• Author / Uploaded
• Micheletto C.Swing

Citation preview

1AKING [ISTORY ^RITINGS ON H ISTORY AND CULTURE

P. THOMPSON

M A K IN G HISTORY: WRITINGS ON HISTORY AND CULTURE

M aking H istory: Writings on History and Culture

E P THOMPSON

THE NEW PRESS NEW YORK

Copyright © 1994 Dorothy Thompson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without tlie written permission from the publisher and autlior. Published in 1£$ United States by The New Press, New York Distributed by W.ÍS5T Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fiñh Avenue, New York, NY 10110 Thompson, E. P. (Edwarjí 924-93 Making histoiy: writings on lústory and culture / E. P. Thompson p. cm. Ineludes bibliograpliftáll rcferences. ISBN 1-56584-216-2 — ISBN 1-56584-217-0 (pbk.)

1. Great Britain—History. g. English literature—History and criticism. I. Title. DA32.A1T46 941—dc20

1995 94-29225

Established in 1990 as a major alternativé" to tlie large, connnercial publishing houses, The New Press is the first full-scale nonprofit American book publisher outside the university presses. The Press is operated editorially in the public interest, rather tlian for private gain; it is committed to publishing in innovative ways works of educational, cultural, and community valué that, despite their intellectual merits, might not nonnally be “ commercially” viable. The New Press’s editorial offices are locatcd at the City University of New York. Printed in the United States of America 94 95 96 97 9 87 65 4 3 2 1

Contents Preface Introduction Mary Wollstonecraft Eleaiior Marx Honiage to Tom Maguire Williani Morris Christopher Caudwell In Defence of tíre Jury Peterloo Sold Like a Sheep for £1 History and Anthropolagy ' Left Revieto Edgell Rickword Country and City George Sturt Tlie Grid of Inlieritance Happy Faniilies Herbert Gutnian Which Britons? Conunitnient and Poetiy Powers and Nanies Agenda for a Radical History

Vil viíi 1 10 23 66 78 * 141 P l6 7 191 199 226 *■ 234 242 254 261 299 310 319 330 340 358

Preface

Collected here will be found historical cssays froni the past thirty ycars. I llave not included my more directly political and pcace-rclated cssays, some o f wliich are still availablc. Ñor have I included cssays on thc romantic poets. I hope to makc a collcction of tlicsc later. My tlianks are due to Cambridge University Press, Dissenl, Essays in Labour History (edited by John Saville), Iridian Historical Review, William Morris Society, New Society, London Iieview o f Books, New York Review o f Books, Radical History Review, Socialist Regisler, Past and Present Society and The Times Lilerary Supplement. E.P.T. August 1993

Introduction These essays were handed ovcr for publication by Edward a fortnight bcforc he died in August last year. During the previous six montíis he had been making a carefi.il selection, and this, the ordcr and the suggested title are all his. Most o f tliese pieces have appearcd over the years in a vvide spread o f joumals, many o f them now virtually inaccessible. The división of the book into two parts, ‘Persons’ and ‘Polemics’, reflects two aspects of Edvvard’s writing. On the one hand re-examination and rehabilitation of the lost or misinterpreted figures in history - from William Morris to the voiceless agricultural protesters of the eighteenth century. On the other die polcniical attacks, brilliant and unforgettable, on fellow historians widi vvhom he differed in this collection seen in ‘Happy Faniilies’ or ‘Peterloo’, elsewhere in his fatnous demolition of Louis Althusser. Reference is made in Edward's preface to a collection o f essays on the Romantics, the preparation of which was fairly advanced at tlie time of his dcath. One of the essays, ‘Hunting the Jacobin Fox’ appears in the current issue of Past and Present (Spring 1994); tlie complete volume will appear in due course. Other as yet unpublished or uncollccted material, including a volume of poems, is in preparation. One project should be especially mentioned here. Edward was a prolific letter writer; for him letters were an important fonn of communication, as friends and collcagues will recall. Many o f his most Creative ideas as well as his humorous and relaxed coniments are to be found in his letters. We are asking anyone who has letters from him to let us know and if possible to let us have either the origináis or copies. At some fiiture date it is hoped to publish a selection. Dorothy Thompson Martin Eve 26 May 1994

Mary Wollstonecraft

On the day after Mary Wollstonecraft first niade love to William Godwin she retreated in conccni and sclf-doubt: ‘Considcr wliat has passed as a fever of your imagination ... and I will bccomc again a Solitary Walker.’ Claire Tomalin, in her bright new biography, gives us this passage, but not that other haunting sentence: ‘I perceive that I shall be a child to the end of the chapter We are all, cverjr one of us, in some part of ourselves children to tlie end of the chapter. \$flfl|stonecraft didn’t always nianage her personal life wisely. Ñor, when one comes to think of it, did Coleridge, De Quinccy, Wordsworth, Hazlitt ... need one go on? I have no objoction to reniinders that persons of genius sliare all tíie ínfirmities of other moteáis. The ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ o ffiia n itie s to which they were liable, often liclp us to understand also their genius. But it is, in the end.3the plus of genius, and not the lowest conimon denoniinator of infimiity, which gives their lives importance. I do object, on W ollstonecraftfeftábpí? to the inequitable treatnient which she has received at tlie hands bf historians and critics. She is seen less as a significant intellcctual, or as a courageous moralist in an exceptionally exposed position, tlian as an ‘Extraordinary Wonian.’ And the moral confusions, or personal crises, of a woman are always somehow more than those of a man: they engross all other aspeets of the subject. As, indeed, from the inexorable faets of the woman’s ‘situation’ they often tend to do. Wordsworth ‘liad’ an illegitimate daughter in revolutionary France: he carried her around intermittently for a few years as a prívate guilt, but his daughter didn’t encumber lihn in more practical ways. Woll­ stonecraft also ‘liad’ an illegitimate daughter in revolutionary France; but the having was a ratlier difíferent matter, and tliereafter she carried her around (with tlie help of a loyal maid) through France, England, nortliem Europe. It was not a carefully guarded secret, to be tumed up by biographers in tliis century. Out-facing the ‘world,’ she walked with Fanny tlirough tlie London streets.

2

MAKI NG H I S T O R Y

A diffcrent mattcr. And it malees her life a subject peculiarly difficult to handle. We are all interested in sexual relations; we are all willing to moralisc about tlrem at the drop o f a hat. And the mention of Wollstonccraft’s ñame is like the collapse o f a whole hat-shop: it tums up the moralising volume-control somewhere in our intestines. We have scarcely begun to establish the faets before we begin to mix them up witli our own moralising additives: scandalised, or apologetic: or pm iring or condescending. What we make of her is already mixed up Wlth what have made of ourselves; it is something different 4), i. pp. 18-19. YFT, 22 July 1904. Ben Turner carne lo regard hiniself as an undenoniinational (or perhaps Benlurnerite?) Christian, but he never ‘belonged’ to any Cliurch (information from Miss Norah Turner). For Gee, see YFT, 15 July 1092. YFT, 5 February 1904, and Labour Leader, 20 April 1901, for biographies of Wood and Bland. At the ínass cxccution of Luddites in 1813, the prisoncrs sang Mcthodist liynins on the scaffold. The oulstanding West Yorkshire Chartist leader, Bcn Rushlon, was an cxpellcd local preacher. See YFT, 17 J u lv ¡891: 'Ben is a d e ep C hristian - an earnest, everyday Christian .... Ha is a t hum e tea c h in g tra d es un ion isin o r preaching the religión o f Christ. '

46 47 48 49 50

Wlien Tillen at firsl rcliiscd to stand, J. Bcdford (of the General Railway Workcrs), E.D. Girdlcslonc, and G.B. Sliaw were each ¡nvited to stand. YFT, 15, 22, a n d 29 M ay 1891. B radford Observar, 9 and H June 1892. lbid. 14 June 1892; Brockway, op. cit. pp. 40-1. B radford Observar, 16 January 1893. D ewshurv Repórter, 8 June 1895.

51

YFT, 14 O ctober 1904.

HOMAGE 52 53 54 55

56 57 58

59 60 61 62

63 64 65

66

67 68 69 70 71

TO T OM

MAGU1RE

61

IsabcIIa Ford (ed.), Tom Maguire, A Remembrance (Manchcsler, 1895), p. xii. ¡bul. pp. ix-x, xiii: Maltison Letterbook. For the early history o f the Lccds and Bradford Lcagucs, sce also Thompson, op. cil. pp. 488, 491-4, 496. Correspondencc of the sccrelary, Socialisl Lcague, in the Interna­ tional Inslilulc of Social History, Anislerdam; M aguire lo Mahon, Oclobcr and Novcinber 1885. Ihiil. Scptcinbcr 1885. Sce E. Carpenlcr, Kíy D ays and D reams (1916), pp. 134-5; Maltison Notebooks. ‘The Socialisl Lcague slood definitely for a brotlierhood buill on puré com radeship .... T he París Com m une and Chicago Martyrs andiversarics we ttsed lo look forw ard lo .... Songs and speeclies wcre a fealure o f those gatlierings.’ W. Hill lo A. M altison, n.d. in M altison Lellerbook. Christian Socialisl, Seplembcr 1884. See M aguire, ‘T he Y orkshire M iners’, Commonweal, Novcmber 1885. YFT, 4 Novetnber 1892. Commonweal, 28 A pril 1888; Thom pson, op. cil. pp. 614-15. Jowelt was advocaling an independenl L abour Party in 1887 {BradJ'ord Ohser\>er, 8 Fcbruary 1887). Handbill in M altison Collection. Thom pson, op. cil. pp. 615-16. M aguire’s notes in Commonweal, 10 A ugust an d 16 Novetnber 1889; Thom pson, op. cit. pp. 6 1 8 -2 0 ; YFT, 2 A ug u st 1889. Tom P aylor w as al this tim e an insurance agent; Sw eeney a hoot and shoe worker. lt com plaincd al lite ncw unions w hicli accepted as leaders ‘outsiders w ho rnay have som e other object in view litan the solé inlerest o f lite w orkers. Joined by a few m alcontents frotn otlicr associations these are organizing atlacks on the oíd and tried officials o f the Congress. ’ YFT, 3 0 A u g u st 1889. C om m onw eal, 6 July 1889. YFT, 13 D ecem her 1889. Ibid. 20 D ecentber 1890. L eeds W eekly C itizen, M ay 1931. 1.0. F ord carne from a w ealllty Q uaker fantily at A del G rangc, near Leeds. Site liad helped M iss P aterson w itli the W om en’s Provident Lcague. In th e sunu ncr o f 1888 site assislcd th e W cavcrs' U nion d u rin g a strike in Leeds, a n d from th a t tinte forvvard w as associalcd

62

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82

83 84 85 86 87

88

89 90 91 92

M A K I N G

H I S T O R Y

w ilh all thc new u nión struggles involving women. Report and Balance Shceí o f Ihe W est R id in g P ow er Loom W eavers Associatiun Scpleinber 1X88; an d YFT, I N o v em h e r 1889. YFT, 1 N ovem her 1889, a n d (for S w e e n e y ’s criticism s o f íhe Trades C ouncil o f iciáis) 10 Ja n u a ry 1890. YFT. 25 Ó cloher 1889 to 27 D ec em h er 1889. Ihid. 1 N ovem ber 1889. Toiii hlaguire, a R cm einhrance, p. xvi; slide o f th e song in Mrs. M allison’s possession. YFT, 7 a n d 28 M arch 1890. Ihid. 9 M ay 1890; L eed s W eekly C itizen, M ay 1931. Leeds T C A n n u a l R ep o rt for year en d in g 31 M ay 1891, p. 6. Ii appearcd in inslalm ents in C om m onw eal throughou t 1890. Leeds M ercury, 26 M arch 1890; T hom pson, op. cit. pp. 632 IT. O n 12 M arch 1890, in the m id st o f the new unión struggles, C arpenter w as w riting to M attison: ‘A n interesting book has turned up, by H avelock Ellis, callcd T h e N ew S pirit - on Whitman, Tolsloi, Ibsen, H eine, & otliers. E verything seem s to be rushing on faster & fasler. W here are w e going? N iagara, o r the Islands of tlie B lest?’ M attison Colleclion. Sec Thom pson, op. c it. pp. 6 5 2 -3 . M ahon an d D onald addressed the first dem onslration o f the Leeds gasw orkers, YFT, 13 D e c e m h e r 1889. Commomveal, 4 M ay 1889; L eeds W eekly C itizen, 29 A pril 1929. Ihid. 10 A ugust 1889. See F.W . Jowclt, What M ude M e a Socia list (Bradford, n.d.). Turncr, A hout M y s c lf p. 80. For the full case o f the G as C om m illee and the u n io n ’s reply see thc letters exchanged belween Aid. G ilston. an d T om Paylor in the Leeds M ercury, 27 and 28 June 1890. T he best accounls o f the slrikc are to be found in the Leeds M ercury, Com monweal also carricd (very slridcut) reports w rittcn by an anarchist. YFT, 5 Fehruary 1904; Tom M aguire, a Rcm em hrance p. xv. W. Thronc, M v Life 's B attles (1925), p. 131 f. Leeds M ercury, 30 June 1890. A rthur Shaw o f thc ASE, Prcsidcnt o f Leeds T rades Council in 1894 and 1896, relates how - before thc gas slrikc — lie ‘workcd witli ardour and pcrscvcrance for lile succcss o f thc Liberal P arty’. During thc slrikc lie wilncsscd a Liberal Councillor and ‘professed fricnd o f Labour’ entertain thc blacklcgs ‘with "B rito n s never shall be slavcs’” . O thcr Liberáis provided thcm will» beer and tobáceo.

H O M A G E TO T O M M A G U I R E

63

wliilc at llic same lime (he Lecds gasworkcrs were provided wilh militar)', as another mark of Liberal fricndship. This decided me. I vowcd I would never again assist eilher of thc Política! Parties.’ J. Claylon (ed.), IVhv I Joined thc independent Lahour Party (Lceds, n.d.). 93 Tom Maguire, a Reincmhrance, p. xi. 94 By lite end of 1892 títere were Fabian Societies at Batley, Bradford, Copley (ttear Halifax), Halifax, HolmTirlh, Huddersfield, Leeds, and Sowerby Bridge; Castleford and Dewsbury were added before May 1893. List o f Memhers (Fabian Society, October 1892) and Tenth Animal Report of Fabian Society, April 1893. A correspondent in lite Lahour Leader, 20 April 1901, notes tliat the Bradford Socialist League ‘ailerwards nterged into tlie Bradford Socialist Society and linally became a branch of the Fabian Society’. The Halifax Fabian Society was especially effeclive in its propaganda; see Lister MSS. History. 95 Lahour Leader, 13 April 1901. 96 Dewsbury Repórter, 13 October 1894. 97 At the same lime the Leeds TC changed its ñame to the Trades and Labour Cottncil. 98 Leeds TntftfflslCouncil, Animal Report, 189$, pp. 1-2, 6. This was lite successor to the Labour liad been founded aficr thc gas%trike, wilh Maguire as sccrctary and the formidable oíd unionist, Judge, H ^ I S I iIS I^ P t ', 78 July 1890, and Jbr Judge, 1 July 1892. 99 Annual Report, 1893, p.5. 100 ’ T il retire into the comer and write po et$ ’, lie dcclarcd aíter the gas strike (Tom M a g ta rS a Remembróme, p. xiijf'See also letler quoted in Thompson, op. cit. p. 703 n. 1: ‘Totn .. sinks liis own individualily and allows otlier people to rnn away wilh his ideas’, etc. 101 Mahon was elecled paid assistant secretary of the Yorkshire Dislrict of llie Gasworkers on a slender majority vote in July 1891. YFT, 10 July 1891. 102 YFT, 20 Novemher 1891. 103 Ibid. 26 February 1892. 104 Information frotn Mr A.T. Marles. 105 See Note on the South Leeds Eleclion, pp. 315-6. 106 Edward Carpenler to Alf Mattison, 2 October 1892, Mallison Colleclion. 107 On lite occasion of the first National Conference of the ILP Carpenler wrote to Mattison (13 January 1893): ‘(I see tliat oíd

64

M A K IN G

H IST O R Y

fraud Mahon has got there - Champion too!) I am glad you didn’. yield to Mahon about going, and Tom M. I tliink in his heart cannot be sorry that you were elected.’ Mattison Collection. 108 Article by Turner in Yorkshire Evening AfeHw^l924, in Mattison Cutling-book. 1U9 Obituary of Paul Bland, Labour Leader, 20 April 1901. 110 Bradford TC Minutes, in possession of Bradford Trades Council. 111 Turner, Heavv Woollen Textile Workers^Union, pp. 65-7WTlie paper opened up a new vista. We scoured Yorkshire textile areas for members, and the Unioffl grew froijt a few hundreds to a few thousands.’ See aba P a® $ on its effect, in YFT, 25'JDecember 1891. 112 Commtmwfájf, Rí Octobefc. 1889? John Lister, a learned antiquarian, was later to vvrite: T learned many useful, practical lessons from sonre of thesc “ agitators” who ... knew far more about the industrial ratory of (tur country than I ’. Lister MSS. History. 113 YFT, 19 1891. 114 Ibidj 6 February 1891. But a Germán manufacturer wrote to tlie Observar from Crefeld and claimed that their average wages were higher than litóse in Lister’s milis. 115 Ibid. 24 April p L 116 Ibid. 1 May 1891. 117 Ibid. 17 July 1891. 118 The Bradford Trades Council was ‘considering’ contesting East Bradford with a Labour candidate in 1885 (TC Minutes, 10 February 1885). But in 1888 the Liberal Association could only be persuaded with great difliculty to adrnit a Trades Council nominee to the ‘Liberal Eight’ for the School Board. (Minutes, 6 November, and entries lo 4 December 1889). However a Labour Electoral Association had been formed in 1888, and socialists like Bland, Cowgill, Concitan and Bartley were inaking ihemselves felt on the Council. But the LEA was hamstrung by Liberal-Socialist disagreemcnls, and Jowelt, who was secretary, let it die. Labour Leader, 20 April 1901; Brockway, op. cit. p. 31. 119 For Mahon's Programnie, see Thompson, op. cit. p. 615, note 2. For the Bradford Labour Union progranime, see Labour Union Journal, 30 June 1892. For Coiné Valley, see Mann, op. cit. 120 Bills and eleclion leaflcts in Shaftoe Cutting-book. 121 YFT, 29 May 1891. 122 Ihid. 15 and 22 January 1892. 123 M inutes o f 2nd Annual Congress o f D ockers &c. (Septcniber 1891), pp. 25-6. The signaturas have bcen bound and are preserved by the Bradford Trades Council.

H O MA G E TO TOM MA G U I R E

65

124 Minutes of Colnc Vallcy Labour Union (in posscssion nf C V Labour Party). For un cxaniplc oí Mnnu's vicws on (he priorily of (rucie unión and municipal work over purlininciUary, scc (he irtide Unionisl yetj a f 't h e point o f saying th i& ? m y criticism appears ungcnerous. It is not only tliat I háve p u t undue w eight upon a suggeslive tw o-page passage o f tliis histo rian ’s w ork, w hich w as never intended to carry such "weight. It fe also tliat, by introducing a synchronic model o f the ‘act o f giving’, Stedm an Jones succeeds in m aking us sce the relationship cntailed in charity in th e 1860s in new w ays, and he provokes one also to generalized com parativo thoughts as to the functions o f charity in different historical contexts. Scores o f histories o f ch aritiea or o f the P oor Law s have been w ritten w hich scarcely raisc the critical question o f prestige, su b o rd in aro n and social control (or, as I prefer, class control): at their w orst these represen! the donors w holly in term s o f their own professed intentions, self-im age and ideological ju stiñeatio n s. Sted-

H I S T O R Y AND A N T H R O P O L O G Y

215

m an Jones m ay llave offered too tidy an explanation. But by inducing this kind o f reflcction he has opened the way to serious analysis o f a new kind. Henee my criticism must be inadequate. If we m ay not transpose synchronic finding in this way - as ideal types, constant íunctions, universal deep structures - we can rarely discover the inwardness o f a particular context without having some such typology to bring to it and to argüe with. I have found m yself forced to reflect upon this m my currcnt w ork on ‘rough m usic’ or charivari,28 Here I am examining another ‘border’ ritual which throws light upon nonns. The rituals expose some individual who has offended against community nonns to the m ost public forms o f insult, humiliation and sometimes ostracism - riding victims upon an ass or upon a pole, buming them in efFigy, perform ing raucous ‘music’ outside their cottages upon tin cans, the hom s o f beasts, and so on, and reciting obsceno traditional rhymes. 1 have argued that these fomis are o f importance, not - as L évi-Strauss has suggested - as universal structures but precisely because the immediate íunctions o f the rituals change. T he kinds o f offender subjected to rough music are not tlie same, from one country to another, or from one century to tlie next. So that once again I have liad to resist an anthropological finding that charivari has one constant trans-cultural function or significance.29 Henee the im portance o f tliese rituals lies in the fact that, since tliey identify w hich kinds o f (sexual, marital, public) conduct incurred outrage in the community, tliey also offer a signpost to that com m unity’s nomis. But, even so, I feel the need for guidance at many points from social antliropology - and for m uch greater expertise in the discipline than I possess. I f w liat goes on within the forms changes, the fonns still remain important; and the fonns themselves deploy symbolism which derives from the ulterior cognitive System o f the community. (Tlie driving out o f evil or o f ‘the other’ by raucous noise is one o f tlie most constant and m ost ancient symbolic modes.) Just as Stedman Jones needs to tliink about the ‘act o f giving’, so I need to tliink about the act o f ostracism , the expulsión o f ‘the other’, the ways a boundary is set upon a nonn. In this way, a dialogue with antíiropology becomes an insistent need. In the examples w hich I have given I m ust apologize for

216

MAKING HI STORY

drawing so exclusivcly upon English materials. T o attenipt a translation into Indian temis would only be to expose my own ignorance. I must leave tlie translation to my auditors. I have been told that charivari is well-known also in ludían village life, and that the ritual shaming o f riding upon an ass may still survive in some parts of uorth India. 1 have no doubt that the ancient traditions o f charity and o f ritual mendicancy in India offer examplcs of social niediations which require more delicate retrieval and more subtle analysis than any I have offered. And o f course tire kinds of sources which we must use will be different. But I suspect that both British and Indian historians face a similar problem in the fact that those who recorded the evidence which we must employ often failed to penétrate to the meaning o f what they recorded. The great class distance o f the British gentry when facing the common people of their own or o f other countries requires no fiirther conunent. But it is often suggested that the bralimin tradition also failed01L many occasions to penétrate all the mcanings of the culture o f the Indian poor.30 To the British rulers the defences of these poor were often seen as passivity or ‘fatalism’. But within this fatalism there may have been hidden a wisdom of survival: as the Chínese proverb has it, ‘Do not help on tlie great chariot, you will only get covered in dust’, or, as they say in north Lidia, ‘Spitting on tlie sky falls on one’s own mouth’.31 If we need this dialogue with anthropology, there are still some problenis as to the way in which this can be conducted. The equation comes easily to mind: just as economic history presupposcs the discipline of economics, so social history (in its systcmatic examination of nomis, expectations, valúes) must presuppose tlie discipline of social anthropology. We camiot examine rituals, customs, kinship relations, without stopping the process o f history from time to time, and subjecting the elements to a static, synchronic structural analysis. Let us say that there is some truth in tliis equation. But it remains a little too easy. Economics and economic history developed in cióse intellectual partnership. But more recently emergent social history has been offered (or, more often, has had to solicit in the face of some indiffercncc) a partnership with social disciplines

H I S T O R Y AND A N T H R O P O L O G Y

217

which are, in some párt^ e x S c itly ««h-histoncíll; oile thinks o f tlie influence o f Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brjmn, Talcott Pafsons and Lévi-Strauss. Moreover, some social santhropology is also antieconomic, or, more accurately, innocent of advanced economic categories. That is, wftile it Üikes in considerations o f ‘material Ufe’ af the leve! discussed by Périiafld BraMCÍ,32 its traditional subjectmatter leaves it thin, and áomStintes actively resistant, to ‘econoniies’. But vve cannot wish to scc an ‘advance’ in systematic social history which is purchaspd only by tucning its back upon economic history. And, fihail^ ‘ scdfe-^torvbmic íiístory already has its own concepts a n d ' categories - and gpHong these, and o f paramount importance in the M arxist tradition, the Concepts o f capitalista, o f i^cology, and o f social class -¡¡¿vn$6h are hisfofical concepts, atising firont the analysis o f diachronic process, o f repeated regularities o f behaviour over time, and which for that reason are often «reSisted, and even Wijifu% ( misunderstood (as ilj» the case o f class) by the Synchronic disciplines. This is to ^ n p h a s jz e . *Aa| while a rclationship niust be Üaicouraged so c irj J t^ to iy , lit is , cannot be any kind o f relaftowshfl A fljiití party is *teede ire < ^ j|p o ry to tó v i4Strausj^ian structurafising or M arxist historiograplSuto the sociology o f Talcott Parsons - then we can be very sure that no censummation will ensue. This is increasingly recognized by rscliolars witlífn each disci­ pline. But when we come to this point, we m ust cease to pretend to speak for our discipline as a whole, and can only speak for our own position within it. In aiy own case, I would have to define my relation to the M arxist tradition. I could not use certain fam iliar sociological concepts unless they were given, first, a new dialectical ambivalence: an ‘act o f giving* m ust be seeit simultaneously as 1 an ‘act of getting’, a social consensus as a class hegemony, social • control (very often) as class control, and some (but not all) norms as nccds. But, equally, if I w ish to effect a junction not vvith ‘social anthropology’ but with, a , M arxist anthropology I am persuaded that I must abandon that curiously static concept, ‘b asis’

218

MAKING HISTORY

and ‘superstructura’, which in a dominant M arxist tradition identifies ‘basis’ vvitli economics and afFimis a heuristic priority to economic needs and behaviour over norms and value-systems. We may botli assert that ‘social being determines social consciousness’ (an assertion which still calis for scrupulous examination and qualification) vvhile leaving open for common investigation the question as to how far it is meaningíul, in any given society, to describe ‘social being’ independcntly o f the norms, and primary cognitive structures, as well as m aterial needs, around which existence is organized. We may conclude by examining tlús problem a little more carefiilly. Historical materialism has, in general, held finnly to an underlying model o f societies, which, for the purpose o f analysis, may be seen as horizontally structured according to a basis and superstructura. The M arxist method has directed attention first to the mode of production and its attendant productive relations, and this is conunonly interpreted as disclosing an ultimate ‘economic’ determinism. This m o d e l lias often been employed vvith great subtlety by historians who have borne in mind such w am ings as those o f Engels in his famous letter to B loch;33 in recent years there has been rcnewed emphasis upon the reciprocal interaction o f basis and superstructura, upon the ‘relative autonom y’ o f elements o f the superstructura, and o f determination being only ‘in the last instance’ economic. And there has been some further refmement and qualification o f the notion o f ‘detennination’. What is radically wrong, however, is the analogy, or the metaplior, we start with, and also the employment o f too narrow a catcgory, ‘economic’. M arx him self did not frequently employ this analogy, although he did so once in a critically im portant sununary o f his theory, which proved to be influential.34 B ut w e should rccall that on occasion he had rccourse to quite different analogies for the historical process. Thus in the G rundrisse he wrote: ln all forms o f society it is a determínate production and its relations which assign every other production and its relations their rank and influcnce. It is a general illumination in w hich all other colours are plungcd and which modifies their specific

H1STORY

AND A N T H R O P O L O G Y

219

tonalitics. It is a spccial etlicr whicli defines the specific gravity of cverything found in it.-15 Wliat tliis empliasizcs is the simultancity of expression of ciiaracteristic productivo relations in all systcnis and arcas of social life rather tlian any notion of the primacy (more ‘real’) of the ‘economic’, vvith the nomis and culture secn as sonie sccondary ‘rcflection’ of the primary. What I am calling in question is not the ccntrality of the mode of production (and attendant relations of power and ownership) to any niaterialist understanding of history. I am calling in question - and Marxists, if they wish to have an honest dialogue with anthropologists, m usí cali in question - the notion tliat it is possible to describe a mode of production in ‘economic’ terms, leaving aside as secondary (less ‘real’) the norms, the culture, the critical concepts around which this mode of production is organized. Such an arbitrary theoretical división into an economic basis and a cultural superstructure may be made in the head, and it may look all right on paper for a while. But it is only an argument in the head. When we turn to the examination of any real society vve very rapidly discover, or ought to discover, Üie fiitility o f attempting to cnforce such divisions. Anthropologists, including Marxist anthropologists, have long insisted upon the impossibility o f describing the economy of primitive societies independently o f the kinship systems according to which these are structured, and the kinship obligations and reciprocities which are as much endorsed and enforced by norms as by needs.36 But it is equally true that in more advanced societies the same distinctions are invalid. We cannot even begin to describe feudal or capitalist society in ‘economic’ terms independently of the relations of power and domination, the concepts of usc-right or prívate ownership (and attendant laws), the culturally-endorscd nontis and the culturally-formcd needs characteristic of the mode of production. No agrarian systeni could be continucd for a day without contplex concepts o f riglits o f use and acccss and ownership: where are we to putsuch concepts - ina ‘basis’ or a ‘superstructure’?37 Where are we to put customs of inhcritancc f patrilinear or matriclinear, partible or impartible - which are

220

MAKING HISTORY

tenaciously transniitted in non-‘econoniic’ ways and yet which profoundly influence agrarian history?38 Where are we to put the customary rhytluns o f vvork and o f leisure (or festival) 0f traditional societies, rhytluns intrinsic to the very act of production and yet which are often ritualized, whether in Hindú or Catholic societies, by religious institutions and according to religious beliefs? There is no way in which I find it possible to describe the Puritan or Methodist work-discipline as an element o f the ‘superstnicture’ and then put work itself in a ‘basis’ somewhere else. However much the notion is sophisticated, however subtly it has on many occasions been eniployed, the analogy of basis and superstnicture is radically defective. It cannot be repaired. It has an in-built tendency to lead the mind towards reductionism or a vulgar economic detemiinism, by sorting out human activities and attributes and placing some (as Law, the Arts, Religión, ‘Morality’) in a superstnicture, others (as technology, economics, tlie applied Sciences) in a basis, and leaving yet others (as lingüis­ ta s , work-discipline) to float unliappily in-between. In tliis fomi it has a tendency to move into an alliance with utilitarian and positivist thought: that is, with central positions, not o f Marxist, but o f bourgeois ideology. The good society can be created simply (as in Stalinist theory) by building a heavy industrial ‘base’; given this, a cultural superstnicture will somehow build itself. hi more recent (Altliusserian) form, with its emphasis upon ‘relative autonomy’ and ‘in the last instance detennination’, tlie problems of historical and cultural materialism are not so much solved as shuffled away or evaded; since the lonely hour o f the last instance never strikes, we may at one and the same time pay pious lip-service to the theory and take out a licence to ignore it in our practice. I am o f course by no means the first Marxist to have voiced thesc objections.39 Indced, the objcctions have now become so apparent that one wishes that more o f one’s fellow Marxists would attend carcfully to the argument before sniffing the air for ‘heresy’. A Iiving systcm o f historical and political thought lias come to a point of crisis if its continued existence depends upon maintaining an ill-considcred analogy. The question o f the

H I S T O R Y AND A N T H R O P O L O G Y

221

catcgory of ‘economics’ raises other questions again. We all think tliat we know what we mean by the term, but historiaos do not need the reminder that it is a temí of comparatively recent evolution. Still, in eighteenüi-ccntury England, ‘oecononiy’ couid be uscd to mean the regulation and adjustmcnt of all the affairs of a household (and, by analogy, of a State), witli no particular reference only to those material and financial affairs which, today, we would desígnate as ‘economic’. If we tum to earlier British history, or to other societies in many diffcrent stagcs o f developmént, we find that ‘economics3 in the niodem sense, is a notion for which there is no word and no exactly corresponding concept. Religious and moral imperatives rernain inextricable intcnneshcd with economic needs. One of the offences against mankind brought about within fúll-grown market societj'i and witlún íts ideol |^ t h p M p s u p p o r t o f a ‘lawless m ob’, and the ensuing triunrphal procession ‘was done in a style unlike anyrylring ever betore*e¡tWbited in this Country’: The Goddess o f Reason attended by four & tw enty Virgins dress’d or rather h alf dress’d in Hvlrite in the French fashion, followed by the Tree o f Liberty and the tricolour’d Flag; a Band o f Music playing the Tune o f ‘M illions be free’ and tire Multitude singing the words ... In other accounts the Goddess o f Reason w as nakcd, although shc was probably wcaring a flesh-colourcd gamrent. No wondcr that a committce o f the House o f Comnrons solcnurly declared the elcction to be invalid. My point is not only that the evidencc is difficult to rcad but that

WHI CH B R I T O N S 7

329

it is always cvidence o f conflicí, o f competing agencies, with the outeome undecidcd, and not o f determined Whiggish evolution. Hannah M ore had tire goodwill o f the whole State and o f much of the ruling-class to propel her to famc and fortune, whereas the Nottinghani Goddess o f Reason was bound to be found, on enquiry, to be invalid. But tliat is no reason for historians to follow suit. Perhaps we could conipromise by saying that Üie trutli lies somewhere between my view and Colley’s? I am certainly not proposing that diere was an almost-revolution in Britain in the 1790s. In my view - as I ’ve said before - the only time when that was a historical possibility WaT during the Crisis leading up to the Reform A ct o f 1832, when the ruléis wefe divided and when great sections o f the middle and working classes were making common cause. I concur strongly vgith a note o f Colley’s in wliich she says that to d i s & s O t s f strains o f Ü^GT790s ‘p rim arily in tenns o f the potential for f^ o lu tio n is unhelpful.’ B u F ffistill remains necessary to take the full message o f those strains to qualify the dieses o f B r ib ffr f W hat all this is about m ay only be a m atter o f emphasis. Most of my points w ould be acknowledged b y ’ to llé ^ , and indeed fmd some mention (if only m arg in alm in her carefiilly-qualified argument._5he may T airl¿'respond that h is to r i^ ^ written enougli about riots and popular radicalism, and that her purpose is to mark out fmnly the boundaries o f national all that took p l S ^ She does tliis superbl y ^ w í^ T B th controlíett' judgemems and w ith abundant infonuation. Her stimulating book will be, and deserves to be, influential. Instead o f trying for some mid-way conipromise, we might say that both views might be true. Not only were the British sometimes highly loyalist and sometimes decidedly not so, but also Colley’s argument about the making o f one British nation need not contradict arguments about the ‘Two Nations’ o f class. A fter all, English, Scottish and Welsh refonners and Chartists managed to w ork together, and the most prominent British Chartist leader, Feargus O ’C onnJ» was an Irishman. Tliere are times when the patriot m usí also be a revolutionary. And on that note I am willing to welcome this book and to cali out ‘Pax!’ Froin Dissent, Sununer 1993, reviewing Linda Colley’s Britons ■M1992),

Commitment in Poetry

I distrust the tem í ‘commitment’ because it can slide only too easily into usages vvhich defeat its apparent intention. In the first stage, commitment appears as ah attitudc appropriate in a poet, without fiirther relational defmition: that is, it finds its defmition in tem is of the poet’s own sensibility or ego-state - one poet has Fancy, another has Self-concehtration, and anotlies has Commitment. In tlie second stage, ‘commitinaml m ust be followed b * ‘in’ or ‘to ’: ?the comrnitment is a disposition o f concern in the poet, b u t w hat the poet is committed to lies ready-made, over there, outside the poet awaiting appropriation. The poem does not create the commitment, it simply * endorses causes which are already known and which have been disclosed without any poet’s Ixercise. I will not delay to argüe w ith this slide in usage: in the first stage it has a romantic, in the second stage a utilitarian pedigree. Taken together, these leave the poet free to choose causes like hats, whether from history’s attic or fom i the radical boutiques o f today. In either case the hats should be scrutinised, since their selection may well be the Índex to ulterior commitments, o f IC profounder kind. Tlie advanced *jadical’ vvlio continually chooses to wear military or M aoist forage caps m ay perhaps be signalling a commitment to self-display, a g ? .itc h for violence and verbal outrance, at odds w ith his professedly rational or democratic commitments. W hat the ‘royalist’ may be signalling when he tries on the hat o f M aurras can be disclosed only by the informed scrutiny o f which John Silkin’s essay is cxemplary. H istorical hats (Like the Nazi insignia worn by last year’s deluded NF youngsters) may look splcndid, provocativo and bizarro, but tliey ought to reccive this kind o f scrupulous examination within history’s own terms. Yct this docs not always settle the matter. Pocts are often pitifully bad as political judges, and thcy have a habit o f getting

CO M M ITM EN TIN

POETRY

331

lost in mazos o f misrecognition. Sometimos we need to attend more carefblly to the chooser and his valúes, less to tile article chosen. Caints Craig in his thoughtfiil essay can easily assume that Yeats was ‘deeply reactionary’ in his ptJfitics.K53iink otherwise, although I couldn’t hope to defend my view in a short comment. Tliis is, in sonie parí, because I find an unusual disjunction in Yeats between the opinions he tried on and tlie valúes wltich im peled his choice.

As Williant Morris rotntu'kea, after that fracas in the Socialist Clubroont at"Kclmscoti House, % rang my chainnan’s bell because you vvere not being understood.’ Veiy certaiilly Yiáts had a genius for selecting for Iiimself exliibitionist reattiottlhy hats. He courted misunderstanding. Atid yet I can’t see auy way in which compassion must be defined as quainyJ^Bid the kind of «elf-critical compassion Twdenced in ‘M e d ita u ® |\i Time of Civil Wat’’ or in ‘Nineteen Hmtdred and N ineteenBis^H qualilH and a political quality part of today’s intellectual Left is not

t riclilrfffqgOT: " We had Te5 The lieart brutal front the fare; More substarra;. m our eimtities Than in our love ... Perhaps one d a " some B lo tie y ^ S ^ wifl tremulouslf* retura to tlie empty hou“ o f socialist aspjHffioji TOJlch fnalinism and bureaucratic social-deniocracy have vacated. If they do n O tH R I can see few affimiative prosprcíSW 'or attem pts on tlie intellectual Ri^ht w invoke (on their side!) a liistorical ‘England’ are éíther callow or whimsical. For if that older ‘organic so cieí^ in which ttasses an unquestioned ‘order o f nature’ is not an England which sociaM historians can fmd, the attenipt is certainly far advanced to put us all into an organic order today. And it is ‘capital’ - now insecure and supra-national, but still witli an imperative inertia - which is daily dismantling that historie England over our heads: inexorably destroying oíd landscapes, oíd buildüigs, oíd cultural m o deslo ld institutions, and striving to compact us conveniently into a modemised and managed circuit o f conditioned need and consonant

332

MAKING HI STORY

supply. It is money m ic h seeks to make over society as its organ. And tlie real Right (not the Right of party hats and churchgoing homiletics) has long been negotiating points of privilege within this circuit. They have long been into business studies, iconoclasm, conspicuous sexual consumption, Auberon Waugh, rationalisation,, pseudo-classlessness and S ú jg in g airports. When they are not in Washington w are packing a weekend bag for Brussels. Or for Frankfiirt, vvheS the multi-national signs welcome visitors with Customs, Duty Free Goods, Taxis, and Sexshop, whose sign (for tíie illiterate) is a pair of legs and boobs. That is what the Right is into now, and I have^io doubt that it gives Davif and Sisson pain. What does the real Right care about tlieir ‘various EnglandsJS^ Meanwhile íhg. oíd valúes (for very few new ones have been discovered in the last decades) dither around at sixes and sevens in search of social referents. Above their heads tlie oíd unreconstructed political rhetoric booms on. The Right (just back from Brussels) Slaim s this and t h 5 or líistory^ or (just back from ■rankfurt) tli e ^ m il j. The Left (fighting bitterlj over the texts of 1844, 1848, 1917) claims modernity, progress, innovation. The valúes get bored with all this, and look out for a quiet place to realign themselves. We must watch and see what they do.

Ev1 One place in which they might realign themselves is poetry. Perhaps we should reverse the customary question, and ask, not about poetry’s conunitment to ... whatever it may be, but about the conunitment of people 1jp poetry. I don’t mean the problem of tlie loss of a mass audience for poetry, of thejÉgood attendance once’ at Gahvay Races. I mean the marginalíty of poetry arnong other intcllectual activities: have the functions conunonly attributcd to poetry in the past, of signalling shifts in sensibility, of stating and organising valúes, of cnhancing our perccption within the primary tenns of comnninication, and o f disclvxing and defming commitments - have these functions been displaced, driven into a margin, takcn over by some surrogate? Or has the place from which some of the profoundest commitments of the past have arisen simply been

COMM1TMENT1N

POETRY

333

lcft vacant? Left or Riglit, what contemporary poct and which pocms — unlcss as a marginal solace — are we to be committed to? In emergency, in criscs of choicc, or ¡n the longcr reaches of endurancc, vvhich imagcs and forms assist us to define our human loyaltics?

It is an unfair i|ucstion. Pcrhaps commilment of that kind, to poets or to poetry, has always been rare, and has generally been to poets of a prior generation. And if we have no contemporary poets who can conunand tliat commitmént, dwn that is no-one’s fault. But there might be BM Pfflroj1 cxamination. Perhaps, Itere or there, áre péT^óns who 4 more odnductye climate, have'fíGHP tlfl? pfiets or moralists o!f the past decades, whose talents are buried instead in sdtíiology or historical research? And the paucity of relevant poeticRtateniHtS adjatóeffl to public and social life - ’the kind of státcmcnt which might enablc pRiple Jg dRlgagl* political action as the carrier of significant valué - ntay be a very ' substantial part of our problent. By ‘our problcm’ 1 do not mean a problem exclusive to visiting histonans, but the general íftf a society void of aspirations, dircctionlcss. If we had better we might l i a v j p s bad sociolo0 and less enipty and -mendácious p o lit^ S People with ^ ^ ^^ H p ercep tio n would 110 longer tolérate these offences against language and diese trivialisations o f valué* III Thus, when the argument J s r reversed, it a p H H in Üiis fonn. Poetry in our time has faitea to State relevant valúes, or to disclase and defíne social commitments: diinkers, artists, and1moralists llave failed also. Henee much of social and pubhK ^^a appears void of valué unless as a habit of rhetoric. Poets can’t be cottniiitted to any actual politics because diese are devoid of any valué stubbom or palpable enough to bear the weight of poetic commitmént. They are left to espouse tinreal politics (whether ‘royalist’ or ‘pvolutipnary’) which entail few consequences, which enmesh thern in no enduring obligations or loyalties, and henee which should be seen as attitudes or poses ratíier than as commitments. They are acting out parís to each other in a psychodrama 011 the margins of society, some in Guevara caps, others in splendid affairs with plumes.

334

MAKI NG HI S T O&Y

I State iO h u s to cJaí^ B arg u m en Q and to emphasis* the reciprocity implicit in a profounder notiotf of .fom m itntcnt Tfip poem may sindícate valúes > tíisclosq political commitments, and those vvho are politically active may liold stubbornly to uns> commitnrcnt i bccause they are, in thek turn, committed to the poem anfó£|§ts valúes. Nothing of this kind goes on now, of coMQíe. Ñor do complex historical processes of valuc-fonnation can rcally be tidicd up inside this paradigm. This may be how some fish swim, but the fish do qot control the The sea itself, the crippling pressure of waters, the flux o f ’m s J is taken as given: and, IjS ihW É E it js easy to I have done, tuíd say things. I would suspect only tl^at a poetry whici^ tecreated the valúes of a ‘L eft’ might prove to be uncom fortabljlto most o f us who tlúnk ourselves to be on the Left, and sxceedingljJI distasteful to sonte parí oEpthat intellectual Left wltich is so stridently competitive in its pursuit o f advapped and Tcvolutionary' causes. But the poets ^Vould n o tjlre a te the p olitiS . Wliat titey might do fíüpuld be to d i ñ ó s e the valúes lurking beneath the abstract constructions, indícate the consonancy o f clusters of valué, and the inconipatibi 1ity o f one cluster with another. Then people would h a m to rnake their choice. A n R erciS e o f this kind might bring light but very little sweetncss. It might tu n T é b t that the Left is inliabift2 by valúes at ftirious emnity with each other, and tlrat people w ould ^ e t on better if theH rearranged thentselvcs in new parties and Ipomea for d i f f e r ^ ^ ^ ^ B ^ U ' ego-freaks Itere, aggros there, and

For the Left in the last fifteen years has been beconting a very odd place. I am not as (Eapiied¡jtSiiBost intcllectuals seent to be about the joonservolism’ o fjraditional trade unionisnt and Labourísm ( ‘coQperative’, Ztsubordinate’, ‘refomtist’, &c &c): a bloodyminded defensiveness against the nianagement of ntoney seents to me a humane, if not an adequate, response. I am more worried by the intellectuals, or by sonte o f them. I can’t assunte, as Jon Silkin seents to do, that intellectual violence and élitism are only to be found on the Right. Might not his vigilance and anxiety be extended also to the Left? N o doubt Malcolnt Bradbury’s The

338

MAKI NG HI S T ORY

Hislory Man is a vicious counter-revolutionary lampoon, but it was near enough to the mark to worry me, just as Ben Johnson’s wittier lampoon of Tribulation Wholesome ought to have worried (and no doubt did) Puritans of that day. There are some on tire ‘Left’ vvho flirt witli conceits of violence and aggression in a way which suggests a disorder of the imagination, a mere bravura of opinions. I have watched the eyes of a young woman, whom I kirow to be gentle and sensitive, glitter vvith excitement at the Manson murders: acts which she supposed to have some ‘revolutionary’ significance. I have argued more than once with comfortable middlc-claS? p e r s o n é who wmild regard joining the Labour Party (or the Communist Party or any other on offer) as an offence to tlieir high principies, but who have tried to persuade me that Baader-Meinhof and Red Brigades are engaging in a justified struggle againstyffl ^remBsive violbice o f the State. Within the vocabulary o f this kind o f ‘Left’ there are many ‘dainty terms for fratricide* Terms which we trundle smoothly o’er our tongues Like mere abstractions, éflipty sounds to which We join no feeling and attach no form! As if the soldier died without a wound ... Tlie other thing is that an intellectual generation which has made it through educational selection really has developed a colossal contempt for those who have not. And I find this also in a section of the intellectual Left, with its élitism, its distrust for experience and practice, its accent on youth and repute and fashion, its silence about pcople who are oíd or monogamous or ugly or unfortunate in uninteresting ways. O f coursc, this is not all the Left, ñor all o f the intcllcctuals. But it suggests to me that odd separations are going on. And, oddly again, some of the valúes of ‘tradition’ and of ‘England' (and Scotland and Wales) are coming across and regrouping at another córner of the Left. Some of us found oursclvcs, at the end of 1978, somcwhat to our own surprisc, defending passionatcly the integrity of the jury systcm (onc of our oldest institutions) against not only conservativo judges and pólice but a

C O M M I T M E N T 1N P O E T R Y

339

Labour Attorney-Goneral, and in thc face of an astonishcd audicncc o f advanccd intcllcctuals and Marxist-structuralists who saw us as cntrappcd witliin the ideológica! mystifications of bourgeois libcralism. Where was thc ‘various England’ of the right thcn? And where was the Left? O f course the Left does not belong to me. Maybe it shonld belong to revolutionary aggro. But if the message o f the Left is to be bang! bang! then I wish they would get themselvcs poets to imagine this, to join feeling and attach fom t to the bangs, so that these become a full-blooded aggressive commitment to banging and not the cap-pistol o f opinión. O r if the L eft is to be traded into the keeping o f structuralist scientists fo r wliom the very notion o f experience is anathem a ( ‘em piricism ’), then let them get poets who can im agine that. The rest o f u s can then creep out and invent for ourselves another ñame.

Somewhelp (if poets did their work) another cluster of valúes would be défjftjntí themseffies. These might be a little quieter, less invigilatory «and dominatjS'e. le ^ K trid e n t and more compassionate, than those rt'dfeéiiflyTo be noted on the Left. They might (as William Morris did) d e n p rtd 1less o í^ ^ ^ relu jes and institutions and more of our ovvif creátlve resources. The imagination would explore into the dark altead o f us once m orB instead o f lagging a few paces behind opinión. As the earth gets colder under the winter o f rnoney, who knows? A few traditional valúes out o f ‘various England’ might join this cluster to keep warra. I would not repudíate them. It would be heartless to drive them back into ‘history’. Perhaps a ll this w ork o f disclpsing and defining the valúes on which our commitmentsU tfe based is being done in poetry already and I have failed to keep up. O r perhapsfct is being done and we haven’t yet heard: w h o ,j n the 1790s, knew o f W illiam Blake? All that I arn arguing is that our sense o f political reality, in any generous historical sense, has becom e lost w ithin faded rhetoric and threatening abstractions, and that poetry, m ost o f all, is wliat we now need. A nd tliis m ust be poetry m ore am bitious, more confident of its historical rights arnong other intellectual disciplines, than any that is commonly presented to us today. The Poetry Magazine, Stand, invited me to conunent on a debate on this theme.

PoweFS and Ñames (With apologies to Szum a Chien) , You have the pow er to ñame: Naming (gM'es powgr over all. But who vvill ñame the power to líame? Asked the Oracle.

^ragp} Like a silkworm on a m ulberry le a f The unmaiuicrly carth Gnawcd at the edge o f the sky and bit out m ountains. ocean, Cocooned in unconsciousness and grass, An existence unknown to itself, W aiting to be spun by nimble tongues into languages. Let us conciliate the pojvers by giving theni ñames. Let us swallow the wonn. Let us tame the world by taking it into ourselves.

Art Tlie dragons and the lions are furious. They would like to eat us. If we model their rage in clay Will we drive terror away?

Nu/ninf; the Got/x

Ten suns flared in the sky. Thoy scorchcd the crops and hatched out of the clay Fire-brcathing dcmons. The great archer Yi Chose froni his pouch Nine arrows flighted vvith a shaman’s charm And slew one sun with cach, and ever after we Named Yi as deity. But Heaven's pilláis crackcd And water mtshea out of Wasliing A paste of To patch the gashcs in the sky, fgnd frorn a giant turtle She hewcd its legs to prop Heavcn back in place. The gOaros¿rBfcifti be Then water must be educated And Accomplished this in thirteen years o f toil. A wingcd dragón And aalfee a bear To scratch a passage through an obstínate liill. We named Yu o f the soil And CtsÁs son hercditary Owner o f all under Heavcn, he and his family In perpeftaw ; f rAST n a ffliiíp S ta y o w e r Sprouted the State:

Annies invented sltwpta: asf