luminous, sulphuric glow. When I was ill or out of sorts with the world, I would turn to Out of Africa, which never failed to comfort and support me—and when I wanted to be lifted out of my life, I would read Seven Gothic Tales or Winter’s Tales or, much later, The Last Tales.

  About two years ago, the Academy of Arts and Letters, of which I am a member, wrote to me that it had invited Isak Dinesen as an honorary member and guest. I hesitated to meet her because Isak Dinesen had been so fixed in my heart, I was afraid that the actual would disturb this image. However, I did go to the dinner and at cocktail time when I met the Academy’s president, I asked of him a great favor. I asked if I could sit near her at the dinner party. To my astonishment and joy he said that she had wanted to sit with me, and so the place cards were already on the table. He also asked me how we should address her since her name was the Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke. All I could say to him was that I was not going to call her “Butch” at the first meeting. I said, “I feel the best thing is ‘Baroness,’ so I will call her ‘Baroness,’ ” which I did until we were on a first-name basis and she asked me to call her Tanya, which is her English name.

  How can one think of a radiant being? I had only seen a picture of her when she was in her twenties: strong, live, wonderfully beautiful, and with one of her Scotch deerhounds in the shade of the African jungle. I had not thought visually about her person. When I met her, she was very, very frail and old but as she talked her face was lit like a candle in an old church. My heart trembled when I saw her fragility.

  When she spoke at the Academy dinner that evening, something happened which I had never seen there before. When she finished her talk, every member rose to applaud her.

  At the dinner she said she would like to meet Marilyn Monroe. Since I had met Marilyn several times, and since Arthur Miller was at the next table, I told her I thought that could be very easily arranged. So, I had the great honor of inviting my imaginary friend, Isak Dinesen, to meet Marilyn Monroe, with Arthur Miller, for luncheon in my home.

  Tanya was a magnificent conversationalist and loved to talk. Marilyn, with her beautiful blue eyes, listened in a “once-upon-a-time-way,” as did we all. Tanya talked about her friends Berkeley Cole and Denys Finch Hatton. She talked always with such warmth that the listeners didn’t have to try to interrupt or change her marvelous conversation.

  Tanya ate only oysters and drank only champagne. At the luncheon we had many oysters and for the big eaters several large soufflés. Arthur asked what doctor put her on that diet of nothing but oysters and champagne. She looked at him and said rather sharply, “Doctor? The doctors are horrified by my diet but I love champagne and I love oysters and they agree with me.” Then she added, “It is sad, though, when oysters are not in season, for then I have to turn back to asparagus in those dreary months.” Arthur mentioned something about protein and Tanya said, “I don’t know anything about that but I am old and I eat what I want and what agrees with me.” Then she went back to her reminiscences of friends in Africa.

  It was a great delight for her to be with colored people. Ida, my housekeeper, is colored, and so are my yardmen, Jesse and Sam. After lunch everybody danced and sang. A friend of Ida’s had brought in a motion picture camera, and there were pictures of Tanya dancing with Marilyn, me dancing with Arthur, and a great round of general dancing. I love to remember this for I never met Tanya again. Since writers seldom write to each other, our communication was infrequent but not vague. She sent me flowers when I was ill and lovely pictures of her cows and her darling dog in Rungsted Kyst.

  When I was asked to go to lecture at the Cheltenham Festival in England last year, I wrote Tanya and asked if she could possibly join me in London. I received a letter from Clara that she not only could not come to London but she could scarcely move from room to room. Soon afterward, I read that this most radiant being had died.

  In London, Cecil Beaton called me and said he had spent an afternoon with Tanya two weeks before her death. He invited me to tea. I went to Cecil’s extraordinary house. The walls of the sitting room were black velvet and there was a magnificent orange portrait of Cecil by Bébé Bérard, whom I loved very much, and who died about a decade ago. In that setting I could see vivacious Tanya with her delicate gestures, drinking champagne instead of tea, enchanting her listeners, enjoying her tales of long ago. I can imagine that she would have enjoyed the chic of the decor.

  Cecil said that he was in Denmark two weeks before her death and had called Tanya. He told her he had an appointment in Spain. Tanya said then, “Well, that means, Cecil, I will never see you again and it makes me very sad.” Thereupon, Cecil broke his appointment in Spain. Before he had time to hire a car to go to Rungsted Kyst, she called back and said, “Cecil, we have always been such good friends and I hate to have our friendship end on such a disappointing note.” Cecil said, “I am just leaving for Rungsted Kyst, and I shall see you this afternoon.” Tanya met him at the door, and the dri
ver, seeing her, took off his hat and gave her a full bow from the waist. Cecil asked if she was suffering and she said that the drugs they had given her were sufficient and that she was in no pain. Cecil gave me copies of the last photographs of her: aged and exquisite, she was among her beloved possessions, portraits of her ancestors, the chandeliers, and the beautiful old furniture. Clara wrote me later that she was buried under her favorite beech tree near the shore of Rungsted Kyst.

  THE WRITER’S WORK

  How I Began to Write

  IN OUR OLD GEORGIA HOME we used to have two sitting- rooms—a back one and a front one—with folding doors between. These were the family living-rooms and the theatre of my shows. The front sitting-room was the auditorium, the back sitting-room the stage. The sliding doors the curtain. In wintertime the firelight flickered dark and glowing on the walnut doors, and in the last strained moments before the curtain you noticed the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, the old tall clock with the glass front of painted swans. In summertime the rooms were stifling until the time for curtain, and the clock was silenced by sounds of yard-boy whistling and distant radios. In winter, frost flowers bloomed on the windowpanes (the winters in Georgia are very cold), and the rooms were drafty, quiet. The open summer lifted the curtains with each breeze, and there were the smells of sun-hot flowers and, toward twilight, watered grass. In winter we had cocoa after the show and in summer orange crush or lemonade. Winter and summer the cakes were always the same. They were made by Lucille, the cook we had in those days, and I have never tasted cakes as good as those cakes we used to have. The secret of their goodness lay, I believe, in the fact that they were always cakes that failed. They were chocolate raisin cupcakes that did not rise, so that there was no proper cupcake cap—the cakes were dank, flat and dense with raisins. The charm of those cakes was altogether accidental.