Henry James Book

This is my first read of a book by Rebecca West, which achieves merely a first sampling of West's mordant wit and prodigious intelligence. Her writing is engaging and vigorously charged with both critical views and emotions. Metaphors and similes are often used to deliver images to readers mind, often successfully if occasionally overwrought. This is a writer I should continue to read.

Henry James, the subject matter of this biography, shared a prominent position in the literary and intellectual life of English-speaking countries in the twenty century with his brother the philosopher William James. The idea of critical biography is to shed more light in the works instead on the author; hence the usefulness of reading about Henry James lies in reading about his works, as well as West as a literary critic.

We learn the strong disapprobation of West toward the refined yet detached attitude in Henry James in some of his works. "Unless a subject is congenial to the character of the artist the subconscious self will not wake up and reward the busy conscious mind by distributions of its hoarded riches in the form of the right word, the magic phrase, the clarifying incident."

The central metaphor that West used on James' art is that of a crystal bowl, made brilliant by the golden tracery of his genius in phrase-making, yet occasionally contains carelessly chosen subject matters. Her summary assessment is quite critical and even exasperating:

"He had but gilded its clear sides with the gold of his genius for phrase-making, and now, instead of lifting it with a priest-like gesture to exhibit a noble subject, held it on his knees as a treasured piece of bric-à-brac and tossed into it, with an increasing carelessness, any sort of subject'a jewel, a rose, a bit of string, a visiting-card'confident that the surrounding golden glow would lend it beauty."


This is due to the fact West did not like the considered major works such as Golden Bowl and Portrait of a Lady, considering them lacking in certain critical element of goodness and greatness. But she does give enthusiastic appraisal of "A little Tour in France" ("one of the happiest and sunniest travel books in all literature"), "Washington Square" (of achieving a level of art through "rubbing down the too brilliant phrase to tone with the quiet harmony of the whole, of obliterating the exotic effect that would compromise the lorn simplicity of the subject."), "The Altar of the Dead" ("so perfect a beauty that one can read every separate paragraph every day of one's life for the music of the sentences and the loveliness of the presented images, which takes ritual from the trembling hands of the coped old men and exhibits it as something that those who love the natural frame of things and hate superstition need not fear to accept."), and lastly the great "Wings of Dove" ("the application, clear and calculated, crystal-firm, as it were, of the idea conceived in the glow of experience, of suffering, of joy.")