But perhaps you have been reading little brown books on Evolution, and
you don't believe in Catastrophes, or Climaxes, or Definitions? Eh?
Tell me, do you believe in the peak of the Matterhorn, and have you
doubts on the points of needles? Can the sun be said truly to rise or
set, and is there any exact meaning in the phrase, 'Done to a turn' as
applied to omelettes? You know there is; and so also you must believe
in Categories, and you must admit differences of kind as well as of
degree, and you must accept exact definition and believe in all that
your fathers did, that were wiser men than you, as is easily proved if
you will but imagine yourself for but one moment introduced into the
presence of your ancestors, and ask yourself which would look the
fool. Especially must you believe in moments and their importance, and
avoid with the utmost care the Comparative Method and the argument of
the Slowly Accumulating Heap. I hear that some scientists are already
beginning to admit the reality of Birth and Death - let but some brave
few make an act of Faith in the Grand Climacteric and all shall yet be
well.
Well, as I was saying, this Difficulty of Beginning is but one of
three, and is Inexplicable, and is in the Nature of Things, and it is
very especially noticeable in the Art of Letters. There is in every
book the Difficulty of Beginning, the Difficulty of the Turning-Point
(which is the Grand Climacteric of a Book) -
LECTOR. What is that in a Book?
AUCTOR. Why, it is the point where the reader has caught on, enters
into the Book and desires to continue reading it.
LECTOR. It comes earlier in some books than in others.
AUCTOR. As you say ... And finally there is the Difficulty of Ending.
LECTOR. I do not see how there can be any difficulty in ending a book.
AUCTOR. That shows very clearly that you have never written one, for
there is nothing so hard in the writing of a book - no, not even the
choice of the Dedication - as is the ending of it. On this account only
the great Poets, who are above custom and can snap their divine
fingers at forms, are not at the pains of devising careful endings.
Thus, Homer ends with lines that might as well be in the middle of a
passage; Hesiod, I know not how; and Mr Bailey, the New Voice from
Eurasia, does not end at all, but is still going on.
Panurge told me that his great work on Conchology would never have
been finished had it not been for the Bookseller that threatened law;
and as it is, the last sentence has no verb in it. There is always
something more to be said, and it is always so difficult to turn up
the splice neatly at the edges. On this account there are regular
models for ending a book or a Poem, as there are for beginning one;
but, for my part, I think the best way of ending a book is to rummage
about among one's manuscripts till one has found a bit of Fine Writing
(no matter upon what subject), to lead up the last paragraphs by no
matter what violent shocks to the thing it deals with, to introduce a
row of asterisks, and then to paste on to the paper below these the
piece of Fine Writing one has found.
I knew a man once who always wrote the end of a book first, when his
mind was fresh, and so worked gradually back to the introductory
chapter, which (he said) was ever a kind of summary, and could not be
properly dealt with till a man knew all about his subject. He said
this was a sovran way to write History.
But it seems to me that this is pure extravagance, for it would lead
one at last to beginning at the bottom of the last page, like the
Hebrew Bible, and (if it were fully carried out) to writing one's
sentences backwards till one had a style like the London School of
Poets: a very horrible conclusion.
However, I am not concerned here with the ending of a book, but with
its beginning; and I say that the beginning of any literary thing is
hard, and that this hardness is difficult to explain. And I say more
than this - I say that an interminable discussion of the difficulty of
beginning a book is the worst omen for going on with it, and a trashy
subterfuge at the best. In the name of all decent, common, and homely
things, why not begin and have done with it?
It was in the very beginning of June, at evening, but not yet sunset,
that I set out from Toul by the Nancy gate; but instead of going
straight on past the parade-ground, I turned to the right immediately
along the ditch and rampart, and did not leave the fortifications till
I came to the road that goes up alongside the Moselle. For it was by
the valley of this river that I was to begin my pilgrimage, since, by
a happy accident, the valley of the Upper Moselle runs straight
towards Rome, though it takes you but a short part of the way. What a
good opening it makes for a direct pilgrimage can be seen from this
little map, where the dotted line points exactly to Rome. There are
two bends which take one a little out of one's way, and these bends I
attempted to avoid, but in general, the valley, about a hundred miles
from Toul to the source, is an evident gate for any one walking from
this part of Lorraine into Italy. And this map is also useful to show
what route I followed for my first three days past Epinal and
Remiremont up to the source of the river, and up over the great hill,
the Ballon d'Alsace.
