Going Too Far?

 This is my reading of the prolific novelist E F Benson's beautiful short story "The Man Who Went Too Far", in which an artist shares his philosophy about the pursuit of joy and the worship of Pan as the embodiment of all that is wondrous and free in the world. The inset photo shows the author as a young man - maybe this is what the fictional character of Frank would look rather like. 

Benson is better know these days for his comedic novels about the rivalry between two wealthy society matrons, Mapp and Lucia, forever feuding for social status in the market town of Tilling and beyond.

You can enjoy the story in and of itself, or take it in conjunction with the philosophical waffle below the video link....

This story exists in an intertextual network of other works of fiction featuring the Greek deity Pan. There are definite echoes here of "Wind n the Willows" (published a couple of years earlier than the anthology in which this tale first appears) with the wonderfully lyrical descriptions of nature and the prominence of the living river. The menace of Arthur Machen's "Great God Pan" looms large here too. Those two works give contrasting visions of the Greek god, one the kindly guardian and the other a consuming force of darkness, both of which can be seen in Benson's story.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was much enamoured of Greek myth, writing extensively about the gods Apollo and Dionysus as emblems of two aspects of human nature – the wild, sensual, chaotic side and the logical, rational, orderly side. Art historian and cultural critic Camille Paglia ran with this argument to controversial effect. The psychologist Carl Jung had some similar notions and held that spiritual maturation came about through the realisation that such dualistic oppositions are ultimately two sides of the individual – we are both these traits, yet also greater than the sum of our parts. We are gestalt entities.  

The main character in this story, Frank, talks about two opposing philosophies – the joyless, sour Puritanism he despises, and the vivacious, joyful devotion to the God of Nature he venerates. Without spoiling the story before you listen to it, it is made clear that this view of nature as all love and light is very naïve. There is a dualism here between the Puritanical view that life is filled with suffering with rigid moralism as the only way forward, and Frank's Paganism which looks only for bliss and a totally abandoning the civilised arenas of life (this latter being much easier to do when you're well off and can afford a manservant to cook meals and iron shirts for you!).

As Jung might well have said if he read this story (I've no idea if he ever did or not), human life and the wilderness alike are a combination of misery and happiness, pain and pleasure. Any philosophy that addresses only one aspect, any life that seeks to ignore one to fixate only on the other, will take you about as far as a horse with two of its legs sawn off. A world-view must answer to both sides of the coin, and a sense of Self must encompass both our capacity for sublime joy and dour duty alike.

As well as the tension between joy and pain, this short story also encompasses the dichotomy between civilisation and the wild. Human communities can only survive by people being willing to obey rules, to fulfil obligations which are tiresome to people who are more so. Too much civilisation undoubtedly tips over into a soul-destroying exercise, but too little results in starvation - when nobody plays by the rules there will be no food to eat, no hammocks to sleep in. Too much Nature is equally risky, resulting in pneumonia from sleeping out in too many storms. It is the naive complacency of the modern urbanite to see nature as nothing but a loving Mother, blinkered to the dangers and predators inherent throughout. Just as naive as the Puritan to whom Nature is nothing but terrifying, brutal, and in need of a taming hand.

The sensuality in the story has a subtle eroticism to it, and to Puritan and Pagan alike Nature is subtextually also the Body and all its appetites. To fear one is to fear the other; to aggrandise one is to aggrandise the other (and refuse to acknowledge the risks that come from excess indulgence). If Nature is synonymous with the Body, then Civilisation becomes emblematic of the Mind. Though Puritans would despise any hint of Catholicism, they might well have notions around the City of God and an almost Augustinian sense in which the human-divine relationship is better suited to the metaphor of the built environment than the untouched one. The Pagan view of nature makes no allowances for a cultivated Garden or for wolves laying down with lambs. The Greeks of old would have advised treading the Golden Mean - a healthy respect for the Wilderness and Society alike, alert to the advantages and risks inherent in both.

Does Frank find balance in the end? Maybe, though at a considerable cost.