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R.G.マーフィ一1神の構、れた敵?小説家ウィ リアム・ ジ.・:,;ーリーディの見解 101

GOD'S FIFTH COLUMNIST?A View of Novelist William Gerhardie (1895-1977)

R.G.Murphy

ABSTRACT

In his novels,William Gerhardie took the events provided by life rather than inventing them, claiming that out-and-out invention cut across the workings of Reality.Applied to history,his mind produced highly individua11iterature.He conceived of a motive force in all history which he called 'God's Fifth Column',accounting for the fact that history seems to repeat itself.Examples from some of his writings attempt tothrow light on an unjustly ignored writer.

In his attack on the claim that scientific objectivity is possible in the study of history through facts alone,.E. H_Carr (1964)warns that facts “are always refracted through the mind of the recorder.''When reading history,he advises,''always listen out for the buzzing''of the historian's own interests,the'bees in the bonnet'(pp22-23).William Gerhardie(pronounced/d3/)was a unique writer,certainly for Britain. He was born and raised in St.Petersburg_His works deal with life, death,immorality and the duty of the Artist toshedlight on Life,of which much remains closed to our sensual perceptions_History as written by Gerhardie is not the kind that academic historians might write or even wish to study,but Gerhardie as an Artist felt that history is a means of elucidation,.a field for artistic intuition and integrity,based on facts.Manyof his books on history are biographical in approach.Hislast work,“God's Fifth Cohlmn”(Holroyd& Skidelsky,1981,eds) is subtitled “a biography of the age :1890-1940"_

William Gerhardie took as his subject the very stuff of life:people interacting,uniting,dividing, the whole sorry mess of human experience and history,with the moments that manage to transcend the misery,the drudgery,in short,the negativity、Individuals,he seemed to be saying,are in a world, not only of matter,but also of spirit.This''spirit within the gate of matter'',along with the reality of our experience of frustration,our experience of incompleteness,never being able forest and at the same time thrive both materially and spiritually : this and more Gerhardie attempted to communicate in his novels and other writings.He discerned;as many others have done and w加continue todo,that many of the 'great'men and women of history ultimately fail,often when they appear to have attained the pinnacle of success in their ambitions. It is Gerhardie's way of expressing reasons for this factor in human existence from time immemorial that is interesting. What is it that brings them(us)low,often at the very height of their (our)power?If God is a factor in explaining it,could it operate through human agency,the weather,or soon?If God is acting,how does he act?Perhaps we should also ask why he acts,for what purpose,to whose advantage?Or are human beings themselves the main authors of their downfall?Is there something built in to our experience,a law that inexorably governs life and will always ultimately intervene to frustrate Man and to ensure the continuance of some greater purpose,some design in life?Gerhardie's writings are constantly aware of a spiritual dimension in history as much as in personal Iife.In his final work, published posthumously in 1981,he at]udes to the existence of an unseen'fifth column',resident in

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humans and just waiting for us to unwittingly set it into action.The theme of God (as an idea buzzing in Gerhardie's bonnet)is directly stated in the title of the book,“God's Fifth Column'',and in other titles,references are te a Power that runs all,is undoubtedly the Creator of everything_ Responsibility for the consequences of our actions rests fairly and squarely with us rather than with a cruel'God.Holroyd and Skidelsky(1981)explain Gerhardiefs conception of God's Fifth Column' as the motive force that sabotages mans complacency and makes progress possible.Faith,hope, charity and mercy are the four columns in God's army:the fifth is divine discontent_No matter how much we may achieve;we more often than not feel the need for more whether prince or pauper, using fair means or fou1.People deemed as“great"in historical terms populate the pages of “God's Fifth Column':royalty,and political figures.Gerhardie also - indeed,with a decided emphasis-includes artists and scientists and thinkers in the book.He does not necessarily have the same definition of “great''as the history books of his (and our?)time,which accord great respect to military figures and others he refers te as 'mon et action'.The history of (mainly European) concerns in the late 19th and first half of the20th centuries is sketched in a series of vignettes.The author is constantly checking whether the individuals“ring true''or not;is their claim to greatness a hot]ow one?The test of genuine greatness is incisive,but idiosyncratic.People are classified as either mon et action and raw power or mon et creativity.Perhaps we might also say,more quintessentially,people who end uptakmgmore than they give during their lives,or those who give more than they take,in spiritual as well as physical terms.Gerhardie states it in terms of Aristotle or Plate:by 'Aristotelian'figures,Gerhardie meant those who conceived of reason as power;by 'Platonic;figures,.he meant these who conceived of reason as a quality or an attribute.The Platonic Idea is the counter on which the sundry figures of the Age are thrown to find out whether they ring true(eh_77)_Not very many politicians pass the test (of real value),but even writers were seen as relatively more or less Aristotelian or Platonic.The Aristotelian is a manet action,the Platonist a manet creativity.

“God's Fifth Column'',then,is not so much a history of facts,which Gerhardie despised,for artistic reasons(see remarks concerning his artistic philosophy below);it is an attempt at a morally accurate history,accurate in the relation of what has been done to what has been suffered.Human beings,the 'suffering unit'or the 'assailant',history,life,death,love,mortality and the sense of immortality form the raw material from which his art was shaped,usually in the form of novels。 As Holroyd& Skidelsky(1981)and friends and admirers such as01ivia Manning noted,Gerhardie did not fear to employ humour in the most serious matters.“He is our Gogol's 'Overcoat'.We all came out of him,'is a quote from Ms Manning on the dustjacket of theoriginal editionof “God's 5th Column',brought out some four years after Gerhardie's death by Holroyd & Skidelsky. Humour,sometimes extremely funny,is not used to reduce artistic value in Gerhardie but is a way of directing a strong light on the truth,especially when it is hidden,covered up by subservient media or historians who,wittingly or unwittingly,are often in the service of those who really run things. Gerhardie co-wrote a tour do force with Brian Lunn in1932,“The Memoirs of Satan'',in which,with much whimsy,Satan himself was employed to narrate the whole course of history,from the inside, until the early 20th century,when God,his emp1oyer-(suspected)-father or other relative,has him informed,in the manner of a20th-century big business tycoon,that he is redundant,so that Satan turns decrepit overnight,no longer free of the laws of Time that decree aging_He is forced to turn to writing (his'memoirs')to keep himself going.(More on this novel below.)In short,by employing humour and irreverence (relative matters to different 'beholders'), Gerhardie was in no way escaping from reality:he was illuminating it,showing what wasspiritua11yincongruous not simply

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socja11yincongruous.It was his task to depict and judge temporal events in the light of the universal and eternal (Holroyd& Skidelsky,p.18 Introduction to ''God's 5th Column').

Before looking at examples of the writings,the idea of 'God'needs to be quaiified.Gerhardie mentions in his t931 autobiography,''Memoirs of a Polyglot;',that his family was of the Anglican faith,but he does not write as a member of any denominatior1.Gerhardie would appear to walk a similarly individual path as William Biake,aware of some guiding hand,some designer who has created life as we have it,yet fully determined to have the designer approach him rather than the other way round.He ls as unwilling to engage in traditional theological debate,setting up and knocking down theories of who or what God is,as he is uninterested in traditional historical approaches tohistory.It is as if the inconclusiveness of such endeavour were no match for the ways of the Artist,aware of purpose and significance in the smallest things that most of us pay no attention to,things we deem trite insignificant.Life for such an Artist is a moving thing,a thing of purpose,and the Artist is privy to messages from those really vitalpartsof life missed by others: the sense,if not the narrowest specifics,of that Purpose.The way to jive was to move with and not against the streams of Life and Purpose,engaging in creative activity through art.Interestingly,he perceived that the Man et Creativity was often attracted to the Man et Power,but that this attraction was a snare and was never reciprocated.

It was Gerhardies artistic gift that Edith Wharton rated highly in her l927 preface to the American edition of Gerhardie's first novel,“Futility'',which made him famous (but not rich)from 1922_She referred to attempts made by writers from one culture to 'translate''the“soul'of another culture “in terms of our vernacular''.She wrote that such writings often failed to reveal living essence,being unable to penetrate beyond the surface trappings of the ''wooden puppets'they portrayed throughlabels.Gerhardie had succeeded in building a bridge between Russian and English cultural worlds,she wrote,possessing ''enough of the true novelist's objectivity tofocus the two so utterly alien races to whom he belongs almost equally,by birth and bringing_up_.to sympathize with both and to depict them for us as they see each other,with the play of their mutual reactions illuminating and animating them all_''Gerhardie's method is clearly explained in his t931autobiog_ raphy,“Memoirs Of A Polyglot'':

_the born writer looks at the outer world properly speaking without ]ooking.He says to himself:、、othingof [thesel consciously observed and obvious to all phenomena is any good tome.I willabsolve my mind from such trash,'And the mind,thankful for such consideration,says:'Leave ittome',and with its silent camera snaps an image in bloom,seemingly too trite to be worthy ofserious notice,and stores the negative in oblivion,in that dark room at the back of our mindwhich preserves it from the light of day till we are ready to develop lt. It may be some small trait- the way some shopwalker rubbed his shoulders,revealing a whole attitude to the world;or howa man hurriedly came down the steps with another,and observing a pretty girl at the telephone,said to her with a sort of beaming solicitude,which denoted his maximum anxiety to approachher in the minimum of time available,associate with her predicament,yet was sufficient to puther off by the apparent foolishness of the question:'So you can't get through,can you?Awfulthings,these telephones-(deliberately)aren't they?'These puerile nothings are in reality the mostprecious (because the most individual)receptacles of human truths,For it is the particular whichreveals affectingly that which is general to a11human kind and,in default of appearing to usthrough a particular lens,must remain what it otherwise is- a generalization_The woman welove.the precious exception conforming to the general laws of her species and sex,giving herself

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like another and bearing a child- her idiosyncrasies endear us to what is general in her andcommon toa11.And it is in her smallest traits,the twitchof her lashes,not her lengthy discourseson her mistakes and ideals,which,.stored away in the dark room of memory,one day will bringher to life,her and a whole world of things,vouch,like a hall-mark.,a kind of spiritual thumb-print,for her authenticity_what we human beings yearn for are the general things,and theparticular things which contain them,and_particular things come to you by the way,when youare not looking.(Chapter II,Part7)

This,toGerhardie,is“the ideal state of mind for a writer''(op.cit_,IIi7).So;the born writer must rely in the first instance on the subconscious,not on the conscious,in order to mine the raw material of his art from the depths of the mind designed with some purpose_Some readers who prefer to read stories that use strong,fast_moving or teasing plots may find particular novels of his hard to concentrate on,if they are out of sympathy with his Chehovian love of the trite.The histories, however,are built on a series of events.I would like to take a leck at two works,''The Memoirs of Satan''and“God's Fifth Column',although Gerhardie was sufficiently consistent in his writings from first to last that the odd reference is made te ether writings.

THE MEMOIRS OF SATAN(1932)This book has three successive narrators,Satan,Fred Watkins,who takes over as Satan

disappears,and'Gerhardi_Lunn'(the 'e'was added to his name in his latter years).Of course,it is Gerhardi_Lunn who,I suspect,are 'setting up'Satan as the literary device to get away with their imaginative meetings with important historical personages (some mythical,but in the book to illustrate a serious point of real human beings)_Gerhardie's final book is limited to the age 1890_1940,but the “Memoirs''start from before Man's appearance on the Earth_Satan,far from being the great Spoiler of God's Purpose,states his sympathy with Man,unfairly treated by God.His memoirs open with grief for “the brave men and women_born into this bedlam they call 'history,' who have dreamed visions,hoped,strained at the wheel of cross-purposes,and who are dead_ Cheated one and alii They say I am the serpent_tooth,the worm who undermines the plank of happiness,eats into the heart of every fulfilment:I am not.I am he who reads the sorry truth. Because I have not shrunk from facing it and calling it by its name,they call ME evil_History?The story of mass_unfulfiiment.However have you endured it?''Man is able to bear it by dying,a fate not shared by Satan,who bears witness that history repeats itself:“_I,your daemon,must gallop up and down the same lunatic road paved with blood and error,the sordid,tortuous highway,speed turning to dust and distance to winding,past the same;always the same,heart-breaking signposts of greed and self_righteousness,grievance and boredom and cruelty almost beyond credence and endurance_”

Satan has an inside view of history,though not a complete one;that is God's privilege alone,and Satan resents his deprivation,his unfair treatment by God.It is not clear whether Satan is truly in sympathy with Manor merely masquerading.The narrative is ali bis,until Book Six,when Fred Watkins takes it up,only to be entered and possessed by Satan as a refuge against 'arrest'by God's spirit forces of law and order_Fred is executed for murder.Gerhardie and Lunn then take up the story_

Throughout we hear how unfair God is,and the picture of God through Satan's eyes is irreverent; in a style reminiscent of Gerhardie.God is shown as all-powerful,referred to in the style of a U.S. capitalist mogul as “All_Highest''or “A.H_'',an indifferent parent-figure.''My origin,'records

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Satan,''for some dark reason,has never been made explicit tome.f'This could almost be a foreign employee's feeling in,say Japan concerning the jack et what the foreigner may think is necessary information.“I remember the All-Highest in the garden when I was quite small,and He treated me like a son_I could never take to him sincerely',he continues (pi2)_The purpose of history,the secret of God's design,he feels is kept from him_He cannot understand God's reply (which baff les many'Christians'and non_Christians alike):“some day we くSatan and the other angels> should be He.''The new plan (Earth)is “a sideline_one more planet on different lines''.God's idea was to impregnate it with His own breath,then invest the growth that might spring from it with a certain amount of auto-wi11.He could not tell how it would turnout_Satan's job would be to watch the new experiment and possibly take entire control of lt. In effect,this is tongue-in-cheek Gerhardie,who shows Satan(through Satan's imagination)as having been set up'by God,almost as if a gangster were setting up an unsuspecting victim.

This,then,is our'inside observer'of history from the very beginnings of the Earth,aware of some purpose to which he never becomes privy,and heading for ultimate redundancy.He does not know about climate,water,movement until,after experiencing desolation on the face of the Earth where he has been sent (the Bible calls it 'banished')todo a job,he receives first-hand experience of the start of Earthfs history,the start-up,as it were,of certain mechanisms bound in mortality,which he is raised above so that he can follow it and report to God the inside story without going the way of all flesh:death.Movement in the air brings a new sensation of warmth to the motionless ice:it is the wind,“the breath of God''.Every new thing bewilders him,causes a sense of awe that is thus in the world from the very beginning,but which perhaps only the poetic sensibility will remain aware of (pp14-15):

_a new quality,warmth_a new sound,a confidential rustling,and then as of gurgling content-ment.I thought that the All-Highest had send another being to share my solitude.I touched it;itran through my fingers,caressed my arm,and ran away chuckling,yet always there,repeatingexactly its sport with the stones.

This is the first moving water that Satan has ever experienced.His reaction is one that stamps the whole view of history:disgust,terror,at the dawning awareness that there is a launching of something immense,horrific:

The first stir - ughlNor shall I ever forget the grizzly terror which overtook me as suddenly thismass of ice loosened and began to move_

''Unknown in heaven'',Time,that major Gerhardian theme,has been unloosed.''The horror of it1''Satan has been charged by God to record everything that happens in Time.He produces a film,

which can go backwards as well as forwards,speeding up to spare the boredom of God(in Satan;s perception)when Satan appeals to God to end the suffering of Man and shows the whole of history to the 'absentee landlord'.(God is flown down to Salisbury Plain,in Britain,by Peter in a planet). This is by now the 20th century,arguably the worst in history.The result is the suspension of Satan's immunity from the ravages of Time,and overnight he has become unutterably senile(p296). “The reward for alifeof patient service?- 0,divine ingratitude1''Satan decides to'spill the beans', to appeal to Man(Fred Watkins,and,ultimately,Gerhardie and Lunn1)_God,as already mentioned, effectively 'puts out a contract'to have Satan'brought in',and the20th century becomes a frenzied

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Satan,hunt causing spiritual perturbation such as the world has never experienced before.Before this,Satan has roamed the world,encountering famous figures at crucial moments in their lives: Biblical figures,including David,into whose head he puts the idea of 'applying the brain to assist the work of destruction formerly confined to brute force",an idea which“has today くi.e. the20th century> assumed diabolic proportions.And the notion that the smaller,the more endearing,nation or individual- the woman,more often- is not getting a square deal from the big fellow,has passed into an accepted tradition,with infernal results_''(p59)_Ancient Emperors,mythical figures such as Helen of Trov er Tristan and Yseult,Genghis Khan,Barbarossa,Louis XVI-he enters into them and is able to tell their stories from the inside;but he is drawn mite the m b y a pu11from then1, something like a vacu1_1m suction,to mteract diabolica11y lj ith them and aid them in their designs.

Gerhardie is sticking his neck out,as they say,in both a theological and a historical sense.His purpose,however is that of Art,not religious persuasion or dissuasion.He argues rio case for a particular denomination.This artistic licence enables the writer to have ar1observer.an instrument of some Purpose,inside,at the heart of,the constant patterns in the flux of Time,able to“read the story of the struggles of the human heart and mind''(p276).The writer,like Gerhardie's Satan,is “Captain of the Human Spirit''(one of the titles God has given him)_Gerhardie is not willing to engage in theological debate in the traditional sense.He hints at what God is by taking the route of the Artist,aware of significance in the seemingly trite.Through his art,he can engage in creation,move with and not against the streams of Life and Purpo,e and deference is paid to the reject Love and Time in creation.The specifics he takes,of fact and of imagination all serve the sense of the motive forces we can only come near to grasping in Art.

The registers of Gerhardie's language vary,sometimes markedly in the same paragraph,and this is very apparent in “Gods Fifth Column'',reflecting the relative crudity of political and other powerful figures,bywords for ties,deception,individuals who ruthlessly take more than they need, inflicting more than their share of suffering on the general mass of humanity;his language can also be beautiful,poetic,and tragi_comic,in short or long passages (see the end of his t930 novel. “Pending Heaven'',pp258_272,describing the death of Max,or whole swathes of the masterpiece, ''Of Mortal Love''(1936))_Even Satan,the Prince of Hate,is moved by the experier,coot human love,which he can sample freely when he enters Tristan (pi22 ff.),whose love for Yseult in the legend has inspired many a poet:

We くTristan-Satan and Yseult are the couple> held each other with incredulity,and the kisswas of heart_sinking bliss,as if,humbled by gratitude,we did not expect all this to last for morethan a moment,as if it were something too sweet,and that must hoover:the soul,alreadycontemplating from beyond the grave this flower the unequalled earth has grown.I understoodthat,if such a moment was possible,then paradise had not been closed to man,and I wanted tocry,I don't know why,as over somebody we have misjudged and who turns out to be good.

When Tristan is k加ed,and Satan has left him,Satan was 'relieved,yet moved by the memory of human love which;when intense,must also be tragic.I reflected on the frailty of human life,on the courage of this doomed race,born to die and live in uncertainty of its fate beyond so short a span of years_'(pi27)

GOD'S FIFTH COLUMNISTS:AGENTS OF THE'LOVE OF GOD'?

Human love takes many forms,as does the 'love of God',and Poetry (covering all writing that

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touches the pulse of Life)is where these tom s of love can meet_In 1923Gerhardie wrote a classic biography of Chehov (one of his preferred spellings,always minus'k')which could qualify as a work of love(See Gerhardie,1974).In 'God's Fifth Column Chehov isoneof the Fifth Columnists.It does not mean necessarily that 'agents'would credit God,or would even be aware of what they were doing.Gerhardie's view of Chehov (and Proust among others)as being superior to Aristotelian figures,including some powerful artists such as Shaw,was expressed in terms of their real service to humanity,as follows: Chehov whose influence was not realised until the 1920s,was head and shot_11ders above the Shaws and Ibsens who called shapes into being,not to be but to prove something.''For the Shaws and Ibsens,a merely utilitarian message was a way to win a victory over opponents such as the family or society.“Literature,however,''Gerhardie continues;;'_is not a scuffle.Literature is not an argument,but the physiognomic charm of phenomena It is the scenting of a world_secret contained not in the Absolute presl.1med to hide the meaning of existence,but rather in the noumenon,the subject of the object.Donot,I beg ot you,'Goethe pleaded,、look for anything behind phenomena.They are their own lesson.f ''Gerhardie prized Chehov's kind of

realism.Side by side with what WAS くe.g. facts of behaviour he observed>,Chehovian realism ''suggested that which all hearts yearned for as the real life.'It is not sufficiently considered,'said Dr.Johnson,'that men more fro(1uently require to be reminded than informed.'_Chehov sensed the secret of literature,which was the quest for the poetry of life_He was concerned with our common humanity_ くand>distilled beauty out of life by seeing the eternal aspect of ephemeral existence. A poet in narrative and dramatic prose,he watched the great passing stream around him,and what he caught in his mesh were images of an undying reality.'(pp111-112)

What Gerhardie on a good day caught in his mesh were just st_1ch images,of an undying reality, but on every page it is Gerhardie we hear,his stamp on the material,irreverent,telling his readers the way things are,and confident to the point of cockiness something that does not sit particularly well with British,more particularly English,readers_The352 pages bristle with a non-stop barrage of 'realf 'history;,the research for which started in 1939,the writing of which was interrupted by World War Two,during which Gerhardie joined the BBC,finally pioneering “English by Radio'' before leaving in 1945_“God's Fifth Columnf'was put together from his vast notes after his death after some 32years of living as a virtual hermit in the centre of London.Perhaps he was,in some way,a victim of God's Fifth Column.How,one might ask,by the love of God,how could such a thing happen?What is,then,the resistance to such a powerful force?Again,in Gerhardies own words,the love of God

percolates through matter くe.g。humans>where it gets the least encouragement.For it takes twoto make a meeting_God is 1ove.But manf steeped in time,is not,in static situations,capable oflove;he must part,he must lose and yearn and grieve;he must learn to love without reciprocity,suffer unjustly:not for some utilitarian end,but because love is its own reward,love not limitedby time and space,but love eterna1.If God is love,love moves in the heart as the poetry of life.Eternity,knowing not change,is in ]eve with time_Time,knowing not constancy,is unable tocontemplate itself.It is the fragrant and fleeting that eternity is in love with;for she has no causeto be in love with the permanent,which is herself__That beautiful marriage between time andeternity_ is the secret spring of the universe.(p224)

In effect,Man as a free agent,with free will,is not so much at the mercy of powerful historical forces that started off the'struggle for life',he is a prime cause of the buffeting winds_Interestingly

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enough,'Satan'does not even manage to appear in the index of this book_God and Man are at the fore, with no literary Satan to intervene and play, as it were, devil's advocate1 Man's “own backwardness,our common frailty,is

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of appeal_'Two passages from tweet the 1930s'novels help to see the relation in Gerhardie's mind between

the Individual,the whole of Humanity,Love,History and Poetry,all perceptible in the web of the Trite.In 'Pending Heaven''(1930:30),the writer Victor is walking in London,thinking:

Unless he was in contact with the poetry of things he was paying dearly for the privilege of beingalive.For then he ate without being fi11ed.His whole existence,it occurred to him,hung on theword'unless'_

Unless he lived he might as well be dead_At the corner of Albemarle Street they were repairinga drain。A dozen of them were repairing a drain,but their own souls were leaking.It wascharacteristic of the perversity which marked the human race since the Fa11.What a fall;indeed1A fall en the head,since which cerebral accident man seemed to excel in putting the cart beforethe horse.Clearly,man ought first to have repaired his sou1.With a full soul he could put up witha leaking drain.With a full soul he could forgive dilapidation;yes,see romance in lt. But with aleaking soul poetry,life's purest water,must inevitably run aground.

Poetry run aground everywhere.The pity of itlBad drainage.Wanted a soul-plumber.That wasthe practical need of the age.

There are already strong overtones of a degree of self_mockery here,and that kind of humour that would come to the fore on mid_century radio comedies_The point is clear;however:the20th century is in trouble,and the Poet can function as the''soul-plumber''and restore some health tea troubled time that was on the rocks.

The elusive natureof ugoals',whether personal love or New World Order,peace or universal brother- and sisterhood,are revealed as the thoughts of Walter,a composer in“Of Mortal Love'', who is having an affair with a married woman,Dinah,and who has been named as co-respondent by the husband.The following passage encapsulates beautifully the triteness and the very real frustrations of a human existence (1936:92,cr t982:95-96):

It is our special daily curse that we cannot see anything withont cloying it over with our ownattitude,making it other than it is,a part of ourselves,as drab,as deadly familiarlAnd this is alsotrue of 1ove.We1ove,we are fascinated by,a woman who is not yet a part of ourselves.For thesame reason,we love her also after she has left us. While she is with us,as our wife,our mother,when we feel so anxious about her,so cager she should not be hurt er involved in pain,we do notlove her any more than we love ourselves,for whose welfare,none the less,we display a constantcare and anxiety.And we donot 1ove ourselves,and we donot 1ove our wives,for exactly thereason that we donot 1oveour cares and our anxieties_And now,thinking of what Jim had done,Walter felt very positive that he did not want to love Dinah as drearily and anxiously as belovedhimself.He would prefer to love her as he had done so far,romantically,as Jim's wife.He hadnever yet come even with life,never overtaken happiness,which was always a yard ahead of him_Life sent in accounts for payment in respect of things he had regarded as samples-not quite tohis taste.The things he really wanted were just out of reach.It seemed to Walter as if Time werean interminable glass corridor through which he moved,nervously eager for what lay ahead ofhim.But the things he came upon were always outside the glass corridor;he stretched his handfor them,only to feel the chilly glass dividing him from his happiness;and headlong he rushed inthe empty glass corridor,hoping to overtake the treasures ahead,to press to his bosom the lovely

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creatures who beckoned to him,only to find that each moved in her own glass corridor of Time,that even as he touched her he was touching glass.

Here,approaching his front door with its glass front,to open it to Dinah,isoneof those individual suffering units that compose mortal life and are forever striving_In the course of the novel,Walter will undergo a painful transition to so田ess 1ove,having lost her both to life (other lovers)and finally,to Death_Of such stuff is history,the meaningful base upon which powerful figures and events that tittup the history books,or are censored from them and replaced by diversions,rest and derive their existence.As with the soul-plumber passage above,the trite matters of the immediate perception are fashioned into a11kinds of unexpected figurative associations,

There is much in Gerhardie's writings of deep and sensitive insight.He has been unjustifiably ignored.He has so much to say,on what is,when ail is said and done,all that really matters.

References:Carr,E H.(1964):What Is History:'Harmondsworth,Pelican.Gerhardi(e),W、(1930):Pending Heaven.London,Duckworth.- 一一一 (1931):Memoirs of a Polyg1ot.London,Duckworth.

(1936):Of Mortal Love_London,Arthur Barker.(Revised edition in Harmondsworth,Penguin,1982)

一 (1974):Anton Chehov,a critical study.London,Macdonald.(1981):God's Fifth Column_London,Hodder & Stoughton.

一一 一& Lunn,B.(1948):The Memoirs of Satan.London,Macdonald Holroyd,M.(1983):'Preface',in W.Gerhardie (1983):The Polyglots.

London,Seeker & Warburg,1ii-vfiHolroyd,M.& Skidelsky,R.(1981)(eds):Introduction to “God's Fifth Column''9_21Wharton,E.(1927):Preface',in W.Gerhardie:(1990):Futility.London;Robin Clark,5_6

「神の第五列 ? 」 (すなわち、 「神の隠れたる同調者」)小説家ウィリアム・ジェハーティー (1895- 1977) に関する一考察

R G マーフィー

要 約

ウイリアム・ジエハーティーは彼の小説において、 ことさらに事件に富んた物語を作リ上けることを拒絶し、 それは現実の営みに反することであると主張しましたJ 彼が歴史に向かう時、 彼の精神は非常に独特な、彼独自の文学をつくり出しました。 彼は、 (人開の)Iii:史を動かしている力があると考え、 その力を l神の際れたる同調者」 と呼びました。 そして、 この力があれはこそ、 1整史は繰り返すと思えるのだと説明しました。本稿は、彼の者作からいくつかの例を掲け、 この不当に無視された作家に光を投げかけよう としたものです。