The Tower of Oblivion

by Oliver Onions

And that was only Shipping. There were a hundred other things. He had applied his brilliant intellect to them all in turn, and had (as I may say) so "orchestrated" the whole that in the result it seemed the easiest of improvisations.

And now think what his present plan was!

He contemplated, not an analysis of one system, but a welding of analyses of all systems!

That was why he sought to juggle with his own years—that he might combine the enthusiasm of sixteen with the grasp and certainty and power of forty-five, and at the same time assure the coincidence between his past and his present impulses to create.

Montesquieu had never dreamed of such a work—Moses' task had been simpler.

Therefore I saw the position as follows:

He was thirty-three.	But thirty-three was a falsemiddle.
He was in a rage to attempt work for which no man had ever been equipped as he was equipped.	But the dazzling endeavour might elude him at any moment.
He would make that python-meal of material and produce a super-Vicarage.	But he might be thirty again before he digested it.
He was still hanging on, his enthusiasm at its keenest, his experience at its richest.	But he was hanging on as a straphanger hangs on—totteringly, insecurely.
Once he had got going he would take a week off with me, a day with Julia Oliphant.	But not until he got going.

One thing was clear. He would have to give it up. If necessary he would have to be made to give it up. If I couldn't persuade him, Julia must. But already I saw the cost to him. He was an artist, with a passionate need to create. He was an artist so highly specialised that the creation of a small thing merely irritated him. But see where he was placed! So close to the dreamed splendour that he brushed it with his fingertips, and then perhaps to see it recede, diminish, go out! To be conscious of that inordinate power, and to have the agony of knowing that it could not last long enough for the task to be completed! To be unique, as he was unique, and yet to be forced to share the common bitterness and humiliation and despair!... A few moments ago I risked the word "impious." To my way of thinking it was impiety. If it was not impiety I do not see why Prometheus was bound.

For what was this monstrous right that Derwent Rose claimed, to put all the rest of us into the shadow of his own overweening and presumptuous glory? Who was he, to seize on immortality like this? Not satin slippers with poor little feet inside them that would soon, too soon be dust—not this was the sin. It was this other that is not forgiven. And man is forbidden to call his brother by the name that fitted Derwent Rose.