Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme) by Robert Graves
Philosopher. Now that the problem is stated in this completer form, I shall be interested to hear your dreams tomorrow morning. I expect them to bring you to some sort of conclusion: it will not be the first time that our dreams and our philosophy have developed concurrently.
II
THE NEXT DAY
Philosopher. Well, what were your dreams?
Poet. Forgotten. But last night I began writing a poem and this morning I finished it; and as apparently my dreams provided something that enabled me to finish this morning, quite easily, what seemed an impossible problem last night; and as poetry and dreams are closely allied and sometimes identical, your expectations have been more or less satisfied.
Philosopher. Well then, read!
Poet. You, landlord, when your tenants make complaint
Of uncouth doings in the black of night,
And even in decent sunlit hours of day;
Of choristers who practise doleful anthems
And the grey vicar, candlestick in hand,
Hunting his spectacles from room to room;
Or when they speak of eviller visitations
Of faces silver-white, noseless and earless,
Outcry of clappers, inarticulate moans;
Or tell how always on a Saturday
Come gaunt old men, with beards and parchment rolls
And long-drawn Babylonian misereres
Trailing procession through the solid walls;
Or when they chance on scenes of solemn passion
Where, cloak and toga duly hung on nails,
Breast kisses breast and thighs are joined with thighs
While incense bums beside the rose-wreathed couch –
Be then the historian concealing nothing,
Inform them of the age of this foundation,
Registry-office now, once parsonage,
Before that lazar-house; farther back yet
Synagogue (in the reign of good King John)
And even before, a shrine to Roman Venus;
Whose tenants in each stem successive age
Had variance with their ghostly predecessors,
Each making claim for undisturbed possession.
Relate how once with candle, bell and book
The surly vicar strove to exorcize
Ghosts of the lepers, but they stayed to plague him,
Being blind, stone-deaf and obstinate in grief.
Tell them, these lepers when they lived in flesh
Saw phantoms too, they cowered in palsied fear
From the rabbi and his fur-capped congregation.
Nor had these Jews enjoyed possessive peace,
They had called the vengeance of their angels down
On ghost defilers of God’s chosen place,
The Venus-worshippers; archangels even
Proved powerless to evict them. And these Romans,
Had they no strange incursions at their shrine
Of Druid knives and basket-sacrifices
Breaking the sacred raptures of the kiss?
Was not their temple founded here to mask
The lopped oakgrove of aboriginal gods?
Then let your tenants, duly warned, consider
Their duty as the present occupants
Or their advantage, if that touches nearer,
Of being the first to practise tolerance,
Allotting private times to every faction
Inviolable by others, quick or dead;
Reserving for themselves, free from all trespass
Such office-hours as business may demand,
Lest, failing to deal fairly, they themselves
May century-long be doomed to walk these rooms.
Then let them think it more than possible
That future tenants may resent intrusion
At casual moments of the night or day
Of Gretna marriages, proud fatherhood
And red-eyed notifications of decease.
There it finishes: but I did not recognize until after the poem was written why I had made the haunted house a registry-office, though I was aware that during the war Mock Beggar Hall had been used as a Government office-building: it evidently symbolizes European civilization, officialdom attempting to control the individual from the cradle to the coffin. The allegory has broadened from the conflicts within the individual to the conflicts between groups of individuals. I had only recognized, before I began writing, that the Romans and the Jews were standing respectively for flesh and spirit: it seems now that they also symbolize the two main historic streams, often conflicting, to which Europe owes her legal and religious development.
Philosopher. If you are waiting for my comment, it is this. The poem has only just begun its broader allegory. While I approve the idea of tolerance, as you know, I question your solution: it appears too much like a compromise, and compromises can by their nature only lead to further conflict. The registrar draws up his very characteristic time-table and gives himself all the best hours of every day but Sunday; will the ghosts be satisfied?
Poet. I appreciate your point. I am afraid that this Haunted House is going to haunt us for a great while yet.
III
A WEEK LATER
Philosopher. Are there any new developments of the poem you read me?
Poet. Mock Beggar Hall? Yes. A lawyer and the landlord have started an ethical dialogue. The lawyer after beginning with the poem more or less as I read it you has been answered as follows: –
I must confess myself vastly surprised
To hear a lawyer recognizing ghosts
Possessed of individual rights and feelings,
Instead of taking the old legal stand
‘Once the estate is settled, the man’s dead.’
Your lyrical presentation, too, was fine.
And I admire your sense in recognizing
There’s a commercial and a legal question
Bound up with hauntings.
(Then the lawyer says complacently):
That’s sound common sense.
(The landlord picks him up quickly):
Yet common sense, the Anglo-Saxon flair
Seems weakest on its vaunted practical side,
Compromise, managing the unruly factions
With ‘You stay here’ and ‘You keep over there’.
Only advice at first, no hint of arms.
‘We have no greed for power, desiring only
Business connections, order, progress, Peace.
Trust us; we can restore your fainting land.
We’ll be your servants, stewards and managers.’
For awhile, admitted, things go well enough.
At first mere arbitration, registration,
Statistics, scientific service, steam,
Development of minerals, harbours, roads.
‘Responsibility weighs most heavy on us.
Not central power, mere central agency
For news, views, experts on one thing or other.’
Yet gradually by slow degrees appears
A small police well drilled with guns and rods,
A loyal stem Praetorian Guard, abets
The rising tyranny; soon Augustan splendour,
The pink Protectorate grown Empire-red,
Army and Navy, Laws, poll-taxes, fines,
History written as ‘Divide and Rule’
By loyal Virgils, ‘Tu regere imperio
Populos, Romane’ and the rest of it,
Clipped powers of movement for the native tribes,
Still a pretence of representative rule
With general fatness, general acquiescence.
National debit swings across to credit,
And every weak dissenting voice goes dumb.
The Jews enjoy each Saturday for Sabbath,
Christians enjoy each Sunday for their Sabbath,
And all goes well until some Christian Feast
Falls on a holy Jewish Saturday.
Then the
Calls out the lathi-wallahs to line the streets.
Order must be preserved whatever the cost.
Then ‘Head Cue, ‘Fork Cut’, ‘Belly Point’, ‘Charge Lathis’
Where two processions take converging routes.
They drive both backward to their starting points,
Killing a few, breaking some arms and legs,
With a complacent ‘But for us, of course
Things would have been far worse’, which pleases no one.
Then ‘Those ungrateful swine’; ‘These arrogant bullies’
Whispered at first, soon shouted in the squares
When distant Rome outlasts her conquering noon,
Next, boycotts, massacre, non-co-operation,
And the play drags to its anarchic end.
No, sir, though I admit the attempt will come
In much the manner you have just outlined
Towards settling the disputes between these factions,
I’ll take no part in hurrying on events.
No arbitration I could give would lull
Suspicions of an interested motive.
I sailed along easily so far, but then grounded: now I have come to talk it over with you.
Philosopher. How it broadens! but why this satire on British imperialism? How does it rise out of the former version of the poem and the original dream? I believe I see the connexion but please reassure me.
Poet. Surely this, that efforts to exploit one mode of behaviour in the individual at the expense of all others is a form of imperialism comparable with a political imperialism, and though at first it is the ready solution of former difficulties, all imperialism as such is bound in its later stages to run a certain unhappy course. Besides, British Imperialism is not singled out for illustration; Roman imperialism is hinted too, and at one point I was considering the origins of the recent tyranny in Russia; although not invaders from outside and honestly communistic the Bolsheviks started and developed along the usual imperialistic lines. All imperialisms, Tartar, Mogul, Rajput, Aztec, Spanish; there is no difference in the outline of their rise and fall.
Philosopher. That part will stand, then. But I am not happy about the relations between your lawyer and your landlord. If the landlord is really a landlord, he cannot afford to criticize the legal methods that maintain him. How did he become landlord except approving and approved by the lawyer? I make this criticism not in any formal scholastic sense. I do not mind whether poems continue the single-strand logic of the Classicist or the metamorphic logic of the Romantic method – I am just continuing your allegory.
Poet. I know that, but I can hardly follow yet. Probably this is the sandbank where I ran aground.
Philosopher. Did you see what General…what General Dunkel said about the Indian question at Cascara Colony in Africa?
Poet. Tell me. I have always been taught to regard Dunkel as the one honest man in world-politics; since his insistence on the rights of European subject races when the map was being arranged four years ago, and his recent outburst at the Imperial Conference.
Philosopher. His comment was something to this effect. ‘Why should the Cascara Indians, with their tradition of an exclusive caste system, object to us English becoming the military and administrative caste, which in a modern state takes precedence of all others?’ He pointed out that the white races have obviously developed the sciences of government and war further than either the brown or black races.
Poet. I don’t blame Dunkel, he could hardly have taken any other view. A verbal question by the way; I believe that it would add greatly to the amity of nations if the word pink were substituted for white, and blue for black as you talk of a blue Persian cat: there is a powerful symbolic suggestion in white and black, white for honour and purity, black for dishonour and devilry.
Philosopher. Neither do I blame Dunkel; and the apparent inconsistency of his attitude is easy to explain. It is possible for him to be generous to European subject races where he is not personally concerned and where it is only a case of pink against pink, but in his own continent the hegemony of the pink races over the blue and brown must be assured. It is an interesting comment on your lawyer character that Dunkel began his career as most politicians do by practising law.
Poet. Enlarge on the imperialistic question, please.
Philosopher. Although not pink myself, I can sympathize with the Pinks – as you know I spent some years in one of the few surviving Brown tyrannies outside the Pink Raj. These Pinks, then, once they are firmly enough established on Brown territory explain themselves thus. ‘Here we are, and here by fate, we stay. We hate our exile and we hate your climate, but we are forced to maintain ourselves here because, for one thing, there is not enough scope at home for the military and administrative professions to which we have been educated. In the wider sense, we stay here because our country is organized for trade and industry and is dependent on yours for a steady supply of raw materials and a steady market for our admirable manufactured goods. You Easterners have a proverb “First, the Bible, then the enamel basin, then the bayonet.” It is unhappily true about the bayonet, but a minority is always at the mercy of the majority unless it controls the administrative offices, and these finally depend on bayonet power. We act only in self-defence and I think you will agree that we manage very efficiently. As for certain disagreements that have arisen between us, you must recognize that being Pink we cannot afford to live in these unhealthy coast-cities and plain-cities all the year round. Our families have joined us here now and in the heats we must all take our turn for going up to the hills; to stay where we are would kill us quickly. Therefore whether by Bible, basin or bayonet we intend to possess ourselves of the hill-stations which you formerly occupied and to keep these safe for Pinks. You are Browns, some of you even Blues, therefore you can, though with difficulty, survive the summer on the plains and in the coast-cities: we are sorry for you, but life is as a struggle for existence, and by this arrangement we can both just survive. Remember that if ever there is a famine in the land, our administrative genius will alleviate it as usual; that is to say, after we have taken our share of the rice supply and after the usual quantity has been shipped home and paid for by the money that covers our salaries, we will then equitably distribute what is left among you. If there is only just enough rice for us to eat we will not send any home (we can get our salaries by simple land taxes) but we will equitably share among your provinces the rice-water in which our rice has been boiled: and you can drink it out of our admirable enamel basins.’ That genuinely well-disposed attitude is what the subject races call ‘mocking the beggar’.
Poet. I see. Then Dunkel will only be able to support the League of Nations’ ideals when his own basin of rice is not threatened. Similarly the Pink Americans are up against a Blue Problem in the South. The pink minority there found that it could not survive when the blue majority had been given the franchise by well-meaning but unintelligent Dunkels in the North: there followed the original Klu Klux Klan revolt, and pink hegemony was restored under a legal fiction of democracy, that is, Blue voted, Pink voted, but the Blue votes were left uncounted in the Ballot box: or it amounted to that.
Philosopher. Again, the Struggle for Existence way of looking at human relationships insures that, where an imperialism is tottering, the ancient honest virtues approved by a Cato or a Cincinnatus tend to disappear in political circles. You will find the central government of a province spending an annual sum of millions, through its secret service, on keeping one subject-race at loggerheads with another. This enables them to point out the necessity of their continued government, if the country is not to be torn in pieces. Meanwhile the subject races, who have developed each in their own communities the moral code of schoolboys, prisoners or prostitutes, that lies and low cunning are commendable when directed against the system that holds them down, begin to abandon their former technique for a sort of mutinous self-righteousness correspond
Poet. I’ll put the poem away for a bit.
IV
A MONTH LATER
Poet. Do you remember Mock Beggar Hall?
Philosopher. I have been expecting some more news: read it as it stands now.
Poet. I am not at all satisfied with it as a final version of the poem, but a new point has emerged: that you cannot talk about the Voice of India or the Voice of England or the Voice of Civilization or the Voice of the Individual, even, where these are not any longer entities but storm-centres, rough houses of acute conflict. So in the poem as I read it to you last time, though the lawyer still makes his lawyer speech, and gets the same answer, the man who answers him is not called the landlord but just ‘The Other’, because as landlord he cannot co-exist with the lawyer. He represents the hope of reintegration in these groups. He has no contact with the lawyer’s practical suggestions because the law is fed by litigation and because he cannot realize himself as owner of the property until the rival claims to the estate disappear and the tenants quit.
Philosopher. Well, then.
Poet reads:
LAWYER. My card, sir.
THE OTHER, (reads). John B. League of League and Action,
Solicitors, late Liberty and Action.
LAWYER. I have come to speak about some real estate
Between King Street and Martyr Avenue.
I understand that’s yours, or we could prove
Your legal title if you cared to employ us.
May I continue, sir?
THE OTHER. Then, Mr. League
Let this be talk and not a consultation;
Nothing you say must prejudice my purse.
I’m not the landlord yet.
LAWYER. Quite so.
THE OTHER. Remember
I never dealt with Liberty and Action
Nor feel disposed to deal with League and Action
Though Mr. Liberty, I hear, is dead.
LAWYER. Poor man, he got the firm in disrepute.
A most efficient lawyer in his day