Professor Woodson states that his “unveiling of the emblematic novel” arose when he attempted to study the novels of Carl Van Vechten, using stylometry (19). Van Vechten had written a number of novels before he met Orage, and he wrote more after that point. Woodson had thought that the post-Orage novels would differ from the earlier ones by having “an esoteric subtext” (19). But as he read The Blind Bow-Boy, written before meeting Orage, but not necessarily before he knew of Ouspensky and perhaps Gurdjieff, Woodson realised that what had been dismissed by critics as “stylistic excesses” (22) were in fact clues left by the author to show the reader that there was more to his meaning than met the eye. Further, the novel was understood that way by the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and the “Lost Generation” writers of NY, who were influenced by this “emblematic novel” (23).
In Part 1 of this review, I noted Woodson’s comments on the cover illustration. It differs from earlier alchemical illustrations in that they were published in books which were clearly of an occult genre. The Blond Bow-Boy, however, was ostensibly a modern novel and nothing more. This masking means that the book has to be read in a fresh way. Woodson conjectures that Van Vechten had met The Brothers of Heliopolis in Paris. He acknowledges that there is no evidence for this, but even if it were not so, yet Van Vechten shows an encyclopaedic knowledge of alchemy in this novel *25). A further possible source was Muriel Draper (85). When Van Vechten lists interiors with a details which the uninitiated find baffling, the knowing reader can read the symbols as more than furniture.
Returning to the cover illustration, Woodson makes a powerful case for the symbolic and alchemical nature of the cover illustration, with its homage to John Dee and Paracelsus (two key figures in the early modern art); and a fair case that it was directly influenced by the drawing in Basil Valentine’s The Triumphal Chariot of Antinomy (27-30).
The identification of “Miss Perkins” with Mr Ouspensky is probably correct – Tertium Organum was universally known in esoteric circles, and well-known even outside them in the 1920s. The reading of the “Duke of Middlebottom” is doubtless also correct – the character of the Duke being as convincing a sign as Woodson’s reading of the “green language” (33). I suspect, however, that while “Zimbule O’Grady” is a “great symbol,” as Woodson suggests, that O’Grady may also be Organum. An interest in arcane matters, and especially in Ouspensky, could easily have led Van Vechten to Orage – who appears in this novel as “Oliver Drains”, a former servant of the formidable Duke (22).
There is a great consistency or rather inner logic in Van Vechten’s book (and I also, I suggest in Firecrackers), this Campaspe is a matchmaker – she urges others onwards – but O’Gray actually does the love-making. I found The Blind Bow-Boy far better than I had expected. I shan’t methodically work through Prof. Woodson’s book. I think I have said enough to indicate its worth. I will add that he has an important chapter on Zora Neale Hurston, who in my view turned out two great books (The Eyes Were Watching God and Dust Tracks on a Road) although the others range from mediocre to most interesting, just not great (e.g. the recently published Barracoon).
I would rather turn to Firecrackers (1927), a novel I would not have read but for Woodson’s book, but found impressive. The first clue that this is an emblematic model is that its full title reads: Firecrackers: A Realistic Novel, in other words – it is anything but a “realistic novel.” Equally significantly, one of the forepages has six short quotations, the sixth of which is from Ouspensky: “We acquire the knowledge of that which we deserve to know.” Apart from confirming his regard for Ouspensky, Van Vechten is saying that we will learn from this novel only what we merit to.
On the very first page of Firecrackers, Paul Moody from Blind Bow-Boy reappears, a sign of continuity of inner logic. “Moody,” I think, is an “everyman,” meaning man before he has done any work, but is subject to moods and changeability. Not surprisingly, the “decorative centre of interest” in Paul’s room is the “augite fireplace” (3). Augite is a symbol of fire. The fireplace is the essential instrument in alchemy. However, the furnace is out of order (6), and the name of the novel, we will remember, is “FIREcrackers.”
Paul discovers the repairman not attending to the fireplace, but to The Alchemy of Happiness by “the Persian poet-philosopher, Al-Ghazzali.” (9) One could hardly fit more esotericism into one clause. Paul asks him what it is about, and he replies: “Al-Ghazzali avers that the highest function of man’s soul is the perception of truth” (10). He tells Paul: “What you lack is balance” (12). I may quite off the mark, but I suspect that this is part of the explanation of Gurdjieff’s name in green language: the Duke of Middlebottom. Remember, “Duke” comes from “ducere/dux” to lead, the leader, and to be in the middle, and settled at the base is to have a propensity for balance. That is, I think that in Van Vechten’s code, Gurdjieff shows the way to be balanced.
This man turns out to be Gunnar O’Grady, acrobat; and he is of course Zimbule’s brother. He moves from one occupation to another. He becomes the trail they have to follow, and like his sister, he does not just talk about or dream of making love – he does it. But even at the end, they do not know about him.
I found Van Vechten’s writing better than I had expected. He is not nearly so great a writer, in any sense, as Tolkein or E.M. Forster. But he is not a minor figure, I think. He was quite a luminary in the New York scene in his day. He is not a luminary, I think him mid-level. But his mind was interesting in a high degree, and some of his work has been overlooked. Perhaps Woodson’s writing will lead to a revival of interest in Van Vechten. I recommend Woodson’s book for anyone with an interest in the possibilities of literature.
There is more in this book, but I do not have time to pursue it.
