[ilds] "stale incense"

[James Gifford]

Charles,

I like your thoughts here, and especially Durrell's look back not only 
to his modernist forebears but also to the decadents, dandies, and 
clean-shaven Victorians...  I'm thinking even as early as _The Black 
Book_, in which "sperm whales ... prowl like bardic Tennysons, muttering 
in their beards" or "There are four gutted candles in the room.  Yes, 
and the first edition of Baudelaire."  We can see Eliot when "Tarquin is 
lying on the operating table," but Wilde is far more prominent in the 
references directly to "De Profundis," its echoes in the book's letters, 
the shift from Huysmans' yellow book in _Dorian Gray_ to the Black Book 
itself, and the "impotence" of being earnest.

If we want that mascluinely terse prose of a Hemingway, we ought to look 
to Durrell's poetry instead, or at least the likes of "Carol on Corfu" 
or "Blind Homer."  Just the stylistic range from the poetry to the prose 
ought to alert us to its conscious construction (not that Durrell's 
intentions need to limit our readings).

It's worth noting too that much of Durrell's 2nd UNESCO lecture on 
Shakespeare is inspired by Wilde's "The Picture of Mr. W.H."  I don't 
think the 90s were ever very far from his mind or his pen.  In part, I 
suspect that's behind the discomfort with his obvious modernist influences.

Best,
Jamie

slighcl wrote:
> 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
> **********************