From Bergson to Einstein

Butts’s engagement with Bergson’s ideas varies in intensity over time. To some extent, this mirrors the general degree of interest in him. Bergson was immensely popular in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century but had faded into comparative obscurity before the end of the third decade. ¹ Butts’s journals reveal an acute interest in 1917, with references to Bergson, durée and élan vital. These vanish after this year, although, as the previous discussion on ‘Angele au Couvent’ shows, Bergson’s ideas persist in Butts’s creative work. This assumes, in the absence of any information to the contrary, that the story was not written long before its publication date of 1923. Direct references to Bergson in the journals are temporarily re-stimulated in 1927 by T. S. Eliot’s dismissive comments, mentioned in Chapter 4. ² In January 1928, Butts’s description of ‘durée’ as ‘Einstein-in-the-heart’ suggests that Butts has amalgamated her concept of time, initially inspired by Bergson’s ideas, with her more recent thinking about Einstein’s relativity theories. ³