Article #288-2 | Gutenberg Articles

Excerpt

Excerpt from The Certain Hour (Dizain des Poëtes), by James Branch Cabell

And this much said, it is permissible to hope, at least, that here and
there some reader may be found not wholly blind to this book's goal,
whatever be his opinion as to this book's success in reaching it. Yet
many honest souls there be among us average-novel-readers in whose eyes
this volume must rest content to figure as a collection of short
stories having naught in common beyond the feature that each deals with
the affaires du coeur of a poet.

Such must always be the book's interpretation by mental indolence. The
fact is incontestable; and this fact in itself may be taken as
sufficient to establish the inexpediency of publishing The Certain
Hour. For that "people will not buy a volume of short stories" is
notorious to all publishers. To offset the axiom there are no doubt
incongruous phenomena--ranging from the continued popularity of the
Bible to the present general esteem of Mr. Kipling, and embracing the
rather unaccountable vogue of "O. Henry";--but, none the less, the
superstition has its force.

Here intervenes the multifariousness of man, pointed out somewhere by
Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, which enables the individual to be at once a
vegetarian, a golfer, a vestryman, a blond, a mammal, a Democrat, and
an immortal spirit. As a rational person, one may debonairly consider
The Certain Hour possesses as large license to look like a volume of
short stories as, say, a backgammon-board has to its customary guise of
a two-volume history; but as an average-novel-reader, one must vote
otherwise. As an average-novel-reader, one must condemn the very book
which, as a seasoned scribbler, one was moved to write through long
consideration of the drama already suggested--that immemorial drama of
the desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings, and the obscure
martyrdom to which this desire solicits its possessor.

Explanation

James Branch Cabell’s The Certain Hour (1916), part of his Dizain des Poëtes sequence, is a collection of interconnected stories exploring the lives—and often tragic fates—of poets. The excerpt provided serves as a metafictional preface or authorial aside, blending self-deprecation, irony, and a defense of artistic ambition. Below is a detailed breakdown of the passage, emphasizing its textual nuances, themes, and literary strategies while situating it within Cabell’s broader project.

Context and Overview

The Certain Hour is the fourth book in Cabell’s Dizain des Poëtes ("Decade of Poets"), a series examining the intersection of art, love, and mortality through the lens of fictional poets. Cabell, a master of ironic fantasy and philosophical satire, often employed a detached, archly sophisticated tone to critique romantic idealism and the commercial realities of literature. This excerpt reflects his characteristic blend of:

Metafiction: Commenting on the act of writing and the reader’s expectations.
Satirical Wit: Mocking both the publishing industry and the "average novel-reader."
Thematic Obsession: The "immemorial drama" of the poet’s struggle for perfection and the suffering it entails.

The passage functions as a defensive yet playful preamble, anticipating misreadings while hinting at deeper unity beneath the surface fragmentation of the stories.

Line-by-Line Analysis

1. Hope for the Discerning Reader

"And this much said, it is permissible to hope, at least, that here and there some reader may be found not wholly blind to this book's goal, whatever be his opinion as to this book's success in reaching it."

Tone: Wry optimism tempered by resignation. Cabell acknowledges that his work may fail but clings to the possibility of an ideal reader—an echo of Walter Pater’s "aesthetic critic" or Jorge Luis Borges’ later idea of the reader as collaborator.
Irony: The phrase "not wholly blind" is backhanded; even the "discerning" reader is only partially sighted.
Theme: The gap between artistic intention and reception. Cabell’s goal (exploring the poet’s martyrdom) may be obscured by the book’s superficial appearance as mere short stories.

2. The "Average-Novel-Reader" and Superficial Unity

"Yet many honest souls there be among us average-novel-readers in whose eyes this volume must rest content to figure as a collection of short stories having naught in common beyond the feature that each deals with the affaires du coeur of a poet."

"Average-novel-reader": A pejorative term for the uncritical mass audience. Cabell’s elitism is playful but genuine; he despises the reductive tendencies of popular taste.
Unifying Thread: The affaires du coeur (love affairs) of poets. This is both literal (the stories often involve romantic entanglements) and metaphorical (the poet’s "love" for art, which is unrequited or destructive).
Literary Device: Synecdoche—the "heart" stands for the poet’s entire being, consumed by passion (artistic and erotic).
Significance: Cabell signals that the stories are linked thematically, not just by plot. The poet’s affaires are less about romance than about the eroticized suffering of creation.

3. The Inevitability of Misreading

"Such must always be the book's interpretation by mental indolence. The fact is incontestable; and this fact in itself may be taken as sufficient to establish the inexpediency of publishing The Certain Hour."

"Mental indolence": A jab at lazy readers who seek easy entertainment. Cabell’s work demands engagement with its philosophical undercurrents.
Ironic Resignation: He feigns agreement with the publishers’ assumption that short-story collections don’t sell, but the tone suggests he finds this a trivial objection.
Theme: The commercial vs. artistic tension. Cabell, like his poet-protagonists, is caught between the desire for recognition and the knowledge that true art is often unmarketable.

4. Exceptions to the Rule (and Their Irrelevance)

"For that 'people will not buy a volume of short stories' is notorious to all publishers. To offset the axiom there are no doubt incongruous phenomena—ranging from the continued popularity of the Bible to the present general esteem of Mr. Kipling, and embracing the rather unaccountable vogue of 'O. Henry';—but, none the less, the superstition has its force."

Satirical Catalog: The Bible, Kipling, and O. Henry are "incongruous" exceptions that prove the rule. The Bible is sacred, Kipling was a bestselling imperialist, and O. Henry’s stories were formulaic yet popular—none align with Cabell’s aesthetic.
Literary Device: Juxtaposition of high and low culture to underscore the arbitrariness of taste.
Tone: Mocking the publishing industry’s reliance on "superstition" (i.e., market trends) rather than artistic merit.

5. The Multifariousness of Man (Chesterton’s Influence)

"Here intervenes the multifariousness of man, pointed out somewhere by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, which enables the individual to be at once a vegetarian, a golfer, a vestryman, a blond, a mammal, a Democrat, and an immortal spirit."

Reference: G.K. Chesterton’s idea (from Orthodoxy or Heretics) that humans contain contradictory identities. Cabell uses this to justify his book’s dual nature.
Purpose: If a man can be all these things at once, why can’t a book be both a short-story collection and a unified artistic statement?
Literary Device: Paradox—the book’s form is deliberately ambiguous, mirroring the poet’s fragmented yet cohesive existence.

6. The Backgammon-Board Analogy

"As a rational person, one may debonairly consider The Certain Hour possesses as large license to look like a volume of short stories as, say, a backgammon-board has to its customary guise of a two-volume history;"

Absurdist Comparison: A backgammon board disguised as a history book is a surreal image, highlighting how form can deceive. Cabell’s stories appear disjointed but are secretly unified.
Theme: Appearance vs. Reality. The "average reader" sees only the surface (short stories), while the "seasoned scribbler" (Cabell) knows the deeper design.
Tone: "Debonairly" suggests a carefree confidence, but the analogy is deliberately convoluted, reinforcing the idea that truth is hidden.

7. The Poet’s Immemorial Drama

"but as an average-novel-reader, one must vote otherwise. As an average-novel-reader, one must condemn the very book which, as a seasoned scribbler, one was moved to write through long consideration of the drama already suggested—that immemorial drama of the desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings, and the obscure martyrdom to which this desire solicits its possessor."

Dual Perspective: Cabell splits himself into the "average reader" (who rejects the book) and the "seasoned scribbler" (who understands its purpose).
"Immemorial drama": The eternal struggle of the artist to capture beauty in words, knowing perfection is unattainable. This is the core theme of The Certain Hour.
"Obscure martyrdom": The poet’s suffering is unseen by the world, yet it is inevitable. Cabell’s poets (like his Dom Manuel in Figures of Earth) are doomed by their own ideals.
Literary Device: Chiasmus—the structure of the sentence mirrors the conflict between the artist’s vision and the audience’s blindness.

Key Themes in the Excerpt

The Artist’s Isolation: The poet’s "martyrdom" is solitary; their audience is either indifferent or incapable of understanding.
The Illusion of Unity: The book’s fragmented form reflects the poet’s fragmented existence—unified only by the thread of suffering.
Commercial vs. Artistic Value: Cabell mocks the publishing world’s reliance on marketable forms while defending his own uncompromising artistry.
The Erotics of Creation: Writing "perfectly of beautiful happenings" is an act of love, but like all love in Cabell’s work, it is doomed and self-destructive.

Literary Devices

Irony: The entire passage is ironic, from the faux-humble hope for a discerning reader to the backhanded praise of O. Henry.
Paradox: The book is both a collection of stories and a single, cohesive work; the poet is both divine (an "immortal spirit") and absurd (a "mammal").
Metafiction: Cabell breaks the fourth wall to discuss the act of writing and reading, blurring the line between author and text.
Allusion: References to Chesterton, Kipling, and the Bible situate the work within a literary tradition while undermining it.
Cataloguing: The list of the "multifarious" man’s identities is a satirical enumeration, emphasizing human contradiction.

Significance of the Excerpt

Defense of Artistic Integrity: Cabell refuses to dumb down his work for commercial success, aligning himself with his doomed poet-protagonists.
Reader as Collaborator: The passage challenges the reader to look beyond the surface, making them complicit in the book’s meaning.
Cabell’s Philosophical Project: The "immemorial drama" is a recurring motif in his work—the idea that art is a noble but futile pursuit, akin to Don Quixote’s quests.
Modernist Prefiguration: The self-aware, fragmented style anticipates postmodern metafiction, though Cabell’s tone is more ironic than earnest.

Conclusion: The Poet’s Certain Hour

The excerpt encapsulates Cabell’s view of the artist as a tragic figure, caught between the desire for perfection and the indifference of the world. The "certain hour" of the title refers to the moment of poetic inspiration—or perhaps the hour of the poet’s death, when their martyrdom is complete. By framing his book as both a collection of stories and a unified whole, Cabell mirrors the poet’s paradox: a life spent chasing an ideal that can never be fully realized, yet must be pursued regardless.

In this passage, he doesn’t just describe his book; he enacts its central tension—the gap between the artist’s vision and the world’s myopia. The reader is left to decide: Are these merely affaires du coeur, or is there something deeper, something worth the poet’s obscure martyrdom? Cabell, ever the ironist, leaves the question tantalizingly open.

Questions

Question 1

The passage’s comparison of The Certain Hour to a "backgammon-board [disguised] as a two-volume history" primarily serves to:

A. illustrate the absurdity of publishers’ assumptions about what constitutes a marketable book.
B. underscore the tension between superficial appearance and underlying artistic unity in the work.
C. mock the pretensions of historical fiction by equating it with a trivial game.
D. suggest that the book’s true value lies in its entertainment rather than its thematic depth.
E. imply that the stories, like backgammon, are governed by arbitrary rules of chance.

Question 2

The phrase "mental indolence" (line 6) is best understood as a critique of readers who:

A. reject experimental literature out of a misplaced sense of moral superiority.
B. prioritize emotional engagement over intellectual analysis in their reading.
C. dismiss works that do not conform to the conventions of realist fiction.
D. are incapable of recognizing satire due to their literal-mindedness.
E. seek effortless consumption and thus reduce complex works to their most accessible features.

Question 3

The "immemorial drama" (line 20) is most accurately characterized as:

A. the cyclical nature of literary trends, in which even forgotten works are occasionally rediscovered.
B. the conflict between the poet’s desire for fame and the public’s indifference to artistic innovation.
C. the universal human struggle to reconcile idealism with the constraints of mortal existence.
D. the inevitable decline of artistic movements once they become institutionalized.
E. the poet’s doomed pursuit of perfect expression and the suffering this pursuit entails.

Question 4

The passage’s tone is best described as:

A. earnestly didactic, with a pedagogical intent to educate the reader about literary value.
B. bitterly resigned, reflecting the author’s acceptance of his work’s inevitable obscurity.
C. playfully cynical, using humor to mask a deep disdain for both publishers and readers.
D. ironically detached, oscillating between self-deprecation and arch superiority.
E. wistfully nostalgic, lamenting the loss of an era when art was valued for its own sake.

Question 5

Which of the following best captures the relationship between the "average-novel-reader" and the "seasoned scribbler" as depicted in the passage?

A. The average-novel-reader embodies the commercial forces that the seasoned scribbler must either resist or exploit, creating an irreconcilable duality within the artist.
B. The average-novel-reader represents the ideal audience the seasoned scribbler hopes to cultivate, despite the former’s current limitations.
C. The average-novel-reader’s preferences are a necessary evil that the seasoned scribbler must accommodate to achieve financial success.
D. The average-novel-reader’s misunderstanding of the work is a deliberate provocation by the seasoned scribbler to spark deeper engagement.
E. The average-novel-reader and the seasoned scribbler are two facets of the same individual, reflecting the internal conflict between artistic ambition and pragmatic compromise.

Solutions and Explanations

1) Correct answer: B

Why B is most correct: The backgammon-board analogy is a metaphor for the discrepancy between appearance (a collection of short stories) and reality (a unified exploration of the poet’s martyrdom). Cabell suggests that, just as a backgammon board might be disguised as something it is not, his book’s fragmented form conceals a deeper coherence. This aligns with the passage’s broader concern with how works are misperceived by "mental indolence." The analogy is not about marketability (A) or mockery of historical fiction (C), but about the tension between surface and substance.