Review
Novel by James Branch Cabell, published in 1917 and revised in 1920. It is the 16th book of the 18-volume series called The Works of James Branch Cabell (1927-30), also known as The Biography of the Life of Manuel. The comic novel blends contemporary realism and historical romance. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature
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In one of the charming essays wherein Anatole France narrates the adventures of his soul I find these words:
"It is good to be reasonable and to love only the true; yet there are hours when common reality no longer satisfies and one yearns to escape from nature. We know well that this is impossible, but we so not desire it the less for that. Are not our most i rrealizable desires the most ardent? Doubtless--and this is our great misery--doubtless we cannot escape from ourselves. We are condemned, irrevocably, to see all things reflected in us with a mournful and desolating monotony. For this very reason we t hirst after the unknown and aspire to what is beyond us. We must have the unusual. We are asked, 'What do you wish?' And we reply, 'I wish something else.' What we touch, what we see, is nothing: we are drawn toward the intangible and the invisible."
It is a philosophy of disillusion, the graceful sigh of an Epicurean who has concurred in the wisdom of Heraclitus: an Epicurean, however, in whose wisdom is the fragrance of compassion and understanding, and who has achieved to the dignity that is incap able alike of enthusiasm and despair.
James Branch Cabell agress with M. Anatole France. He has observed life very closely--too closely, perhaps, ever to surprise its deepest secrets--and, in a dozen volumes he has intimated, with exquisite urbanity, that it leaves much to be desired. He ha s even ventured to supply a few of the ommissions, troubled always by the suspicion that he must inevitably fail, yet consoled by the sublime faith that "to write perfectly of beautiful happenings" will ensure his labors against utter oblivion.
From the beginnings of these labors Mr. Cabell has ranked himself with the skeptics. In itself this is no distinction, for skepticism nowadays is almost as easy to aquire as faith,-- indeed, for most of its devotees, it is the expression of a faith--a re bours. But Mr. Cabell, being essentially an aristocrat of sensibilities, and averse from indulgence in the obvious, has always insisted upon distinction. He has found it by introducing into his skepticism two qualities: good taste and irony. That is to say, every doubt which issues from his fertile intelligence must be arrayed in the brilliant garb of a courtier, whose flattery of the monarch--Life--is a veiled sarcasm, so delicately worded only upon reflection does one perceive the sting.
Yet even the flattery is sincere, and the mockery, however mordant, conceals a poignant wistfulness. Nowhere in his books can a shrewd reader charge him with lese-majeste towards life. It is true that superficially Mr. Cabell is an advocate for ennui, s eeming to relish with soft melodious laughter every imperfection discoverable in the features of "reality." And unquestionably the author of Domnei,of Gallantry, of The Cream of the Jest, Jurgen and Figures of Earth com municates always a profound discontent with things-as-they-are, seeks always a country modeled upon dreams wherein is neither amiguity nor frustration, nor any hint of sorrow or regret. But this is the prerogative of huckster and genius alike. Mr.Cabell has fished in deep waters, and so, not content with "desiderating"--the word is peculiarly his own--a "life beyond life," he terminates all his valiant errantry into Cocaigne and Storisende and Poictesme with the invariable conclusion that one should make the best of this world, since all others are conjectural, and all conjectures, however beautiful and necessary, a little childish.
This attitude, mingling an adroit, uncanny and disconcerting insight with a suave good humor entitles Mr. Cabell to be called a philosopher. The pedantic will add "a pessimist." Oddly enough, the word fits like a glove; what pessimism deeper than to hav e perceived, with equal clarity, and in one glance, the inadequacy of life and the fatal impotence of the dreams whereby living was to become an enfranchisement of all things noble and lovely and gracious?
