he comes to see me.’
Harry in a black silk dressing gown was seated. Stuart was standing before him. They had just returned from the McCaskerville dinner party.
‘I was a fool when I was your age,’ Harry was saying, ‘I was some sort of crazy absolutist, fortunately I didn’t do anything irrevocable about it. I was a romantic, I am a romantic, I was working out my nature, I wasn’t in a state of total illusion. You seem to be trapped inside a purely theoretical notion of yourself as good or holy or something, I can’t think where you got it from, you weren’t religious at school, to which you’re sacrificing the precious time in which you could be learning something useful. Why can’t you go on studying something worthwhile, you could study and help the poor? You’re running away from something difficult to something easy, that’s what it comes to. You’re a defeatist, you’re bogus. You’re giving up the world because you realise you can’t rule it, you can’t succeed, you’d like to be a grand professor, a powerful physicist, a great philosopher, you’re funking it all, you’re throwing it all away, you’d like to know how to blow up the world, but you never will, so the only way you can destroy it is to pretend to give it up. Isn’t that it?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Stuart.
‘You aren’t unselfish and humble, you’re power-mad, a sort of moral Hitler. If you were some kind of artist I could understand it, I went on with my studies, I did well, but in the end I was only interested in what I could invent entirely by myself. That’s what makes an artist, wanting to be God. You want to be God, perhaps we aren’t so unlike after all, but you’re not an artist, you lack imagination, and that’s a recipe for disaster. Perhaps you want to be persecuted — but you don’t want to end up as a pitiful neurotic, do you?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Stuart.
‘And as for giving up sex, you can’t, all you can do is put it off and get neurotic about it! People will think you’re impotent or abnormal or a repressed homosexual. Or perhaps you’re waiting for the perfect romance, the pure knight who’ll deserve the princess, some sort of virginal Valkyrie! Your religious fantasy is just a sexual fantasy in disguise. You can’t take a vow of celibacy all by yourself, there’s no such thing, you’ll just come to grief, you’ll end up leaping on somebody and then feeling guilty and the whole business will be mucked up forever. You are like me, Stuart, you’re full of sex, it’s running out of your ears, you’re being insincere, you haven’t really examined yourself.’
‘I know about sex,’ said Stuart, ‘I mean about it being in my nature, but for me there’s just another pattern of living.’
‘You can’t do it.’
‘I don’t see why not. Many people do, like going straight from school into a religious seminary, never entering into — all that — at all.’
‘All that! You see it as a black pit of pollution and degradation! You want to stay innocent, not to be like the rest of us. I suppose that’s aimed at me, you want to be as unlike me as possible. I suppose you see me as some sort of sex maniac. I couldn’t conceal things from you when you were a child, I can remember your little white face, judging me. You’ve just held onto your childish picture of things you can’t understand. This fantasy of yours hurts me so much. Do you realise that?’
‘Look, Dad,’ said Stuart. ‘Look, it’s not against you. I know what you mean about when I was a child — but it isn’t anything to do with you, and I couldn’t will to hurt you.’
‘You could unconsciously.’
‘I don’t believe in that. I do try to understand myself. But in a way that’s not important. It’s something else, something ultimate and absolute — ’
‘But this is simply superstition, as bad as believing in God, which you say you don’t! Anyway what’s fundamental could be
Harry in a black silk dressing gown was seated. Stuart was standing before him. They had just returned from the McCaskerville dinner party.
‘I was a fool when I was your age,’ Harry was saying, ‘I was some sort of crazy absolutist, fortunately I didn’t do anything irrevocable about it. I was a romantic, I am a romantic, I was working out my nature, I wasn’t in a state of total illusion. You seem to be trapped inside a purely theoretical notion of yourself as good or holy or something, I can’t think where you got it from, you weren’t religious at school, to which you’re sacrificing the precious time in which you could be learning something useful. Why can’t you go on studying something worthwhile, you could study and help the poor? You’re running away from something difficult to something easy, that’s what it comes to. You’re a defeatist, you’re bogus. You’re giving up the world because you realise you can’t rule it, you can’t succeed, you’d like to be a grand professor, a powerful physicist, a great philosopher, you’re funking it all, you’re throwing it all away, you’d like to know how to blow up the world, but you never will, so the only way you can destroy it is to pretend to give it up. Isn’t that it?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Stuart.
‘You aren’t unselfish and humble, you’re power-mad, a sort of moral Hitler. If you were some kind of artist I could understand it, I went on with my studies, I did well, but in the end I was only interested in what I could invent entirely by myself. That’s what makes an artist, wanting to be God. You want to be God, perhaps we aren’t so unlike after all, but you’re not an artist, you lack imagination, and that’s a recipe for disaster. Perhaps you want to be persecuted — but you don’t want to end up as a pitiful neurotic, do you?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Stuart.
‘And as for giving up sex, you can’t, all you can do is put it off and get neurotic about it! People will think you’re impotent or abnormal or a repressed homosexual. Or perhaps you’re waiting for the perfect romance, the pure knight who’ll deserve the princess, some sort of virginal Valkyrie! Your religious fantasy is just a sexual fantasy in disguise. You can’t take a vow of celibacy all by yourself, there’s no such thing, you’ll just come to grief, you’ll end up leaping on somebody and then feeling guilty and the whole business will be mucked up forever. You are like me, Stuart, you’re full of sex, it’s running out of your ears, you’re being insincere, you haven’t really examined yourself.’
‘I know about sex,’ said Stuart, ‘I mean about it being in my nature, but for me there’s just another pattern of living.’
‘You can’t do it.’
‘I don’t see why not. Many people do, like going straight from school into a religious seminary, never entering into — all that — at all.’
‘All that! You see it as a black pit of pollution and degradation! You want to stay innocent, not to be like the rest of us. I suppose that’s aimed at me, you want to be as unlike me as possible. I suppose you see me as some sort of sex maniac. I couldn’t conceal things from you when you were a child, I can remember your little white face, judging me. You’ve just held onto your childish picture of things you can’t understand. This fantasy of yours hurts me so much. Do you realise that?’
‘Look, Dad,’ said Stuart. ‘Look, it’s not against you. I know what you mean about when I was a child — but it isn’t anything to do with you, and I couldn’t will to hurt you.’
‘You could unconsciously.’
‘I don’t believe in that. I do try to understand myself. But in a way that’s not important. It’s something else, something ultimate and absolute — ’
‘But this is simply superstition, as bad as believing in God, which you say you don’t! Anyway what’s fundamental could be
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