January

The Arnold Bennett Calendar

[9]January

OneThe individual who scoffs at New Year’s resolutions resembles the woman who says she doesn’t look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in him.TwoTo give pleasure is the highest end of any work of art, because the pleasure procured from any art is tonic, and transforms the life into which it enters.ThreeThere are only two fundamental differences in the world—the difference between sex and sex, and the difference between youth and age.FourThe only class of modern play in which it is possible to be both quite artistic and quite marketable, is the farce.FiveTo enjoy a work of imagination is no pastime, rather a sweet but fatiguing labour. After a play of Shakespeare or a Wagnerian opera repose is needed. Only a madman like Louis of Bavaria could demandTristantwice in one night.SixGreat books do not spring from something accidental in the great men who wrote them. They are the effluence of their very core, the expression of the life itself of the authors.SevenIt is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.EightOne of the main obstacles to the cultivation of poetry in the average sensible man is an absurdly inflated notion of the ridiculous.NineThe crudest excitement of the imaginative faculty is to be preferred to a swinish preoccupation with the gross physical existence.TenThe brain is the diplomatist which arranges relations between our instinctive self and the universe, and it fulfils its mission when it provides for the maximum of freedom to the instincts with the minimum of friction.ElevenA woman who has beauty wants to frame it in beauty. The eye is a sensualist, and its appetites, once aroused, grow. A beautiful woman takes the same pleasure in the sight of another beautiful woman as a man does; only jealousy or fear prevents her from admitting the pleasure.TwelveThe beginning of wise living lies in the control of the brain by the will.ThirteenTo utter a jeremiad upon the decadence of taste, to declare that literature is going to the dogs because a fourth-rate novel has been called a masterpiece and has made someone’s fortune, would be absurd. I have a strong faith that taste is as good as ever it was, and that literature will continue on its way undisturbed.FourteenThere is a loveliness of so imperious, absolute, dazzling a kind that it banishes from the hearts of men all moral conceptions, all considerations of right and wrong, and leaves therein nothing but worship and desire.FifteenWhen homage is reiterated, when the pleasure of obeying a command and satisfying a caprice is begged for, when roses are strewn, and even necks put down in the path, one forgets to be humble; one forgets that in meekness alone lies the sole good; one confuses deserts with the hazards of heredity.SixteenThere are men who are capable of loving a machine more deeply than they can love a woman. They are among the happiest men on earth.SeventeenThe uncultivated reader is content to live wholly in and for the moment, sentence by sentence. Keep him amused and he will ask no more. You may delude him, you may withhold from him every single thing to which he is rightfully entitled, but he will not care. The more crude you are, the better will he be pleased.EighteenIt is only in the stress of fine ideas and emotions that a man may be truly said to live.NineteenOh, innocence! Oh, divine ignorance! Oh, refusal! None knows your value save her who has bartered you! And herein is the woman’s tragedy.TwentyTo extract from the brain, at will and by will, concentration on a given idea for even so short a period as half an hour is an exceedingly difficult feat—and a fatiguing! It needs perseverance.Twenty-oneA merely literary crudity will affect the large public neither one way nor the other, since the large public is entirely uninterested in questions of style; but all other crudities appeal strongly to that public.Twenty-two“Cupid and Commonsense” produced.Everyone who has driven a motor-car knows the uncanny sensation that ensues when for the first time in your life you engage the clutch, and the Thing beneath you begins mysteriously and formidably to move. It is at once an astonishment, a terror, and a delight. I felt like that as I watched the progress of my first play.Twenty-threeCan you see the sun over the viaduct at Loughborough Junction of a morning, and catch its rays in the Thames off Dewar’s whisky monument, and not shake with the joy of life? If so, you and Shakespeare are not yet in communication.Twenty-fourAdults have never yet invented any institution, festival or diversion specially for the benefit of children. The egoism of adults makes such an effort impossible, and the ingenuity and pliancy of children make it unnecessary. The pantomime, for example, which is now pre-eminently a diversion for children, was created by adults for the amusement of adults. Children have merely accepted it and appropriated it. Children, being helpless, are of course fatalists and imitators. They take what comes, and they do the best they can with it. And when they have made something their own that was adult, they stick to it like leeches.Twenty-fiveThe living speak of the uncanniness of the dead. It does not occur to them that manifestations of human existence may be uncanny to the dead.Twenty-sixThere is no royal road to the control of the brain. There is no patent dodge about it, and no complicated function which a plain person may not comprehend. It is simply a question of: “I will,Iwill, and Iwill.”Twenty-sevenI knew that when love lasted, the credit of the survival was due far more often to the woman than to the man. The woman must husband herself, dole herself out, economise herself so that she might be splendidly wasteful when need was. The woman must plan, scheme, devise, invent, reconnoitre, take precautions; and do all this sincerely and lovingly in the name and honour of love. A passion for her is a campaign; and her deadliest enemy is satiety.Twenty-eightEfficient living, living up to one’s best standard, getting the last ounce of power out of the machine with the minimum of friction: these things depend on the disciplined and vigorous condition of the brain.Twenty-nineIn the world of books, as in every other world, one-half does not know how the other half lives. In literary matters the literate seldom suspect the extreme simplicity andnaïvetéof the illiterate. They wilfully blind themselves to it; they are afraid to face it.ThirtyThe mysteriousness of woman vanishes the instant you brutally face it. Boys and ageing celibates are obsessed by the mysteriousness of woman. The obsession is a sign either of immaturity or of morbidity. The mysteriousness of woman,—take her, and see then if she is mysterious!Thirty-oneTrain journeys have too often been sorrowful for me, so much so that the conception itself of a train, crawling over the country like a snake, or flying across it like a winged monster, fills me with melancholy. Trains loaded with human parcels of sadness and illusion and brief joy, wandering about, crossing, and occasionally colliding in the murk of existence; trains warmed and lighted in winter; trains open to catch the air of your own passage in summer; night-trains that pierce the night with your yellow, glaring eyes, and waken mysterious villages, and leave the night behind and run into the dawn as into a station; trains that carry bread and meats for the human parcels, and pillows and fountains of fresh water; trains that sweep haughtily and wearily indifferent through the landscapes and the towns, sufficient unto yourselves, hasty, panting, formidable, and yet mournful entities: I have understood you in your arrogance and your pathos!

The individual who scoffs at New Year’s resolutions resembles the woman who says she doesn’t look under the bed at nights; the truth is not in him.

To give pleasure is the highest end of any work of art, because the pleasure procured from any art is tonic, and transforms the life into which it enters.

There are only two fundamental differences in the world—the difference between sex and sex, and the difference between youth and age.

The only class of modern play in which it is possible to be both quite artistic and quite marketable, is the farce.

To enjoy a work of imagination is no pastime, rather a sweet but fatiguing labour. After a play of Shakespeare or a Wagnerian opera repose is needed. Only a madman like Louis of Bavaria could demandTristantwice in one night.

Great books do not spring from something accidental in the great men who wrote them. They are the effluence of their very core, the expression of the life itself of the authors.

It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.

One of the main obstacles to the cultivation of poetry in the average sensible man is an absurdly inflated notion of the ridiculous.

The crudest excitement of the imaginative faculty is to be preferred to a swinish preoccupation with the gross physical existence.

The brain is the diplomatist which arranges relations between our instinctive self and the universe, and it fulfils its mission when it provides for the maximum of freedom to the instincts with the minimum of friction.

A woman who has beauty wants to frame it in beauty. The eye is a sensualist, and its appetites, once aroused, grow. A beautiful woman takes the same pleasure in the sight of another beautiful woman as a man does; only jealousy or fear prevents her from admitting the pleasure.

The beginning of wise living lies in the control of the brain by the will.

To utter a jeremiad upon the decadence of taste, to declare that literature is going to the dogs because a fourth-rate novel has been called a masterpiece and has made someone’s fortune, would be absurd. I have a strong faith that taste is as good as ever it was, and that literature will continue on its way undisturbed.

There is a loveliness of so imperious, absolute, dazzling a kind that it banishes from the hearts of men all moral conceptions, all considerations of right and wrong, and leaves therein nothing but worship and desire.

When homage is reiterated, when the pleasure of obeying a command and satisfying a caprice is begged for, when roses are strewn, and even necks put down in the path, one forgets to be humble; one forgets that in meekness alone lies the sole good; one confuses deserts with the hazards of heredity.

There are men who are capable of loving a machine more deeply than they can love a woman. They are among the happiest men on earth.

The uncultivated reader is content to live wholly in and for the moment, sentence by sentence. Keep him amused and he will ask no more. You may delude him, you may withhold from him every single thing to which he is rightfully entitled, but he will not care. The more crude you are, the better will he be pleased.

It is only in the stress of fine ideas and emotions that a man may be truly said to live.

Oh, innocence! Oh, divine ignorance! Oh, refusal! None knows your value save her who has bartered you! And herein is the woman’s tragedy.

To extract from the brain, at will and by will, concentration on a given idea for even so short a period as half an hour is an exceedingly difficult feat—and a fatiguing! It needs perseverance.

A merely literary crudity will affect the large public neither one way nor the other, since the large public is entirely uninterested in questions of style; but all other crudities appeal strongly to that public.

Everyone who has driven a motor-car knows the uncanny sensation that ensues when for the first time in your life you engage the clutch, and the Thing beneath you begins mysteriously and formidably to move. It is at once an astonishment, a terror, and a delight. I felt like that as I watched the progress of my first play.

Can you see the sun over the viaduct at Loughborough Junction of a morning, and catch its rays in the Thames off Dewar’s whisky monument, and not shake with the joy of life? If so, you and Shakespeare are not yet in communication.

Adults have never yet invented any institution, festival or diversion specially for the benefit of children. The egoism of adults makes such an effort impossible, and the ingenuity and pliancy of children make it unnecessary. The pantomime, for example, which is now pre-eminently a diversion for children, was created by adults for the amusement of adults. Children have merely accepted it and appropriated it. Children, being helpless, are of course fatalists and imitators. They take what comes, and they do the best they can with it. And when they have made something their own that was adult, they stick to it like leeches.

The living speak of the uncanniness of the dead. It does not occur to them that manifestations of human existence may be uncanny to the dead.

There is no royal road to the control of the brain. There is no patent dodge about it, and no complicated function which a plain person may not comprehend. It is simply a question of: “I will,Iwill, and Iwill.”

I knew that when love lasted, the credit of the survival was due far more often to the woman than to the man. The woman must husband herself, dole herself out, economise herself so that she might be splendidly wasteful when need was. The woman must plan, scheme, devise, invent, reconnoitre, take precautions; and do all this sincerely and lovingly in the name and honour of love. A passion for her is a campaign; and her deadliest enemy is satiety.

Efficient living, living up to one’s best standard, getting the last ounce of power out of the machine with the minimum of friction: these things depend on the disciplined and vigorous condition of the brain.

In the world of books, as in every other world, one-half does not know how the other half lives. In literary matters the literate seldom suspect the extreme simplicity andnaïvetéof the illiterate. They wilfully blind themselves to it; they are afraid to face it.

The mysteriousness of woman vanishes the instant you brutally face it. Boys and ageing celibates are obsessed by the mysteriousness of woman. The obsession is a sign either of immaturity or of morbidity. The mysteriousness of woman,—take her, and see then if she is mysterious!

Train journeys have too often been sorrowful for me, so much so that the conception itself of a train, crawling over the country like a snake, or flying across it like a winged monster, fills me with melancholy. Trains loaded with human parcels of sadness and illusion and brief joy, wandering about, crossing, and occasionally colliding in the murk of existence; trains warmed and lighted in winter; trains open to catch the air of your own passage in summer; night-trains that pierce the night with your yellow, glaring eyes, and waken mysterious villages, and leave the night behind and run into the dawn as into a station; trains that carry bread and meats for the human parcels, and pillows and fountains of fresh water; trains that sweep haughtily and wearily indifferent through the landscapes and the towns, sufficient unto yourselves, hasty, panting, formidable, and yet mournful entities: I have understood you in your arrogance and your pathos!

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