ON FRAGMENTS
As I have said before I am a believer
in staring blankly at things; if you do it something always happens. For
instance, I am staring blankly at this sheet of paper and I firmly believe that
something more or less intelligible will happen soon. Men stared at the blank
blue sky and invented a million mythologies. Staring stupidly at live people is
more dangerous; but even this has its fascination; and if you ever see your
companion's face turned towards you with the rounded and complete expression of
a congenital idiot, you may be certain again that he is nearer at that moment
than at any other to knowing what you really are; which I fancy is the last
thing that you desire. When we cast `an intelligent look' (as they say in
books) at a thing, it only means that we stamp our own significance upon it.
When we look wisely at a post we see what we mean by a post. But when we look
stupidly at a post we see what a post means.
In such a trance of divine imbecility I
remember once staring at the paving-stones under my feet, until I went off into
a sort of dream of paving-stones. They passed perpetually under my feet like
flat and silent waves of stones, and all the time I was asking myself what they
were. Street after street I passed, looking at the ground like a cow. And then
it suddenly seemed to me that they were all gravestones; the gravestones of
innumerable and utterly forgotten men. For under every one of them, almost
certainly, there was human dust. I seemed to see fantastic epitaphs on them,
commemorating the deeds of heroes who are too old and too great to be
remembered. There, for instance, was the man who found fire and the man who
made the first wheel; men too necessary to be ever named. There were the dim
poets who gave names to the flowers, and have utterly lost their own.
And among those imaginary benefactors
in all ages I seemed to see one class especially predominant. I mean the people
who in the dim beginning of time united one thing artificially, but permanently,
with another. What primeval priest, for instance, married bread and cheese? Who
was the wild visionary (of later times) who, after ransacking all the forests,
and counting all the fruits of the earth, discovered that almonds and raisins
had been looking for each other since the world began? Who, above all,
discovered such a thing as the happy marriage between music and literature? The
men who are least known from the past are certainly the men who made this
combination. And the men who are best known at the present day are certainly
those who are tearing such combinations in pieces.
This is the worst element in our
anarchic world of today. The whole is one vast system of separation - an
enormous philosophical Divorce Court. The theory of art for art's sake, for
instance, as applied to painting, was a proposal to separate a picture from the
subject of the picture. Sentiment would be better without art, art would be
better without sentiment. In other words, a picture would be a better picture
if it were not a picture of anything. And a subject would be all the better
subject if you did not paint it. Such moderns easily might, I think some
moderns really have, applied the same principle to that ancient combination
called a song. A very modern poet might easily say that the words would convey
their own natural rhythms much better without a tune. A very modern musician
might easily say that the only perfectly musical songs would be songs without
words. No one has yet had the star-defying audacity to hint at a separation
between bread and cheese. But we must be prepared to have it said before long
by some profligate aesthete that bread would be more breadish without cheese,
and that cheese would be more exquisitely and penetratingly cheesy without
bread. We must be prepared, I say, for a perpetual tendency towards such
cleavages; and we must be prepared to answer them by insisting on the
immemorial right of mankind to perpetuate such alliances. Man has from the
beginning joined spoken words to an air, and the two have grown old and wise
together. Those whom man hath joined let no man sunder.
This
endless process of separation of everything from everything else has a good
example, for instance, in the case of religion. Religion, a human and historic
religion, like Christianity or Buddhism or some great periods of Paganism was,
as a matter of fact, a combination of all the important parts of life. Every
one of the main human interests was in old times made a part of the creed.
Every one of those human interests is now but a part by itself, as if it were a
monomania like collecting stamps. A religion, as understood by humanity in the
past, always consisted at least of the following elements. First, of a theory
of ultimate truth and of the nature of the universe. That is now put by itself
and called Metaphysics. Second, of a groping communication with some being
other than man. This is now put by itself and called Psychical Research. Third,
of a strict rule of behaviour, with many irritating vetoes. This is now put by
itself and called Ethics. Fourth, of a certain flamboyant tendency to break out
into colours and symbols, to do wild and beautiful things with flowers or with
garments or with fire. This is now put by itself and called Art. Fifth, of a
tendency to feel that matter and locality can be sacred, that certain soils or
features of the landscape can be a part of the peace of the soul. This is now
put by itself and called Patriotism. And the typically modern men are mainly
proud of having thus torn up the original unity of the religious idea. Ethics
for ethics' sake, and art for art's sake are like the tatters of what was once
the seamless robe. They have parted his garments among them, and for his
vesture they have cast lots.
-- Daily News, March 31, 1906
- What are the chief problems with staring blankly at others?
- What is the chief problem with modernity or the modern world?
- (Based on your answer in #4.) Find a subject, school of thought, or aspect of modern life that seems to have gotten fragmented from the larger picture. How is the fragmented version of what once was more whole and wholesome proving now to be hurtful or inhumane? Explain.
- How does staring blankly at something relate to fragments and wholeness? Why would he open an essay on fragments that way? How might "staring blankly at things" be a way of redeeming ourselves or the world for a more humane life?
- 7. Remember, in Part II of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where Gawain's virtues are fold-five held in balance--one cannot dominate the others? How does Chesterton's idea about fragments relate to Gawain? What does the conclusion of Sir Gawain (end of Part III and Part IV; the last interaction with Lady Bercilak and the ensuing events) mean for the balance of his virtues?
