For a couple of weeks, several hours per day, I have been reading Michael Holroyd's 1997 single volume condensation of his previously-published four volume biography of Bernard Shaw.
It took me a long time. Even greatly shortened, this was one of the biggest biographies I have read all-through. Another reason for my slowness is that Shaw's life, or at least his adult life, was so complex, fascinating, and varied.
Also, I (like most people) find Shaw's character extremely odd, inconsistent - in fact incoherent.
He was sometimes the kindest most considerate and helpful of people - genuinely saint-like in behaviour (including keeping secret the vast scale of his gifts and assistance). He could be almost paralysed with horror by the contemplation of cruelty and suffering, in reality or imagination.
At other times, especially when wearing his persona of GBS; Shaw was himself, and advocated, a calculated hard-hearted indifference to well-being and life that was a glorification of cruelty and unkindness.
This can be explained by thinking of Shaw as an extreme version of the Leftist (or Liberal) ethic that regards suffering as the worst thing in life and therefore the elimination of suffering as the primary value; to the point that mass deployment of suicide and humane killing become imperative, and a moral necessity.
In this sense, as in others; Shaw was in the vanguard; because this perspective is nowadays mainstream and officially endorsed - although very few are honest enough to state it explicitly.
I have been reading Shaw since my early teens. Back then, I thought that, although he persistently pushed some silly and false notions; Shaw was right about most of the most important things; and I modelled some of my own main ideas and aspirations on his work - at least in some moods, and to some extent.
Nowadays, by contrast, Shaw seems to be fundamentally wrong about most important things, as well as having multiple very annoying or self-indulgent attributes!
Yet I continue to regard him as a great genius, and return to his works to relish their distinctive quality of expression - whose good and bad qualities were both very obvious; and therefore probably two sides of the same coin.
My main criticism of Shaw - as of so many people - is that he never reflected on his fundamental (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of reality. Therefore, he never really understood that the inadequacies and contradictions of his attitudes, opinions, and actions; originated and were sustained by the incoherence of his deepest assumptions - many of which I believe Shaw would have rejected, had he ever become aware of them.
11 comments:
Very interesting. I've often wondered if anyone reads Shaw for pleasure anymore. I read some of his plays in my teens and they didn't rouse my interest at all (for whatever that's worth). All else I know from him is from reading Chesterton biographies, and Chesterton's writings about him. Also I often think about Yeats's reported dream after seeing a Shaw play for the first time; " "I had a nightmare that I was haunted by a sewing-machine, that clicked and shone, but the incredible thing was that the machine smiled, smiled perpetually."
How was it that Shaw and Bertrand Russell, so catastrophically wrong about so much, were possibly the only sane public commentators in Britain during World War One? In my view.
@M - I am selective in my enjoyment of Shaw; but I still return and re-read some of the plays for pleasure (and watch the movies, sometimes go to see a play). Nowadays I skip the Prefaces, which I find mostly just annoying, and they often contradict the Plays.
John Bull's Other Island seems to me one of the very best - which I would imagine would interest you. Man and Superman (including the "preface" but Not the lame appendix - The Revolutionist's Handbook) is my favourite, usually. There is a clear, light, joyous beauty about that play, for me - like Mozart's music, as has often been said.
Yeats's quote has some validity, but it did refer to Shaw before he hit his peak (and Yeats was Shaw's rival in love too! - Florence Farr). Shaw continued to improve in *some* respects, right through to St Joan - it was St Joan that got him the Nobel (a couple of years after Yeats, I think).
But Holroyd describes some extraordinary episodes, incident, actions of Shaw - coming almost all the way through his life - that are so beautiful and moving as to bring tears.
in 1915 Lillah McCarthy was informed by letter that her husband (Harley Granville Barker) would divorce her, and in her devastated misery she turned to Shaw:
"He made me sit by the fire, I was shivering. Presently I found myself walking with dragging steps with Shaw beside me up and down Adelphi terrace. He let me cry. Presently I heard a voice in which all the gentleness and tenderness of the world was speaking. It said "Look up dear, look up to the heavens. There is more in life than this. There is much more. ""
My only attempt at Shaw came via Colin Wilson, for whom Shaw was a House God. I find it interesting that Wilson’s brand of vitalism (the Outsider etc) seemed to eventually run out of gas and led Wilson in his middle and later years to explore the occult and the afterlife. But Wilson could
never quite commit himself to it, and seemed unable to quit ‘this-lifeism’, if I may coin a term.
That's a very touching story indeed. I probably should read John Bull's Other Island, but I admit I've avoided it through hating any anti-nationalist propaganda, which I expect to find in it. Contra your earlier post this week-- I do believe nationalism is possible and still relevant!
@Karl - I have posted on this and other aspects of Colin Wilson - https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=colin+wilson . I regard Wilson's writing about Shaw as the best I have encountered - and have re-read his Shaw book multiple times.
Both Shaw and Wilson realised that there was more to life than the materialistic mindset in which they lived could offer but neither could make the next logical step. They both sensed the higher reality but could not take that seriously enough to move themselves out of this worldly one. They remained caught in the middle, neither fish nor fowl.
@M - As usual, Shaw puts several points of view, and the mystical priest Keegan is one of his very best characters; but IRL Shaw was certainly in favour of Home Rule for Ireland, in some form.
Nationalism is still possible as a state of mind; but it lacks the cohesive power to form the basis of a nation.
The Republic of Ireland is a good example of how nationalism inexorably faded in strength over a few decades - until nowadays anti-nationalism/ cultural-suicide is dominant; and it is the same everywhere else in the world.
Political nationalism strong enough to bind and motivate a nation is, I think, the first post-religious phase in modern societies; but being secular nationalism is oppositional in its motivations, therefore inexorably self destroying.
@William. I agree. Shaw believed in creative evolution - but saw this as an impersonal tendency in the universe towards higher consciousness: deism rather than theism.
Shaw poured scorn on the idea of a personal God - apparently because he associated it with childhood, and with the use of religion for a type of social control of which he disapproved.
But to make purpose an abstract tendency of the universe, means that it has nothing to do with you or me - why we we care about that, or shape our lives by it, any more than we care about gravity or electricity?
And Shaw saw that the future of mankind was to be superseded by higher beings, then disembodied super-human spirits (see back to Methuselah).
But for everybody to die, and human beings replaced with something else that is Not Us, is hardly a solution for you and me, or mankind! It is, indeed, a covert form of suicidal self-hatred - a desire for annihilation.
I agree that secular nationalism is incoherent, because nationalism is spiritual and secularism is material; if not of necessity, than simply as an observable fact.
It is interesting that those online "influencers" who are rediscovering English nationalism are also rediscovering, or newly discovering, at least a respect for Christianity (Carl Benjamin, for instance.). In Ireland the right has always been at least pro-Catholic, apart from a fringe of neopagan lunatics, so no rediscovery is necessary. I don't know how aware you are of these online currents; if you are too busy reading Shaw, Colin Wilson, and the Inklings (etc.), then good for you!
In practice I don't think there can be a revival of Irish nationalism without a revival of Catholicism. But then, I think ALL spiritual and cultural energies are rooted in religion, even those which oppose religion.
@M - Well, time will tell.
Nationalism, much like how Charlton depicts Christianity, does exist (I am a real nationalist and I exist), but its most visible and popular forms are not a true opponent to the mainstream, and nationalism, even in its true form, or anything else for that matter, has no hope for profane victory against the hopeless darkness of emptiness and death that rules mankind.
However, a small group like an extended family, cult, or even a country (in theory) could build a garden that would be genuinely loving and good, if only the individuals would choose to, and find each other. That is still possible
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