“... They alighted on the eternal questions, but went up in a gust of hot air.”
“Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did and said, at a certain period.”
“Would you believe it, Rod? Last night they got on to the question of whether there’s such a thing as crime or not! I told you they were talking a devil of a lot of nonsense! But tonight our friend Pash, there, brought up the law of progress, and we got on statistics; then Lily, there, sayin we knew well enough before countin that in the same state of society the same sort of things would happen, and it was no more wonder that quantities should remain the same than that qualities should remain the same, for in relation to society numbers are qualities - the number of drunkards is a quality in society - the numbers are an index to the qualities, and give us no instruction, only setting us to consider the causes of difference between different social states - Lily sayin this, we went off on the causes o'social change, and when you came in I was goin upon the power of ideas, which I hold to be the main transformin cause.”
“BUT in conversation with Ezra Pound there emerged the idea of defining what WE wanted & having a name for it.”
“What’s so extraordinary about it? It’s a social problem you hear discussed all the time.”
“Ultimately Gaudier for sculpture, Ezra Pound for poetry, and Wyndham Lewis, the prime mover, set down their personal requirements.”
“Not in the terms in which they were formulating it,” says Godwin, the inlayer, more concerned to carry on the subject than to wait for a word from the new guest.
“Wyndham Lewis certainly MADE Vorticism...”
“You can say that again. I say, Rod: listen and give me your opinion. For either you mean so many sorts o'things by ideas that I get no knowledge by what you say... or else you mean a particular sort of idea, and then I go against yer meaning as too narrow. For look at it in one way, all actions MEN put a bit o'thought into are ideas - say, sowing seed, or makin a canoe, or bakin clay; and such ideas as these work themselves into life and go on growing with it, but they can't go apart fromt he material that set them to work and makes a medium for them. It's the nature o'wood and stone yieldin to the knife that raises the idea o'shapin them, and with plenty o'wood and stone the shapin will go on. I look at it, that such ideas as are mixed straight away with all the other elements o'life are powerful along with'em. The slower the mixin, the less power they have. And as to the causes o'social change, I look at it in this way - ideas are a sort of parliament, but there's a commonwealth outside, and a good deal of the commonwealth is working at change without knowing what the parliament is doing. I want to hear it. I nearly burst a blood-vessel arguing with them last night before you arrived, I couldn’t wait for you to get there; I’d told them you were coming... What sparked it off was when we started talking about the view of the socialists. It’s a view that is well-known: crime is a protest against the craziness of the social system - and that’s all there is to it, no more than that, and no other reasons conceded - so it doesn’t matter!...”
“’Vorticism’ now seems more a period label than an aesthetic programme.”
“Here comes the nonsense again! But if you take easy mixing as your test of power, some of the least practical ideas beat everything. They spread without being understood, and enter into the language without being understood, and enter into the language without being thought of... ”
“What, then, was Vorticism? The question has been asked, and answered, before.”
“Take JoE, for instance. Totally stuck in the eighties. He puts everyone into categories and gets so caught up in them that he totally forgets about people, like what real people are like. He's that whole Ringwald movie series all rolled into one. And the truth is, people just aren't like that anymore. Maybe it's the drug movement, maybe it’s post-modern ecclecticism. Call it what you will, but the distinctions between different types of people have broken down.”
I’d totally forgotten dat dis conversation was going on between patients, dat is til Randt came back an opened his ignorant mouth. But I ain got nothin to add’is time. I’m jus happy to sit back and observe, cept for de very real fact dat I’m d’one runnin dis’imulation. De rest jus totally ignorin Randt anyway, which I find hilarious.
“What is Vorticism? Well, like Futurism, and Imagisme, and Cubism, essentially it is nonsense. But it is more important than these other fantastic, artistic, and literary movements because it is their sure conclusion.”
“N-no other reasons are conceded! It’s not nonsense!... I can show you the books they have: they put it all down to being ‘a prey to one’s surroundings’ - and that’s it! It’s their favourite expression! From that it follows directly that if only society were to be organized sanely, crime would simply disappear, as there would be nothing to protest about and everyone would become virtuous, just like that.”
“What was Vorticism? The answer could only be - a slogan.”
“Nature isn’t taken into consideration, nature is banished, nature is not supposed to exist. The way they see it, it’s not MANkind which, moving along a HIStorical, living path of development, will finally transmute itself into a sane society, but rather a social system which, having emanated from some mathematical head, will at once reorganize the whole of mankind and in a single instant make it virtuous and free from sin, more speedily than any living process, bypassing any historical or living path!”
“Vorticism... What does this word mean? I do not know.”
“That is why they have such an instinctive dislike of HIStory.”
“One MAN’s doings, group designation, personal requirements, period label, nonsense, slogan, enigma - all of these must be accounted for in answering the question. They may act by changing the distribution of gases. Instruments are getting so fine now. MEN may come to register the spread of a theory by observed changes in the atmosphere and corresponding changes in the nerves.”
“It’s nothing but a catalogue of outrages and follies. Ay, ye've done well to bring us round to the point. Ye're all agreed that societies change - not always and everywhere - but on the whole and in the long-run. Now, with all deference, I would beg to observe that we have got to examine the nature of changes before we have a warrant to call them progress, which word is supposed to include a bettering, though I apprehend it to be ill chosen for that purpose, since mere motion onward may carry us to a bog or a precipice. And the questions I would put are three: Is all change in the direction of progress? If not, how shall we discern which change is progress and which not? And thirdly, how far and in what ways can we act upon the course of change so as to promote it where it is beneficial and divert it where it is injurious?”
Lily immediately says, “What was Vorticism? Change and progress are merged in the idea of development. The laws of development are being discovered, and changes taking place according to them are necessarily progressive; that is to say, if we have any notion of progress or improvement opposed to them, the notion is a mistake.”
"I really can't see how you arrive at that sort of certitude about changes by calling them development."
"That is a truth. Woe to the MEN who see no place for resistance in this generation! I believe in a growth, a passage, and a new unfolding of life where of the seed is more perfect, more charged with the elements that are pregnant with..."
Well, dis a fascinatin time in de Field an all, but I'm gonna get on over to JoseF's class now.
