Morality and the Novel

The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his circumambient universe, at the
living moment. As mankind is always struggling in the toils of old relationships, art is always ahead
of the ›times‹, which themselves are always far in the rear of the living moment.
When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself,
as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not
represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will
visualise the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.
The vision on the canvas is a third thing, utterly intangible and inexplicable, the offspring of
the sunflower itself and van Gogh himself. The vision on the canvas is for ever incommensurable
with the canvas, or the paint, or van Gogh as a human organism, or the sunflower as a botanical
organism. You cannot weigh nor measure nor even describe the vision on the canvas. It exists, to tell
the truth, only in the much-debated fourth dimension. In dimensional space it has no existence.
It is a revelation of the perfected relation, at a certain moment, between a man and a sunflower.
It is neither man-in-the-mirror nor flower-in-the-mirror, neither is it above or below or across
anything. It is between everything, in the fourth dimension.
And this perfected relation between man and his circumambient universe is life itself, for
mankind. It has the fourth-dimensional quality of eternity and perfection. Yet it is momentaneous.
Man and the sunflower both pass away from the moment, in the process of forming a new
relationship. The relation between all things changes from day to day, in a subtle stealth of change.
Hence art, which reveals or attains to another perfect relationship, will be for ever new.
At the same time, that which exists in the non-dimensional space of pure relationship is
deathless, lifeless, and eternal. That is, it gives us the feeling of being beyond life or death. We say
an Assyrian lion or an Egyptian hawk’s head ›lives‹. What we really mean is that it is beyond life,
and therefore beyond death. It gives us that feeling. And there is something inside us which must
also be beyond life and beyond death, since that ›feeling‹ which we get from an Assyrian lion or an
Egyptian hawk’s head is so infinitely precious to us. As the evening star, that spark of pure relation
between night and day, has been precious to man since time began.
If we think about it, we find that our life consists in this achieving of a pure relationship
between ourselves and the living universe about us. This is how I ›save my soul‹ by accomplishing
a pure relationship between me and another person, me and other people, me and a nation, me and a
race of men, me and the animals, me and the trees or flowers, me and the earth, me and the skies
and sun and stars, me and the moon: an infinity of pure relations, big and little, like the stars of the
sky: that makes our eternity, for each one of us, me and the timber I am sawing, the lines of force I
follow; me and the dough I knead for bread, me and the very motion with which I write, me and the
bit of gold I have got. This, if we knew it, is our life and our eternity: the subtle, perfected relation
between me and my whole circumambient universe.
And morality is that delicate, for ever trembling and changing balance between me and my
circumambient universe, which precedes and accompanies a true relatedness.
Now here we see the beauty and the great value of the novel. Philosophy, religion, science,
they are all of them busy nailing things down, to get a stable equilibrium. Religion, with its nailed-
down One God, who says Thou shalt, Thou shan’t, and hammers home every time; philosophy, with
its fixed ideas; science with its ›laws‹: they, all of them, all the time, want to nail us on to some tree
or other.
But the novel, no. The novel is the highest example of subtle inter-relatedness that man has
discovered. Everything is true in its own time, place, circumstance, and untrue outside of its own
place, time, circumstance. If you try to nail anything down, in the novel, either it kills the novel, or
the novel gets up and walks away with the nail.
Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. When the novelist puts his
thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality.
The modern novel tends to become more and more immoral, as the novelist tends to press his
thumb heavier and heavier in the pan: either on the side of love, pure love: or on the side of
licentious ›freedom‹.
The novel is not, as a rule, immoral because the novelist has any dominant idea, or purpose.
The immorality lies in the novelist’s helpless, unconscious predilection. Love is a great emotion.
But if you set out to write a novel, and you yourself are in the throes of the great predilection for
love, love as the supreme, the only emotion worth living for, then you will write an immoral novel.
Because no emotion is supreme, or exclusively worth living for. All emotions go to the
achieving of a living relationship between a human being and the other human being or creature or
thing he becomes purely related to. All emotions, including love and hate, and rage and tenderness,
go to the adjusting of the oscillating, unestablished balance between two people who amount to
anything. If the novelist puts his thumb in the pan, for love, tenderness, sweetness, peace, then he
commits an immoral act: he prevents the possibility of a pure relationship, a pure relatedness, the
only thing that matters: and he makes inevitable the horrible reaction, when he lets his thumb go,
towards hate and brutality, cruelty and destruction.
Life is so made that opposites sway about a trembling centre of balance. The sins of the fathers
are visited on the children. If the fathers drag down the balance on the side of love, peace, and
production, then in the third or fourth generation the balance will swing back violently to hate, rage,
and destruction. We must balance as we go.
And of all the art forms, the novel most of all demands the trembling and oscillating of the
balance. The ›sweet‹ novel is more falsified, and therefore more immoral, than the blood-and-
thunder novel.
The same with the smart and smudgily cynical novel, which says it doesn’t matter what you do,
because one thing is as good as another, anyhow, and prostitution is just as much ›life‹ as anything
else.
This misses the point entirely. A thing isn’t life just because somebody does it. This the artist
ought to know perfectly well. The ordinary bank clerk buying himself a new straw hat isn’t ›life‹ at
all: it is just existence, quite all right, like everyday dinners: but not ›life‹.
By life, we mean something that gleams, that has the fourth-dimensional quality. If the bank
clerk feels really piquant about his hat, if he establishes a lively relation with it, and goes out of the
shop with the new straw on his head, a changed man, be-aureoled, then that is life.
The same with the prostitute. If a man establishes a living relation to her, if only for one
moment, then it is life. But if it doesn’t: if it is just money and function, then it is not life, but
sordidness, and a betrayal of living.
If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the
relationships may consist in. If the novelist honours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.
But there are so many relationships which are not real. When the man in Crime and
Punishment murders the old woman for sixpence, although it is actual enough, it is never quite real.
The balance between the murderer and the old woman is gone entirely; it is only a mess. It is
actuality, but it is not ›life‹, in the living sense.
The popular novel, on the other hand, dishes up a réchauffé of old relationships: If Winter
Comes. And old relationships dished up are likewise immoral. Even a magnificent painter like
Raphael does nothing more than dress up in gorgeous new dresses relationships which have already
been experienced. And this gives a gluttonous kind of pleasure of the mass: a voluptuousness, a
wallowing. For centuries, men say of their voluptuously ideal woman: »She is a Raphael Madonna.«
And women are only just learning to take it as an insult.
A new relation, a new relatedness hurts somewhat in the attaining; and will always hurt. So life
will always hurt. Because real voluptuousness lies in re-acting old relationships, and at the best,
getting an alcoholic sort of pleasure out of it, slightly depraving.
Each time we strive to a new relation, with anyone or anything, it is bound to hurt somewhat.
Because it means the struggle with and the displacing of old connexions, and this is never pleasant.
And moreover, between living things at least, an adjustment means also a fight, for each party,
inevitably, must ›seek its own‹ in the other, and be denied. When, in the parties, each of them seeks
his own, her own, absolutely, then it is a fight to the death. And this is true of the thing called
›passion‹. On the other hand, when, of the two parties, one yields utterly to the other, this is called
sacrifice, and it also means death. So the Constant Nymph died of her eighteen months of constancy.
 It isn’t the nature of nymphs to be constant. She should have been constant in her nymph-hood.
And it is unmanly to accept sacrifices. He should have abided by his own manhood.
There is, however, the third thing, which is neither sacrifice nor fight to the death: when each
seeks only the true relatedness to the other. Each must be true to himself, herself, his own manhood,
her own womanhood, and let the relationship work out of itself. This means courage above all
things: and then discipline. Courage to accept the life-thrust from within oneself, and from the other
person. Discipline, not to exceed oneself any more than one can help. Courage, when one has
exceeded oneself, to accept the fact and not whine about it.
Obviously, to read a really new novel will always hurt, to some extent. There will always be
resistance. The same with new pictures, new music. You may judge of their reality by the fact that
they do arouse a certain resistance, and compel, at length, a certain acquiescence.
The great relationship, for humanity, will always be the relation between man and woman. The
relation between man and man, woman and woman, parent and child, will always be subsidiary.
And the relation between man and woman will change for ever, and will for ever be the new
central clue to human life. It is the relation itself which is the quick and the central clue to life, not
the man, nor the woman, nor the children that result from the relationship, as a contingency.
It is no use thinking you can put a stamp on the relation between man and woman, to keep it in
the status quo. You can’t. You might as well try to put a stamp on the rainbow or the rain.
As for the bond of love, better put it off when it galls. It is an absurdity, to say that men and
women must love. Men and women will be for ever subtly and changingly related to one another; no
need to yoke them with any ›bond‹ at all. The only morality is to have man true to his manhood,
woman to her womanhood, and let the relationship form of itself, in all honour. For it is, to each, life
itself.
If we are going to be moral, let us refrain from driving pegs through anything, either through
each other or through the third thing, the relationship, which is for ever the ghost of both of us.
Every sacrificial crucifixion needs five pegs, four short ones and a long one, each one an
abomination. But when you try to nail down the relationship itself, and write over it Love instead of
This is the King of the Jews, then you can go on putting in nails for ever. Even Jesus called it the
Holy Ghost, to show you that you can’t lay salt on its tail.
The novel is a perfect medium for revealing to us the changing rainbow of our living
relationships. The novel can help us to live, as nothing else can: no didactic Scripture, anyhow. If
the novelist keeps his thumb out of the pan.
But when the novelist has his thumb in the pan, the novel becomes an unparalleled perverter of
men and women. To be compared only, perhaps, to that great mischief of sentimental hymns, like
›Lead, Kindly Light,‹ which have helped to rot the marrow in the bones of the present generation.