[ilds] "stale incense"
Mark Valentine
Mark2.Valentine at btinternet.com
Mon Feb 4 12:38:30 PST 2008
I suspect that Burgess may have stolen that "stale incense" line. It was
used by the poet John Heath-Stubbs, much earlier, to describe the
supernatural romances and high prose style of Arthur Machen - and just as
unjustly.
Mark Valentine
----- Original Message -----
From: <ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca>
To: <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 8:00 PM
Subject: ILDS Digest, Vol 11, Issue 3
> Send ILDS mailing list submissions to
> ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> ilds-owner at lists.uvic.ca
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of ILDS digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: ILDS Digest, Vol 11, Issue 2 (Smithchamberlin at aol.com)
> 2. an assassin of polish (slighcl)
> 3. Re: an assassin of polish (slighcl)
> 4. Re: an assassin of polish (James Gifford)
> 5. Re: an assassin of polish (slighcl)
> 6. On Message (Denise Tart & David Green)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 16:40:01 EST
> From: Smithchamberlin at aol.com
> Subject: Re: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 11, Issue 2
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <ce3.24f0c21d.34d78eb1 at aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
> In the USA the real age of proletarian literature was the 1930s, viz.
> Michael Gold and other CP-oriented writers, Henry Roth, some of Steinbeck,
> Hem's To
> Have and Have Not, Dos Passos' USA, James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan
> trilogy
> and Danny O'Neill tetrology, Odet's play Waiting for Lefty, Richard
> Wright's
> Native Son, and the like. Durrell's style is definitely not a
> contemporary
> one, alas.
> Brewster
>
> In a message dated 2/3/2008 3:00:34 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> ilds-request at lists.uvic.ca writes:
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 07:57:28 +1100
> From: "Denise Tart & David Green" <dtart at bigpond.net.au>
> Subject: [ilds] beautiful writing
> To: "Durrel" <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <003501c865de$392043a0$0201a8c0 at MumandDad>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> Lawrence Durrell's writing is slightly out of fashion just now, his style
> too beautiful for contemporary tastes.
>
> Indeed. The age of monosyllabic prol writing is upon us. Much as I like
> most
> of Tim Winton's work, it is self consciously 'working class'.
>
> Durrell wrote in an age before the proletarian scholars and the kind of
> modern writing that eschews classical learning and scholarship and
> prefers 'plain
> English' to latinate modes of expression and in which words of one
> syllable
> appear very frequently; the impact of journalese is very evident.
>
> Thanks Charles for keeping the list going during thje bleak northern
> winter.
> We, for our part are having heat, rain and humidity; wettest summer for
> about twenty years.
>
> DG
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> **************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.
> (http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025
> 48)
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20080203/dfb62fae/attachment-0001.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:32:38 -0500
> From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> Subject: [ilds] an assassin of polish
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <47A64106.6090606 at wfu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
>
> On 2/3/2008 4:40 PM, Smithchamberlin at aol.com wrote:
>
>> Durrell's style is definitely not a contemporary one, alas.
>>
>>
>
>> Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2008 07:57:28 +1100
>> From: "Denise Tart & David Green" <dtart at bigpond.net.au>
>>
>> Lawrence Durrell's writing is slightly out of fashion
>> just now, his style too beautiful for contemporary
>> tastes.
>>
> So here is the Old Stylist himself, surely at this moment thinking over
> the difficult midwifery of the "Justine" manuscript:
>
>>
>> Durrell, Lawrence : STYLE [from Collected Poems:
>> 1931-1974 (1985) , Faber and Faber ]
>>
>>
>>
>> Something like the sea,
>> Unlaboured momentum of water
>> But going somewhere,
>> Building and subsiding,
>> The busy one, the loveless.
>>
>> Or the wind that slits
>> Forests from end to end,
>> Inspiriting vast audiences,
>> Ovations of leafy hands
>> Accepting, accepting.
>>
>> But neither is yet
>> Fine enough for the line I hunt.
>> The dry bony blade of the
>> Sword-grass might suit me
>> Better: an assassin of polish.
>>
>> Such a bite of perfect temper
>> As unwary fingers provoke,
>> Not to be felt till later,
>> Turning away, to notice the thread
>> Of blood from its unfelt stroke.
>>
>> 1955/ /1955/
>>
> I like the points of contrast that Durrell observes--supposing that this
> is even about writing, not living or lovemaking. Moving back and forth
> between the tide-like, "unlaboured momentum of water" and writing as "an
> assassin of polish"--I would hang Durrell's style on those two horns.
> (I am thinking of /Justine/, of course, which I admit is not Durrell's
> only prose style.)
>
> I am also thinking about the strong early pronouncements upon Durrell's
> "style"--especially Burgess in 1967
>>
>> If is a prose-poetry whose rhythms tend to flaccidity and
>> which sometimes
>>
>> melts info a romantic wash a little too close to the old
>> lending-library sadistic-sentimental
>>
>> exotic escapism beloved of the dreaming shop-girl. For all that,
>>
>> there are passages which are powerful and masterly-sharply and
>> exactly observant.
>>
>> But the final impression is of something shimmering in a
>> rather old-fashioned
>>
>> fin de si?cle way, suggesting languor and satiety after
>> elaborate self-indulgence.
>>
>> The decadence smells of stale incense.
>>
>> (/The Novel Now: A Guide to Contemporary Fiction/ 97)
>>
> and George Steiner, who declared that "style is, in fact, the vital
> center of Durrell's art" (/Language and Silence/ 280). Steiner goes to
> some length to break down and analyze specific moments in Durrell's
> prose, which he finds "precise and luminous," filled with "a complex
> aural music" (281). He especially single out the memorable descriptive
> jotting, "The clicking of violet trams," which I am guessing other
> Durrellians will instantly recall.
>
> Perhaps we should undertake that sort of particularizing investigation
> here?
>
> Distinctively Durrellian paragraphs, sentences, phrases, fragements, or
> words, anyone?
>
> Charles
>
> --
> **********************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Department of English
> Wake Forest University
> slighcl at wfu.edu
> **********************
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20080203/088a2dc1/attachment-0001.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:49:21 -0500
> From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] an assassin of polish
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <47A65301.2040501 at wfu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I feel responsible for the way in which my copying-and-pasting from a
> pdf doc made a hash of Burgess's prose. Here is a corrected version--
>>
>>> It is a prose-poetry whose rhythms tend to flaccidity and
>>> which sometimes
>>>
>>> melts into a romantic wash a little too close to the old
>>> lending-library sadistic-sentimental
>>>
>>> exotic escapism beloved of the dreaming shop-girl. For all that,
>>>
>>> there are passages which are powerful and masterly-sharply
>>> and exactly observant.
>>>
>>> But the final impression is of something shimmering in a
>>> rather old-fashioned
>>>
>>> fin de si?cle way, suggesting languor and satiety after
>>> elaborate self-indulgence.
>>>
>>> The decadence smells of stale incense.
>>>
>>> (/The Novel Now: A Guide to Contemporary Fiction/ 97)
>>>
> Just as a quick reaction to Burgess's pronouncements, I would ask
> Burgess--or perhaps his frittering shade in Hades, supplicated by small
> ponds of bourbon--to point out where the "flaccidity" occurs. If
> Burgess is thinking of /Justine/, then it all gets a bit more
> complicated. Context is all. Durrell has written his prose under
> multiple masks (Darley, Arnauti, Pursewarden, &c.), thus creating the
> "out" or the explanation that it is the prose style of the /Creatures/,
> not the Creator, that has gone "flaccid."
>
> Once Durrell creates the fiction that /Balthazar /is to follow
> /Justine/, then this game truly becomes genius--revision and
> self-criticism of style as storyline and drama.
>
> Seen in these terms, I think, we can better understand that the "plot"
> of /Justine /is in its prose "style"--when and how the style starts,
> when and how it eddies, when and how it returns to start afresh, and
> when and how it finds or does not find its way to new resources.
>
> Did "shop girls" read such things? Oh dear. . . .
>
> Charles
>
> --
> **********************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Department of English
> Wake Forest University
> slighcl at wfu.edu
> **********************
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20080203/62c1fe10/attachment-0001.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:04:54 -0700
> From: James Gifford <odos.fanourios at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] an assassin of polish
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <47A656A6.6080808 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> As someone who likes Burgess and even teaches _Clockwork Orange_
> (although I *do not* think it is a "great" novel), isn't the response
> here obvious? If Burgess wants to find, ahem, prose that "melts into a
> romantic wash a little too close to the old lending-library
> sadistic-sentimental exotic escapism beloved of the dreaming shop-girl,"
> couldn't he look at that sentence itself?
>
> I think the answer fall far closer to home. Burgess saw himself in much
> this same guise, and that made Durrell direct competition.
>
> Also, I have to agree with Charles. The polyphonic voices of the text
> make it difficult to hammer it down to a single narrator. After all,
> how could we link the narrative voice of the first page of _Monsieur_
> with that of the first pages of _Justine_? Perhaps in the word
> "brndled," but in little else. Even within the Quartet, the duckshoot
> seems to have found its own, while Arnauti is given to dramatics that
> seem to vanish by the time _Balthazar_ arrives. The voices here differ,
> and that would also answer Burgess' challenge in provocative ways.
>
> Still, what of a stylistic analysis of Burgess' _Clockwork Orange_
> against _Justine_. Wipe away the rather simplistic (though appealing)
> social commentary in Burgess' novel, and I think style is clearly
> accorded first position in both books -- on that level, Burgess creates
> one catchy voice, but I think Durrell goes a bit further.
>
> Still, I liked the reminder of Steiner's comments on Durrell's style.
> That seems spot on.
>
> Best,
> James
>
> slighcl wrote:
>> I feel responsible for the way in which my copying-and-pasting from a
>> pdf doc made a hash of Burgess's prose. Here is a corrected version--
>>>
>>>> It is a prose-poetry whose rhythms tend to flaccidity and
>>>> which sometimes
>>>>
>>>> melts into a romantic wash a little too close to the old
>>>> lending-library sadistic-sentimental
>>>>
>>>> exotic escapism beloved of the dreaming shop-girl. For all
>>>> that,
>>>>
>>>> there are passages which are powerful and masterly-sharply
>>>> and exactly observant.
>>>>
>>>> But the final impression is of something shimmering in a
>>>> rather old-fashioned
>>>>
>>>> fin de si?cle way, suggesting languor and satiety after
>>>> elaborate self-indulgence.
>>>>
>>>> The decadence smells of stale incense.
>>>>
>>>> (/The Novel Now: A Guide to Contemporary Fiction/ 97)
>>>>
>> Just as a quick reaction to Burgess's pronouncements, I would ask
>> Burgess--or perhaps his frittering shade in Hades, supplicated by small
>> ponds of bourbon--to point out where the "flaccidity" occurs. If
>> Burgess is thinking of /Justine/, then it all gets a bit more
>> complicated. Context is all. Durrell has written his prose under
>> multiple masks (Darley, Arnauti, Pursewarden, &c.), thus creating the
>> "out" or the explanation that it is the prose style of the /Creatures/,
>> not the Creator, that has gone "flaccid."
>>
>> Once Durrell creates the fiction that /Balthazar /is to follow
>> /Justine/, then this game truly becomes genius--revision and
>> self-criticism of style as storyline and drama.
>>
>> Seen in these terms, I think, we can better understand that the "plot"
>> of /Justine /is in its prose "style"--when and how the style starts,
>> when and how it eddies, when and how it returns to start afresh, and
>> when and how it finds or does not find its way to new resources.
>>
>> Did "shop girls" read such things? Oh dear. . . .
>>
>> Charles
>>
>> --
>> **********************
>> Charles L. Sligh
>> Department of English
>> Wake Forest University
>> slighcl at wfu.edu
>> **********************
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ILDS mailing list
>> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
>> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:46:42 -0500
> From: slighcl <slighcl at wfu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [ilds] an assassin of polish
> To: ilds at lists.uvic.ca
> Message-ID: <47A68AA2.101 at wfu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Let me venture another observation or two about the standard criticisms
> of Durrell's style. I hate that I am not up for citing specific
> critics, but then I am up late and want to sleep.
>
> First, most criticism of the style voices disapproval of Durrell's
> /lushness /or /exoticism/. I cry foul when I hear such judgments, not
> because Durrell is not lush or exotic, but because the criticism implies
> that the writer's imagination should be tamed or disciplined to some
> normative sort of prose style, a prose connected point-for-point with a
> corrective (politically or otherwise) sense of reality. Even an
> educated and cultured stylist like Burgess seems to be following in this
> line of criticism, a most curious thing. If I could scan it, I would
> say that Burgess thinks a good stylist should stay on point, writing
> always in his characteristic style. Again, Durrell's changing style
> evidences a more complex view of character and psychology. If character
> and psychology are multiplex and changing, then the styles expressing
> them will follow by being multiplex and changing.
>
> I will also admit that in /Justine /and in the /Quartet /Durrell is
> often working in haste. That the magic occurs even if the unevenness
> and cobbling show through makes it all the more amazing.
>
> A final point: Like Byron in /Don Juan/, Durrell equally mistrusts the
> prescriptive and proscriptive, I think. Thus he comes up short because,
> mistrusting "messages," he has no interest or inclination to stay "on
> message." That last point may be at the heart of the deepest critical
> suspicion of Durrell. He had loyalty to himself, not a program. For
> Byron and for Durrell--both of whom favor fragmentation, ellipses, a
> cosmopolitan range of reference, and a disinterest in neat
> endings--style reflects a world-view.
>
> Charles
>
> --
> **********************
> Charles L. Sligh
> Department of English
> Wake Forest University
> slighcl at wfu.edu
> **********************
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20080203/0e7994e0/attachment-0001.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 17:28:47 +1100
> From: "Denise Tart & David Green" <dtart at bigpond.net.au>
> Subject: [ilds] On Message
> To: "Durrel" <ilds at lists.uvic.ca>
> Message-ID: <00aa01c866f7$330fae00$0201a8c0 at MumandDad>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> In my view, the closest Durrell came to staying "on message" was with
> Bitter Lemons. there is a defined angle here, but it's no polemik. A
> series of scenes and thoughts about an unfolding tragedy that to my mind
> are about a failure of intelligence, a failure of management.
>
> DG
>
>
> Denise Tart & David Green
> 16 William Street, Marrickville NSW 2204
>
> +61 2 9564 6165
> 0412 707 625
> dtart at bigpond.net.au
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20080204/42d84440/attachment-0001.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds
>
>
> End of ILDS Digest, Vol 11, Issue 3
> ***********************************
>
More information about the ILDS
mailing list