[ilds] "stale incense"

[slighcl]

On 2/4/2008 3:38 PM, Mark Valentine wrote:
> 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.
>
>   
Thanks for the tip, Mark.  "Stale incense" rings true to the /fin de 
siècle/ moment with which Burgess seems to be flogging Durrell's 
"flaccid" prose.

Incense also leads back through Darley to the Romantic poet Darley and 
his Phoenix:

>         O Blest unfabled Incense Tree,
>         That burns in glorious Araby,
>         With red scent chalicing the air,
>         Till earth-life grow Elysian there!

Now that we have outlived both the modernists and their apologists' need 
to tilt at Victorian windmills, I wonder why we should see decadence, 
artifice, and a /fin de siècle/ stylistic sensibility as bad things for 
Durrell?  Gautier, Pater, Huysmans, Wilde, Beardsley, Dunsany, 
Machen--if we follow Gawsworth (novel idea) and do not accept the notion 
that the 1880s and 1890s were a dead end, then perhaps we could start to 
learn what resources Durrell discovered there. . . .

A point of comparison:  Cavafy's Alexandrian sensibility is most 
"Alexandrian" because it is, in some real sense, also a hothouse 
artifice.  This is not to question Cavafy's credibility as a "real 
Alexandrian"--and I am not interested in asking about that--but rather 
to observe that Cavafy came of age and schooled himself in the British 
and French poets and critics and painters and musicians of the European 
/fin de siècle/.  Peter Jeffreys has written about this in "'Aesthetic 
to the point of affliction': Cavafy and English Aestheticism" (/Journal 
of Modern Greek Studies /24, no. 1 [May 2006]: 57-89).  I'll hazard that 
Durrell finds a lineage to that sensibility via Cavafy, Gawsworth, and 
(he would grimace and protest, but yes certainly) Eliot. . . .

I have no doubt that Durrell could self-monitor and that he knew when 
his style modulated that way.  He was not unable to catch his own 
moments of mannerism and diagnose them quite accurately:  For instance, 
"Pombal's gaunt bedroom had become vaguely /fin de siècle/ and was as 
clean as a new pin.  Oscar Wilde might have admitted it as a set for the 
first act of a play" (/Justine /3.1). 

The pressing question for me is not whether or not Durrell's prose fits 
a falsely-assumed, prescriptive and proscriptive Modernist notion of 
style as necessarily lean and taut and (supposedly) male.  Again, I am 
surprised that Burgess needs to diagnose Durrell's style as un-masculine 
("flaccid" is the code) and fit for "shop-girls," but I do wonder at 
Burgess's rather dated sense of aesthetics, class, and chivalry.  That 
was 1968 after all.  What in the world was he thinking?  Now we should 
ask, what are the particular qualities and effects and resources of this 
particular writer's style?  And how did Durrell come to write so 
marvelously against the larger stylistic trend of his times?

Charles

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************

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