Tragedy and the Whole TruthAldous HuxleyThere were six of them, the best and bravest of the heros companions. Turning back from his post in the bows, Odysseus was in time to see them lifted, struggling, into the air, to hear their screams, the desperate repetition of his own name. The survivors could only look on helplessly, while Scylla at the mouth of her cave devoured them, still screaming, still stretching out their hands to me in the frightful struggle. And Odysseus adds that it was the most dreadful and lamentable sight he ever saw in all his explorings of the passes of the sea. We can believe it; Homers brief description (the too poetical simile is a later interpolation) convinces us.Later, the danger passed, Odysseus and his men went ashore for the night and, on the Sicilian beach, prepared their supperprepared it, says Homer, expertly. The Twelfth Book of the Odyssey concludes with these words. When they had satisfied their thirst and hunger, they thought of their dear companions and wept, and in the midst of their tears sleep came gently upon them.The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truthhow rarely the older literatures ever told it! Bits of the truth, yes; every good book gives us bits of the truth, would not be a good book if it did not. But the whole truth, no. Of the great writers of the past incredibly few have given us that. Homerthe Homer of the Odysseyis one of those few.Truth? you question. For example, 2+2=4? Or Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837? Or light travels at the rate of 187,000 miles a second? No, obviously, you wont find much of that sort of thing in literature. The truth of which I was speaking just now is in fact no more than an acceptable verisimilitude. When the experiences recorded in a piece of literature correspond fairly closely with our own actual experiences, or with what I may call our potential experiencesexperiences, that is to say, which we feel (as the result of a more or less explicit process of inference from known facts) that we might have hadwe say, inaccurately no doubt: This piece of writing is true. But this, of course, is not the whole story. The record of a case in a text-book of psychology is scientifically true, insofar as it is an accurate account of particular events, But it might also strike the reader as being true with regard to himselfthat is to say, acceptable, probable, having a correspondence with his own actual or potential experiences. But a text-book of psychology, is not a work of artor only secondarily and incidentally a work of art. Mere verisimilitude, mere correspondence of experience recorded by the writer with experience remembered or imaginable by the reader, is not enough to make a work of art seem true. Good art possesses a kind of super-truthis more probable, more acceptable, more convincing than fact itself. Naturally; for the artist is endowed with a sensibility and a power of communication, a capacity to put things across, which events and the majority of people to whom events happen, do not possess. Experience teaches only the teachable, who are by no means as numerous as Mrs. Micawbers papas favourite proverb would lead us to suppose. Artists are eminently teachable and also eminently teachers. They receive from events much more than most men receive and they can transmit what they have received with a peculiar penetrative force, which drives their communication deep into the readers mind. One of our most ordinary reactions to a good piece of literary art is expressed in the formula: This is what I have always felt and thought, but have never been able to put clearly into words, even for myself.IIWe are now in a position to explain what we mean when we say that Homer is a writer who tells the Whole Truth. We mean that the experiences he records correspond fairly closely with our own actual or potential experiencesand correspond with our experiences not on a single limited sector, but all along the line of our physical and spiritual being. And we also mean that Homer records these experiences with a penetrative artistic force that makes them seem peculiarly acceptable and convincing.So much, then, for truth in literature. Homers, I repeat, is the Whole Truth. Consider how almost any other of the great poets would have concluded the story of Scyllas attack on the passing ship. Six men, remember, have been taken and devoured before the eyes of their friends. In any other poem but the Odyssey, what would the survivors have done? They, would, of course, have wept, even as Homer made them weep. But would they previously have cooked their supper and cooked it, whats more, in a masterly fashion? Would they previously have drunk and eaten to satiety? And after weeping, or actually while weeping, would they have dropped quietly off to sleep? No, they most certainly would not have done any of these things. They would simply have wept, lamenting their own misfortune and the horrible fate of their companions, and the Canto would have ended tragically on their tears.Homer, however, preferred to tell the Whole Truth. He knew that even the most cruelly bereaved must eat; that hunger is stronger than sorrow and that its satisfaction takes precedence even of tears. He knew that experts continue to act expertly, and to find satisfaction in their accomplishment, even when friends have just been eaten, even when the accomplishment is only cooking the supper. He knew that when the belly is full (and only when the belly is full) men can afford to grieve and that sorrow after supper is almost a luxury. And finally he knew that, even as hunger takes precedence of grief, so fatigue, supervening, cuts short its career and drowns it in a sleep all the sweeter for bringing forgetfulness of bereavement. In a word, Homer refused to treat the theme tragically. He preferred to tell the Whole Truth.Another author who preferred to tell the Whole Truth was Fielding. Tom Jones is one of the very few Odyssean books written in Europe between the time of Aeschylus and the present age; Odyssean, because never tragical; nevereven when painful and disastrous, even when pathetic and beautiful things are happening. For they do happen; Fielding, like Homer, admits all the facts, shirks nothing. Indeed, it is precisely because these authors shirk nothing that their books are not tragical. For among the things they dont shirk are the irrelevancies which, in actual life, always temper the situations and characters that writers of tragedy insist on keeping chemically, pure. Consider, for example, the case of Sophy Western, that most charming, most nearly perfect of young women. Fielding, it is obvious, adored her; (she is said to have been created in the image of his first, much-loved wife). But in spite of his adoration, he refused to turn her into one of those chemically pure and, as it were, focussed beings who do and suffer in the world of tragedy. That innkeeper who lifted the weary Sophia from her horsewhat need had he to fall? In no tragedy would he (nay,couldhe) have collapsed beneath her weight. For, to begin with, in the tragical context weight is an irrelevance; heroines should be above the law of gravitation. But that is not all; let the reader now remember what were the results of his fall. Tumbling flat on his back, he pulled Sophia down on top of himhis belly was a cushion, so that happily she came to no bodily harmpulled her down head first. But head first is necessarily legs last; there was a momentary display of the most ravishing charms; the bumpkins at the inn door grinned or guffawed; poor Sophia, when they picked her up, was blushing in an agony, of embarrassment and wounded modesty. There is nothing intrinsically improbable about this incident, which is stamped, indeed, with all the marks of literary truth. But however true, it is an incident which could never, never have happened to a heroine of tragedy. It would never have been allowed to happen. But Fielding refused to impose the tragedians veto; he shirked nothingneither the intrusion of irrelevant absurdities into the midst of romance or disaster, nor any of lifes no less irrelevantly painful interruptions of the course of happiness. He did not want to be a tragedian. And, sure enough, that brief and pearly gleam of Sophias charming posterior was sufficient to scare the Muse of Tragedy out of Tom Jones, just as, more than five and twenty centuries before, the sight of stricken men first eating, then remembering to weep, then forgetting their tears in slumber had scared her out of the Odyssey.IIIIn his Principles of Literary Criticism Mr. I.A. Richards affirms that good tragedy is proof against irony and irrelevancethat it can absorb anything into itself and still remain tragedy. Indeed, he seems to make of this capacity to absorb the un-tragical and the anti-tragical a touchstone of tragic merit. Thus tried, practically all Greek, all French, and most Elizabethan tragedies are found wanting. Only the best of Shakespeare can stand the test. So, at least, says Mr. Richards. Is he right? I have often had my doubts. The tragedies of Shakespeare are veined, it is true, with irony and an often terrifying cynicism; but the cynicism is always heroic idealism turned neatly inside out, the irony is a kind of photographic negative of heroic romance. Turn Troiluss white into black and all his blacks into white and you have Thersites. Reversed, Othello and Desdemona become Iago. White Ophelias negative is the irony of Hamlet, is the ingenuous bawdry of her own mad songs; just as the cynicism of mad King Lear is the black shadow-replica of Cordelia. Now, the shadow, the photographic negative of a thing is in no sense irrelevant to it. Shakespeares ironies and cynicisms serve to deepen his tragic world, but not to widen it. If they had widened it, as the Homeric irrelevancies widened out the universe of the Odysseywhy, then, the world of Shakespearean tragedy would automatically have ceased to exist. For example, a scene showing the bereaved Macduff eating his supper, growing melancholy, over the whisky, with thoughts of his murdered wife and children, and then, with lashes still wet, dropping off to sleep, would be true enough to life; but it would not be true to tragic art. The introduction of such a scene would change the whole quality of the play; treated in this Odyssean style, Macbeth would cease to be a tragedy. Or take the case of Desdemona. Iagos bestially cynical remarks about her character are in no sense, as we have seen, irrelevant to the tragedy. They present us with negative images of her real nature and of the feelings she has for Othello. These negative images are alwayshers, are always recognizably the property of the heroine-victim of a tragedy. Whereas, if, springing ashore at Cyprus, she had tumbled, as the no less exquisite Sophia was to tumble, and revealed the inadequacies of sixteenth-century underclothing, the play would no longer be the Othello we know. Iago might breed a family of little cynics and the existing dose of bitterness and savage negation be doubled and trebled; Othello would still remain fundamentally Othello. But a few Fieldingesque irrelevancies would destroy itdestroy it, that is to say, as a tragedy; for there would be nothing to prevent it from becoming a magnificent drama of some other kind. For the fact is that tragedy and what I have called the Whole Truth are not compatible; where one is, the other is not. There are certain things which even the best, even Shakespearean tragedy cannot absorb into itself.To make a tragedy, the artist must isolate a single element out of the totality of human experience and use that exclusively as his material. Tragedy is something that is separated out from the Whole Truth, distilled from it, so to speak, as an essence is distilled from the living flower. Tragedy is chemically pure. Hence its power to act quickly and intensely on our feelings. All chemically pure art has this power to act upon us quickly and intensely. Thus, chemically pure pornography (on the rare occasions when it happens to be written convincingly, by someone who has the gift of putting things across) is a quick-acting emotional drug of incomparably greater power than the Whole Truth about sensuality, or even (for many people) than the tangible and carnal reality itself. It is because of its chemical purity that tragedy so effectively performs its function of catharsis. It refines and corrects and gives a style to our emotional life, and does so swiftly, with power. Brought into contact with tragedy, the elements of our being fall, for the moment at any rate, into an ordered and beautiful pattern, as the iron filings arrange themselves under the influence of the magnet. Through all its individual variations, this pattern is always fundamentally of the same kind. From the reading or the hearing of a tragedy we rise with the feeling thatOur friends are exultations, agonies,And love, and mans unconquerable mind;with the heroic conviction that we too would be unconquerable if subjected to the agonies, that in the midst of the agonies we too should continue to love, might even learn to exult. It is because it does these things to us that tragedy is felt to be so valuable. What are the values of Wholly-Truthful art? What does it do to us that seems worth doing? Let us try to discover.Wholly-Truthful art overflows the limits of tragedy and shows us, if only by hints and implications, what happened before the tragic story began, what will happen after it is over, what is happening simultaneously elsewhere (and elsewhere includes all those parts of the minds and bodies of the protagonists not immediately engaged in the tragic struggle). Tragedy is an arbitrarily isolated eddy on the surface of a vast river that flows on majestically, irresistibly, around, beneath, and to either side of it. Wholly-Truthful art contrives to imply the existence of the entire river as well as of the eddy. It is quite different from tragedy, even though it may contain, among other constituents, all the elements from which tragedy is made. (The same thing placed in different contexts, loses its identity and becomes, for the perceiving mind, a succession of different things.) In Wholly-Truthful art the agonies may be just as real, love and the unconquerable mind just as admirable, just as important, as in tragedy. Thus, Scyllas victims suffer as painfully as the monster-devoured Hippolytus in Phdre; the mental anguish of Tom Jones when he thinks he has lost his Sophia, and lost her by, his own fault, is hardly less than that of Othello after Desdemonas murder. (The fact that Fieldings power of putting things across is by no means equal to Shakespeares, is, of course, merely an accident.) But the agonies and indomitabilities are placed by the Wholly-Truthful writer in another, wider context, with the result that they cease to be the same as the intrinsically identical agonies and indomitabilities of tragedy. Consequently, Wholly-Truthful art produces in us an effect quite different from that produced by tragedy. Our mood, when we have read a Wholly-Truthful book is never one of heroic exultation; it is one of resignation, of acceptance. (Acceptance can also be heroic.) Being chemically impure, Wholly-Truthful literature cannot move us as quickly and intensely as tragedy or any other kind of chemically pure art. But I believe that its effects are more lasting. The exultations that follow the reading or hearing of a tragedy are in the nature of temporary inebriations. Our being cannot long hold the pattern imposed by tragedy. Remove the magnet and the filings tend to fall back into confusion. But the pattern of acceptance and resignation imposed upon us by Wholly-Truthful literature, though perhaps less unexpectedly beautiful in design, is (for that very reason perhaps) more stable. The catharsis of tragedy is violent and apocalyptic; but the milder catharsis of Wholly-Truthful literature is lasting.IVIn recent times literature has become more and more acutely conscious of the Whole Truthof the great oceans of irrelevant things, events, and thoughts stretching endlessly away in every direction from whatever island point (a character, a story) the author may, choose to contemplate. To impose the kind of arbitrary limitations which must be imposed by anyone who wants to write a tragedy has become more and more difficultis now indeed, for those who are at all sensitive to contemporaneity, almost impossible. This does not mean, of course, that the modern writer must confine himself to a merely naturalistic manner. One can imply the existence of the Whole Truth without laboriously cataloguing every object within sight. A book can be written in terms of pure phantasy and yet, by implication, tell the Whole Truth. Of all the important works of contemporary literature not one is a tragedy. There is no contemporary writer of significance who does not prefer to state or imply, the Whole Truth. However different one from another in style, in ethical, philosophical, and artistic intentions, in the scales of values accepted, contemporary writers have this in common, that they are interested in the Whole Truth. Proust, D.H. Lawrence, Andre Gide, Kafka, Hemingwayhere are five obviously significant and important contemporary writers. Five authors as remarkably unlike one another as they could well be. They, are as one only in this: that none of them has written a pure tragedy, that all are concerned with the Whole Truth.I have sometimes wondered whether tragedy, as a form of art, may not be doomed. But the fact that we are still profoundly moved by the tragic masterpieces of the pastthat we can be moved, against our better judgment, even by the bad tragedies of the contemporary stage and filmmakes me think that the day of chemically pure art is not over. Tragedy happens to be passing through a period of eclipse, because all the significant writers of our age are too busy exploring the newly discovered, or re-discovered, world of the Whole Truth to be able to pay any attention to it. But there is no good reason to believe that this state of things will last for ever. Tragedy is too valuable to be allowed to die. And there is no reason, after all, why the two kinds of literaturethe Chemically Impure and the Chemically Pure, the literature of the Whole Truth and the literature of Partial Truthshould not exist simultaneously, each in its separate sphere. The human spirit has need of both.

"...'A thing which poesy seldom mentions': in an essay calledTragedyand the Whole Truth,Aldous Huxleyargued that (pure) tragedy does not tell the whole truth, because in it people weep and grieve, whereas in real life 'even the most cruelly bereaved must eat,' for 'hunger is stronger than sorrow' and 'its satisfaction takes precedence even of tears'. As an example of a writer telling the whole truth, Huxley cites the aftermath of Scylla's attack on Odysseus' ship in Homer, when the survivors expertly prepare and eat their dinner, before they weep for their dead companions. "

Huxley is saying that, no matter how intense or powerful a piece of drama or tragedy, it is, at best, an artful distillation of human experience, uncluttered, or strategically stripped, after the fact, by the mundane necessities of human existence. History records that Lincoln was shot by Booth, but makes no mention of whether Booth might have made a cleaner getaway, if his bladder hadn't been full, from drinking in the bar next door for an hour before shooting the President, thus necessitating a greater urgency to escape in Booth than he might otherwise have felt, had he not needed to relieve himself, too. Perhaps Booth wouldn't have leapt to the stage from the Presidential box, breaking his leg, had he not been feeling Nature's urgent call, on top his assassin's desperation. Perhaps if he'd have run back down the stairs instead, and then walked slowly and coolly out the front entrance of Ford's Theater, he'd have got away, and we wouldn't know his name today.

But history doesn't record such, and tragedy can't discuss it, for such considerations are mundane, and pull the mind down, below tragedy's claim on higher sensibilities.Aldous Leonard Huxley/hksli/(26 July 1894 22 November 1963) was an English writer and a prominent member of the famousHuxley family. Best known for his novels includingBrave New Worldand a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazineOxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, film stories and scripts. He spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death.Huxley was ahumanist,pacifist, andsatirist. He later became interested in spiritual subjects such asparapsychologyand philosophicalmysticism,[1][2]in particularVivekananda'sNeo-VedantaandUniversalism.[3]He is also well known for his use ofpsychedelic drugs.By the end of his life Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time.[4]Contents[hide] 1Early life 2Career 2.1Bloomsbury set 2.2United States 2.3Post World War II 3Association with Vedanta 4Eyesight 5Personal life 6Death 7Awards 8Film adaptations of Huxley's work 9Selected works 9.1Novels 9.2Short story collections 9.3Poetry collections 9.4Essay collections 9.5Screenplays 9.6Travel books 9.7Children's fiction 9.8Drama 9.9Articles written forVedanta and the West 9.10Audio Recordings on CD 9.11Other 10See also 11References 12Sources 13Further reading 14External linksEarly life[edit]See also:Huxley familyAldous Huxley was born inGodalming, Surrey, England, in 1894. He was the third son of the writer and schoolmasterLeonard Huxleyand his first wife,Julia Arnold, who foundedPrior's Field School. Julia was the niece of poet and criticMatthew Arnoldand the sister ofMrs. Humphrey Ward. Aldous was the grandson ofThomas Henry Huxley, thezoologist,agnosticand controversialist ("Darwin's Bulldog"). His brotherJulian Huxleyand half-brotherAndrew Huxleyalso became outstanding biologists. Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevelyan Huxley (18911914), who committed suicide after a period ofclinical depression.[5]Huxley began his learning in his father's well-equipped botanical laboratory, then continued in a school namedHillside[disambiguation needed]. His teacher was his mother, who supervised him for several years until she became terminally ill. After Hillside, he was educated atEton College. Huxley's mother died in 1908 when he was 14. In 1911, he suffered an illness (keratitis punctata) which "left [him] practically blind for two to three years".[6]Aldous volunteered to join the army at the outbreak of theFirst World War, but was rejected on health grounds: he was half-blind in one eye. Once his eyesight recovered sufficiently, he was able to study English literature atBalliol College, Oxford. In 1916 he editedOxford Poetryand later graduated (B.A.) with first class honours. His brother Julian wrote,I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career... His uniqueness lay in his universalism. He was able to take all knowledge for his province.[7]Following his education at Balliol, Huxley was financially indebted to his father and had to earn a living. He taught French for a year atEton, whereEric Blair(later to becomeGeorge Orwell) andStephen Runcimanwere among his pupils, but was remembered as an incompetent and hopeless teacher who couldnt keep discipline. Nevertheless, Blair and others were impressed by his use of words.[8]For a short while in 1918, he was employed acquiring provisions at theAir Ministry.Significantly, Huxley also worked for a time in the 1920s at the technologically advancedBrunner and Mondchemical plant inBillingham, Teesside, and the most recent introduction to his famous science fiction novelBrave New World(1932) states that this experience of "an ordered universe in a world of planless incoherence" was one source for the novel.[9]

Huxley-Arnold Family Tree (partial) view talk edit

Thomas Arnold17951842Mary Penrose17911873George Huxley

Matthew Arnold18221888Tom Arnold18231900Thomas Henry Huxley18251895Ann Heathorn18251915

Mary Augusta Ward18511920Julia Arnold18621908Leonard Huxley18601933Rosalind Bruce18901994Jessie Huxley18561927

Trevelyan Huxley18911914Julian Huxley18871975Maria Nys18991955Aldous Huxley18941963Laura Archera19112007David Bruce Huxley19151992Andrew Huxley19172012Richenda Pease19252003

Matthew Huxley19202005

Career[edit]Huxley completed his first (unpublished) novel at the age of 17 and began writing seriously in his early 20s. His first published novels were social satires, beginning withCrome Yellow(1921).Bloomsbury set[edit]

Left to right:Bloomsbury Groupmembers Lady Ottoline Morrell, Maria Nys,Lytton Strachey,Duncan Grant, andVanessa Bell.During the First World War, Huxley spent much of his time atGarsington Manor, home of LadyOttoline Morrell, working as a farm labourer. Here he met severalBloomsburyfigures includingBertrand RussellandClive Bell. Later, inCrome Yellow(1921) he caricatured the Garsington lifestyle. Jobs were very scarce, but in 1919 Middleton Murray was reorganizing theAthenaeumand invited Huxley to join the staff. He accepted immediately, and quickly married the Belgian refugee Maria Nys, also at Garsington.[10]They lived with their young son in Italy part of the time in the 1920s, where Huxley would visit his friendD. H. Lawrence. Following Lawrence's death in 1930, Huxley edited Lawrence's letters (1933).Works of this period included important novels on the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, most famouslyBrave New World, and on pacifist themes (for example,Eyeless in Gaza). InBrave New WorldHuxley portrays a society operating on the principles of mass production andPavlovian conditioning. Huxley was strongly influenced byF. Matthias Alexanderand included him as a character inEyeless in Gaza.Starting from this period, Huxley began to write and edit non-fiction works on pacifist issues, includingEnds and Means,An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, andPacifism and Philosophy, and was an active member of thePeace Pledge Union.[11]United States[edit]In 1937, Huxley moved toHollywood, with his wife Maria, son Matthew, and friendGerald Heard. He lived in the U.S., mainly in southern California, until his death, but also for a time inTaos, New Mexico, where he wroteEnds and Means(published in 1937). In this work he examines the fact that although most people in modern civilisation agree that they want a world of "liberty, peace, justice, and brotherly love", they have not been able to agree on how to achieve it.Heard introduced Huxley toVedanta(Upanishad-centered philosophy), meditation, and vegetarianism through the principle ofahimsa. In 1938 Huxley befriendedJ. Krishnamurti, whose teachings he greatly admired. He also became a Vedantist in the circle of HinduSwamiPrabhavananda, and introducedChristopher Isherwoodto this circle. Not long after, Huxley wrote his book on widely held spiritual values and ideas,The Perennial Philosophy, which discussed the teachings of renowned mystics of the world. Huxley's book affirmed a sensibility that insists there are realities beyond the generally accepted "five senses" and that there is genuine meaning for humans beyond both sensual satisfactions and sentimentalities.Huxley became a close friend of Remsen Bird, president ofOccidental College. He spent much time at the college, which is in theEagle Rockneighbourhood of Los Angeles. The college appears as "Tarzana College" in his satirical novelAfter Many a Summer(1939). The novel won Huxley that year'sJames Tait Black Memorial Prizefor fiction.[12]Huxley also incorporated Bird into the novel.During this period Huxley earned some Hollywood income as a writer. In March 1938, his friendAnita Loos, a novelist and screenwriter, put him in touch withMetro-Goldwyn-Mayerwho hired Huxley forMadame Curiewhich was originally to starGreta Garboand be directed byGeorge Cukor. (The film was eventually completed by MGM in 1943 with a different director and cast.) Huxley received screen credit forPride and Prejudice(1940) and was paid for his work on a number of other films, includingJane Eyre(1944).However, his success in Hollywood was minimal. When he wrote a synopsis ofAlice in Wonderland,Walt Disneyrejected it on the grounds that "he could only understand every third word".[13]Huxley's leisurely development of ideas, it seemed, was not suitable for the movie moguls, who demanded fast, dynamic dialogue above all else. For Dick Huemer, during the 1940s, Huxley went to the first of a five meetings' session to elaborate the script ofAlice in Wonderlandbut never came again.[14]For author John Grant, although the movie's character the Caterpillar displays some characteristics familiar from Huxley's discussion of his experiments withhallucinogens, Huxley's contribution to the movie is nonexistent.[15]Huxley wrote an introduction to the posthumous publication of J.D. Unwin's 1940 bookHopousia or The Sexual and economic Foundations of a New Society.[16]On 21 October 1949, Huxley wrote toGeorge Orwell, author ofNineteen Eighty-Four, congratulating him on "how fine and how profoundly important the book is". In his letter to Orwell, he predicted:Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.[17]Huxley had deeply felt apprehensions about the future the developed world might make for itself. From these he put forward some warnings in his writings and talks. In a 1958 televised interview conducted by journalistMike Wallace, Huxley outlined several major concerns: the difficulties and dangers of world overpopulation; the tendency toward distinctly hierarchical social organization; the crucial importance of evaluating the use of technology in mass societies susceptible to wily persuasion; the tendency to promote modern politicians, to a naive public, as well-marketed commodities.[18]Post World War II[edit]After the Second World War, Huxley applied for United States citizenship. His application was continuously deferred on the grounds that he would not say he would take up arms to defend the U.S. He claimed a philosophical, rather than a religious objection, and therefore was not exempt under theMcCarran Act.[19]He withdrew his application. Nevertheless, he remained in the country; and in 1959 he turned down an offer of aKnight Bachelorby theMacmillan government. During the 1950s, Huxley's interest in the field ofpsychical researchgrew keener, and his later works are strongly influenced by bothmysticismand his experiences withpsychedelic drugs.In October 1930, the English occultistAleister Crowleydined with Huxley inBerlin, and to this day rumours persist that Crowley introduced Huxley topeyoteon that occasion.[citation needed]He was introduced tomescaline(the key active ingredient of peyote) by the psychiatristHumphry Osmondin 1953, taking it for the first time during the evening of May 5.[20]Through Dr. Osmond, Huxley met millionaireAlfred Matthew Hubbardwho would deal withLSDon a wholesale basis.[21]On 24 December 1955, Huxley took his first dose of LSD. Indeed, Huxley was a pioneer of self-directed psychedelic drug use "in a search for enlightenment". According to a letter written by his wife Laura, Huxley requested and received two intramuscular injections of 100 micrograms of LSD as he lay dying.[22]His psychedelic drug experiences are described in the essaysThe Doors of Perception(the title deriving from some lines in the bookThe Marriage of Heaven and HellbyWilliam Blake), andHeaven and Hell. Some of his writings on psychedelics became frequent reading among earlyhippies.[23]While living in Los Angeles, Huxley was a friend ofRay Bradbury. According to Sam Weller's biography of Bradbury, the latter was dissatisfied with Huxley, especially after Huxley encouraged Bradbury to take psychedelic drugs.Association with Vedanta[edit]Beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, Huxley had an extensive association with theVedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed bySwami Prabhavananda. Together withGerald Heard,Christopher Isherwood, and other followers he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices.[3]In 1944 Huxley wrote the introduction to the "Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God",[24]translated by Swami Prabhavanada and Christopher Isherwood, which was published by The Vedanta Society of Southern California.From 1941 through 1960 Huxley contributed 48 articles toVedanta and the West, published by the Society. He also served on the editorial board with Isherwood, Heard, and playwright John van Druten from 1951 through 1962.Huxley also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta temples. Two of those lectures have been released on CD:Knowledge and UnderstandingandWho Are Wefrom 1955.After the publication ofThe Doors of Perception, Huxley and the Swami disagreed about the meaning and importance of the LSD drug experience, which may have caused the relationship to cool, but Huxley continued to write articles for the Society's journal, lecture at the temple, and attend social functions.Eyesight[edit]With respect to details about the true quality of Huxley's eyesight at specific points in his life, there are differing accounts. Around 1939, Huxley encountered theBates Methodfor better eyesight, and a teacher,Margaret Corbett, who was able to teach him in the method. In 1940, Huxley relocated from Hollywood to a 40-acre (160,000m2)ranchitoin the high desert hamlet ofLlano, California, in northernmost Los Angeles County. Huxley then said that his sight improved dramatically with the Bates Method and the extreme and pure natural lighting of the southwestern American desert. He reported that for the first time in over 25 years, he was able to read without glasses and without strain. He even tried driving a car along the dirt road beside the ranch. He wrote a book about his successes with the Bates Method,The Art of Seeing, which was published in 1942 (US), 1943 (UK). It was from this period, with the publication of the generally disputed theories contained in the latter book, that a growing degree of popular controversy arose over the subject of Huxleys eyesight.It was, and to a noticeable extent still is, widely held that, for most of his life, since the illness in his teens which left Huxley nearly blind, that his eyesight was exceedingly poor (despite the partial recovery which had enabled him to study at Oxford). For instance, some ten years after publication ofThe Art of Seeing, in 1952,Bennett Cerfwas present when Huxley spoke at a Hollywood banquet, wearing no glasses and apparently reading his paper from the lectern without difficulty: "Then suddenly he falteredand the disturbing truth became obvious. He wasn't reading his address at all. He had learned it by heart. To refresh his memory he brought the paper closer and closer to his eyes. When it was only an inch or so away he still couldn't read it, and had to fish for a magnifying glass in his pocket to make the typing visible to him. It was an agonising moment."[25]On the other hand, Huxley's second wife,Laura Archera Huxley, would later emphasise in her biographical account,This Timeless Moment: "One of the great achievements of his life: that of having regained his sight." After revealing a letter she wrote to theLos Angeles Timesdisclaiming the label of Huxley as a "poor fellow who can hardly see" byWalter C. Alvarez, she tempers this: "Although I feel it was an injustice to treat Aldous as though he were blind, it is true there were many indications of his impaired vision. For instance, although Aldous did not wear glasses, he would quite often use a magnifying lens."[26]Laura Huxley proceeds to elaborate a few nuances of inconsistency peculiar to Huxley's vision. Her account, in this respect, is discernibly congruent with the following sample of Huxley's own words fromThe Art of Seeing. "The most characteristic fact about the functioning of the total organism, or any part of the organism, is that it is not constant, but highly variable." Nevertheless, the topic of Huxleys eyesight continues to endure similar, significant controversy, regardless of how trivial a subject matter it might initially appear.[27]Personal life[edit]He married Maria Nys (10 September 1899 12 February 1955), a Belgian he met at Garsington, in 1919. They had one child,Matthew Huxley(19 April 1920 10 February 2005), who had a career as an author, anthropologist, and prominentepidemiologist.[28]In 1955, Maria died of breast cancer.In 1956 he marriedLaura Archera(19112007), also an author. She wroteThis Timeless Moment, a biography of Huxley. Laura felt inspired to illuminate the story of their provocative marriage through Mary Ann Braubach's 2010 documentary, "Huxley on Huxley".[29]In 1960 Aldous Huxley was diagnosed withlaryngeal cancer, and in the years that followed, with his health deteriorating, he wrote the Utopian novelIsland,[30]and gave lectures on "Human Potentialities" at theEsalen Institute, which were fundamental to the forming of theHuman Potential Movement.Despite his interest in spirituality and mysticism, Huxley called himself an agnostic.[31]The most substantial collection of Huxley's few remaining papers (following the destruction of most in a fire) is at the Library of theUniversity of California, Los Angeles.[32]Some are also at theStanford UniversityLibrary.[33]Death[edit]On his deathbed, unable to speak, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for "LSD, 100 g, intramuscular". According to her account of his death[34]inThis Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 11:45am and a second one a few hours later; Huxley died aged 69, at 5:20pm on 22 November 1963. Media coverage of Huxley's passing was overshadowed by theassassination of President John F. Kennedy, on the same day, as was the death of the British authorC. S. Lewis, who also died on 22 November. This coincidence was the inspiration forPeter Kreeft's bookBetween Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley.Huxley's ashes were interred in the family grave at the Watts Cemetery, home of theWatts Mortuary Chapelin Compton, a village nearGuildford, Surrey, England.[35]On 26 July 2013 a commemorative bench was unveiled there, donated by the Aldous and Laura Huxley Literary Trust and the International Aldous Huxley Society.Huxley had been a long-time friend of famous Russian composer Igor Stravinsky who later dedicated his last orchestral composition to Huxley. Stravinsky began 'Variations' in Santa F, New Mexico in July 1963, and completed the composition in Hollywood, California on 28 October 1964. It was first performed in Chicago on 17 April 1965, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Craft (Spies 1965, 62; White 1979, 534). The score is dedicated to the memory of Stravinsky's close friend Aldous Huxley, who died on 22 November 1963, when composition of the Variations was in progress (White 1979, 53637).Although not composed for the purpose, Stravinsky's music was twice choreographed for the New York City Ballet by George Balanchine, a first version in 1966, and a second version in 1982, both times under the title "Variations" (Barnes 1966; Anderson 1982).Huxley's literary legacy continues to be represented by the literary agency headed byGeorges Borchardt.Awards[edit] 1939James Tait Black Memorial PrizeforAfter Many a Summer Dies the Swan. 1959 Aldous HuxleyAmerican Academy of Arts and LettersAward of Merit forBrave New World. 1962 the Companion of Literature by theRoyal Society of Literature.[36]Film adaptations of Huxley's work[edit] 1968:Point Counter PointBBC mini-series by Simon Raven 1971:The Devils(Ken Russell) adapted Huxley'sThe Devils of Loudun 1980:US TV adaptation ofBrave New World 1998:US TV adaptation ofBrave New WorldSelected works[edit]Novels[edit] Crome Yellow(1921) Antic Hay(1923) Those Barren Leaves(1925) Point Counter Point(1928) Brave New World(1932) Eyeless in Gaza(1936) After Many a Summer(1939) Time Must Have a Stop(1944) Ape and Essence(1948) The Genius and the Goddess(1955) Island(1962)Short story collections[edit] Limbo(1920) Mortal Coils(1922) Little Mexican(U.S. title:Young Archimedes) (1924) Two or Three Graces(1926) Brief Candles(1930) Jacob's Hands: A Fable(discovered 1997) co-written withChristopher Isherwood Collected Short Stories(1944)Poetry collections[edit] Oxford Poetry(magazine editor) (1916) The Burning Wheel(1916) Jonah(1917) The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems(1918) Leda(1920) Selected Poems(1925) Arabia Infelix and Other Poems(1929) The Cicadas and Other Poems(1931) Collected Poems(1971, posthumous)Essay collections[edit] On the Margin(1923) Along the Road(1925) Essays New and Old(1926) Proper Studies(1927) Do What You Will(1929) Vulgarity in Literature(1930) Music at Night(1931) Texts and Pretexts(1932) The Olive Tree and other essays(1936) Ends and Means(1937) Words and their Meanings(1940) The Art of Seeing(1942) The Perennial Philosophy(1945) Science, Liberty and Peace(1946) Themes and Variations(1950) The Doors of Perception(1954) Heaven and Hell(1956) Adonis and the Alphabet(U.S. title:Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow) (1956) Collected Essays(1958) Brave New World Revisited(1958) Literature and Science(1963) Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience 193163(1977) The Human Situation: Lectures at Santa Barbara, 1959(1977)Screenplays[edit] Brave New World Ape and Essence Pride and Prejudice(Collaboration. 1940) Madame Curie(Collaboration. 1943) Jane Eyre(Collaboration withJohn Houseman. 1944) A Woman's Vengeance1947 Original screenplay for Disney's animatedAlice in Wonderland1951 (rejected)[37] Eyeless in GazaBBC Mini-series (Collaboration withRobin Chapman. Aired 1971)[38]Travel books[edit] Along The Road: Notes and essays of a tourist(1925) Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey(1926) Beyond the Mexique Bay: A Traveller's Journey(1934)Children's fiction[edit] The Crows of Pearblossom(1967) The Travails and Tribulations of Geoffrey Peacock(1967)Drama[edit] The Discovery(adapted from Francis Sheridan, 1924) The World of Light(1931) Mortal Coils A Play.(Stage version ofThe Gioconda Smile, 1948) The Genius and the Goddess(stage version, co-written with Betty Wendel, 1958) The Ambassador of Captripedia(1967) Now More Than Ever(Huxley's lost play discovered in 2000 in the University of Mnster, Germany's Department of English Literature)Articles written forVedanta and the West[edit] Distractions (1941) Distractions II (1941) Action and Contemplation (1941) An Appreciation (1941) The Yellow Mustard (1941) Lines (1941) Some Reflections of the Lord's Prayer (1941) Reflections of the Lord's Prayer (1942) Reflections of the Lord's Prayer II (1942) Words and Reality (1942) Readings in Mysticism (1942) Man and Reality (1942) The Magical and the Spiritual (1942) Religion and Time (1943) Idolatry (1943) Religion and Temperament (1943) A Note on the Bhagavatam (1943) Seven Meditations (1943) On a Sentence From Shakespeare (1944) The Minimum Working Hypothesis (1944) From a Notebook (1944) The Philosophy of the Saints (1944) That Art Thou (1945) That Art Thou II (1945) The Nature of the Ground (1945) The Nature of the Ground II (1945) God In the World (1945) Origins and Consequences of Some Contemporary Thought-Patterns (1946) The Sixth Patriarch (1946) Some Reflections on Time (1946) Reflections on Progress (1947) Further Reflections on Progress (1947) William Law (1947) Notes on Zen (1947) Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread (1948) A Note on Gandhi (1948) Art and Religion (1949) Foreword to an Essay on the Indian Philosophy of Peace (1950) A Note on Enlightenment (1952) Substitutes for Liberation (1952) The Desert (1954) A Note on Patanjali (1954) Who Are We? (1955) Foreword to the Supreme Doctrine (1956) Knowledge and Understanding (1956) The "Inanimate" is Alive (1957) Symbol and Immediate Experience (1960)Audio Recordings on CD[edit] Knowledge and Understanding(1955)[39]