The Art of The Soldier's Art

The title for the eighth volume of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time comes from Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came:

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.

As a man calls for wine before he fights,

I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights

Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier’s art;

One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

Charles Stringham has wandered his way back in to Nicholas Jenkin’s life, this time as a waiter on the base where our narrator is stationed.  Stringham has sobered up and has entered an introspective period, wanting to do little more than think about life, both in general and his in particular.  Nick has worried a great deal about Stringham and worked what little influence he has to try to help his friend, but in the end Stringham is doing exactly what he wants.  It is Stringham who reads this passage from Browning to Nick near the end of the novel (Stringham has been reading Browning because he is one of Tuffy’s favorite authors, Tuffy Wheedon being his old caretaker, one-time lover, and the woman who helped him give up alcohol).

As I've said before, one of the challenges of reading each book in this series is to figure out what sort of guiding principles, if any, Powell uses to decide which stories he will tell in any given volume.  While he is certainly forced by the chronology of events and the need to set up narratives for later reaping, Powell of course has total control over his fictitious world and can reasonably do as he pleases.  So why these stories?  Why these stories in this volume?    I often turn to the title as an aid in determining Powell’s principles. 

In this case, everything about the titular line seems fitting.  In mid-1941, we are deep in Britain’s involvement in the Second World War.  Nick and all the other men in his life are involved in the war effort, most of them as soldiers, even if their posts are not glorious ones.  Even those who are not wearing a uniform are contributing.  Barnby is painting camouflage on buildings to preserve them from the raids, and Moreland’s musical career is tied directly to the war efforts.  Soldiers and arts.   

Art also has the meaning of deception and artifice, and part of the art in this novel are the maneuverings of Widmerpool, Farebrother, Stevens, and the other officers using their own arts to further their military career and hoped-for corresponding glory.  It is great fun getting to see Widmerpool in this new environment and to witness his strained relationship with Nick.

Of course the real meat of the Browning line is the first half: “Think first, fight afterwards,” which is the noble opposite of our American version, “shoot first, ask questions later,” or “kill them all, and let God sort it out.”  This is above all a book about thinking.  Nick’s experience with the war is not on the front lines.  We are not in tanks or in the thick of battle.  We experience the whole war so far on the home front—only not on the front at all.  The war touches the characters of the novel through the unpredictable raids and bombs dropped from unseen planes by unseen Germans.  The destruction arrives without warning and lives are snuffed out without ceremony.  There is no “fight” at all in these narratives.  Bombs fall and Aunt Molly dies.  Bombs fall and Bijou dies.  Bombs fall and Chips Lovell dies.  Bombs fall at Priscilla dies.  Bombs fall and whole buildings are erased from existence.  All there is to do in the world of the novel is think.

As Browning describes it, the art of the soldier is to be able to use the power of his pre-war memories to charge his batteries for the fight ahead, to use the memories of home to “set[] all to rights.”  This particular interpretation seems more like a theme for the entire series than for this particular volume.  The past revisits Nick again and again as people pass in and out of his vision, and his thoughts as a narrator are free to move forward and backward in time, jumping ahead to an untimely death, and back to recall similar and contrasting times to breathe new meaning into the present. 

Returning briefly to Stringham, his new incarnation is mesmerizing.  While his changes seem to unsettle Nick, they are brought to life so compellingly by Powell that the character is in turns heartbreaking (as when he says that he no longer falls in love with the world or anyone now that  he is permanently sober) and charming.  Powell is at his best bringing the little motions that define a character into sharp focus, and this novel has that power at every turn.  This is one of the better novels in the series.