The Abyss of Carnality

Abstract

Anthony Powell stated once that he likes ‘balance and pattern all right… I like… pairs of things.’¹ One way to deal with the series is to examine it with reference to the contrast outlined in The Strangers All Are Gone: ‘that important division of the human race between voyeurs and exhibitionists’.² Nicholas Jenkins markedly falls into the former category. Always given to probing under people’s surfaces to discover their motivations, he is particularly interested in speculating about the camera obscura of other characters’ sexual preferences. His curiosity can find endless fodder to exercise itself when pondering the aetiology of love: ‘most people’s sex life is a mystery, especially that of individuals who seem to make the most… parade of it.… Few subjects are more fascinating than other people’s sexual habits from the outside; the tangled strands of appetite, tenderness, convenience or some hope of gain.’³ Consequently, A Dance to the Music of Time is a highly sexual novel. Sex — love would be putting it high — is treated in a distanced, cool way in keeping with the narrator’s attitude in the series.