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WHAT THE DICKENS! --OFF TOPIC

Not very on topic, and tangential, is a previous topic I engaged here with
Mr. Parr, on the subject of 'placing' people by borrowing them into
groups --- and we discussed how both Marxists did that with Dickens, and
if indeed he would profile as a modern liberal. -- Phil Innes

Dear Phil,

I think one can make sense of Dickens'
socio-political views if you think of him in the
American Progressive tradition of southern politics.
Namely, the supposed benefits of social democracy are
for white folk rather than for blacks.That puts the
matter in a single sentence and makes sense of the
contradictions apparent but not inherent.

You will recollect that Marx himself had no
place for Negroes in his system.

Dear Larry,

There is an extensive review of such folk in The Wine Dark Sea, set in the
pacific Islands & Peru, by P. O'B, where the paradise on earth can be
established, freedom of religion, true egalitarian systems, no hierarchies
or churches or church taxes! Except for the awkward problem of having to
eliminate the natives to get the thing off the ground, then by inate human
good will, the place will run itself. A French enthusiast named DuTord is
the propopent of said system, following the ideas of that mumping villain
Rousseau.

The likely view of a Dickens toward Negroes and
toward many colonial peoples is that they annoyed him
by appearing human. You will recollect that such is
the point made by Lawrence of Arabia in "Seven Pillars
of Wisdom." The Negro would not be so objectionable if
he had seven hands and three heads, but instead has
the effrontery to appear in bodily form as we do.

Gosh - I first read 7 pilllars when I was 19. Fascinating that the man who
survived the film, in grubby RAF overalls, should have cabinet ministers
dropping by to see him, since his was the only opinion Arabs trusted, even
after they were betrayed at the end of the first war. His was also the only
disinterested opinion in Britain in an area of the world that was ever in
danger of becoming inflamed and a real biblical Megidio.

Orwell paid him the particular compliment of stating that his was the /only/
intellectual opinion on the right worth taking in.

Still worse, he awakens within us the suspicion that
he may be, more or less, about the same as we, though
Lawrence does not not admit that as even a remote
possibility. Hence Lawrence's anger that we have
impostors as human beings who thereby drag down one's
own status as fully human.

To invoke another writer - probably the best on this subject - would be to
reference van der Post, who championed the black man in Africa, notably the
Bushmen, /but also/ what he called the first person in us all, the
aboriginal person.

The acceptance or rejection of that sense of ourselves was what deeply
interested Jung about Europeans and in fact set him in sharply different
focus from Freud - in fact vdP and Jung were close friends thereafter.
Symbolically [of course] they met over a discussion about making fire.

He told me that when Jung went to Africa the 'missing' European sense of
this first person in us, almost overwhelmed Jung by comparison - and I think
neither of them trusted Euro-intellectualism thereby, since it did not admit
this inner man - this inner 'black' man!

Latterly here in the US, the philosopher Jacob Needleman admits this
relationship as being of prime importance to the USA as 'the world's
country.' As well as its neglect of all things 'black' being a principle
crime. [Currently the newest 'black' people are Mexican]

After all, if the Negro is
mistaken as human by others, those others may imagine
that Lawrence himself partakes of important
similarities with Negroes. He found such impudence to
be intolerable.

The writer, poet-Laureate, Ted Hughes said that Shakespeare was the first to
frame this issue in 'modern' times. And the rejection by Macbeth of the 3
hags, is rejection of the female side of life, and in fact the /power/ and
the means to reflect at all, other than as intellection.

It is interesting that this state endures, and even today, people are still
willing to state that La MacBeth 'made him do it'. Now nations do it!

Kipling spoke of "lesser breeds without the Law,"
by which I think he meant, if you read Recessional
very carefully, the Mosaic Law. The best you could do
was to build carefully and, having built, as Kipling
writes in the White Man's Burden, "Watch Sloth and
heathen Folly/ Bring all you hope to nought."

His writing in this very town was perhaps the most inspired of all. His most
animistic books written here - Jungle Book[s] was a long time before Lord of
the Rings, or the works of J. C. Powys.

Dickens was concerned about alleviating suffering
among white Christian folk, whilst objecting to really
ill treatment of Jews and natives not because they
merit his concern on the basis of their intrinsic
value, but because to not be so concerned is to
coarsen one's own spirit.

Yes. Except Smiley makes the point that Dickens did not as much relate to
others from any social stance we should recognise as 'politics' but as
novelist, which is at least vicariously, a one to one relationship. I think
he drove what was to become public polity, by being the first writer to look
fair and square at the new world of the industrial revolution - and the
lauded Victorian middle-classes of England - though he was an improbable
candidate for that category himself, and to actually attempt to critique it
from a value level.

It is also complicated since the great divide in his life surrounding his
divorce [where he not only behaved badly, but in public, rather like his
'misbehavior' here in the US when he refused to be the literary 'Great' as
was expected of him - whatever he was he didn't care to hide or dissemble
about] makes a clear division in early/late Dickens.

Whatever happened latterly, and to end with a reference you make repeatedly
above, those 5 months in the /blacking/ factory, was his own /black/
personal experience. At least Smiley credits her female insight of this
early experience as being a very potent force throughout his life, and a
sort of anchor or emotional grounding which was shocking, yet an experience
no middle class person could access [though I paraphrase to suit this
discussion.]. Latterly [Eton educated] Orwell deliberately did the same
thing.

This shorter biography is very good that way, finding IMO, in all the
material, both his own driving forces, and those of the society and the life
of his times.

At end, the subject was not engaged again to the same degree until Hardy -
Tess, eg, is the cream of the country, and the new man, Angell is a modern
disaster of a person. George Eliot didn't cope with it to any near extent,
granting far more space to specific individual characterisation, with the
occassional social topic, such as the repugnant English anti-Semiticm she
illustrates in Daniel Deronda.

And what lineage here! Since Hardy and Lawrence were rather more than
friends - and what a great shame that their conversations at Max Gate went
unrecorded, not even summarised save perhaps what he told Buchan's wife.

Cordially, Phil Innes


Yours, Larry Parr