'I did in fact consider cutting them out. I sat up most of last night, after I heard you were going to be here, trying to find a way of making my remarks less pointed, less offensive. I even thought of absenting myself entirely – pretending I was ill. But that would not have been fair to the organizers, don't you think?'
It is an opening, a chance for him to speak. He clears his throat, but then says nothing, continuing to gaze ahead, presenting her with his rather handsome profile.
'What I say,' she says, glancing at her watch (ten minutes left, the theatre is beginning to fill, she must plunge ahead, no time for niceties),'what I contend, is that we must be wary of horrors such as you describe in your book. We as writers. Not merely for the sake of our readers but out of concern for ourselves. We can put ourselves in peril by what we write, or so I believe. For if what we write has the power to make us better people then surely it has the power to make us worse. I don't know whether you agree.'
Again an opening. Again, tenaciously, the man holds his silence. What is passing through his mind? Is he wondering what he is doing at this get-together in Holland, land of windmills and tulips, being harangued by some mad old witch, with the prospect of having to sit through the same harangue a second time?
A group of young people, students probably, settle into the seats immediately in front of them. Why does West not respond? She is getting irritated; she has an urge to raise her voice, wag a bony finger in his face.
'I was deeply impressed by your book. That is to say, it made an impress on me the way a branding iron does. Certain pages burned with the fires of hell. You must know what I am talking about. The scene of the hangings in specific. I doubt I would be able to write such pages myself. That is to say, I might be able to write them, but I would not, I would not let myself, not any more, not as I am now. I do not think one can come away unscathed, as a writer, from conjuring up such scenes. I think writing like that can harm one. That is what I intend to say in my lecture.' She holds forth the green folder with her text, taps it. 'So I am not asking your pardon, not even asking your indulgence, just doing the decent thing and apprising you, warning you, of what is about to take place. Because' (and suddenly she feels stronger, surer of herself, more ready to express her irritation, her anger even, at this man who does not bother to speak back) 'because you are after all not a child, you must have known the risk you were taking, must have realized there could be consequences, unpredictable consequences, and now, lo and behold' – she stands up, clasps the folder to her bosom as if to shield herself from the flames that flicker around him – 'the consequences have arrived. That is all. Thank you for hearing me out, Mr West.'
Badings, at the front of the hall, is waving discreetly. It is time.
The first part of the lecture is routine, covering familiar ground: authorship and authority, claims made by poets over the ages to speak a higher truth, a truth whose authority lies in revelation, and their further claim, in Romantic times, which happen to have been times of unparalleled geographical exploration, of a right to venture into forbidden or tabooed places.
'What I will be asking today,' she continues, 'is whether the artist is quite the hero-explorer he pretends to be, whether we are always right to applaud when he emerges from the cave with reeking sword in one hand and the head of the monster in the other. To illustrate my case I will be referring to a product of the imagination that appeared a few years ago, an important and in many ways courageous book about the nearest approximation that we, in our disillusioned age, have produced to the monster of myth, namely Adolf Hitler. I am referring to Paul West's novel
'If this were an ordinary lecture I would at this point read out to you a paragraph or two, to give you the feel of this extraordinary book. (It is not a secret, by the way, that its author is among us. Let me beg Mr West's pardon for presuming to lecture him to his face: at the time I wrote my talk I had no idea he would be here.) I ought to read to you from these terrible pages, but I will not, because I do not believe it will be good for you or for me to hear them. I even assert (and here I come to the point) that I do not believe it was good for Mr West, if he will forgive my saying so, to write those pages.
