Reason, Spiritualism, and Surrealism

BOOK REVIEWS prejudice" and reflected her sympathy for "the cause of the outcast and the untouchables." During the last two decades of her life, the Queen's favorite Prime Ministers were Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery. As for Gladstone, she steadfastly persisted in her animus against him and any one who supported the "Grand Old Man" and his policies. Thus she was incensed when, on Gladstone's death in 1898, the Prince of Wales and his son, Prince George, honored Gladstone's memory as pallbearers at his funeral . The Queen's relations with her grandson, the German Emperor William II, were unsatisfactory ever since he had humiliated his mother, Victoria's eldest daughter, following the death of his father, the Emperor Frederick III, in 1889. She disliked William's flamboyant posturing as much as his ill-treatment of his mother and was well aware of his love-hate relationship with Britain. When the Queen finally consented to William's visit in 1889, it was a disaster·—nor were his subsequent visits up to 1899 entirely satisfactory. But the last straw for Victoria was William's "Rruger Telegram" in early 1896 congratulating the President of the South African Republic, Paul Kruger, on his defeat of Cecil Rhodes's attempt to overthrow the Boer government. She rebuked her grandson and refused to accept (as "lame and illogical") his attempts to make amends. In spite of the Queen's great interest in the literature and art of the late Victorian era, St. Aubyn deals lightly with this aspect of her life. Nevertheless, his biography is valuable for providing a fresh frame of reference for a very fertile and creative period in British literature. Enriched by superb photographs, a list of Prime Ministers who served the Queen, a chronology of her reign, a superb Index, and an outstanding bibliographical essay ("Note on Sources"), St. Aubyn's study is a worthy addition to the immense literature on or about Queen Victoria. J. O. Baylen, Emeritus ___________________ Eastbourne, England Reason, Spiritualism, and Surrealism Daniel Cottom. Abyss of Reason: Cultural Movements, Revefations, and Betrayals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 305 pp. $32.50 I MUST BEGIN this review with a confession: I don't know what Professor Cottom intended to accomplish through his explorations of spiritualism and surrealism; after a second trip through the book, 509 ELT : VOLUME 35:4 1992 rechecking what seem to me the key passages, I'm not sure the author fully knew either. To be sure, purposes are stated: The motivation for bringing [spiritualism and surrealism] together under one cover has more to do with questioning than with establishing foundations of knowledge. I do not approach history here as a ground, a court of last resort, but rather as a torn, disputed, demanding space and time that gives our understanding no choice but to be at once and indivisibly historical, cultural, and political. The justification for studying these two movements together is that the differences between them, as much as the connections, allow me to explore the complexities of cultural movements and their implications for the study of culture in any of its aspects: literary, artistic, philosophical , scientific, religious, and so on (9-10). This seems reasonable enough; it suggests in modest phrasing some of the most important slogans of current criticism: that what is thought to be knowledge is always and necessarily groundless, that history is nothing but interpretation, and that culture is all there is to be studied inasmuch as everything is a cultural construction. Spiritualism and surrealism have an evident appeal to the poststructuralist mind. Once the belief is accepted that it is impossible to ground any knowledge or judgment in reality, it is hard to deny either the spiritualist claim of communication with spirits of the dead or the surrealist claim that chance juxtapositions, momentary promptings, and automatic writing are as meaningful as conventional modes of reasoning. However, the result of what seems a diluted but still-present poststructuralist frame of mind is that Cottom seems to feel that he must take spiritualist beliefs and surrealist doctrines more seriously than his own skepticism about either really allows. Additionally damaging is the failure of the book to cast...