JOHN KEATS - DOOMED ROMANTIC.

John Keats was born in Moorgate towards what was then the eastern edge of London, on the 31st October 1795 to a barman and spent all his life ‘on the margins’. Following the early death of his parents (he was raised by his grandmother) he attended a school in Enfield that was to all intents and purposes a dissenting academy – that  provided a broad liberal education and encouraged liberal thinking.Death loomed large around him, but within his short life of 25 years he developed such thought , art and vision! From his first musings to his last, his vision of experience was continuous and boy did he share this.

At just 14 he was apprenticed to a surgeon in Moorfields, and at 19 was registered as a medical student at Guy's hospital London ,( now known as King's College ) absorbing the radical influences that were then sweeping through the medical establishment. New kinds of intervention and new standards of patient care were aligned with his larger social sympathies.

Almost exactly as Keats qualified, he gave up medicine. Once again, it was a change of course which allowed him to stay true to himself. Actually, in order to live for and by his poetry.He was influenced by Spencer, Milton, Dryden and William  and owed particular debt to Byron and Wordsworth. He took with him into poetry the fundamental principles that his education as a whole had rooted in him. He became friends with Leigh Hunt, editor of The Examiner, the great free-thinking journal of the day. He consorted with Hunt's circle, which included Shelley. He began writing poems which gave a voice to the convictions that justify his description of himself as a ‘rebel angel’.

In some of Keats’s early work, these political allegiances are clear: the opening sections of the four books of his long poem Endymion, for instance, or squibs like ‘Lines Written on 29 May, The Anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II’. But by the time Keats reached his maturity – the ascent is astonishingly rapid and steep – he had absorbed the lessons of Shakepeare and found a way of writing that was simultaneously of its own particular time, and universal in its reach and application. It resists explicit mention of local circumstances (the government’s suspension of habeas corpus, for instance, or the Peterloo Massacre which occurred only days before he wrote the ode ‘Too Autumn '  only because it seeks to reveal the general truth in a particular situation. This means that when we read his best poems – which with a few exceptions are those in the 1820 volume – we are watching a writer grapple with the largest eternal questions: what is the role of the imagination? What is the value of art? What is the purpose of suffering? How can we create our own selves, and integrate with the lives of others?

He encountered much snobbery during his lifetime, the tory press of the time chose to vilify and patronize him as merely a cockney poet. He refused to be ashamed of his origins despite the vicious attacks of his reviewers who were as offended by his low birth and  today he is praised as one of the greatest poets to live.

In his short life he followed passion and held dearly to the concepts of friendship and kindness . He knew love too, in 1818 he first met a lady called Frances ( Fanny) Brawne and an intimacy and a love developed between them. She herself only 18, Keats lent her books and they would walk and read together. It was to her that he gave the love sonnet - Bright Star, also around this time he met another woman who he also held conflicting emotions, a beautiful lady called Isabella Jones, unfortunately for the young poet he was prone to melancholy and severe depression and his relationships with both were broken due to his illnesses.

Sadly consumption was also in his family, and it gained on him, and what with his knowledge of medicine, it heralded a new feeling for him of doom.He became haunted by the apprehension of death before he had " garnered this teeming brain ".

Primitive medicine of the time actually " bled " him and so hastened his death.
Who knows where his writing would have developed had he lived longer, his words were already pretty well formed , and perhaps perfection of vision was yet to emerge.

Before his death  on the 23rd of February 1821 he travelled to Rome, Italy with his friend Joseph Severn, he knew he was dying and was in much pain, apparently he demanded Laudenum to numb it but for some reason the people around him refused to give him any, prolonging his agony and suffering. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetary, Rome, his last request was to be buried under a tombstone, without his name, his epitaph read:

This Grave
contains all that was Mortal,
of a
Young English Poet,
Who,
on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart,
at the Malicious Power of his Enemies,
Desired
these words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone:
Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water.

Unlike his contemporaries he did not follow any causes, only the cause of perfection of sensation, tone and form, and had I feel a peculiar genius of making perfect pictures. Yet if we were to put him on any side , it was on the side his contemporaries stood, on the the side of sedition, rebellion and freedom.

His first volume of poetry, published in 1817, established him firmly in the radical camp. It was dedicated to his friend Leigh Hunt who had been imprisoned for breaking the draconian censorship laws. His hostility to the British ruling class was confirmed when, after Waterloo, Keats wrote defiantly:

'O Europe, Let not sceptred tyrants see that thou must shelter in thy former state;
Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;
Give thy kings law--leave not uncurbed the great
So with the horrors past thou'lt win thy happier fate!'

Keats hated the British army, which occupied many areas of Britain. He wrote that, in the countryside, poppies:

'show their scarlet coats
So pert and useless, that they bring to mind
the scarlet coats that pester human kind.'

The language Keats used, constantly referring to 'us' and 'we' and 'them' and 'they' and 'man' and 'universal knowledge', would have instantly identified him with radicals like Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft. He also explicitly challenged leading figures in the establishment. He reversed Edmund Burke's infamous description of the 'swinish multitude' when he wrote:

'In noisome alley and in pathless wood Oft may be found a singleness of aim
That ought to frighten into hooded shame
A money-mongering, pitiable brood.'

Keats did not write revolutionary poetry, but he wrote poetry which represented revolution. In Endymion, for example, he describes a mass demonstration, like those taking place in Britain. He also describes how the ruling class, like foxes with their tails burning, 'sear up and singe/Our gold and ripe eared hopes'.

This passage was so subversive that one reviewer accused the youngest member of the 'Cockney School' of having learnt to 'lisp sedition'. A later reworking of the same theme in Hyperion describes a revolution in a mythical world, in a way which suggests that great change bringing violence and upheaval is inevitable.

For some people they look at his poems and his life and they see him as over sensitive, sensuous and simplistic, with far too much rawness, but what we must remember is that his urge to deliver was due to his knowledge of his impending death ,which saw him effectively producing a lifetimes work in only two years. He was then a poet of immediacy, he did not have time for revisions and rewrites, he simply had to get it all down. This is why I think some of his works seem simple, he followed his muse and saw poetry like he saw medicine as a way of healing.

For me he was a poet of stillness, an absorbed dreamer and weaver of spells. Unlike some poets, I read him today with calm and aquviessence and with many pauses to savour. He sought out the primal things of nature, that was his urge. For some reason contemporaries at the time did not really understand him. Luckily we do now, his words frozen, immortal. His strong and inquiring mind still engaging us today. What follows are a selection of his shorter verses that appeal greatly to me.

BRIGHT STAR

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No - yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillo'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.

ODE ON MELANCHOLY

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Prosperine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For dhade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anquish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Empirison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty-Beauty that must die;
And joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tonque
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

ON FAME
"you cannot eat your cake and have it too." PROVERB

How fever'd is that Man who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temerate blood,
Who vexes all the leaves of his Life's book
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood;
It is as if the rose should pluck herself
Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom;
As if a clear Lake meddling with itself
Should cloud its pureness with a muddy gloom.
But the rose leaves herself upon the Briar
For winds to kiss and grateful Bees to feed
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire-
The undisturbed Lake has crystal space-
Why then should Man teasing the world for grace
Spoil his salvation by a fierce miscreed?

SONNET TO SLEEP

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfuness divine:
O soothest sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the Amen ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow breeding many woes:
Save me from curious conscience that still hoards
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like the mole;
Turn the Key deftly in the oiled wards
And seal the hushed Casket of my soul-

PENSIVE THEY SIT, AND ROLL THEIR LANQUID EYES'

Pensive they sit, and roll teir lanquid eyes
Nibble their tosts, and cool their tea with sighs,
Or else forget the purpose of the night
Forget their tea-forget their appetite.
See with cross'd arms they sit-ah hapless crew
The fire is going out, and no one rings
For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings.
A fly is the milk pot - must die
Circled by humane society ?
No no there Mr. Werter takes his spoon
Inverts it-dips the handle and lo, soon
The little struggler sav'd from perils dark
Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark
Romeo! Arise! take Snuffers by the handle
There's a large Cauliflower in each candle.
A winding-sheet- Ah me ! I must away
To No. 7 just beyond the Circus gay.
Where may your Taylor live?-I say again
I cannot tell. Let me no more be teas'd-
He lives in Wapping might live where he pleas'd.'

THE HUMAN SEASONS

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancies clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
His nearesr unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness-to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forget his mortal nature.

WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I MAY CEASE TO BE

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high Brooks in charactery
Hold like rich garners the full ripe'd grain-
When I behold upon the night's starr'd face
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And feel that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of Chance:
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting Love: then on the Shore
Of the wide world I stand alone and think
Till Love and Fame to Nothingness do sink.-

ON THE SEA

It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores,-and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns,-till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be lightly moved, from where it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Ye, that have your eye-balls vex'd and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the sea;-
Or are your hearts disturb'd with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody,-
Sit ye near some old caver's mouth and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired.

TO AUTUMN

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

WRITTEN IN DISGUST OF VULGAR SUPERSTITION

The Church bell toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More heark'ning to the Sermon's horrid sound-
Surely the mind of Man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown'd-
Stll, still they toll , and l should feel a damp,-
Achill as froma tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion; that fresh flowes will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp-

KEATS DEATH MASK

Some simple words of advice from Lord Acton

An independent scholar and part of the liberal Catholic movement , Acton was an advocate of the scientific methods of enquiry in history and was most interested in the study of liberty. He helped found the Cambridge Modern History series, and the English Historical Review.

ERUPTION.

In our confusion and fury
the days run quick
yesterdays blood
nearly gone,
tomorrow
a new dawn.
Struggle is infinite
we must look beyond
further out.
No aeroplanes in the sky
a clarity
of horizons,
traffic grinding to a halt.
Their will be stillness
but some things
still worth fighting for.
A land divided
is not home,
humanity pronounces
judgement,
and in the end
we all fall,
but
mother nature
prevails.

EDWARD CARPENTER - NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY

With the dying out of fear and grinding anxiety and the undoing of the rightful tension which today characterizes all our lives, Society will spring back nearer to its normal form of mutual help. People will wake up with surprise, and rub their eyes to find that they are under no necessity of being other than human.
Simultaneously ( i.e., with the lessening of the power of money as an engine of interest and profit-grinding) the huge nightmare which weighs on us today, the monstrous incubus of " business "- with its endless Sisyphus labours, its searchings for markets, its displacement and destructions of rivals, its travellers, its advertisements, its armies of clerks, its banking and broking, its accounts and checking of accounts - will fade and lessen in importance; till some day perchance it will collapse, and roll off like a great burden to the ground! Freed from the great strain and waste which all this system creates, the body politic will recover like a man from a disease, and spring to unexpected powers of health.

EDWARD CARPENTER, 1911

Postscript-

Well here I am in the year 2010, still listening,the world even colder than when the above words were written, a world unfortunately still stuffed with greed.
The General Election is forthcoming, my opening gambit is to be distrustful of all, but real change will one day come. We must demand it with every breath. Spoil your vote, do something, do not give the parasites legitimacy.Do not give up hope.

Blind and Busted

DI-WAITH / WITHOUT WORK

Wandering
where we are,
some say not having a job
creates a lack of identity,
have you seen us lately
walking up and down,
situationist's vacant.
Some say that most of us
are lost,
it depends where you are found,
some stunned into silence,
some in the nightshot sparkle.
Visions of one day
colliding with the next,
the secret is distraction
different winds blowing,
calling one another.
All summer
space is eternal,
we find gradually
that somethings are never there.
In groups
of solitary walkers,
in dreamtime
we don't give a damn,
this world has shifted
a million miles,
telescopes seek new horizons.
We carry on shuffling through,
sometimes taking the wrong turn
spiralling monk like
out of
control.
All battlefields are the same
it's never an easy road,
all this is work
where there is none.

GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS - some poems

(28/7/1844 - 8/6/1885)
Gerald Manley Hopkins was a daring innovator at a time of largely traditional verse, his life was built on renunciation and self-denial, he found lots of things quite testing and morally dangerous, but seemed to have a go anyway. His life spent hemmed in by personal guilt and scrupulousness encouraged no doubt by the constricting doctrines of 1860s Oxford. His personality was of great complexity, this is what all biographers seem to note, his descent into darkness and depression. Anyway I will endeavor to explore him further later in the year. First and foremost he was a poet, so here I will just post a few of his that reveal this calling. I will add that many of his poems were produced in relation to his spiritual state which were just another addition perhaps to his own complicated emotions. Enjoy.

SPRING AND FALL.
to a young child

MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
it will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

PEACE

When will yiu ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I'll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.

ANDROMEDA

NOW Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, look off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon food.
Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rifle in her wrongs, more lawless, and more lewd.

Her Perseus linger and leave her to her extremes?-
Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill/ thongs and fangs.

RIBBLESDALE

EARTH, sweet Eart, sweet landscape, with leaves throng
And louched low grass, heaven that dost appeal
To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel;
That canst but only be, but dost that long -

Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong
Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal,
Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reel
Thy river, and o'er gives all to rack or wrong.

And what is Earh's eye, tongue, or heart else, where
Else, but in dearand dogged man?- Ah, the heir
To his own selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn,
To thriftless reave bothour rich round world bare
And none reck of world after, this bids wear
Earth brows of such care, care and dear concern.

THE MYTH OF DEFENSIVE MILITARY UAVS

Nearly all politicians in West Wales either support the Parc Aberporth UAV testing zone without question and support it for non-military use only ( but still fail to condemn it even though its use for the forseeable future will be overwhelmingly military ); or support it for civilian and defensive military use only.
Those of us against military use entirely would argue that locating people with a UAV site in order that they can be killed with a bomb dropped by a war plane, rather blurs the offensive/defensive distinction for those politicians who still think that they know which is which, this report from WWW.trainingconf.com should finally disabuse them.

The Uk could intergrate a light-weight weapon with its Thales Uk/ Elbit Systems Watchkeeper 450 tactical unmanned air vehicles, operations of which should begin late next year.
"We are conducting analysis to investigate the contribution that an armed Watchkeeper UAV system could make in current and future operations,"
confirms minister for International degence and security Baroness Taylor.
Taylor's comments represent the first time that the MOD has acknowledged the possibility of arming the British Army's future WK450 air vehicles. One likely candidate is Thames Air Systems' lightweight multirole missile (LKM), which has previously been shown at exhibitions with a full scale model of the WK450.
WK450 air vehicle Flight-test activities should start before year-end at the Park Aberporth UAV cenre of excellence in West Wales. The Royal Air force already operatesGeneral Atomics MQ-9 Reaper UAVs carrying GBU-12 Paveway II precision guided bombs and Lockhead Martin AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles.
So "Watchkeeper becomes "Watchkiller". What rationale will the politicians invent now to justify their continued support for Parc Aberporth.

With thanks to Bro Emlyn Peace and Justice Group

Happy Easter now
Peace/heddwch

RANT

Charming David Cameron,
walks through the door
looking quite debonair,
he just keeps hanging around
pretending to care.

He's cruising for your favour
but the stink of Thatcher's breath,
stalks him everywhere
it worries me, should worry all
disturb our sleep, our waking falls.

Miniature dinosaurs
cosying up to to big business,
wearing the same hats
and their old school ties,
and their ugly transparent smiles.

Remember the last time,
nothing much has changed
they made promises then
in order to catch our vote,
still wearing the same ruddy
overcoat.

Lying is the tory's one true calling
with unblinking eyes they then attack,
champions of the privileged elite
this broken economy we live in,
an example of their twisted legacy.

Still a party of the right,
though now dressed in soft blue
the same old bullshit, the same old lies,
their smarmy handshakes
offering only a poisoned chalice.

God help the lonely and the helpless,
the old, the poor, the frial and meek,
they will kill our spirit,
they will steal the light,
the bell tolls, THIS IS A WARNING!

Spectre of another era
of divide and conquer,
the ghosts of a not to distant past,
returning to ruin this countries future
because we voted for an arse.

A KIND OF RELIGION - by Colin MacInnes.

Colin MacInnes was born on the 20th August 1914, and was known primarily as an English novelist. He was also openly bisexual, yet an outsider, a champion of youth and there many subcultures. A precursor to many pop anthropologists. He was most at ease in the coffee bars and jazz clubs of Soho and Notting Hill, author of the London Novels - Absolute Beginners, City of Spades and Mr Love and Justice from which this following essay is drawn from.
A brilliant chronicler of British life, one of the first to deeply explore its many boundaries. A broad palette he had indeed covering racial tensions, drugs, anarchy and decadence. A man of strong humanistic values and a strong moral committment, in the 1960s he became a press officer for an organisation of Blacks in Notting Hill called Defence, he was the only white person involved and became a kind of propogandist for the notorious Black Power leader-cum hustler Michael X. In 1971 on a British Council tour of Africa his behaviour was so outrageous that officials were forced to put a stop to it. Later that year the "OZ" trial on youth and censorship and the trial of the " Mangrove 9" bought out his better side. He died on April 22, 1976, the following essay I hope displays the depth of his writing, most of his books are still in print and are well worth checking out.

" I published some years ago a novel called "Mr Love & Justice".Superficially, this a realistic portrait of the worlds of the police and prostitution, and as such was kindly acclaimed by not very acute reviewers for its factual actuality. But my true intention was to write a morality, or religious allegory. Frankie Love, the professional ponce "lover", has no understanding of love, which he mistakes for mere sexuality; but he does have a profound sense of justice, and this very virtue brings about his material, if not spiritual, ruin. Edward Justice, the copper and professional upholder of the law, has no sense of justice, which he equates with power; but he does possess a deep instinct for spiritual ( as well as sexual ) love, and this, too, encompasses his material destruction. Each man, in his acts, betrays his supposed conventional virtue, and is in turn betrayed into a fall that brings truth and understanding by the real virtue of which he is unaware.
The final scene of this novel takes place in a hospital, where both men lie wounded, and where each man finally becomes, as the result of his material fall and inner illumination, identical with the other. (Hence the title "Mr Love & Justice, " and not "Mr Love & Mr Justice", which several benelovent critics said it should have been.) I had hoped this hospital scene would be read in two ways, on teo levels: both as what it is, realistically, and also as an allegory of purgatory. If read in the latter sense, the "nurses", "doctors" and invisible "specialists" take on another meaning and dimension. I planted clues all over the place, and particularly in the final paragraph, when the word "God" is used for the first and only time in the whole book.
That everyone ( so far as I know ) entirely missed the point of my endeavour may prove artistic incompetence, or perhaps that the religious instinct I thought I possessed was unconvincing; yet it may also be that the kind of person who happens to like what I write (or what he thinks I do) cannot imagine that a "serious" writer, yet one not overtly adhering to any denominational faith, would ever be compelled by a religious theme at all.
To try to situate the religious element which I concieve exists in myself and in others of my countrymen (but which the orthodox would consider not religious at all or, at best heretical), may I beg indulgence for a further autobiographical fragment.
I was reared by an unbaptized mother, and have myself never been baptized. The only tangential religious instruction I recieved was ata Presbyterian school, where my admiration for the goodness of many of my teachers was matched by the horror I felt at their theology, once I grew to understand it. I passed through the usual phase of adolescent religiosity and then, after much reading - Marx, Freud and about older rival faiths, for instance - and considerable inquiry among believers of various sects, arrived at a total doubt about historical religions which still remains with me; yet something which I take to be religious also remains.
Before trying to define this, may I please make it clear I do not wish to give offence, do not presume to be " right", nor do I of course, wish to suggest I am a good person at all. So: a personal God, an indentifiable devil, miracles ( including an immaculate conception) and any kind of physical after-life are to me not only incredible but paltry concepts. What remains?
On a radio interview not long ago with Norman Mailer (who, in contrast to the popular and partly self-created notion of him as a roaring boy and intellectual hipster, I take in fact to be an almost rabbinical moralist), the conversation turned chiefly on the concept of God. According to Mailer, God is not omnipotent, but dependent on us as we on Him. Satan was not thrown down from heaven - he tore himself out of it by the force of his own evil, and God could not prevent this. The whole universe - as each human life - consists of a creative and a destructive force. The meaning of our lives is to add to the positive, and repel the negative. In so far as we do, we survive eternally in essence. If sufficient of us fail, we help drag the whole cosmos into destruction, and all life, physical and spiritual, comes to its end.
This concept ( which is no doubt an ancient heresy, refuted by many a skilled theoligian - not to mention by atrocious religious wars) has reality for me. It explains a lot of things which in conventional theology ( and despite every twist of sophisticated logic, or the armature of an unquestioning faith), remain otherwise inexplicable. It explains why God is both omnipotent and powerless, why evil and cruelty must exist as well as good and kindness, and it explains , most pertinently of all, the imperative necessity for a constant personal choice. To act well or ill is no longer a mere matter of individual salvation, nor of pleasing God: to act well or ill involves the very existence of God, mankind, the whole firmament.
I think anyone with a feeling of this kind may have agreat awareness, and acceptance, of the laws of life that come directly and observedly from nature, and yet will constantly be conscious of an otherness, of a reality both in and outside all our lives, in function of which he also lives even if, by his deeds, he may deny it. This otherness I can best define as a perpetual sensation that life exists in ways the brain and even imagination cannot apprehend - but of which a powerfully intuitive instinct ( which I expect the orthodox mean by a soul) is constantly aware despite itself, and by no act of concious volition. Accompanying this, will be a compelling sensation that the forces of good and of creation, and evil and destruction - impersonal, eternal, locked in perpetual battle - exist in everyone and thing, and even as potent essences in themselves that cannot entirely be identified nor defined by the evidence of their effects on mankind or nature.
Persons who feel all this will not be religious, like the chuchman, by any hope of areward, but simply by necessity: for the invisible life seems as inescapably real to them as does the kife their five senses know in nature - and no one exppects rewards for recognising natural fact. Nor, for such persons, is this any matter of "belief" at all. To me, this very word is suspect, since it implies blind effort of a desperate will. I would rather say, not that I " believe" thes things, but that after forty-eight years of thinking, reading and then questioning, then to such as I am, the concept is so real as to impose itself, and thus be beyond belief..."

FROM
Spectator, February 1963