British Writers and Their Experience of Empire

64 Rain," "Beeny Cliff," and "At Castle Boterei" are among Hardy's supreme achievement. It is when Davie turns from his discussion of Hardy's poems to a consideration of his influence that the study seems less reliable . Davie is generally convincing in his treatment of Philip Larkin, less so with John Betjeman and W. H. Auden. With Sassoon , Blunden, Graves, and Lawrence, Davie admits that the influence of Hardy was temporary and detrimental to the development of their work. Clearly, in the case of Roy Fisher, Davie's discussion is more concerned with special pleading of the neglected poet's work. All the curious and controversial matters considered, Davie's book is a welcome and valuable addition to the growing library of studies of Hardy's poetry. Though it makes excessive claims about Hardy's influence upon his British descendente, it will surely evoke broader discussion of the works and their relation to the ongoing tradition of English poetry. University of Houston Frank R. Giordano, Jr. 2. British Writers and Their Experience of Empire Jeffrey Meyers, Fiction and the Colonial Experience (Totowa, NJi Rowman & Littlefield, 1973)I Benita Parry, Delusions and Discoveries ι Studies on India in the British Imagination 1880-1930 (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California P, 1972). $12.50. Jeffrey Meyers and Benita Parry analyze the work of British writers who attempted in fiction to recreate their experience of life in the colonial dependencies. Both commentators assume the "liberal" point of viewi their sympathy goes to those authors who are critical of the unimaginative aspect of English hegemony and who are in accord with the aspirations of subject peoples for political autonomy. Parry confines herself to those who wrote about India, while Meyers discusses only Kipling and Forster on India and ranges afield then to consider the colonial theme in Conrad, Joyce Cary, and Graham Greene. Both critics find a focus in the work of Kipling and Förster) they are sympathetic to Forster * s Bloomsbury liberalism as opposed to Kipling's Tory imperialism . In fact, the contrast established in Meyers' book between Kipling and Forster forms the most illuminating discussion of this subject that I know) and for those who are sympathetic toward Forster, it is likely to be the last word on it. The critiques of Forster by Meyers and Parry are among the most valuable we have, Meyers placing A Passage to India in its exact political and social milieu and Parry relating it, with discernment, to the religion, philosophy, and metaphysics of the East. Both critics touch when they consider the dilemmas of Forster's characters and the social problems posed by the domination of one race with 65 an ancient, rich, and vital culture by another, with equally rich if less confused and less deep-reaching traditions. Central to Meyers' book is the perception that the imperial experience is a metaphysical metaphor, expressing the individual's relation to the primeval, primordial, and atavistic. A confrontation with the aboriginal can be either disabling or fructifying , depending upon the mind, sensibility, and spiritual reserves of the individual. Some people, of course, are insensitive to the influence of such elemental forces) these persons do not suffer but do not reach the depths of experience. In the tropics an ordered world is often absent ι chaos prevails and a frightening reality obtrudes from under the surfaces of social life. In Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" there is the jungle, and in A Passage to India there is Mrs. Moore's experience in the Marabar Caves. The primitive as an overpowering reality is symbolized for Rudbeck in Mr. Johnson's personality in Cary's novel, the characters in Kipling's "At the End of the Passage" confront with stoic despair the refractory reality of India, and Major Scobie in Greene's The Heart of the Matter cannot escape the tainted yet powerful influence exerted by a drab African locale. In colonial fiction of any worth and depth, the white man is put on trial, according to Meyers. He either survives as a result of his own intrepidity, fortitude, and conscience, or else he succumbs (as Kurtz does) to powers whose pressure is too great for him to withstand. Mrs...