ABSTRACT
The most important thing I admire is Mr. Huxley's valiant, and I believe successful, attempt to say something positive, to set up a sanction for life. I am sick of death and death-worshipping in all its forms, from senile gentility to the cold butchery of intellectual suicide. Let me give an example. A greatly admired poem by the most admired poet of the day may be summarized in the following excerpted words:
[Alludes to T. S. Eliot's 'The Hollow Men' and expresses his dislike of 'this exhibitionism of a perpetual suicidal mania'] It is the War despair which involved so many of us and from which the healthy-minded have been struggling to escape, not yearning to wallow in. Mr. Huxley has struggled tremendously and bravely, and I think he has escaped. He has got back to a positive belief in life, a positive enjoy ment of life. And he has not done it by yielding to the old nauseating humbugs, the false official optimisms which are like a bad but insipid smell. Perhaps Mr. Huxley's escape is only valid for himself and for a few who by education and temperament are predisposed to sympathy with him, but at least he has found a way to life-that's something.
