Shirley Sugerman notes that “Barfield asserts that not only is poetry a means of knowing, but that knowing in its most developed form also means ‘bringing into being'” (“Barspecs” 75). The “appetite to birth,” the forward-looking question, is truly characteristic of Barfield’s approach to life. He reifies this impulse again and again as he turns to words as creative medium; not only to birth his poems, fiction, and prose but truly to birth himself. For Barfield, this birthing process leads to more than mere personality, mental, or even emotional development, though its root is in the heart. Nurtured in the heart, it is imagination that allows for the resulting springtime blossoming of redemption and wholeness. In his prose and poetry, Barfield shows that hypocrisy is rooted out and all moral dilemmas find resolution through creativity and obedience to the “great One” (Pair 90), who rules by Justice and Equity (143), who heals fragmentation by drawing our polar selves into unity.
After fifteen years as a solicitor, Barfield reached the end of his tether. In This Ever Diverse Pair, he explores the relationship of his creative, idealistic self, which had come to be completely at odds with his materialist, legal persona.Scholars generally note that This Ever Diverse Pair was written to avert a nervous breakdown; as one of the characters, Burgeon, says in the novel, he “must now write about something or die” (13-14).
The novel begins with an introductory chapter on the relationship between Burgeon (his creative, moral self) and Burden (his grasping, manipulative self). Once introduced, we follow the two through eight chapter-length vignettes which deal with legal situations that Burgeon finds increasingly intolerable. Burden is the more pragmatic of the partners. He deals most closely with the clients, but he views them as mere cases to be won and values them primarily for the money they pay for his services (79). He performs his job well, if in a rather cut-throat manner, noting that “I can only help my client’s interest by relatively ‘injuring’ the other side” (126). This doesn’t cause him any moral anguish or loss of sleep. We are told that Burden at times “allowed [himself] to become infected by [his] clients’ ill temper” and had experienced “animosity” toward the other lawyers (30). While he deals with the clients face-to-face, he forces Burgeon to help in writing up the legal documents because of his “literary” talent, and he tells Burgeon to take work home after office hours and to “use [his] imagination” to sort out difficulties and find innovative ways to manipulate clients and the system (18). Burden expects Burgeon to separate his work from poetic imagination, and to isolate ethics in the poetic sphere.
Even though Burgeon, the narrator in This Ever Diverse Pair, is experiencing a mental crisis, the legal practice has some rewarding moments. For examples, he feels the pride of a job well done (85), and he enjoys the sense of efficiency when he handles financial affairs effectively (69). However, more and more, he feels a sense of futility, “like Alice in the Looking Glass, running without getting anywhere” (52). He becomes increasingly frustrated that he must always be so responsible and make all the decisions regarding the law practice. Burgeon finds that dealing with clients, and the way they use language, has resulted in a general antipathy toward words. The constant “necessity to concentrate on the words so as to apprehend meaning” is something like a “mild or incipient schizophrenia” (54). As Burgeon loses the will to focus and decipher what his clients are saying, he asks, “Is it going to prove too much for me?” (103).
Burgeon has an unsettling dream in which he sees Burden as a fragmented image of himself, separated from him. Burden, he feels, is becoming “a sort of Frankenstein” (15). Yet, Burgeon admits that he is “responsible for the professional existence, almost for the existence at all, of Burden. I deliberately called him forth from his obscurity and set him up in space and time” (14-15). He decides that he must do something to “arrest the process” of fragmentation (or “polarity,” to use one of Barfield’s own terms), and so he decides to keep a diary for Burden which he intends as his own “declaration of independence” (15).
The diary details the daily lives of solicitors along with certain irritations, perhaps not so onerous in one instance, but problematic in their constant reoccurrence. The irritations elicit in Burgeon feelings of shame, animosity, bewilderment, dislike (for Burden in particular), and, perhaps what bothers him most, hypocrisy. The use of words as weapons or cloaking devises in cleverly constructed, inextricably intricate legal documents causes his mind to wander to fantastically orchestrated mischief.