The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing, the primary fact. It is our arms and legs, our pots and pans, that are undefinable. The undefinable is the indisputable. The man next door is undefinable, because he is too actual to be defined. And there are some spiritual things that have the same fierce and practical proximity; some to whom God is too actual to be defined.
-GK Chesterton
Just finished GK Chesterton's biography of Charles Dickens. It was a joy to read, mainly because of Chesterton's humor and style. Chesterton asserted that the greatest thing revealed by Dickens' characters is Dickens. Likewise, the greatest thing revealed in Chesterton’s biography of Dickens is Chesterton. I’ll end with some of his quotes. But first, Dickens.
According to Chesterton, Dickens was at heart a child of the (French) Revolution, and a true democrat, believing not in the equality of faceless masses, but in the intrinsic worth of every human being—combining, in fact, the brotherhood espoused by the Revolution with the Christian concept of the distinctive and expansive value of the individual.
Dickens was attacked by literary critics for his response to criticism (an interesting circle). He often rebutted with an involved defense of himself that aggravated more than soothed. America never forgave him his open hostility to American copyright laws, which he believed were robbing him of income. After all, Americans came out in droves during his tour of the country to worship his popularity, not to be slighted by him. Chesterton reminds us that Dickens never let anything go that seemed remotely like injustice, especially injustice to himself.
More importantly, Dickens was criticized for creating novels with fascinating characters within weak plots. It is certainly true that his early works (Pickwick Papers, the Christmas tales) used plot as a way to move their characters from one episode to another, while later works (David Copperfield, Bleak House) show a more mature balance of character and plot. But the criticism misses the point. We today don’t remember much about his plots, but we do remember his characters. Dickens is his characters. They are optimistic, find joy in the midst of suffering, and we never want them to die. Chesterton points out that at the end of every novel, we assume that the main characters, even Sydney Carton, live forever. That's because they get inside us.
Tragedy (as an art form) reveals that all men are alike. Even though loss and grief are borne individually, they are unwelcome reminders that we share the common experiences of our humanity. But Dickens was a humorist, and humor has the opposite effect. Men strike us as funny because they are different. And Dickens was fascinated with the differences between men. But this fascination was not condescension or arrogance. It was a robust and exhilarating joy in who individual men and women simply are.
Humanity for Dickens meant one character at a time, and he created dozens of them. They simply emerged out of his head, and had he lived indefinitely he would populated a whole planet with unique human beings. Dickens’ characters soaked into his readers and occupied their psyches. Chesterton points out that social reformers had only slight impact in Dickens’ time. It was the revelation of the poor as real individuals instead of a faceless class that brought social change in England. His characters helped change a culture because they lived in the hearts of the culture. This is the greatest justification of Dickens' work.
Now to Chesterton: Charles Dickens contains vintage Chesterton passages. Here is one describing the power of democracy in the early 19th Century, before humanism was infected with Darwinism and began its downhill slide into the survival of the fittest and social engineering:
"The spirit of the early (19th) century produced great men because it believed that men were great. It made strong men by encouraging weak men. Its education, its public habits, its rhetoric, were all addressed towards encouraging the greatness in everybody. And by encouraging the greatness in everybody, it naturally encouraged superlative greatness in some. Superiority came out of the high rapture of equality. It is precisely in this sort of passionate unconsciousess and bewildering community of thought that men do become more than themselves. No man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature, but a man may add many cubits to his stature by not taking thought. The best men of the Revolution were simply common men at their best."
High praise for a period of history from a man who saw the late Middle Ages as the apex of human achievement. Let me close with a quote from the last page of the book. It is impossible to read this without seeing Chesterton's influence on CS Lewis:
"But we have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant: and the passage is along a rambling English road, a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick traveled. But this at least is part of what he meant; that comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel; but that rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy; which through God shall endure forever. The inn does not point to the road; the road points to the inn. And all roads point at last to an ultimate inn, where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters: and when we drink again it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern at the end of the world."
Heaven as an English tavern. Wonderful. We will lift our flagons and proclaim in unison, "God Bless Us, Every One!"
