Читать книгу The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles - Arnold Bennett - Страница 17

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I who now reside permanently on that curious fourth-dimensional planet which we call the literary world; I, who follow the incredible parasitic trade of talking about what people have done, who am a sort of public weighing-machine upon which bookish wares must halt before passing from the factory to the consumer; I, who habitually think in articles, who exist by phrases; I, who seize life at the pen’s point and callously wrest from it the material which I torture into confections styled essays, short stories, novels, and plays; who perceive in passion chiefly a theme, and in tragedy chiefly a “situation”; who am so morbidly avaricious of beauty that I insist on finding it where even it is not; I, in short, who have been victimized to the last degree by a literary temperament, and glory in my victimhood, am going to trace as well as I can the phenomena of the development of that idiosyncrasy from its inception to such maturity as it has attained. To explain it, to explain it away, I shall make no attempt; I know that I cannot. I lived for a quarter of a century without guessing that I came under the category of Max Nordau’s polysyllabic accusations; the trifling foolish mental discipline which stands to my credit was obtained in science schools, examination rooms, and law offices. I grew into a good man of business; and my knowledge of affairs, my faculty for the nice conduct of negotiations, my skill in suggesting an escape from a dilemma, were often employed to serve the many artists among whom, by a sheer and highly improbable accident, I was thrown. While sincerely admiring and appreciating these people, in another way I condescended to them as beings apart and peculiar, and unable to take care of themselves on the asphalt of cities; I felt towards them as a policeman at a crossing feels towards pedestrians. Proud of my hard, cool head, I used to twit them upon the disadvantages of possessing an artistic temperament. Then, one day, one of them retorted: “You’ve got it as badly as any of us, if you only knew it.” I laughed tolerantly at the remark, but it was like a thunderclap in my ears, a sudden and disconcerting revelation. Was I, too, an artist? I lay awake at night asking myself this question. Something hitherto dormant stirred mysteriously in me; something apparently foreign awoke in my hard, cool head, and a duality henceforth existed there. On a certain memorable day I saw tears in the eyes of a woman as she read some verses which, with journalistic versatility, I had written to the order of a musical composer. I walked straight out into the street, my heart beating like a horrid metronome. Am I an artist? I demanded; and the egotist replied: Can you doubt it?

From that moment I tacitly assumed a quite new set of possibilities, and deliberately ordered the old ruse self to exploit the self just born. And so, by encouragement and fostering, by intuition and imitation, and perhaps affectation, I gradually became the thing I am, the djinn that performs tricks with some emotions, a pen, and paper. And now, having shadowed forth the tale, as Browning did in the prologue to The Ring and the Book, I will proceed to amplify it.

Let this old woe step on the stage again!

Act itself o’er anew for men to judge.