Investigating Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time

233 Pages·1994·22.384 MB·English

by  Isabelle Joyau (auth.)

INVESTIGATING POWELL'S
A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME
Investigating Powell's
A Dance to the Music
of Time
Isabelle Joyau
University of Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle
M
St. Martin's Press
© Isabelle Joyau 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994
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First published in Great Britain 1994 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-23286-4 ISBN 978-1-349-23284-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23284-0
First published in the United States of America 1994 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-10670-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Joyau, Isabelle.
Investigating Powell's A dance to the music of time I Isabelle
Joyau.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-10670-6 (hardcover)
1. Powell, Anthony, 1905-- Dance to the music of time.
2. Autobiographical fiction, English-History and criticism.
3. Novelists, English, in literature. 4. England in literature.
I. Title.
PR603l.o74D3335 1994
823' .912--dc20 93-27168
CIP
'Ce que j'attends seulement de votre entretien critique, c'est !'inflex
ion de voix juste qui me fera sentir que vous etes amoureux, et
amoureux de la meme maniere que moi: je n'ai besoin que de lacon
a
firmation et de l'orgueil que procure l'amoureux I' amour parallele
et lucide d'un tiers bien disant.'
Julien Gracq, en lisant en ecrivant (Paris: Jose Corti, 1982), p. 178.
('All I expect to hear in your critical commentary is the inflexion that
will make me feel that you are in love, and in love as I myself am in
love: all I need is the confirmation and pride which the lover derives
from the parallel and lucid love of an eloquent third.')
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction ix
1 The First-Person Narrator 1
2 Tune in A Dance to the Music of Time 27
3 Society 48
4 Structure 73
5 Surface and Depth 105
6 The Abyss of Carnality 124
7 The Series and its Generic Affiliations 137
8 Conclusion 155
Notes 164
Bibliography 192
Index 208
vii
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers are grateful to William Heinemann
Limited for permission to quote from Buyer's Market; A Question of
Upbringing; The Acceptance World; At Lady Molly's; and Temporary
Kings by Anthony Powell.
viii
Introduction:
An Assessment of
Powell's Popularity
No artist can be critically imposed by argument upon a reluctant
and prejudiced public; in order to see the felicities of a work of art,
the reader or beholder must approach it with sympathy. There is no
evading this incontrovertible prerequisite. It is otiose to a degree to
try and convince anybody who has set his heart on not letting him
self be persuaded of the merits of an artistic creation. Sympathy is
emphatically needed when one embarks on the study and defence
of a contemporary writer who has not yet received the infallible
stamp of approval time confers on triumphant fictional accomplish
ments, and who has elicited such divergent critical responses as
Anthony Powell has. Yet, one's enthusiasm might, one hopes,
inspire others to approach any work of art without prejudice.
Goethe believed that whenever one has to express an opinion on
the actions or on the writings of others, this must be done with a cer
tain one-sided enthusiasJ;ll, or a loving interest in them and their
work, otherwise the result is hardly worth considering. To him,
sympathy and enjoyment in what we see are in fact the only reality.
One could not dream of a better way of expressing the spirit in
which this work was undertaken and pursued. I am an admirer, if
not an uncritical one, of Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of
Time and consider this work to be a masterpiece of modem fiction.
I am far from being alone in commending this fictional achieve
ment, whose creation spans the years 1951-75. Numerous devotees
believe that the series compels respect and, for a quarter of a cen
tury, have been eagerly expecting each new instalment with its
'annual treat of Widmerpool'.1 Particularly striking is the large fol
lowing Powell has attracted among fellow novelists: Kingsley Amis
claimed he 'would rather read Mr Powell than any other English
novelist now writing'.2 Evelyn Waugh paid him his devotional
respects, too: 'I have few reasons to desire longevity. One of them is
the hope that I (and he) may be spared to see the completion of the
fine sequence which he calls The Music of Time. '3 Frederick R. Karl
ix
Introduction
X
conveniently collated the laudatory comments passed by literary
craftsmen:
'The most important effort in fiction since the war' (Kingsley
Amis); 'the finest long comic novel that England has produced
this century' (Anthony Burgess); 'if they are not "great", these
beautiful books are as near it as makes no difference for their con
temporary readers' (Roy Fuller); 'a joy to all' (Philip Larkin) ....
The paperbacks of Powell's books proclaim his achievement.4
Yet, when examining Powell's work, the question of literary
status seems to arise with greater urgency than is normally the case.
Perhaps because of Powell's narrative reticences and discretions,
criticism is thrown off balance and found groping more than is usu
ally the case. Jocelyn Brooke warns that Powell is 'extraordinarily
difficult to assess by the normal critical standards'.5 Indeed, few
novelists have made such an iconoclastic impact, few have triggered
off such heated controversy. A Dance to the Music of Time has elicited
wild acclaim- verging occasionally on the fulsome, gushing and
rhapsodic - while simultaneously attracting vitriolic criticism.
Edmund Wilson figures among the most adamant detractors of
Powell: 'He's just entertaining enough to read in bed late at night in
summer.'6 So does John Wain, who casually dismissed the series as
a vast· roman-fleuve, 'possibly the most unreadable work of our
time'? Richard Jones also launched a spirited attack on the series,
rebutting the fascination it exercises on its readership as similar to
the appeal attendant on a gossip column, revolving on 'finding out
who has just been divorced or bedded and by whom'.8
Such a record of hyperbolically divergent critical reception cannot
fail to intrigue. Several tentative explanations might be put forward.
The scarcity of whole books of criticism devoted to Powell, as well
as the scathing appraisals just quoted, may be accounted for by con
trasting the demands of a busy age and very often of a hectic life
style with the leisure required in order to fully appreciate A Dance to
the Music of Time. To the hurried reader, to the mere lecteur, the series
will most probably not reveal its delights. One needs to be a
leisurely liseur to savour it.
Another crucial step necessary for the favourable assessment of
Powell's novel is loyal perseverance. Despite the blurb-writers'
claim to the contrary, each of the twelve volumes making up the
series is not self-contained, and can be read independently as stand-
Introduction xi
ing in its own right only in a most unsatisfactory way and at the risk
of boredom or at least of a considerable diminution of entertain
ment. One can easily enough imagine that economic considerations
led to a fragmented publication and the appearance of one instal
ment every other year or so, but the liability of closely interdepen
dent volumes proves detrimental when the original reading order is
not respected. This claim certainly did Powell's reputation great dis
service. The pleasure one derives from reading the novel is cumula
tive, an accretionary process, the result of prolonged exposure and
of growing familiarity with a personal fictional universe. After the
first effort to get in sympathy with the spirit presiding over the
series, one becomes addicted to A Dance to the Music of Time. My
own initial reaction, corroborated by other admirers' experience,
was not enthusiastic. Powell's appeal is not of a facile and immedi
ate kind. I put down the volume I had picked at random after read
ing only a few pages. But for the methodical reader - methodical at
least during his first perusal of the work - for the reader wary of
succumbing to hasty first impressions and ready to give the series
another try, often with increased success, the rewards are immense.
There remains the possibility that some readers may be totally
unresponsive to Powell's style, a case the writer himself envisaged:
'When a novelist is doing his job he is presenting you with a view of
life. Your reaction to it is much like your reaction to people in real
life .... That's a matter of personality. I think it works the same way
with books. Some people won't like my books because they don't
like my personality.'9 I would like to suggest a more specific poss
ible reason for some readers' failure to find Powell engrossing. In
order to respond to Powell's writings, one has to be attuned to his
sense of humour; 'secret harmonies' must exist between reader and
author. Comedy is universal; humour is highly idiosyncratic and
requires temperamental affinity to be delightful to someone else.
Powell has been repeatedly hailed as the king of comedy. If we
bear in mind Baudelaire's terminology, Powell's hilarious writings
belong to the category of the 'absolutely comic', where laughter is
creative and generates joy, rather than to that of the 'significantly
comic', where it is reductive and deprecatory, more akin to satire in
fact. But Powell is treating us to more than just comedy:
The humorist of mean order is a refreshing laugher, giving tone to
his feelings, and sometimes allowing the feelings to be too much
for him. But the humorist, if high, has an embrace of contrasts