The Jew in Tarr and The Apes of God

Abstract

While readings of Time and Western Man and The Childermass reveal important aspects of Lewis’ philosophy of the self, it is in his expressions of antisemitism that another, more obsessive side to his thinking on this subject can be discovered. Lewis’ analysis of society and culture, in his work until the Second World War, displays increasing fears that Western society is being attacked and undermined by a malicious conspiracy. From 1924 onwards Lewis is concerned, both in new works and in newly revised works, to expose the machinations of the conspiracy and to imply, at least, the identity of the conspirator. The conspirator, when identified, is shown to be a Jew, or to have several of the characteristics which Lewis ascribes to Jews. Lewis develops a caricatural image of the Jew which expresses his own worst fears about the destruction of the artist, the individual, and of Western Man. The Jew is depicted as a self-obsessed and parasitic alien in Western society. The self-obsession of the Jew is a key element and one that is contrasted with the supposed capacity of the Western self to assimilate the not-self and thereby to objectify and generalise itself. The parasitic status of the Jew is due to his sheer racial difference from the European: the Jew is the representative and agent of Eastern, collectivising, anti-individual forces which have achieved their most menacing success in the Russian Revolution. As if to emphasise the invasive nature of the Jew, Lewis is careful to show in his fiction that all his Jews are first generation immigrants. The Jew is represented by Lewis as a rat, an image frequently used by the Nazis, in propaganda films, for example, which juxtaposed sequences of running rats with maps indicating the Jewish spread across Europe. The image of the rat suits Lewis’ vision of Jewish parasitism perfectly: at times of social strength the rat is only an obnoxious presence; but at times of human weakness or failure the rat can become a destructive parasite, thriving on the destruction of its host, the Jew threatening to destroy Europe as did the rat during the Black Death.

Qu’advient-il quand on délègue à l’accusation un personage qui est aussi fasciné par l’inculpé qu’il en est scandalisé?’ Jean-Francois Lyotard, Économie Libidinale, p. 120