Waugh | Civilisation & Culture (1937)

[‘Waugh’s ‘Civilization & Culture’. Review of Stranger Wonders by Christopher Sykes, and The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron, Spectator 2/7/1937] “…. It is perhaps invidious to compare Mr Sykes and Mr Byron. Each appears in the other's book. They have travelled together and shared many appalling experiences; they once collaborated on an unreadable novel. Mr Sykes is a new writer and to that extent an amateur; Mr Byron is an inveterate and indefatigable professional; he began writing before most of his generation and will, I hope, long flourish when the rest of them have given up. They have an almost identical sense of humour, but there is an essential difference between them which must be noted and can best be stated by saying that Mr Sykes is civilized and Mr Byron is cultured. Mr Sykes is at home in Europe. He sees England as an outlying province of a wide civilization; he is by education a member of Christendom. Mr Byron suffers from insularity run amok; he sees his home as a narrowly circumscribed, blessed plot beyond which lie vast tracts of alien territory, full of things for which he has no responsibility, to which he acknowledges no traditional tie; things to be visited and described and confidently judged. So he admits no limits to his insatiable aesthetic curiosity and no standards of judgment but his personal reactions. It is a grave handicap, but Mr Byron’s gusto is so powerful that the reader can only applaud” (Gallagher D, The Essays Articles & Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, Methuen, 1983 p196f)