Quote 1
"What?" said Helmholtz, in astonishment. "But we're always saying that science is everything."
[…]
"Yes; but what sort of science?" asked Mustapha Mond sarcastically. "You've had no scientific training, so you can't judge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good—good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook." (16.54-7)
Aha! Mustapha draws a very important distinction here between the two types of science we've seen in Brave New World. The first is the sort of technology that enables the World State to control and govern. The second, however, is the kind of pure, motiveless, science-for-the-sake-of-knowledge that has been outlawed for its dangers. It is this second kind of science that needs to be muzzled, in Mustapha's eyes.
Quote 2
Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. "I should like a thoroughly bad climate," he answered. "I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example…" (16.68)
This passage makes it clear that Helmholtz has learned the value of sacrifice, of intentional suffering—and he is willing to pursue his passion anyway. It is also the first step in his claim that he wants to write about some sort of passion that he can understand. Since he can't grapple with love or unfulfilled lust or jealousy, he plans to try to experience physical suffering (in this case, through a bad climate) instead. (FYI, this fits into our "weather is super important" argument in "Symbols, Imagery, Allegory.")
Quote 3
"Oh, as far as they go." Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. "But they go such a little way. They aren't important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students—how to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing—you know, like the very hardest X-rays—when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try…" (4.2.29)
Helmholtz's outlet for his individuality and his sense of human passion is writing. For John, it is Shakespeare. Mustapha, we find out later, once felt the same way about science. Bernard, on the other hand, seems to have no outlet—this may be why he ultimately ends up a weak character.
Quote 4
Yesterday's committee,
Sticks, but a broken drum,
Midnight in the City,
Flutes in a vacuum,
Shut lips, sleeping faces,
Every stopped machine,
The dumb and littered places
Where crowds have been:…
All silences rejoice,
Weep (loudly or low),
Speak—but with the voice
Of whom, I do not know.
Absence, say, of Susan's,
Absence of Egeria's
Arms and respective bosoms,
Lips and, ah, posteriors,
Slowly form a presence;
Whose? and, I ask, of what
So absurd an essence,
That something, which is not,
Nevertheless should populate
Empty night more solidly
Than that with which we copulate,
Why should it seem so squalidly? (12.56)
It is fitting that Helmholtz's first poem has to do with solitude. This is what John likes about Shakespeare, after all—that reading it is a process of self-examination and discovery.
Quote 5
"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations, "I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!" He shook his head. "You can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?" (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at the floor, saw nothing.) "No." he concluded, with a sigh, "it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?" He was silent; then, shaking his head, "I don't know," he said at last, "I don't know." (12.75)
In this passage, it seems as though Helmholtz's position is an impossible one. He wants to write about something passionate, but all the big issues (sex, lust, jealousy, family, love) are inaccessible to him. He suspects there's something else to write about—some other passion that he could understand—when in fact his society has engineered him to find all passions smutty or ridiculous.
Quote 6
"But they're… they're told by an idiot."
[…]
"…he's right," said Helmholtz gloomily. "Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say…" (16.32-4)
Helmholtz is still focused on the content of his writing. His maxims, the feelies—all his work is essentially "told by an idiot" because it doesn't address anything real. At the same time, Helmholtz still is not capable of understanding real passion. How, then, does he expect to write anything different?
Quote 7
Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. "I should like a thoroughly bad climate," he answered. "I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example…" (16.68)
Notice that Helmholtz rises from his "pneumatic chair." We've seen the word "pneumatic" used over and over in Brave New World (fifteen times, actually, and you can read our in-depth discussion of it in Lenina's "Character Analysis"), but regardless of your interpretation we can all agree that it has much to do with the World State. When Helmholtz rises from his pneumatic chair, he's also rising away from Mustapha's world. Nifty, isn't it?
Quote 8
"This time I thought I'd give them one I'd just written myself. Pure madness, of course; but I couldn't resist it." He laughed. "I was curious to see what their reactions would be. Besides," he added more gravely, "I wanted to do a bit of propaganda; I was trying to engineer them into feeling as I'd felt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford!" He laughed again. "What an outcry there was! The Principal had me up and threatened to hand me the immediate sack. l'm a marked man." (12.51)
Helmholtz seems rather unperturbed at his predicament. This contrasts with Bernard, who flipped out when he learned he was going to get deported. Helmholtz's freedom, then, is a state of mind.
Quote 9
"Are you?" said Helmholtz, with a total absence of interest. Then after a little pause, "This last week or two," he went on, "I've been cutting all my committees and all my girls. You can't imagine what a hullabaloo they've been making about it at the College. Still, it's been worth it, I think. The effects…" He hesitated. "Well, they're odd, they're very odd."
A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. (4.2.22-3)
Helmholtz is just like Bernard, except more attractive and less insecure. The second paragraph makes that pretty clear. The first one is interesting, though—it provides some insight into just how tight a leash the World State has on its citizens.
Quote 10
"Yesterday's committee,
Sticks, but a broken drum,
Midnight in the City,
Flutes in a vacuum,
Shut lips, sleeping faces,
Every stopped machine,
The dumb and littered places
Where crowds have been:…
All silences rejoice,
Weep (loudly or low),
Speak—but with the voice
Of whom, I do not know.
Absence, say, of Susan's,
Absence of Egeria's
Arms and respective bosoms,
Lips and, ah, posteriors,
Slowly form a presence;
Whose? and, I ask, of what
So absurd an essence,
That something, which is not,
Nevertheless should populate
Empty night more solidly
Than that with which we copulate,
Why should it seem so squalidly?" (12.56)
It is entirely fitting that Helmholtz's first lines of poetry are about solitude—and that they hint at a divine being ("an essence"). Just as John did on the Reservation, Helmholtz explores his spirituality while he's alone.
Quote 11
Helmholtz shook his head. "Not quite. I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something important to say and the power to say it—only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing… Or else something else to write about…" He was silent; then, "You see," he went on at last, "I'm pretty good at inventing phrases—you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopædically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too."
"But your things are good, Helmholtz."
"Oh, as far as they go." Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. "But they go such a little way. They aren't important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students—how to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing— you know, like the very hardest X-rays—when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try…" (4.2.27-9)
Helmholtz actually has a pretty good handle on the problem. It's not that his abilities are lacking, just that his environment isn't providing the content he needs to produce the kind of art he knows he's capable of. In a way, his bottle is just too small (in terms of Mustapha's extended metaphor in Chapter 18).
Quote 12
"I know. But I thought I'd like to see what the effect would be."
"Well, you've seen now."
Helmholtz only laughed. "I feel," he said, after a silence, "as though I were just beginning to have something to write about. As though I were beginning to be able to use that power I feel I've got inside me —that extra, latent power. Something seems to be coming to me." In spite of all his troubles, he seemed, Bernard thought, profoundly happy. (12.59-61)
Once he starts down this road of rebellion, Helmholtz never turns back—unlike Bernard. He is able to laugh off any threats of punishment or consequence (like island deportation) because he realizes the "sacrifice" of leaving the World State isn't actually a sacrifice.