Nineteen
Impressions
By J. D. Beresford
INTRODUCTION
THE
OTHER THING
The
mesh of the net is very fine; so fine that even when the eye of the
would-be observer is pressed close to this apparently impervious web,
nothing can be seen. It is true that the scientist who habitually adopts
this method of peering is occasionally visited by an impression of
something bright beyond, something that shines. But he hardly ever records
that impression. It is so elusive; and it comes only at those times when he is not deliberately seeking
it. This impression of something elusive that shines cannot be counted as
a contribution to exact knowledge.
Other methods of observation, all the tricks and devices of the
impatient to penetrate this veil about us,
are little more successful. Nevertheless we are stirred now and
again by exciting reports of discovery. Some mystic, or poet, or
philosopher, or it may be a professed researcher into the immediate
mysteries beyond the net, comes to us with news.
He claims to have seen or heard or experienced—occasionally even
to have touched!—this commonly invisible, inaudible, intangible other
thing. There is no news more wonderful than this, and our senses are
stirred by strange thrills and ecstasies of hope. But always, after a
little while,
doubt returns. The great news appears on reflection to lack the
authentic touch. At the moment we receive it, we respond without
reservation. For a time we believe that we, too, have had a vision of the
other thing. And, then, it is as if the tiny opening had drawn together
again, and we find—an explanation. Nothing in the world is more
depressing than an explanation. It is like dull, drab paint on what was
once a shining surface. It hides the mystery of those half-seen depths
that do reflect something, even if we cannot see clearly what the image
is.
My metaphor has slid away from nets to mirrors, but I make no
apology for that. The metaphor is of no importance. Any one will do, and
the more you mix them the better chance you have to catch a passing
impression of that elusive brightness. If you fix your thought on a single
figure, on the net, for example, you will presently see the net and
nothing else. And if you wish to look out, it is obviously useless to keep
your eyes fixed on the sash bars or the deficiencies in the glass. Even
this metaphor of “looking” will not hold for long; nor indeed any
metaphor that belongs to the senses.
The best method of learning about the other thing is to keep all
your senses employed, and your inner self free from any preoccupation with
what your body is doing. This may appear to be a very difficult
undertaking; and it is, as a matter of fact, impossible, if you
deliberately try to set about it. Concentration, for example, is instantly
fatal to success. What you want to achieve is dispersion. All these
tiresome senses of ours must be amused, treated as little children, so
that they may occupy themselves quietly and not come worrying us; and then
for a moment or two we may find opportunity to leave them to themselves.
Genius through all time has sought desperate physical measures to
distract the exigencies of these child senses. Alcohol and opiates and
despairing excitements have been constantly used to evoke once more the
opportunity for a released mind to seek the ultimate vision of
inspiration. For when once that has come, no other satisfaction can take
its place. It is a supernal joy that can find no equal in the acts and
sensations of physical life. And all these desperate measures are but a
means for escape to the deeper enjoyment that may follow them.
Another means that we do not consciously seek is that of pain. It
seems as if that suffering inner being of ours could be goaded at last to
separate itself. The perpetual nagging of the children becomes
unendurable, and for a moment or two the mother closes her eyes and stops
her ears and attains the peace of separation.
But perhaps the commonest means whereby we obtain an instant’s
separation, is through literature. Something in us responds, we forget our
bodies, and for one fugitive moment it is as if there had come an opening
and we had looked out. Or it is as if we crouched under a high cliff,
driven by the pressure of a tempest, and that through the crashing,
roaring tumult of wind and sea, we heard the mellow trumpet of a distant
bell.
No enunciation of splendid maxims nor subtle turns of thought will
bring these moments to us, through literature. Nor can I find them by
reading the careful mysteries of those who write of fauns and naiads; the
stories of those authors who appear to think that mystery died, if not
with ancient Greece, at least in the Middle Ages. Indeed, I think that
when we are reduced to seeking this other thing in the past, we have lost
our ability to find it. This association of our delight with any such
solid fantasy as the various homunculi we call fairies, is a denial of its
true reality. This other thing of ours is not phenomenal, and once we give
it a shape, however whimsical, we have given it a spatial, temporal
substance.
There is, indeed, no one type of story that achieves the passing
magic of our instant’s separation. I have found it in poetry, and in
prose, and in every kind of subject. Once I found it in an account of the
chemical discovery that had sought to probe by laboratory methods the
secret of the ultimate constitution of matter; and for one ecstatic moment
the secret was revealed to me. So nearly had my author brought me to the
verge of truth. . . .
And I am hoping that perhaps here and there a reader of these
“impressions” of mine may find an instant’s separation. In certain
of the items that make up this collection, there are two motives. The
first is undisguised, and is displayed as the distraction of a common
story; the movement of modern life in an ordinary setting. The second
motive is never explicit. It does not represent the actual discovery of
separation, nor attempt any indication of what that moment might reveal.
For anything approaching definition is
completely destructive of a vision of the other thing which is in its
nature indefinable. No, all that the second motive stands for is the
hesitating suggestion that the other thing is there, the essential reality
behind every expression, the immanent mystery of life independent of space
or time. . . .
I have written this introduction because some of my friends who
read these stories of mine when they appeared in some weekly journal or
monthly review, have come to me and asked me to explain what I meant by
such efforts as “The Little Town” or “The Empty Theatre.” They
appeared to think that I must know. And in a sense, their sense, I did not
know. There was no careful allegory that I could interpret, no definite
analogy. If I had said that the old man up in the flies of the Kosmos
Theatre represented God, I should have grossly satirised my own idea. At
the best I could only say that if the story meant anything at all—and I
was not the least sure whether it did or not—it meant that under the
stress of such an excitement as the discovery of an unknown town, a man
might be moved to dream of the shadow of some relation between himself and
the impersonal; that he might, in fact, achieve the moment’s separation
which reveals the apparently commonplace as a vision of wonder.
Lastly, these visions are personal
mysteries, and as various in their manner of revelation as the modes of
art or religion. We touch them here or there, according to our individual
equipment. Any one of the five senses may be the immediate means of
communication, conveying the sudden stimulus by which the inner self finds
its brief eternity of release. And there are some who cannot find their
ecstasy in any book; there are others who find it in a few books, but will
not find it here. To them I offer an apology, and ask in return that they
shall not write and ask me what I mean. I have done my best to explain,
although, as I have said, an explanation is the most depressing thing in
the world.
Cut-Throat Farm
The Power o’ Money
The Criminal
Flaws in the Time Scheme (Three Parts)
I. An Effect of Reincarnation
II. A Case of Prevision
III. The Late Occupier
The Little Town
The Lost Suburb
The Great Tradition
The Escape
Force Majeure
The Contemporaries
The Empty Theatre
The Ashes of Last Night’s Fire
The Misanthrope
Powers of the Air
The Instrument of Destiny
The Man in the Machine
Lost in the Fog
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From Your Dark Side
