George Moore, Schopenhauer, and the Origins of The Brook Kerith

21 GEORGE MOORE, SCHOPENHAUER, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE BROOK KERITH Michael W. Brooks (New York University) Near the middle of George Moore's The Brook Kerlth the reader discovers that Jesus, crucified and placed in the tomb, has revived under the care of Joseph of Arlmathea and Is returning to the Essene settlement he had left three years before. Although this ought to be shocking, it Is not so in context. The lulling effect of Moore's rhythms and the calm gravity of his tone dampen any suspicion of blasphemous Intent and If we are surprised at all it Is by Jesus' emergence as the spokesman for a doctrine of quiet pessimism. "It came to me to understand," he says In his fifty-third year, "that all striving was vain and worse than vain. The pursuit of an incorruptible crown leads us to sin as much as the pursuit of a corruptible crown. If we would reach the sinless state, we must relinquish pursuit."1 Few of Moore's readers were prepared to see him crown his kaleidoscopic career with a deeply felt statement of his private theology and, as a consequence, his achievement in The Brook Kerlth has never been quite squarely faced. Critics have concentrated on the preclousness of the novel's style rather than on Its intellectual content and they have treated his late phase not as an outgrowth of his early work but as a stark contrast to it. Both these errors can be corrected simultaneously. An examination of Moore's earliest expressions of a pessimistic philosophy points toward the clear relation of theme to structure In The Brook Kerlth. It was Joseph Hone, Moore's biographer, who first observed the Influence of Schopenhauer In several of Moore's novels. However, Hone clearly did not think that this influence was anything but casual and intermittent. Jean Noel,2 in his exhaustive study of Moore's work, corrects this view and shows that Moore's Interest in the philosopher was careful as well as enthusiastic. Even here, however, Schopenhauer's Influence is discussed as though It were confined to the books Moore was writing in the 1880s. It would be better to say that Schopenhauer provided Moore with a framework capable of balancing the two contradictory sides of his complex temperament: η z*>stful delight In life and a deeply ingrained pessimism. Only In Schopenhauer did Moore find a framework that provided for both the power of the will and Its futility. By providing him with his characteristic theme of desire and renunciation, Schopenhauer affected Moore's work deeply and permanently. That des ire first broke the peace of primal unconsciousness, that the "will to life" is without plan or morality, that It brings inevitable pain, that the wise achieve contentment only by the renunciation of desire - these are among the Ideas Moore took from Schopenhauer and exploited in his early work. 22 Schopenhauer's first lesson - that the world's ultimate reality Is will - prompted Moore, In his quasl-autobioscraphlcal Confessions , to a brash celebration of youth's Impulsive egotism. Although the hero of that book proclaims himself free from all original qualities, defects, and tastes, we should not be misled Into regarding his prenatal soul as a tabula rasa waiting patiently for the Impress of the external world. On the contrary, he makes it clear that his striving, vital will exists prior to perception and selects from the potential Impressions offered by the environment: "brain Instincts," he proclaims, "have always been and still are, the Initial and determining powers of my being."3 He traces all the great turns in his career back to moments when a chance word or event struck an "echo-augury" in his soul and produced an overwhelming burst of enthusiasm. An overheard conversation, a chance acquaintance, a casual remark any of these might be enough to set off another stage in the young man's heiter skelter progress. The full strength of his inner imperative is not revealed to the young man until he hears of his father's death and feels, deep within his soul, an impulse of terrible joy in his new found freedom. Horrified, he seeks to...