James Branch Caball - The Certain Hour

VIP免费

2024-12-15 0 0 230.96KB 90 页 5.9玖币

The Certain Hour

James Branch Cabell

Table of Contents

The Certain Hour................................................................................................................................................1

James Branch Cabell................................................................................................................................1

BALLAD OF THE DOUBLE−SOUL...................................................................................................2

AUCTORIAL INDUCTION..................................................................................................................3

II..............................................................................................................................................................4

III.............................................................................................................................................................5

IV.............................................................................................................................................................7

V..............................................................................................................................................................9

BELHS CAVALIERS.........................................................................................................................10

BALTHAZAR'S DAUGHTER............................................................................................................19

BALTHAZAR'S DAUGHTER............................................................................................................20

JUDITH'S CREED..............................................................................................................................28

CONCERNING CORINNA..................................................................................................................35

OLIVIA'S POTTAGE..........................................................................................................................42

A BROWN WOMAN..........................................................................................................................50

PRO HONORIA....................................................................................................................................57

A PRINCESS OF GRUB STREET......................................................................................................72

THE LADY OF ALL OUR DREAMS.................................................................................................81

BALLAD OF PLAGIARY....................................................................................................................87

The Certain Hour

James Branch Cabell

http://www.blackmask.com

BALLAD OF THE DOUBLE−SOUL• AUCTORIAL INDUCTION• II• III• IV• V• BELHS CAVALIERS• BALTHAZAR'S DAUGHTER• JUDITH'S CREED• CONCERNING CORINNA• OLIVIA'S POTTAGE• A BROWN WOMAN• PRO HONORIA• A PRINCESS OF GRUB STREET• THE LADY OF ALL OUR DREAMS• BALLAD OF PLAGIARY•

THE

CERTAIN HOUR

(Dizain des Poetes)

"Criticism, whatever may be its

pretensions, never does more than to

define the impression which is made upon

it at a certain moment by a work wherein

the writer himself noted the impression

of the world which he received at a

certain hour."

ROBERT GAMBLE CABELL II

In Dedication of The Certain Hour

Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over;

One thing unshaken stays:

Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for

lover;

Whereby decays

Each thing save one thing:mid this strife diurnal

Of hourly change begot,

Love that is God−born, bides as God eternal,

And changes not;

The Certain Hour 1

Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers

Find altered by−and−bye,

When, with possession, time anon discovers

Trapped dreams must die,

For he that visions God, of mankind gathers

One manlike trait alone,

And reverently imputes to Him a father's

Love for his son.

BALLAD OF THE DOUBLE−SOUL

"Les Dieux, qui trop aiment ses faceties cruelles"

PAUL VERVILLE.

In the beginning the Gods made man, and fashioned the

sky and the sea,

And the earth's fair face for man's dwelling−place, and

this was the Gods' decree:

"Lo, We have given to man five wits: he discerneth

folly

and sin;

He is swift to deride all the world outside, and blind

to the world within:

"So that man may make sport and amuse Us, in battling

for phrases or pelf,

Now that each may know what forebodeth woe to his

neighbor, and not to himself."

Yet some have the Gods forgotten,or is it that

subtler

mirth

The Gods extort of a certain sort of folk that cumber

the earth?

For this is the song of the double−soul, distortedly

two in one,

Of the wearied eyes that still behold the fruit ere

the seed

be sown,

And derive affright for the nearing night from the

light

of the noontide sun.

For one that with hope in the morning set forth, and

knew never a fear,

They have linked with another whom omens bother; and

he whispers in one's ear.

And one is fain to be climbing where only angels have

trod,

But is fettered and tied to another's side who fears

that

it might look odd.

And one would worship a woman whom all perfections

The Certain Hour

BALLAD OF THE DOUBLE−SOUL 2

dower,

But the other smiles at transparent wiles; and he

quotes

from Schopenhauer.

Thus two by two we wrangle and blunder about the

earth,

And that body we share we may not spare; but the Gods

have need of mirth.

So this is the song of the double−soul, distortedly

two

in one.

Of the wearied eyes that still behold the fruit ere

the seed

be sown,

And derive affright for the nearing night from the

light

of the noontide sun.

AUCTORIAL INDUCTION

"These questions, so long as they remain

with the Muses, may very well be unaccompanied

with severity, for where there is no other end

of contemplation and inquiry but that of

pastime alone, the understanding is not

oppressed; but after the Muses have given over

their riddles to Sphinx,that is, to practise,

which urges and impels to action, choice and

determination,then it is that they become

torturing, severe and trying."

From the dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled,

Shaping fanciful playthings, with tireless hands,

Useless trumpery toys; and, with vaulting heart,

Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him,

Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went their way.

Then he toiled from the morn to the dusk again,

Gave his gimcracks to peoples who mocked at him,

Trampled on them, deriding, and went their way.

Thus he labors, and loudly they jeer at him;

That is, when they remember he still exists.

WHO, you ask, IS THIS FELLOW?What matter names?

He is only a scribbler who is content.

FELIX KENNASTON. The Toy−Maker .

AUCTORIAL INDUCTION

WHICH (AFTER SOME BRIEF DISCOURSE OF FIRES AND FRYING−PANS) ELUCIDATES THE

INEXPEDIENCY OF PUBLISHING THIS BOOK, AS WELL AS THE NECESSITY OF WRITING IT:

AND THENCE PASSES TO A MODEST DEFENSE OF MORE VITAL THEMES.

The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hillsand as immortal.

Questionless, there was many a serviceable brick wasted in Nineveh because finicky persons must needs be

The Certain Hour

AUCTORIAL INDUCTION 3

deleting here and there a phrase in favor of its cuneatic synonym; and it is not improbable that when the

outworn sun expires in clinkers its final ray will gild such zealots tinkering with their "style." Some few there

must be in every age and every land of whom life claims nothing very insistently save that they write

perfectly of beautiful happenings.

Yet, that the work of a man of letters is almost always a congenial product of his day and environment, is a

contention as lacking in novelty as it is in the need of any upholding here. Nor is the rationality of that axiom

far to seek; for a man of genuine literary genius, since he possesses a temperament whose susceptibilities are

of wider area than those of any other, is inevitably of all people the one most variously affected by his

surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the

impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writingswhere it conceivably might be just

predetermined affectation but in his personality.

Such being the assumption upon which this volume is builded, it appears only equitable for the architect

frankly to indicate his cornerstone. Hereinafter you have an attempt to depict a special temperamentone in

essence "literary"as very variously molded by diverse eras and as responding in proportion with its ability to

the demands of a certain hour.

In proportion with its ability, be it repeated, since its ability is singularly hampered. For, apart from any

ticklish temporal considerations, be it remembered, life is always claiming of this temperament's possessor

that he write perfectly of beautiful happenings.

To disregard this vital longing, and flatly to stifle the innate striving toward artistic creation, is to become (as

with Wycherley and Sheridan) a man who waives, however laughingly, his sole apology for existence. The

proceeding is paltry enough, in all conscience; and yet, upon the other side, there is much positive danger in

giving to the instinct a loose rein. For in that event the familiar circumstances of sedate and wholesome living

cannot but seem, like paintings viewed too near, to lose in gusto and winsomeness. Desire, perhaps a craving

hunger, awakens for the impossible. No emotion, whatever be its sincerity, is endured without a side−glance

toward its capabilities for being written about. The world, in short, inclines to appear an ill−lit mine, wherein

one quarries gingerly amidst an abiding loneliness (as with Pope and Ufford and Sire Raimbaut)and wherein

one very often is allured into unsavory alleys (as with Herrick and Alessandro de Medici)in search of that

raw material which loving labor will transshape into comeliness.

Such, if it be allowed to shift the metaphor, are the treacherous by−paths of that admirably policed highway

whereon the well−groomed and well−bitted Pegasi of Vanderhoffen and Charteris (in his later manner) trot

stolidly and safely toward oblivion. And the result of wandering afield is of necessity a tragedy, in that the

deviator's life, if not as an artist's quite certainly as a human being's, must in the outcome be adjudged a

failure.

Hereinafter, then, you have an attempt to depict a special temperamentone in essence "literary"as very

variously molded by diverse eras and as responding in proportion with its ability to the demands of a certain

hour.

And this much said, it is permissible to hope, at least, that here and there some reader may be found not

wholly blind to this book's goal, whatever be his opinion as to this book's success in reaching it. Yet many

honest souls there be among us average−novel− readers in whose eyes this volume must rest content to figure

as a collection of short stories having naught in common beyond the feature that each deals with the affaires

du coeur of a poet.

The Certain Hour

II 4

Such must always be the book's interpretation by mental indolence. The fact is incontestable; and this fact in

itself may be taken as sufficient to establish the inexpediency of publishing The Certain Hour. For that

"people will not buy a volume of short stories" is notorious to all publishers. To offset the axiom there are no

doubt incongruous phenomenaranging from the continued popularity of the Bible to the present general

esteem of Mr. Kipling, and embracing the rather unaccountable vogue of "O. Henry";but, none the less, the

superstition has its force.

Here intervenes the multifariousness of man, pointed out somewhere by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, which

enables the individual to be at once a vegetarian, a golfer, a vestryman, a blond, a mammal, a Democrat, and

an immortal spirit. As a rational person, one may debonairly consider The Certain Hour possesses as large

license to look like a volume of short stories as, say, a backgammon−board has to its customary guise of a

two−volume history; but as an average−novel−reader, one must vote otherwise. As an average−novel−reader,

one must condemn the very book which, as a seasoned scribbler, one was moved to write through long

consideration of the drama already suggestedthat immemorial drama of the desire to write perfectly of

beautiful happenings, and the obscure martyrdom to which this desire solicits its possessor.

Now, clearly, the struggle of a special temperament with a fixed force does not forthwith begin another story

when the locale of combat shifts. The case is, rather, as whenwith certainly an intervening change of

apparelPompey fights Caesar at both Dyrrachium and Pharsalus, or as when General Grant successively

encounters General Lee at the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor and Appomattox. The combatants

remain unchanged, the question at issue is the same, the tragedy has continuity. And even so, from the time of

Sire Raimbaut to that of John Charteris has a special temperament heart−hungrily confronted an ageless

problem: at what cost now, in this fleet hour of my vigor, may one write perfectly of beautiful happenings?

Thus logic urges, with pathetic futility, inasmuch as we average−novel−readers are profoundly indifferent to

both logic and good writing. And always the fact remains that to the mentally indolent this book may well

seem a volume of disconnected short stories. All of us being more or less mentally indolent, this possibility

constitutes a dire fault.

Three other damning objections will readily obtrude themselves: The Certain Hour deals with past

epochsbeginning before the introduction of dinner− forks, and ending at that remote quaint period when

people used to waltz and two−stepdead eras in which we average−novel−readers are not interested; The

Certain Hour assumes an appreciable amount of culture and information on its purchaser's part, which we

average−novel−readers either lack or, else, are unaccustomed to employ in connection with reading for

pastime; andin our eyes the crowning misdemeanor The Certain Hour is not "vital."

Having thus candidly confessed these faults committed as the writer of this book, it is still possible in human

multifariousness to consider their enormity, not merely in this book, but in fictional reading−matter at large,

as viewed by an average−novel− readerby a representative of that potent class whose preferences dictate the

nature and main trend of modern American literature. And to do this, it may be, throws no unsalutary

sidelight upon the still−existent problem: at what cost, now, may one attempt to write perfectly of beautiful

happenings?

III

Indisputably the most striking defect of this modern American literature is the fact that the production of

anything at all resembling literature is scarcely anywhere apparent. Innumerable printing− presses, instead,

are turning out a vast quantity of reading−matter, the candidly recognized purpose of which is to kill time,

and whichit has been asserted, though perhaps too sweepinglyought not to be vended over book−counters,

but rather in drugstores along with the other narcotics.

The Certain Hour

III 5

It is begging the question to protest that the class of people who a generation ago read nothing now at least

read novels, and to regard this as a change for the better. By similar logic it would be more wholesome to

breakfast off laudanum than to omit the meal entirely. The nineteenth century, in fact, by making education

popular, has produced in America the curious spectacle of a reading−public with essentially nonliterary

tastes. Formerly, better books were published, because they were intended for persons who turned to reading

through a natural bent of mind; whereas the modern American novel of commerce is addressed to us average

people who read, when we read at all, in violation of every innate instinct.

Such grounds as yet exist for hopefulness on the part of those who cordially care for belles lettres are to be

found elsewhere than in the crowded market− places of fiction, where genuine intelligence panders on all

sides to ignorance and indolence. The phrase may seem to have no very civil ring; but reflection will assure

the fair−minded that two indispensable requisites nowadays of a pecuniarily successful novel are, really, that

it make no demand upon the reader's imagination, and that it rigorously refrain from assuming its reader to

possess any particular information on any subject whatever. The author who writes over the head of the

public is the most dangerous enemy of his publisherand the most insidious as well, because so many

publishers are in private life interested in literary matters, and would readily permit this personal foible to

influence the exercise of their vocation were it possible to do so upon the preferable side of bankruptcy.

But publishers, among innumerable other conditions, must weigh the fact that no novel which does not deal

with modern times is ever really popular among the serious−minded. It is difficult to imagine a tale whose

action developed under the rule of the Caesars or the Merovingians being treated as more than a literary hors

d'oeuvre. We purchasers of "vital" novels know nothing about the period, beyond a hazy association of it with

the restrictions of the schoolroom; our sluggish imaginations instinctively rebel against the exertion of

forming any notion of such a period; and all the human nature that exists even in serious−minded persons is

stirred up to resentment against the book's author for presuming to know more than a potential patron. The

book, in fine, simply irritates the serious−minded person; and shefor it is only women who willingly brave

the terrors of department−stores, where most of our new books are bought nowadaysquite naturally puts it

aside in favor of some keen and daring study of American life that is warranted to grip the reader. So,

modernity of scene is everywhere necessitated as an essential qualification for a book's discussion at the

literary evenings of the local woman's club; and modernity of scene, of course, is almost always fatal to the

permanent worth of fictitious narrative.

It may seem banal here to recall the truism that first−class art never reproduces its surroundings; but such

banality is often justified by our human proneness to shuffle over the fact that many truisms are true. And this

one is pre−eminently indisputable: that what mankind has generally agreed to accept as first−class art in any

of the varied forms of fictitious narrative has never been a truthful reproduction of the artist's era. Indeed, in

the higher walks of fiction art has never reproduced anything, but has always dealt with the facts and laws of

life as so much crude material which must be transmuted into comeliness. When Shakespeare pronounced his

celebrated dictum about art's holding the mirror up to nature, he was no doubt alluding to the circumstance

that a mirror reverses everything which it reflects.

Nourishment for much wildish speculation, in fact, can be got by considering what the world's literature

would be, had its authors restricted themselves, as do we Americans so sedulouslyand unavoidablyto

writing of contemporaneous happenings. In fiction−making no author of the first class since Homer's infancy

has ever in his happier efforts concerned himself at all with the great "problems" of his particular day; and

among geniuses of the second rank you will find such ephemeralities adroitly utilized only when they are

distorted into enduring parodies of their actual selves by the broad humor of a Dickens or the colossal fantasy

of a Balzac. In such cases as the latter two writers, however, we have an otherwise competent artist

handicapped by a personality so marked that, whatever he may nominally write about, the result is, above all

else, an exposure of the writer's idiosyncrasies. Then, too, the laws of any locale wherein Mr. Pickwick

achieves a competence in business, or of a society wherein Vautrin becomes chief of police, are upon the face

The Certain Hour

III 6

of it extra−mundane. It suffices that, as a general rule, in fiction−making the true artist finds an ample, if

restricted, field wherein the proper functions of the preacher, or the ventriloquist, or the photographer, or of

the public prosecutor, are exercised with equal lack of grace.

Besides, in dealing with contemporary life a novelist is goaded into too many pusillanimous concessions to

plausibility. He no longer moves with the gait of omnipotence. It was very different in the palmy days when

Dumas was free to play at ducks and drakes with history, and Victor Hugo to reconstruct the whole system of

English government, and Scott to compel the sun to set in the east, whenever such minor changes caused to

flow more smoothly the progress of the tale these giants had in hand. These freedoms are not tolerated in

American noveldom, and only a few futile "high−brows" sigh in vain for Thackeray's "happy harmless

Fableland, where these things are." The majority of us are deep in "vital" novels. Nor is the reason far to seek.

One hears a great deal nowadays concerning "vital" books. Their authors have been widely praised on very

various grounds. Oddly enough, however, the writers of these books have rarely been commended for the

really praiseworthy charity evinced therein toward that large long−suffering class loosely describable as the

average−novel−reader.

Yet, in connection with this fact, it is worthy of more than passing note that no great while ago the New York

Times' carefully selected committee, in picking out the hundred best books published during a particular year,

declared as to novels"a `best' book, in our opinion, is one that raises an important question, or recurs to a

vital theme and pronounces upon it what in some sense is a last word." Now this definition is not likely ever

to receive more praise than it deserves. Cavilers may, of course, complain that actually to write the last word

on any subject is a feat reserved for the Recording Angel's unique performance on judgment Day. Even

setting that objection aside, it is undeniable that no work of fiction published of late in America corresponds

quite so accurately to the terms of this definition as do the multiplication tables. Yet the multiplication tables

are not without their claims to applause as examples of straightforward narrative. It is, also, at least

permissible to consider that therein the numeral five, say, where it figures as protagonist, unfolds under the

stress of its varying adventures as opulent a development of real human nature as does, through similar

ups−and−downs, the Reverend John Hodder in The Inside of the Cup. It is equally allowable to find the less

simple evolution of the digit seven more sympathetic, upon the whole, than those of Undine Spragg in The

Custom of the Country. But, even so, this definition of what may now, authoritatively, be ranked as a "best

novel" is an honest and noteworthy severance from misleading literary associations such as have too long

befogged our notions about reading− matter. It points with emphasis toward the altruistic obligations of

tale−tellers to be "vital."

For we average−novel−readerswe average people, in a wordare now, as always, rather pathetically hungry

for "vital" themes, such themes as appeal directly to our everyday observation and prejudices. Did the

decision rest with us all novelists would be put under bond to confine themselves forevermore to themes like

these.

As touches the appeal to everyday observation, it is an old story, at least coeval with Mr. Crummles' not

uncelebrated pumps and tubs, if not with the grapes of Zeuxis, how unfailingly in art we delight to recognize

the familiar. A novel whose scene of action is explicit will always interest the people of that locality,

whatever the book's other pretensions to consideration. Given simultaneously a photograph of Murillo's

rendering of The Virgin Crowned Queen of Heaven and a photograph of a governor's installation in our State

capital, there is no one of us but will quite naturally look at the latter first, in order to see if in it some familiar

countenance be recognizable. And thus, upon a larger scale, the twentieth century is, pre−eminently,

interested in the twentieth century.

The Certain Hour

IV 7

It is all very well to describe our average−novel− readers' dislike of Romanticism as "the rage of Caliban not

seeing his own face in a glass." It is even within the scope of human dunderheadedness again to point out

here that the supreme artists in literature have precisely this in common, and this alone, that in their

masterworks they have avoided the "vital" themes of their day with such circumspection as lesser folk reserve

for the smallpox. The answer, of course, in either case, is that the "vital" novel, the novel which peculiarly

appeals to us average−novel−readers, has nothing to do with literature. There is between these two no more

intelligent connection than links the paint Mr. Sargent puts on canvas and the paint Mr. Dockstader puts on

his face.

Literature is made up of the re−readable books, the books which it is possiblefor the people so constituted as

to care for that sort of thingto read again and yet again with pleasure. Therefore, in literature a book's

subject is of astonishingly minor importance, and its style nearly everything: whereas in books intended to be

read for pastime, and forthwith to be consigned at random to the wastebasket or to the inmates of some

charitable institute, the theme is of paramount importance, and ought to be a serious one. The modern

novelist owes it to his public to select a "vital" theme which in itself will fix the reader's attention by reason

of its familiarity in the reader's everyday life.

Thus, a lady with whose more candid opinions the writer of this is more frequently favored nowadays than of

old, formerly confessed to having only one set rule when it came to investment in new reading−matter

always to buy the Williamsons' last book. Her reason was the perfectly sensible one that the Williamsons'

plots used invariably to pivot upon motor−trips, and she is an ardent automobilist. Since, as of late, the

Williamsons have seen fit to exercise their typewriter upon other topics, they have as a matter of course lost

her patronage.

This principle of selection, when you come to appraise it sanely, is the sole intelligent method of dealing with

reading−matter. It seems here expedient again to state the peculiar problem that we average novel−readers

have of necessity set the modern novelistnamely, that his books must in the main appeal to people who read

for pastime, to people who read books only under protest and only when they have no other employment for

that particular half−hour.

Now, reading for pastime is immensely simplified when the book's theme is some familiar matter of the

reader's workaday life, because at outset the reader is spared considerable mental effort. The motorist above

referred to, and indeed any average−novel−reader, can without exertion conceive of the Williamsons' people

in their automobiles. Contrariwise, were these fictitious characters embarked in palankeens or droshkies or

jinrikishas, more or less intellectual exercise would be necessitated on the reader's part to form a notion of the

conveyance. And we average−novel−readers do not open a book with the intention of making a mental effort.

The author has no right to expect of us an act so unhabitual, we very poignantly feel. Our prejudices he is

freely chartered to stir upif, lucky rogue, he can!but he ought with deliberation to recognize that it is

precisely in order to avoid mental effort that we purchase, or borrow, his book, and afterward discuss it.

Hence arises our heartfelt gratitude toward such novels as deal with "vital" themes, with the questions we

average−novel−readers confront or make talk about in those happier hours of our existence wherein we are

not reduced to reading. Thus, a tale, for example, dealing either with "feminism" or "white slavery" as the

handiest makeshift of spinsterdomor with the divorce habit and plutocratic iniquity in general, or with the

probable benefits of converting clergymen to Christianity, or with how much more than she knows a

desirable mother will tell her childrenfinds the book's tentative explorer, just now, amply equipped with

prejudices, whether acquired by second thought or second hand, concerning the book's topic. As endurability

goes, reading the book rises forthwith almost to the level of an afternoon−call where there is gossip about the

neighbors and Germany's future. We average−novel−readers may not, in either case, agree with the opinions

advanced; but at least our prejudices are aroused, and we are interested.

The Certain Hour

IV 8

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheCertainHourJamesBranchCabellTableofContentsTheCertainHour................................................................................................................................................1JamesBranchCabell.................................................................................

展开>> 收起<<

James Branch Caball - The Certain Hour.pdf

共90页,预览18页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

James Branch Caball - The Certain Hour

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: