After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (19 page)

Jeremy almost laughed. The coincidence that Mr. Propter should have picked on the same passage as had caught Dr. Obispo's eye that morning gave him a peculiar satisfaction. “Pity he couldn't have read a little Kant,” he said.
“Dios en si
seems to be much the same as
Ding an sich.
Unknowable by the human mind.”

“Unknowable by the
personal
human mind,” Mr. Propter agreed, “because personality is self-will, and self-will is the negation of reality, the denial of God. So far as the ordinary human personality is concerned, Kant is perfectly right in saying that the thing in itself is unknowable.
Dios en si
can't be comprehended by a consciousness dominated by an ego. But now suppose there were some way of eliminating the ego from consciousness.
If
you could do this, you'd get close to reality, you'd be in a position to comprehend
Dios en si.
Now, the interesting thing is that, as a matter of brute fact, this can be done, has been done again and again. Kant's blind alley is for people who choose to remain on the human level. If you choose to climb on to the level of eternity, the
impasse
no longer exists.”

There was a silence. Mr. Propter turned over the sheets, pausing every now and then to decipher a line or two of the fine caligraphy.
“ ‘Tres maneras hay de silencio,' ”
he read aloud after a moment.
“ ‘El primero es de palabras, el segundo de deseos y el tercero de pensamientos.'
He writes nicely, don't you think? Probably that had a lot to do with his extraordinary success. How disastrous when a man knows how to say the wrong things in the right way! Incidentally,” he added, looking up with a smile into Jeremy's face, “how few great stylists have ever said any of the right things. That's one of the troubles about education in the humanities. The best that has been thought and said. Very nice. But best in which way? Alas, only in form. The content is generally deplorable.” He turned back to the letters. After a moment, another passage caught his attention.
“ ‘Oirá y leerd el hombre racional estas espirituales materias, pero no llegerá, dice San Pablo, a comprenderlas: Animalis homo non percipit ea quae sunt spiritus.'
And not merely
animalis homo,”
Mr. Propter commented. “Also
humanus homo.
Indeed, above all
humanus homo.
And you might even add that
humanus homo non percipit ea quae sunt animalis.
Insofar as we think as strictly human beings, we fail to understand what is below us no less than what is above. And then there's a further trouble. Suppose we stop thinking in a strictly human fashion; suppose we make it possible for ourselves to have direct intuitions of the non-human realities in which, so to speak, we're imbedded. Well and good. But what happens when we try to pass on the knowledge so acquired? We're floored. The only vocabulary at our disposal is a vocabulary primarily intended for thinking strictly human thoughts about strictly human concerns. But the things
we
want to talk about are non-human realities and non-human ways of thinking. Hence the radical inadequacy of all statements about our animal nature and, even more, of all statements about God or spirit, or eternity.”

Jeremy uttered a little cough. “I can think of some pretty adequate statements about . . .” he paused, beamed, caressed his polished scalp; . . . “well, about the more
intime
aspects of our animal nature,” he concluded demurely. His face suddenly clouded; he had remembered his treasure trove and Dr. Obispo's impudent theft.

“But what does their adequacy depend on?” Mr. Propter asked. “Not so much on the writer's skill as the reader's response. The direct, animal intuitions aren't rendered by words; the words merely remind you of your memories of similar experiences.
Notus color
is what Virgil says when he's talking about the sensations experienced by Vulcan in the embraces of Venus. Familiar heat. No attempt at description or analysis; no effort to get any kind of verbal equivalence to the facts. Just a reminder. But that reminder is enough to make the passage one of the most voluptuous affairs in Latin poetry. Virgil left the work to his readers. And, by and large, that's what most erotic writers are content to do. The few who try to do the work themselves have to flounder about with metaphors and similes and analogies. You know the sort of stuff: fire, whirlwinds, heaven, darts.”

“ ‘The vale of lilies,' ” Jeremy quoted, “ ‘And the bower of bliss.' ”

“Not to mention the expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” said Mr. Propter; “and all the other figures of speech. An endless variety, with only one feature in common—they're all composed of words which don't connote any aspect of the subject they're supposed to describe.”

“Saying one thing in order to mean another,” Jeremy put in. “Isn't that one of the possible definitions of imaginative literature?”

“Maybe,” Mr. Propter answered. “But what chiefly interests me at the moment is the fact that our immediate animal intuitions have never been given any but the most summary and inadequate labels. We say ‘red,' for example, or ‘pleasant,' and just leave it at that without trying to find verbal equivalents for the various aspects of perceiving redness or experiencing pleasure.”

“Well, isn't that because you can't go beyond ‘red' or ‘pleasant'?” said Pete. “They're just facts, ultimate facts.”

“Like giraffes,” Jeremy added. “ ‘There ain't no such animal,' is what the rationalist says, when he's shown its portrait. And then in it walks, neck and all!”

“You're right,” said Mr. Propter. “A giraffe is an ultimate fact. You've got to accept it, whether you like it or not. But accepting the giraffe doesn't prevent you from studying and describing it. And the same applies to redness or pleasure or
notus calor.
They can be analysed, and the results of the analysis can be described by means of suitable words. But as a matter of historical fact, this hasn't been done.”

Pete nodded slowly. “Why do you figure that should be?” he asked.

“Well,” said Mr. Propter, “I should say it's because men have always been more interested in doing and feeling than in understanding. Always too busy making good and having thrills and doing what's ‘done' and worshipping the local idols—too busy with all this even to feel any desire to have an adequate verbal instrument for elucidating their experiences. Look at the languages we've inherited—incomparably effective in rousing violent and exciting emotions; an ever-present help for those who want to get on in the world; worse than useless for any one who aspires to disinterested understanding. Hence, even on the strictly human level, the need for special impersonal languages like mathematics and technical vocabularies of the various sciences. Wherever men have felt the wish to understand, they've given up the traditional language and substituted for it another special language, more precise and, above all, less contaminated with self-interest.

“Now, here's a very significant fact. Imaginative literature deals mainly with the everyday life of men and women; and the everyday life of men and women consists, to a large extent, of immediate animal experiences. But the makers of imaginative literature have never forged an impersonal, uncontaminated language for the elucidation of immediate experiences. They're content to use the bare, unanalysed names of experiences as mere aids to their own and their reader's memory. Every direct intuition is
notus calor,
with the connotation of the words left open, so to speak, for each individual reader to supply according to the nature of his or her particular experiences in the past. Simple, but not exactly scientific. But then people don't read literature in order to understand; they read it because they want to re-live the feelings and sensations which they found exciting in the past. Art can be a lot of things; but in actual practice, most of it is merely the mental equivalent of alcohol and cantharides.”

Mr. Propter looked down again at the close-set lines of Molinos' epistle. “
‘Oirá y leerá el hombre racional estas espirituales materias,' ”
he read out once more.
“ ‘Pero non llegerá a comprenderlas'
He'll hear and read these things, but he won't succeed in understanding them. And he won't succeed,” said Mr. Propter, closing the file and handing it back to Jeremy, “he won't succeed for one of two excellent reasons. Either he has never seen the giraffes in question, and so, being an
hombre racional,
knows quite well that there ain't no such animal. Or else he has had glimpses of the creatures, or has some other reason for believing in their existence, but can't understand what the experts say about them; can't understand because of the inadequacy of the language in which the fauna of the spiritual world are ordinarily described. In other words, he either hasn't had the immediate experience of eternity and so has no reason to believe that eternity exists; or else he
does
believe that eternity exists, but can't make head or tail of the language in which it's talked about by those who have had experience of it. Furthermore, when he wants to talk about eternity himself—and he may wish to do so either in order to communicate his own experiences to others or to understand them better, from the human point of view, himself—he finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. For either he recognizes that the existing language is unsuitable—in which case he has only two rational choices: to say nothing at all, or to invent a new and better technical language of his own, a calculus of eternity, so to speak, a special algebra of spiritual experience (and if he does invent it, nobody who hasn't learnt it will know what he's talking about). So much for the first horn of the dilemma. The second horn is reserved for those who don't recognize the inadequacy of the existing language; or else who do recognize it, but are irrationally hopeful enough to take a chance with an instrument which they know to be worthless. These people will write in the existing language, and their writing will be, in consequence, more or less completely misunderstood by most of their readers. Inevitably, because the words they use don't correspond to the things they're talking about. Most of them are words taken from the language of everyday life. But the language of everyday life refers almost exclusively to strictly human affairs. What happens when you apply words derived from that language to experiences on the plane of the spirit, the plane of timeless experience? Obviously, you create a misunderstanding; you say what you didn't mean to say.”

Pete interrupted him. “I'd like an example, Mr. Propter,” he said.

“All right,” the other answered. “Let's take the commonest word in all religious literature: love. On the human level the word means—what? Practically everything from Mother to the Marquis de Sade.”

The name reminded Jeremy yet again of what had happened to the “Cent-Vingt Jours de Sodome.” Really it was too insufferable! The impudence of it ... !

“We don't even make the simple Greek distinction between
erao
and
philo, eros
and
agape.
With us, everything is just love, whether it's self-sacrificing or possessive, whether it's friendship or lust or homicidal lunacy. It's all just love,” he repeated. “Idiotic word! Even on the human level it's hopelessly ambiguous. And when you begin using it in relation to experiences on the level of eternity—well, it's simply disastrous. ‘The love of God.' ‘God's love for us.' ‘The saint's love for his fellows.' What does the word stand for in such phrases? And in what way is this related to what it stands for when it's applied to a young mother suckling her baby? Or to Romeo climbing into Juliet's bedroom? Or to Othello as he strangles Desdemona? Or to the research worker who loves his science? Or to the patriot who's ready to die for his country—to die, and, in the meantime, to kill, steal, lie, swindle and torture for it? Is there really anything in common between what the word stands for in these contexts and what it stands for when one talks, let us say, of the Buddha's love for all sentient beings? Obviously, the answer is: No, there isn't. On the human level, the word stands for a great many different states of mind and ways of behaving. Dissimilar in many respects, but alike at least in this: they're all accompanied by emotional excitement and they all contain an element of craving. Whereas the most characteristic features of the enlightened person's experience are serenity and disinterestedness. In other words, the absence of excitement and the absence of craving.”

“The absence of excitement and the absence of craving,” Pete said to himself, while the image of Virginia in her yachting cap, riding her pink scooter, kneeling in her shorts under the arch of the Grotto, swam before his inward eye.

“Distinctions in fact ought to be represented by distinctions in language,” Mr. Propter was saying. “If they're not, you can't expect to talk sense. In spite of which, we insist on using one word to connote entirely different things. ‘God is love,' we say. The word's the same as the one we use when we talk about ‘being in love,' or ‘loving one's children' or ‘being inspired by love of country.' Consequently we tend to think that the thing we're talking about must be more or less the same. We imagine in a vague, reverential way, that God is composed of a kind of immensely magnified yearning.” Mr. Propter shook his head. “Creating God in our own image. It flatters our vanity, and of course we prefer vanity to understanding. Hence those confusions of language. If we wanted to understand the world, if we wanted to think about it realistically, we should say that we were in love, but that God was
x
-love. In this way people who had never had any first-hand experience on the level of eternity would at least be given a chance of knowing intellectually that what happens on that level is not the same as what happens on the strictly human level. They'd know, because they'd seen it in print, that there was some kind of difference between love and
x
-love. Consequently, they'd have less excuse than people have today for imagining that God was like themselves, only a bit more so on the side of respectability and a bit less so, of course, on the other side.