I have just been on a quick trawl through blogland and come back feeling vaguely depressed. So many voices out there, saying so many different things, and yet in the end, all is silence. How can that be though, when silence is so very precisely what it's not? And what is silence after all, if not the echo that follows when somebody has opened his mouth and found that no-one‘s listening?
Communication is what it’s supposed to be about and suddenly, it seems everybody’s doing it. Communicating, that is: to greater, or lesser effect. Some have only to open their mouths and say the first thing which comes, for the whole world to seem to be listening. Others scream and shout in vain, and might do so until doomsday, for all the response it’s ever going to get. The trick seems to be to find the one spot in which to feel at home and settle comfortably in it, whether anyone’s listening or not.
Take me for example. Not because there’s any reason on earth why you should do – but simply because I am here and this is my particular spot. I wrote a piece about Henry James the other day. Full of hope I was, that somebody, somewhere , would write back to say Yes, yes, that’s right, I love him too. Books have been written on him, after all. Millions of words have been expended, so he must be a person who counts. Again though, only the echo of silence. Except for the one person who wrote in to say how much she disliked him, and to complain of his failure of ‘narrative grip’ . Now I’m not at all sure I know what narrative grip is – but it does seem as if Henry James, as a subject, is out.
It was the same thing when I wrote about Virginia Woolf and Dante, and not a murmur from anywhere did they evoke. Am I to conclude that the whole world has somehow moved on from people like Virginia Woolf and Dante – or was I simply shouting from the wrong treetop in the wrong place? Either way, it doesn’t seem to matter very much. Blogland is only a microcosm of the whole after all – and this particular blogspot only a microcosm of that. But since someone, somewhere must be talking about and listening to something, the trick (again) seems to be find out what it is.
Is it Kate Middleton, I wondered yesterday, when I saw a Mirror headline saying that she “blamed Charles” for the breakup? Was Charles responsible for the breakup of Kate’s relationship with William? And if he was, was he right – and if right, does anyone really care? Well, Kate cares, of course; and so, I daresay does William himself. Kate’s friends care, and Kate’s mother, and most of the readers of Hello. The same people, I’m sure, who care whether Richard Gere should go to court in India or not, over that rather foolish public kiss. What was Richard Gere doing grabbing Shilpa Shetty in public like that – and what, in the general scheme of things, does it matter anyway, whatever it was?
It might on the other hand be the question of Prince Harry that people are minding about today. Should he go to Iraq or shouldn’t he? The Queen says he should, the military top brass seem to disagree. Would one receive a spate of comments if one expressed an opinion, blogwise, on the future of Prince Harry’s army career, I wonder? Probably – but again, what’s to shout about? In the end he’ll go or he won’t go: it’s as simple, and finally un-newsworthy, as that.
Iraq itself remains intensely shoutable-about, sad to say. But after the war has been argued over, and won, and lost, and then won and lost all over again in an entirely unforeseeable way… after Saddam has been toppled, and shamed, and then achieved a kind of glory after all right at the moment of dying… after the shouting has been shrill, and then sombre, then shrill and sombre again, and still the brave young men die out there for no conceivable end………. the only question which seems left to ask is: should they stay, or should they come home? Sooner or later they will have to be brought home of course. It would seem better that it should happen now, while some at least of them are still alive.
It is not my intention to be flippant about Iraq though, for I care about it deeply, and always did. But then it’s not my place to talk about it either, since I am neither the Prime Minister, nor the Defence Secretary, nor even Bryan Appleyard. So the search is still on, for me, to find the thing that is mine to talk about. Better to stick to Henry James, perhaps? Or better still, find something really meaningful to shout about. On the whole, I think that one can only say the thing which comes, and go on hoping for the best.
For me, the next thing which comes will probably be the loneliness of the long-distance blogger. That, and the difficulties experienced by the first-person narrator, in fiction. Not mainstream blogging subjects either, I concede it. Especially since I’ll be taking people like Emily Bronte, and Evelyn Waugh, and Scott Fitzgerald as my models, not one of whom seems likely to raise much of a shout. There’s a good deal of re-reading to be done before I can attain to it, anyway; I shall have to go through Wuthering Heights again, for a start. So there’s still time to reconsider my position, and find something else that works.
But what is blogging if not an exploration of the art of the possible? One says the only thing one can, and if no more than one person listens, has it not at any rate still been said? There’s a whole world of blogging out there; and Harry will, or will not go to Iraq. The world will still turn, and sometime the brave and battered troops will actually come home. And when all has been said and done, and written about, and said and written about again - it’s still going to be pretty much as I said about it at the outset: what’s to shout about?
(Just a thought, that's all.)
Sunday 29 April 2007
Thursday 26 April 2007
The Henry James Effect
Is there anyone else out there, I wonder, who is, or was (or ever will again be), hopelessly addicted to Henry James? There can’t be many, I suspect. If indeed there are any at all. People are much too busy, these days, to struggle with the rotund, the resonating, the too-rococo sentence. The allusive, over-subtle approach irritates them, and the parenthetical tendency defeats. You have only to take that word parenthetical itself, for example. It’s a James word if ever I heard one, yet I can’t be absolutely sure it actually exists. But there it is: the ordinary vocabulary can sometimes sag a little, when the rococo in prose is under consideration. And needs must anyway, as they say, when it’s Henry James who drives!
No, it’s the short, sharp, staccato sort of thing that works best for people these days, I’m told. I even seem to remember that there was an instruction to that effect in a little book I bought recently on the practice, and art, of blogging. The implication having seemed to be, that since everyone is so very much too busy now, to do battle with protracted sentences, the potential blogger had very much better forget all about them, and do what he can to go with the current stream instead. It seemed rather a pity to me, I confess it. I have a lingering fondness for the protracted sentence - and parentheses have always seemed to be one of the staples of the compositional life. ‘Playing the Proust Game’, I have always called it; and it’s better than crosswords or sudoku, by half. For exercising the brain there's really nothing else quite like it - since it involves staggering all the way to the end of the sentence, without once going back to see how it started out!
It was a comment left on my fictional blog, I Beatrice, yesterday, as a matter of fact, that has prompted me to go down the Henry James route this morning. Somebody wrote to say that, although it was a long time since she had read James herself, she nevertheless thought she detected something in my own style of writing, that put her in mind of his. I was humbled by the comparison of course - since though one always dares to aspire (as why wouldn’t one, if one were trying at all?), one never does quite presume to hope. (Too many ‘ones’ there, I acknowledge it. But it’s a hard road to escape from, once having started out!)
I was humbled – but I was also vaguely troubled - by the comparison. Because there was a time when the Henry James thing was the only one I really knew, or wanted for myself. All through the sixties and seventies, when my own children were small ( and when I really, according to the standards set by today’s so-very-much-busier Mummies, oughtn’t to have had time for any such thing) ……. at every available spare moment in those busy years, nonetheless, I was to be found with a Henry James novel somewhere about my person. To such an extent indeed, that if I happened to have sat down for a moment without one, my small children would feel impelled to run anxiously off and fetch it for me! Small wonder then, that at that period in my life I began to write, to think - to talk even, I don’t doubt ! – like Henry James.
One small anecdote from that period springs to mind, and I relate it here , because I think it probably illustrates my past addiction better than anything else could do. It concerns my elder son, who is a lawyer of rising distinction these days, but who was then a rumbustious boy of five or six. He wasn’t ordinarily the sort of child to pre-occupy himself with a book - and especially not one of "Mum’s Henry James sort"! But he had happened to be watching a Quiz programme on television that day, and so astonished was he by something he heard there, that he must run in to me at once, crying “Guess what, Mum? That man didn’t even know who wrote The Golden Bowl !”
That little recollection somehow epitomises all that the Old Master meant to me in those far-off days. And seems to illustrate, as nothing else quite could, the long struggle I have had to free myself from his influence since. I no longer wish to write like that. It’s not that I love him less – I can’t help remembering what Virginia Woolf once wrote of him, for one thing: how she said that in the history of the novel, there was no-one else who, having gone to all the lengths of constructing his sentence, could bring himself to smash it so resoundingly at the end! No, I certainly don’t love him less; but I seldom read him any more. I have come to recognise that such a style as his is hopelessly addictive, and that, even could one have hoped to emulate it, for today’s tastes, it simply doesn’t ‘do’. It has taken me many years to free myself from his influence, though, and I genuinely believed I had done it at last.
Which is why it came as something of an unpleasant jolt, as well as a pleasure, yesterday, to be told that to someone else, my style had seemed vaguely reminiscent of his. Somebody had discovered my guilty secret, that's what it was – and I felt somewhat shame-faced as a result!
Not that it wouldn’t give me the most enormous pleasure, just the same, were somebody else to write in and confess to having had (or having still), an addiction rather like mine.
No, it’s the short, sharp, staccato sort of thing that works best for people these days, I’m told. I even seem to remember that there was an instruction to that effect in a little book I bought recently on the practice, and art, of blogging. The implication having seemed to be, that since everyone is so very much too busy now, to do battle with protracted sentences, the potential blogger had very much better forget all about them, and do what he can to go with the current stream instead. It seemed rather a pity to me, I confess it. I have a lingering fondness for the protracted sentence - and parentheses have always seemed to be one of the staples of the compositional life. ‘Playing the Proust Game’, I have always called it; and it’s better than crosswords or sudoku, by half. For exercising the brain there's really nothing else quite like it - since it involves staggering all the way to the end of the sentence, without once going back to see how it started out!
It was a comment left on my fictional blog, I Beatrice, yesterday, as a matter of fact, that has prompted me to go down the Henry James route this morning. Somebody wrote to say that, although it was a long time since she had read James herself, she nevertheless thought she detected something in my own style of writing, that put her in mind of his. I was humbled by the comparison of course - since though one always dares to aspire (as why wouldn’t one, if one were trying at all?), one never does quite presume to hope. (Too many ‘ones’ there, I acknowledge it. But it’s a hard road to escape from, once having started out!)
I was humbled – but I was also vaguely troubled - by the comparison. Because there was a time when the Henry James thing was the only one I really knew, or wanted for myself. All through the sixties and seventies, when my own children were small ( and when I really, according to the standards set by today’s so-very-much-busier Mummies, oughtn’t to have had time for any such thing) ……. at every available spare moment in those busy years, nonetheless, I was to be found with a Henry James novel somewhere about my person. To such an extent indeed, that if I happened to have sat down for a moment without one, my small children would feel impelled to run anxiously off and fetch it for me! Small wonder then, that at that period in my life I began to write, to think - to talk even, I don’t doubt ! – like Henry James.
One small anecdote from that period springs to mind, and I relate it here , because I think it probably illustrates my past addiction better than anything else could do. It concerns my elder son, who is a lawyer of rising distinction these days, but who was then a rumbustious boy of five or six. He wasn’t ordinarily the sort of child to pre-occupy himself with a book - and especially not one of "Mum’s Henry James sort"! But he had happened to be watching a Quiz programme on television that day, and so astonished was he by something he heard there, that he must run in to me at once, crying “Guess what, Mum? That man didn’t even know who wrote The Golden Bowl !”
That little recollection somehow epitomises all that the Old Master meant to me in those far-off days. And seems to illustrate, as nothing else quite could, the long struggle I have had to free myself from his influence since. I no longer wish to write like that. It’s not that I love him less – I can’t help remembering what Virginia Woolf once wrote of him, for one thing: how she said that in the history of the novel, there was no-one else who, having gone to all the lengths of constructing his sentence, could bring himself to smash it so resoundingly at the end! No, I certainly don’t love him less; but I seldom read him any more. I have come to recognise that such a style as his is hopelessly addictive, and that, even could one have hoped to emulate it, for today’s tastes, it simply doesn’t ‘do’. It has taken me many years to free myself from his influence, though, and I genuinely believed I had done it at last.
Which is why it came as something of an unpleasant jolt, as well as a pleasure, yesterday, to be told that to someone else, my style had seemed vaguely reminiscent of his. Somebody had discovered my guilty secret, that's what it was – and I felt somewhat shame-faced as a result!
Not that it wouldn’t give me the most enormous pleasure, just the same, were somebody else to write in and confess to having had (or having still), an addiction rather like mine.
Saturday 21 April 2007
Why didn't anyone stop Virginia?
Those of you who are fond of Virginia Woolf will know that she had a little writing hut at the bottom of her garden in Rodmell, Sussex. Some of you may even have been down there, as I have, to see it for yourselves. In which case you will have noticed its proximity to the little path that leads to the local school – I seem to remember her writing in her diary sometimes, about the pleasure of hearing the chatter of the children as they came and went from school. More gloomily, you will also have noticed her hut’s proximity to the fields beyond, and then to the River Ouse; in which, having filled her pockets with bricks one day, she took it into her head to drown herself.
I hadn’t meant to start on a melancholy note though, and should never have gone down that particular track! I have always been sorry that someone didn’t manage to step in at the time, and forestall the awful event. Leonard might have done it perhaps, if only he’d been looking hard enough in the right direction. Vita Sackville West always thought, afterwards, that she might have prevented it too - if only she’d known! Nobody did prevent it though. And so we are left with the sadness of knowing that anything which Virginia Woolf might have written later is lost to us – simply because Virginia herself wasn’t thinking straight that particular day, and nobody else was looking.
But that wasn’t to have been my point either. What I meant to start by saying was that I too am fortunate enough to have a little hut of my own at the bottom of the garden. Roald Dahl had one, I believe; and so, respectively, did Dylan Thomas and George Bernard Shaw. Shaw’s was mounted on some kind of turn-table, I believe, so as to be moved in any direction to catch the sun. But that would be an engineering feat beyond the range of anyone I know, and a luxury to which I have never thought of trying to aspire.
My little hut is painted green - I have thought of re-painting it heavenly blue. It has a wide bay in front, with four latticed windows, and a nice little latch on the door. Too pretty for a hut or a shed, really, so I more often call it the summerhouse instead. I have made pale green gingham blinds for the windows; they shade my laptop from the sun on summer mornings, and in winter help to keep me protected against the frost. Inside, I have heat and light, a table large enough to accommodate all the paraphernalia necessary to keep the creative effort going (dictionaries, that’s to say; thesauruses, and endless supplies of clean foolscap paper) - and all my favourite books on shelves upon the walls. I am obliged to share my hut with lawn-mower and garden chairs of course; and with an old fridge-freezer that was too good to throw out, and that is useful for storing fruit and vegetables, and all the extra food one somehow accumulates at Christmas, and other festive times.
But none of that seems to matter very much, when once I am down here and have switched my laptop on, in the mornings. The lawn-mower has become my companion indeed; and the humming of the fridge-freezer has a friendly sound - perfectly attuned, I find, to the functioning of the compositional process. Having a room of one’s own, Virginia called it. And in that at least she was absolutely right. For it is of all things the most inestimable in value, to anyone who tries to write.
I hadn’t meant to start on a melancholy note though, and should never have gone down that particular track! I have always been sorry that someone didn’t manage to step in at the time, and forestall the awful event. Leonard might have done it perhaps, if only he’d been looking hard enough in the right direction. Vita Sackville West always thought, afterwards, that she might have prevented it too - if only she’d known! Nobody did prevent it though. And so we are left with the sadness of knowing that anything which Virginia Woolf might have written later is lost to us – simply because Virginia herself wasn’t thinking straight that particular day, and nobody else was looking.
But that wasn’t to have been my point either. What I meant to start by saying was that I too am fortunate enough to have a little hut of my own at the bottom of the garden. Roald Dahl had one, I believe; and so, respectively, did Dylan Thomas and George Bernard Shaw. Shaw’s was mounted on some kind of turn-table, I believe, so as to be moved in any direction to catch the sun. But that would be an engineering feat beyond the range of anyone I know, and a luxury to which I have never thought of trying to aspire.
My little hut is painted green - I have thought of re-painting it heavenly blue. It has a wide bay in front, with four latticed windows, and a nice little latch on the door. Too pretty for a hut or a shed, really, so I more often call it the summerhouse instead. I have made pale green gingham blinds for the windows; they shade my laptop from the sun on summer mornings, and in winter help to keep me protected against the frost. Inside, I have heat and light, a table large enough to accommodate all the paraphernalia necessary to keep the creative effort going (dictionaries, that’s to say; thesauruses, and endless supplies of clean foolscap paper) - and all my favourite books on shelves upon the walls. I am obliged to share my hut with lawn-mower and garden chairs of course; and with an old fridge-freezer that was too good to throw out, and that is useful for storing fruit and vegetables, and all the extra food one somehow accumulates at Christmas, and other festive times.
But none of that seems to matter very much, when once I am down here and have switched my laptop on, in the mornings. The lawn-mower has become my companion indeed; and the humming of the fridge-freezer has a friendly sound - perfectly attuned, I find, to the functioning of the compositional process. Having a room of one’s own, Virginia called it. And in that at least she was absolutely right. For it is of all things the most inestimable in value, to anyone who tries to write.
Wednesday 11 April 2007
Books at bedtime
I have just posted a comment on Marianne's blog-page, in response to her piece about bedtime reading, and I reproduce it here, in the hope that it might spark a little interest in someone else. My own current bedtime reading, I told her, is Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, which I recommended to her for its highly soporific qualities - it must be one of the most boring books ever written! Which has surprised me, since it came highly recommended, and was apparently waited for with bated breath, when it first appeared in serial form in the 19th century. Dickens it is not, however - though it does have a certain mesmeric charm, especially at bedtime
The excellent A.N. Wilson on the other hand, is just now recommending (in the Daily Telegraph), that we all take up Dante's The Divine Comedy , and read it cover to cover. Twenty minutes a day for a month should do it, he says; and all our lives will be transformed as a consequence. I'm thinking of giving it a go - I managed all of Proust after all, so why not Dante? Is there anyone out there who would care to join me? I'd be very much more committed to the enterprise I'm sure, if I knew that somebody else was probably getting ahead of me.
The excellent A.N. Wilson on the other hand, is just now recommending (in the Daily Telegraph), that we all take up Dante's The Divine Comedy , and read it cover to cover. Twenty minutes a day for a month should do it, he says; and all our lives will be transformed as a consequence. I'm thinking of giving it a go - I managed all of Proust after all, so why not Dante? Is there anyone out there who would care to join me? I'd be very much more committed to the enterprise I'm sure, if I knew that somebody else was probably getting ahead of me.
Tuesday 10 April 2007
The blog within the blog
It's not easy, managing two blogs simultaneously: in order to concentrate on one, I must necessarily seem to neglect the other. They seem to be connected by some invisible cord that is adjustable only by Google, besides; so that when I make an editorial alteration to I Beatrice, it has a way of popping up all inconveniently on Just Blogging.
What I'm trying rather awkwardly to explain here is that, having made an alteration to the "About me" section on I Beatrice (now sub-titled Macauley's House to reflect its wholly fictional character), I discover that the same short preamble has also appeared on my Profile page, where it doesn't sit at all happily.
I'm sorry if this creates confusion. It's confusing me, so what can it be doing for anyone else who happens to pass by? Is there any way, I wonder, of separating the two editorials? Or to put it another way - can I say something on my Profile page that is different from what appears on my blog's opening page?
There's usually someone clever enough out there to sort out any problem, large or small, so here's hoping.
What I'm trying rather awkwardly to explain here is that, having made an alteration to the "About me" section on I Beatrice (now sub-titled Macauley's House to reflect its wholly fictional character), I discover that the same short preamble has also appeared on my Profile page, where it doesn't sit at all happily.
I'm sorry if this creates confusion. It's confusing me, so what can it be doing for anyone else who happens to pass by? Is there any way, I wonder, of separating the two editorials? Or to put it another way - can I say something on my Profile page that is different from what appears on my blog's opening page?
There's usually someone clever enough out there to sort out any problem, large or small, so here's hoping.
Saturday 7 April 2007
Irritating mannerisms
My blogmaster has made what I admit is a valid point. He says I use too many 'of courses', and 'howevers' and 'appparentlys'. He's quite right, I admit it (see how adroitly I side-stepped that one!). I shall try very hard to do without them, and it won't be easy, for they operate as a kind of comfort blanket (like chewing a pencil end, or lighting a cigarette), in times of particular narrative stress. To those who might already have offended by them I apologise - they shall henceforth be eradicated, one by one, at source.
Thursday 5 April 2007
"Almost everyone has a Beatrice"
I have put the title in quotes because it's not my own. It was used by A.N.Wilson for an admirable article of his that was published in the Daily Telegraph of Monday April 2. It took my eye at once: first because I always enjoy any piece by A.N. Wilson; next, because it seemed to be about that Beatrice of all Beatrices, Dante’s – and last, because Beatrice just happened to be the name I had chosen for myself when I started blogging, three weeks ago. I'm not sure why I chose it; since, Dante notwithstanding, it’s not a name I have ever really liked very much. It just seemed to be the one that lent itself best to the kind of blog I meant to try to write. But now, suddenly, I find that the name is everywhere. Princesses, babies, French delicatessens - people’s cats , even; all are suddenly called Beatrice. And if A.N. Wilson is writing about her as well (as well, that is, as Dante, not myself), then it seemed to me that she must have something rather special going on for her just now.
A.N. Wilson was writing about a little book he had just re-read on an aeroplane travelling to the United States. He had read it first in 1974, and wanted to know if it would stand up to another scrutiny (it did). The book is called The Figure of Beatrice; it was written by Charles Williams, and it apparently excited a certain jocularity amongst US customs officers, when Wilson was required to hand it over for inspection. I'm not sure what they found to amuse them; and nor, it seems, was A.N. Wilson. Perhaps there was something vaguely erotic about the picture on the cover, that put them in mind of some woman they both knew? It seems unlikely they were devotees of Dante - though one never knows, of course; and there is no reason to suppose that US customs officials should be any less literate than anyone else.
I have never come across the book myself, but I mean to try to find it. Not because I am truthfully speaking a devotee of Dante either – though I have made it to the end of many a large and difficult book. I am on intimate terms with every word of Henry James, for example; and hopelessly addicted to Dickens. I have staggered through a good two thirds of Trollope, no mean feat; and managed all five volumes of Proust, I promise you, hand on heart…. But The Divine Comedy, like Ulysses, and some of the more esoteric Virginia Woolf, has always defeated me. It’s only the idea of Dante himself, and of his Beatrice, that has somehow always haunted me. I would be at a loss to say exactly why. The nearest I can come to it is to suggest that somewhere in that strangest, and most ineffable of relationships, is to be found not only the impossible dream of every man who ever sought the perfect woman..... but also (and this most of all, for me), the unattainable ideal of every writer who ever strove for a perfect expression of his own.
Here is how A.N. Wilson put it: “One of the reasons that Charles Williams wrote his book is that he wanted to suggest that such high-falutin’ experience is not confined to the theologically obsessed political fanatic of the early 14th century. It is an all-but-universal experience that Dante happened to be imaginative enough, and clever enough, to articulate into a system. What Charles Williams called “the Affirmation of Images” is shown forth, for most of us, not in our capacity to think or even, in the first instance, to pray, but in those moments when “the Florentine – the London, the San Franciscan – girl seems a miracle.”
One feels one knows exactly what Charles Williams means, without quite being able to put it into words oneself. It’s the reason, perhaps, why the idea of Beatrice can stay and stay with one, throughout an entire life, and even when The Divine Comedy itself has remained literally a closed book. It’s the reason too, why I have so often found myself impelled to wander the narrow back streets of Florence, looking for Dante’s house, and Beatrice’s church. (Both of which, astonishingly, are still there - though not often open, I’ve found.)
Everyone has his own interpretation of the enigma of Beatrice, I daresay. Some will find it in religious or creative experience, some in devoted service - others perhaps, in sex. For me, it has always seemed to lie buried somewhere inside the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; a book to which I am drawn back time and again, without ever understanding exactly why. Much like Gatsby himself though, I have always been convinced that the magic was in there somewhere - all one had to do was reach out and close one’s fingers around it…
Would it be fanciful, I wonder, to suggest that Gatsby too, was a seeker after Beatrice? His girl was a very far cry from Dante’s, of course; and in the end she was not the apotheosis, but the death of him. Yet even so …. is it possible that in Gatsby’s dream is also to be found the dream of Everyman; writ large, and clear (and to my mind exquisite) enough for every man to recognise as his own?
This is the way Fitzgerald encapsulated it, on his preface page:
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too;
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you.”
A.N. Wilson was writing about a little book he had just re-read on an aeroplane travelling to the United States. He had read it first in 1974, and wanted to know if it would stand up to another scrutiny (it did). The book is called The Figure of Beatrice; it was written by Charles Williams, and it apparently excited a certain jocularity amongst US customs officers, when Wilson was required to hand it over for inspection. I'm not sure what they found to amuse them; and nor, it seems, was A.N. Wilson. Perhaps there was something vaguely erotic about the picture on the cover, that put them in mind of some woman they both knew? It seems unlikely they were devotees of Dante - though one never knows, of course; and there is no reason to suppose that US customs officials should be any less literate than anyone else.
I have never come across the book myself, but I mean to try to find it. Not because I am truthfully speaking a devotee of Dante either – though I have made it to the end of many a large and difficult book. I am on intimate terms with every word of Henry James, for example; and hopelessly addicted to Dickens. I have staggered through a good two thirds of Trollope, no mean feat; and managed all five volumes of Proust, I promise you, hand on heart…. But The Divine Comedy, like Ulysses, and some of the more esoteric Virginia Woolf, has always defeated me. It’s only the idea of Dante himself, and of his Beatrice, that has somehow always haunted me. I would be at a loss to say exactly why. The nearest I can come to it is to suggest that somewhere in that strangest, and most ineffable of relationships, is to be found not only the impossible dream of every man who ever sought the perfect woman..... but also (and this most of all, for me), the unattainable ideal of every writer who ever strove for a perfect expression of his own.
Here is how A.N. Wilson put it: “One of the reasons that Charles Williams wrote his book is that he wanted to suggest that such high-falutin’ experience is not confined to the theologically obsessed political fanatic of the early 14th century. It is an all-but-universal experience that Dante happened to be imaginative enough, and clever enough, to articulate into a system. What Charles Williams called “the Affirmation of Images” is shown forth, for most of us, not in our capacity to think or even, in the first instance, to pray, but in those moments when “the Florentine – the London, the San Franciscan – girl seems a miracle.”
One feels one knows exactly what Charles Williams means, without quite being able to put it into words oneself. It’s the reason, perhaps, why the idea of Beatrice can stay and stay with one, throughout an entire life, and even when The Divine Comedy itself has remained literally a closed book. It’s the reason too, why I have so often found myself impelled to wander the narrow back streets of Florence, looking for Dante’s house, and Beatrice’s church. (Both of which, astonishingly, are still there - though not often open, I’ve found.)
Everyone has his own interpretation of the enigma of Beatrice, I daresay. Some will find it in religious or creative experience, some in devoted service - others perhaps, in sex. For me, it has always seemed to lie buried somewhere inside the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; a book to which I am drawn back time and again, without ever understanding exactly why. Much like Gatsby himself though, I have always been convinced that the magic was in there somewhere - all one had to do was reach out and close one’s fingers around it…
Would it be fanciful, I wonder, to suggest that Gatsby too, was a seeker after Beatrice? His girl was a very far cry from Dante’s, of course; and in the end she was not the apotheosis, but the death of him. Yet even so …. is it possible that in Gatsby’s dream is also to be found the dream of Everyman; writ large, and clear (and to my mind exquisite) enough for every man to recognise as his own?
This is the way Fitzgerald encapsulated it, on his preface page:
Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too;
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you.”
Monday 2 April 2007
25 March 2007
Whistling down the wind
4 comments:
Marianne said...
Oh Beatrice - what a lovely name - I have an 80 year old friend with the same name - you certainly have to spread yourself around when no longer married, but all the better for that.
If you ever do find out all the how-tos, please do let me know as I, too, struggle with them. I've spent hours getting very lost and confused on this website. I would link to you if I could!
28 March 2007 07:01
Pig in the Kitchen said...
Hello Beatrice, to display links, log in to your blog, click on customise, then template. Then 'add a page element', click on 'link list'. Then you'll need the website address of the blog you want to link. visit their blog, copy their web address, the http:// address at the top of the page, then go back to your 'link list' and paste or type their blog address into the box that says new site URL. Click save changes, then it should appear on your blog.
Also, you haven't clicked on the bit to allow anyone to comment on your blog (eg: anonymous comments). I think that is in 'customise', settings, then 'allow anyone to comment' or something like that. At the moment, the only people that can leave comments on your blog are other bloggers.
HOpe at least some of that helps! So is all of your blog completely made up? Or did the window-cleaner really come?! I like your style anyway!
28 March 2007 12:34
mutterings and meanderings said...
Right - first of all make sure you are signed in and at your 'dashboard'.
Then click on 'layouts'. You will get something that says 'add and arrange page elements'.
Click on 'add a page element (on the right). Then choose 'link list' (top right). Press 'add to blog'.
Give it a title. Cut and paste the url of the site you want to link to in 'new site url' (remembering to delete the http:// that is already in the box).
Do this for as many sites as you want to link to, then press 'save changes'. Voila, you have a box of links to other blogs, websites etc that you like, which you can go in and change whenever you feel like.
28 March 2007 13:38
Pig in the Kitchen said...
Yeh, I think M&M put it more succintly than me!
Whistling down the wind
4 comments:
Marianne said...
Oh Beatrice - what a lovely name - I have an 80 year old friend with the same name - you certainly have to spread yourself around when no longer married, but all the better for that.
If you ever do find out all the how-tos, please do let me know as I, too, struggle with them. I've spent hours getting very lost and confused on this website. I would link to you if I could!
28 March 2007 07:01
Pig in the Kitchen said...
Hello Beatrice, to display links, log in to your blog, click on customise, then template. Then 'add a page element', click on 'link list'. Then you'll need the website address of the blog you want to link. visit their blog, copy their web address, the http:// address at the top of the page, then go back to your 'link list' and paste or type their blog address into the box that says new site URL. Click save changes, then it should appear on your blog.
Also, you haven't clicked on the bit to allow anyone to comment on your blog (eg: anonymous comments). I think that is in 'customise', settings, then 'allow anyone to comment' or something like that. At the moment, the only people that can leave comments on your blog are other bloggers.
HOpe at least some of that helps! So is all of your blog completely made up? Or did the window-cleaner really come?! I like your style anyway!
28 March 2007 12:34
mutterings and meanderings said...
Right - first of all make sure you are signed in and at your 'dashboard'.
Then click on 'layouts'. You will get something that says 'add and arrange page elements'.
Click on 'add a page element (on the right). Then choose 'link list' (top right). Press 'add to blog'.
Give it a title. Cut and paste the url of the site you want to link to in 'new site url' (remembering to delete the http:// that is already in the box).
Do this for as many sites as you want to link to, then press 'save changes'. Voila, you have a box of links to other blogs, websites etc that you like, which you can go in and change whenever you feel like.
28 March 2007 13:38
Pig in the Kitchen said...
Yeh, I think M&M put it more succintly than me!
From the Purist's Mouth
That severest of task-masters, Bill, has been good enough to point out what he calls another serious misjudgment on my part in this morning’s blog. To talk about something moving “exceeding slow”, he tells me, is to risk offending those among any possible readers I might have who mind about such things. It's at best a piece of sloppy grammar, he tells me; at worst, a grave distortion of a rather fine old line. In vain did I protest that I’d seen it written that way many and many a time…. If I had, it was wrong, he asserted. The line is from the old German epigrammist, Von Logau, who himself translated it from something else that Bill can’t quite bring to mind (so even Bill isn't perfect, then). This version was later translated by Longfellow, and ought to read:
Though the wheels of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small .
I had it wrong on both counts, therefore. I might just have got away with ‘exceeding small’ - but with ‘exceeding slow’, never!
So there you have it. From the mouth of the purist himself.
It's my view that Bill didn't know the origin of the line either. I believe he had a vague memory, just as I did; and then went away to look it up in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotatations while my back was turned. I mean - hands on your hearts out there, which of you has ever heard of that obscure German epigrammist, Von Logau? Life is just too short for that kind of thing, isn't it...?
But I’m going to take precautions, in future, to keep Bill well away from any newly posted blogs of mine.
Though the wheels of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small .
I had it wrong on both counts, therefore. I might just have got away with ‘exceeding small’ - but with ‘exceeding slow’, never!
So there you have it. From the mouth of the purist himself.
It's my view that Bill didn't know the origin of the line either. I believe he had a vague memory, just as I did; and then went away to look it up in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotatations while my back was turned. I mean - hands on your hearts out there, which of you has ever heard of that obscure German epigrammist, Von Logau? Life is just too short for that kind of thing, isn't it...?
But I’m going to take precautions, in future, to keep Bill well away from any newly posted blogs of mine.
Stopgap
1 April 2007
I have no reason to suppose that there is more than one person ‘out there’ reading me. Though Marianne does remain faithful, which warms my heart; and for which I thank her publicly here, having been unable for some inexplicable reason to get any comments through to her by the usual route…….. Lest there should be any others who come and go by stealth though (and because I promised it anyway), I feel I must explain the reason for the delay in posting my next blog, which is to be called ‘Theodora’s story’. The fact is, my old laptop died on me and I’m now struggling to master the intricacies of Windows Vista on the new one. It seems to be very remarkable, but I just haven’t found my way round it yet, and the blog stumbles along exceeding slow... I'll be out there again soon, though.
I have no reason to suppose that there is more than one person ‘out there’ reading me. Though Marianne does remain faithful, which warms my heart; and for which I thank her publicly here, having been unable for some inexplicable reason to get any comments through to her by the usual route…….. Lest there should be any others who come and go by stealth though (and because I promised it anyway), I feel I must explain the reason for the delay in posting my next blog, which is to be called ‘Theodora’s story’. The fact is, my old laptop died on me and I’m now struggling to master the intricacies of Windows Vista on the new one. It seems to be very remarkable, but I just haven’t found my way round it yet, and the blog stumbles along exceeding slow... I'll be out there again soon, though.
Sunday 1 April 2007
Just Blogging
2 April
Just Blogging
It's not as easy as I thought it was going to be, writing a fictional blog. Over on "I Beatrice", the line between fiction and fact has become rather blurred, so I have decided to transfer some of the material from that page to this, in the hope of keeping the two worlds more sharply separate. Here, I shall simply experiment, and have fun once in a while...
25 March
Whistling down the wind
Blogwise, I’m still blundering about a good deal. I had made up my mind not to write again in this vein; having received what I thought very sound advice from that established and very successful blogger, Wife in the North, who was kind enough to take an interest in me. “Don’t dwell too much on technicalities” she told me; “Just get on with the blog.” It’s excellent advice of course. Generous, too – since what profit could there possibly be, for her, in linking herself with so new and obscure a site as mine? Especially since the very fact of my being in contact with her at all arose from my own blog-incompetence – ie my not understanding the protocol of the Comment page, and sending her an email instead!
She has been kind enough to make a link with me, for all that. And now I don’t know what to do with it! I've read all the instruction pages, and I still don't know how to display my links. If I were Wife herself of course, I would not be required to sit here agonising about what to do – I would immediately have forty three people writing in to my Comments page to tell me. That seems to be the thing about blogging: when once you have won people’s hearts and minds, you are never quite on your own again. Wife has had her problems lately, of course, and they have been of the most distressing sort. There can be few things in life more painful for a mother than to have to watch her child suffer. I’m a grandmother, and I know all about that. I would go further, if I thought it would be the least helpful to Wife … I would tell her that the problems don’t get smaller as the children themselves get larger – they only grow in magnitude accordingly.
Take me, for example. I have weathered the eleven plus, and the O levels and the A levels. I have worried about university places, and whether or not the First at Part One will go on to become a First at Finals. I have watched two sons struggle to become lawyers – and make no mistake, there is an agony about waiting for a pupillage, and then a place in chambers, which is every bit as severe as that associated with the 11+ results! Now, it has become my secret maternal anxiety to wonder if they will sometime be in a position to ‘take silk’…. ? (I’m told not to worry too much about that one, as a matter of fact. My sons have gone so very far beyond me now, as to be able with perfect assurance to declare that it is not always ‘in one’s own best interests’ to bother to take silk at all! So that's telling Mum, then.)
.
All of which is a very long way, of course, from my inconsequential little blogging dilemmas. Still, I’d like to know what to do with Wife’s generous link with me? Just to know how, and where to put it on the page, would be a start…. I’d like, too, to know how I can organise my ‘archive list’ so as to reflect my daily titles; and whether or not I can edit back entries to reflect a better choice of word, or a more elegant syntax?
For me though, with my still-empty comments box and my little following confined almost entirely to family and friends, all this is pretty much whistling down the wind. That self-appointed blog-editor of mine, my brother Bill, has already looked at this entry, and advised me that it’s a serious mistake. How would it have been for him, he wants to know, if instead of delivering the news from the front one day, he’d opted to embark on a little philosophical treatise instead? He’d have been fired on the spot, he says; and rightly. The matter in hand is what counts, he tells me: the rest is hot air and self indulgence.
He’s right, of course. And tomorrow, I will return to the main theme. Which is of course that of my struggle to make myself known in this pretty place. ( Already, for example, I have learnt a little more about the old lady and her daughter who live in the big house at the end of the footpath. From my window cleaner no less…)
Today though, well if there’s anyone ‘out there’ who can advise me ( I wouldn’t dream of importuning Wife again!), they would have my unending and most heartfelt gratitude...
Just Blogging
It's not as easy as I thought it was going to be, writing a fictional blog. Over on "I Beatrice", the line between fiction and fact has become rather blurred, so I have decided to transfer some of the material from that page to this, in the hope of keeping the two worlds more sharply separate. Here, I shall simply experiment, and have fun once in a while...
25 March
Whistling down the wind
Blogwise, I’m still blundering about a good deal. I had made up my mind not to write again in this vein; having received what I thought very sound advice from that established and very successful blogger, Wife in the North, who was kind enough to take an interest in me. “Don’t dwell too much on technicalities” she told me; “Just get on with the blog.” It’s excellent advice of course. Generous, too – since what profit could there possibly be, for her, in linking herself with so new and obscure a site as mine? Especially since the very fact of my being in contact with her at all arose from my own blog-incompetence – ie my not understanding the protocol of the Comment page, and sending her an email instead!
She has been kind enough to make a link with me, for all that. And now I don’t know what to do with it! I've read all the instruction pages, and I still don't know how to display my links. If I were Wife herself of course, I would not be required to sit here agonising about what to do – I would immediately have forty three people writing in to my Comments page to tell me. That seems to be the thing about blogging: when once you have won people’s hearts and minds, you are never quite on your own again. Wife has had her problems lately, of course, and they have been of the most distressing sort. There can be few things in life more painful for a mother than to have to watch her child suffer. I’m a grandmother, and I know all about that. I would go further, if I thought it would be the least helpful to Wife … I would tell her that the problems don’t get smaller as the children themselves get larger – they only grow in magnitude accordingly.
Take me, for example. I have weathered the eleven plus, and the O levels and the A levels. I have worried about university places, and whether or not the First at Part One will go on to become a First at Finals. I have watched two sons struggle to become lawyers – and make no mistake, there is an agony about waiting for a pupillage, and then a place in chambers, which is every bit as severe as that associated with the 11+ results! Now, it has become my secret maternal anxiety to wonder if they will sometime be in a position to ‘take silk’…. ? (I’m told not to worry too much about that one, as a matter of fact. My sons have gone so very far beyond me now, as to be able with perfect assurance to declare that it is not always ‘in one’s own best interests’ to bother to take silk at all! So that's telling Mum, then.)
.
All of which is a very long way, of course, from my inconsequential little blogging dilemmas. Still, I’d like to know what to do with Wife’s generous link with me? Just to know how, and where to put it on the page, would be a start…. I’d like, too, to know how I can organise my ‘archive list’ so as to reflect my daily titles; and whether or not I can edit back entries to reflect a better choice of word, or a more elegant syntax?
For me though, with my still-empty comments box and my little following confined almost entirely to family and friends, all this is pretty much whistling down the wind. That self-appointed blog-editor of mine, my brother Bill, has already looked at this entry, and advised me that it’s a serious mistake. How would it have been for him, he wants to know, if instead of delivering the news from the front one day, he’d opted to embark on a little philosophical treatise instead? He’d have been fired on the spot, he says; and rightly. The matter in hand is what counts, he tells me: the rest is hot air and self indulgence.
He’s right, of course. And tomorrow, I will return to the main theme. Which is of course that of my struggle to make myself known in this pretty place. ( Already, for example, I have learnt a little more about the old lady and her daughter who live in the big house at the end of the footpath. From my window cleaner no less…)
Today though, well if there’s anyone ‘out there’ who can advise me ( I wouldn’t dream of importuning Wife again!), they would have my unending and most heartfelt gratitude...
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