In the current New Republic, there’s a thorough and interesting review (by John Banville) of the first volume of Beckett’s letters. It runs to 752 pages, costs US$50 and there are to be three more volumes. Beckett stipulated that, of the 15,000 letters he wrote, only those should be printed which related to his work. An impossible brief. It looks like a very long wait for the complete correspondence, an expensive investment in the meantime, and to hell with the general reader.
The review quotes a passage which will no doubt go straight into the Beckett primers.
It is indeed getting more and more difficult, even pointless, for me to write in formal English. And more and more my language appears to me like a veil which one has to tear apart in order to get to those things (or the nothingness) lying behind it. Grammar and style! To me they seem to have become as irrelevant as a Biedermeier bathing suit or the imperturbability of a gentleman. A mask. It is to be hoped the time will come, thank God, in some circles it already has, when language is best used where it is most efficiently abused. Since we cannot dismiss it all at once, at least we do not want to leave anything undone that may contribute to its disrepute. To drill one hole after another into it until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through–I cannot imagine a higher goal for today’s writer.
As Banville says, this is the kind of pronouncement that has enthralled critics of modernism and it’s gravy for the deconstructionists.
? yet reading again this famous manifesto from the party of the Nothing, one is driven to ask, however timidly, the simple question: why? Why are grammar and style irrelevant, and what is it they are irrelevant to? Why is language “best used where it is most efficiently abused”? Why should we contribute to the disrepute of language as the next best thing to dismissing it altogether?
One day, I hope, someone will be able to trace the full variety of motives for the twentieth century’s attacks on the organised and ordered word and the various goals of the attackers.
Oh, Banville gave me an idea for the next Wordability competition. Sharpen your keyboards.
The situation: Laura, the heroine and narrator, has married Edward, whom she has only just met, against the wishes of his father. The newly-weds escape by stealing Edward?s father?s coach.
The Postilions had at first received orders only to take the London road; as soon as we had sufficiently reflected However, we ordered them to Drive to M—-. the seat of Edward’s most particular friend, which was but a few miles distant. At M—-. we arrived in a few hours; and on sending in our names were immediately admitted to Sophia, the Wife of Edward’s freind. After having been deprived during the course of 3 weeks of a real freind . . . imagine my transports at beholding one, most truly worthy of the Name.
Sophia was rather above the middle size; most elegantly formed. A soft languor spread over her lovely features, but increased their Beauty–. It was the Charectarestic of her Mind–. She was all sensibility and Feeling. We flew into each others arms and after having exchanged vows of mutual Freindship for the rest of our Lives, instantly unfolded to each other the most inward secrets of our Hearts–.We were interrupted in the delightfull Employment by the entrance of Augustus, (Edward’s friend) who was just returned from a solitary ramble. Never did I see such an affecting Scene as was the meeting of Edward and Augustus. “My Life! my Soul!”(exclaimed the former) “My adorable angel!”(replied the latter) as they flew into each other’s arms. It was too pathetic for the feelings of Sophia and myself–We fainted alternately on a sofa.
From: Jane Austen, Love and Freindship (1787-1790). The spelling is Jane Austen?s. She began L&F at the age of 12.
A sonnet by the Scots poet Mark Alexander Boyd, reprinted by Pound who called it the most beautiful sonnet in the language. Text is from The Oxford Book of English Verse (1919 – is it still in?). There is a fan site for Boyd with pictures of the blind boy and the wife, beautifully designed, which prints the poem with notes on provenance and references – and a glossary.
| 114. Sonet |
| FRA bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rin, | |
| Ourhailit with my feeble fantasie; | |
| Like til a leaf that fallis from a tree, | |
| Or til a reed ourblawin with the win. | |
| Twa gods guides me: the ane of tham is blin, | 5 |
| Yea and a bairn brocht up in vanitie; | |
| The next a wife ingenrit of the sea, | |
| And lichter nor a dauphin with her fin. | |
| Unhappy is the man for evermair | |
| That tills the sand and sawis in the air; | 10 |
| But twice unhappier is he, I lairn, | |
| That feidis in his hairt a mad desire, | |
| And follows on a woman throw the fire, | |
| Led by a blind and teachit by a bairn. |
Ezra Pound in 1914
The teacher or lecturer is a danger. He very seldom recognises his nature or his position. The lecturer is a man who must talk for an hour.
A pleasure of aging: to reconsider books that have helped to form your attitudes. Another: not having to talk for an hour.
Ezra Pound’s The ABC of Reading (1934 – but I read it in the early 1960s) could be described as an eccentric textbook, but it’s more of a manifesto. It comprises a little generalisation about literature, a lot of examples of poetry – almost an anthology – some commentary and a reading list.
Pound thought it necessary to have a standard, to read the best that has been done in its kind. What complicates this goal for him is that no one language holds a monopoly of literary virtue. For Pound, a real understanding of poetry requires a swag of languages (Chinese, Greek, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, French, Italian, Provencal and more). Cross-cultural comparison holds no terrors. To see that Greek drama is not all that good, he advises you to read Homer. Don’t bother with German – he has read it all for you, and found nothing standard-setting. The monoglot gets a look-in. Pound concedes that you can get most of it by reading ‘authorised’ translations such as Pound’s own of Seafarer, Golding’s Ovid or Gavin Douglas’s Virgil. But the strongest impression left by the book – on one seventeen year old reader, at least – is that anyone without a working knowledge of half-a-dozen languages is a dabbler.
As Pound might say: balls. But at seventeen, the book conjured up a marvellous, if deeply confusing landscape – all those exotic peaks waiting to be conquered – and the promise of initiation into the mysteries of the craft, all presented far more enticingly than the plodding textbooks with their pother about iambic pentameter. I suppose I was open to the idea of a cosmopolitan canon because of my immersion in music ?
While looking about for a couple of useful Burney links, I came across this perturbing story. The scholar Ellen Moody some years ago started a number of online discussions of Burney’s novels. She is obviously a woman of fortitude; most of us would have given up, faced with the resulting torrent of flames, trivia and vicious pranks . But she and her colleagues hung in there long enough to get results. Sample threads are on her site.
Dr Moody concludes her page:
Since the existence of large fan communities generates money and favorable partisan coterie publicity, it is in the interest of anyone who works or becomes involved with any projects involving Austen and (lately increasingly) Burney to begin with an exaggerated respect; any sharp criticism must be presented in somewhat disguised forms.The phenomenon of the cult figure or group of texts is an important one in our era, and we need frank discussion of how different cults arise, what imagined characteristics cult figures are typically endowed with by their fans, what kinds of people become fervent fans of literary writers and their characters, and what is the effect of such cults on serious study of works of the imagination.
We could do all that. Or we could just tip-toe away. They’re making too much noise to notice.
Norbury Park, Wednesday, November 3rd 1784
Nothing can be more truly pleasant than our present lives. I bury all disquietudes in immediate enjoyment; an enjoyment more fitted to my secret mind than any I had ever hoped to attain. We are so perfectly tranquil that not a particle of our whole frames seems ruffled or discomposed. Mr Locke is gayer and more sportive than I have ever seen him; his Fredy seems made up of happiness; and the two dear little girls are in spirits almost ecstatic; and all from that internal contentment which Norbury Park seems to have gathered from all corners of the world into its own sphere.
Our mornings, if fine, are to ourselves, as Mr Locke rides out; if bad, we assemble in the picture room. We have two books in public reading, Madame de Sevign?’s Letters and Cook’s last voyage. Mrs Locke reads the French, myself the English.
Our conversations, too, are such that I could almost wish to last for ever. Mr Locke has been all himself – all instruction, information and intelligence, – since we have been left alone; and the invariable sweetness, as well as judgment, of all he says, leaves, indeed, nothing to wish.
They will not let me go while I can stay, and I am now most willing to stay till I must go. The serenity of a life like this smooths the whole internal surface of the mind. My own, I assure you, begins to feel quite glossy ?
_The Famous Miss Burney: the Diaries and Letters of Fanny Burney, eds Barbara G. Schrank and David J. Supino, 1976.
1. Estimate the number of household servants required to support this idle lifestyle and the quantity of agony endured by them.
2. Comment on the phrase gathered from all corners of the world with particular attention to the plantation slaves of the West Indies.
3. Specify the ideological function of (a) Madame de Sevign? (b) Cook’s Voyages.
4. Which form of address is the more sexist, Fanny Burney or Miss Burney?
4. Stop sighing with helpless, hopeless longing.
