This brief but compelling text has its origin in the discussions of a group of readers in Beirut, Lebanon, led by Professor Jad Hatem of the Université St-Joseph in that city. The first, and longest, chapter, indeed, is based on a lecture given by Professor Hatem at Palermo University in the context of a conference on philosophy in the 21st century, and on a seminar directed by him at his own institution.
There have not been many published studies of Morgan’s novels, although there have been a number of Continental doctoral dissertations on his work. Two books have discussed the novels: Henry Charles Duffin’s The Novels and Plays of Charles Morgan (London: Bowes & Bowes, 1959) and Nigel Jackson’s privately-published The Seed That Falls: the Eleven Novels of Charles Morgan (Melbourne, Australia, 2018). It is therefore most welcome to encounter a new voice on what was at one time Morgan’s most popular novel, which in 1933 won the Hawthornden Prize and became a best-seller in both Britain and America.
A Foreword cites André Malraux: ‘the 21st century will be mystical or nothing,’ and follows this with the, perhaps surprising, claim that God has been ‘effacé’ (wiped out) as a determinant criterion and that consequently our era is that of (metaphysical) Absence and Silence; this in order to prepare us for a discussion of mysticism detached from a specific religion. Fortunately, the following text is less dogmatic.
The first chapter, essentially Professor Hatem’s lecture, is a remarkably sensitive reading of Morgan and of The Fountain. It shows an impressive understanding of Morgan’s attraction to the mystique (if not the mysticism) of invulnerability, and to the joy of being transported out of ‘oneself’. The author has also sensed the fact that Morgan, while not calling himself a Christian, does not exclude God – as witness his frequent quotations from the works of Henry Vaughan (an ancestor of Hilda, CM’s wife) and Thomas Traherne. It is also very astute to have noticed that the spirituality of Rupert von Narwitz – the wounded German officer and husband of Julie, The Fountain’s female protagonist – is not the same as that of the male protagonist Lewis Alison (a spirituality of philosophical and especially literary contemplation), but is one of wonder; which in the end means that he has less to give than Lewis at his most evolved.
Chapter Two, on the love between Lewis and Julie, is again extremely perceptive. Professor Hatem has, we think, almost perfectly understood and characterised Julie, first as the ‘korè’ or maiden linked, in a fine narrative invention, to Homer’s Nausicaa, and later as the young English wife of a German (i.e. enemy) officer, the Prussian nobleman Rupert von Narwitz.
Julie is well understood here, and her own self-understanding is given the attention it deserves, especially her refusal, as Professor Hatem persuasively puts it, of Stendhal’s ‘crystallisation’. In view of such understanding, though, it is surprising that he has not included at some point Morgan’s own understanding of her as described at length in a letter to Hilda (23 August 1930; E. Lewis p. 86-7 ): ‘What she is is a spiritual courtesan. She has a power of making herself the spiritual complement of whatever man she happens to be interested, or attached to, or in love with at a given time.’ This, he writes, ‘explains the whole book.’ It is important to note that in this case to Morgan the term ‘courtesan’ implied no condemnation; and, as Professor Hatem points out, Julie grows spiritually to become for Lewis an equal partner – grows, in part by absorbing the wisdom of Narwitz.
Chapter Three, on ‘the second place’, deals at more length with the Prussian; and he has had the excellent idea in this regard to compare The Fountain with its successor. For both novels deal with the idea of death. When George Moore asked Morgan what in life interested him most, CM replied ‘Art, Love, and Death’, and in Sparkenbroke (1936), which Professor Hatem superbly calls ‘l’opus de l’éclatant méridien de Morgan’, all three are dealt with – death perhaps more maturely than in The Fountain. There, it is Narwitz who represents (though he does not incarnate) some of Morgan’s thoughts and feelings about death. The way in which he does so is peculiar. According to Eiluned Lewis (22), ‘Nothing in The Fountain was so important to the author as the death of his character Narwitz.’ And yet many readers, including Nigel Jackson (91-2), have found the implied identification of the dying Narwitz with Christ both blatant and bathetic. Morgan himself, in his letter to Hilda, writes of ‘my view of him as an almost Christlike being’, because ‘his understanding is that of Christ and the psycho-analysts – “neither do I condemn thee”.’ Professor Hatem is kinder to Morgan on this subject, and quotes a sentence from Reflections in a Mirror (II): ‘the role of the artist is not to condemn mankind but to wash its feet'– ‘a Christlike gesture, we know, that marks a deliberately humanist vocation while using a devotional framework.’ His analysis, though, perhaps helps to explain other readers’ negative reaction: the comparison, almost crudely precise, is inconsistent with Morgan’s general, and perhaps deliberate, metaphysical vagueness.
The book ends (Chapter Four) with a delightful gallery of minor topics which all relate to the major one of love. It is full of perception and pleasure: we particularly appreciated the discussion of the conflict in the play The Flashing Stream between Karen Selby and Lady Helston.
Overall, then, this is a small, intense, and perceptive study of a very specific aspect of one Morgan novel – a study, though, that radiates out to touch essentially all or most of his work. Its approach is resolutely philosophical: it cites Plato and Plotinus, and also brings in alchemy and Jungian psychology. It is learned and intelligent, and will doubtless help those readers who can follow the French and sympathise with the approach to understand better certain aspects of this major author. If we have one minor reservation, it is perhaps that Morgan is here considered very much as a thinker, almost a philosopher – while what he was, above all and almost exclusively, was a writer. As he himself wrote to Hilda, 'When I think ahead, without a pen in my hand, I think in circles.' Charles DuBos, after an evening with him, said, 'C’est fou ce qu’il est romantique!' and there was in Morgan something of Goethe’s 'Gefühl ist Alles' ('feeling is all'). He loved to think about life – about Art, Love, and Death – but he could always be sidetracked by a powerful emotion or an irresistible phrase.
Professor Hatem’s admirable little book is a gift to Morganians: it helps us to formulate our own thoughts in dialogue with his, and not only does it help us understand our author better but – an odd but heartfelt compliment to such a work – we feel more intelligent for having read it.