The Melancholy Korean

Part 1

It had been his father’s wish that Manning should go into the Church; but the thought disgusted him; and when he reached Oxford, his tastes, his ambitions, his successes at the Union, all seemed to mark him out for a political career. He was a year junior to Samuel Wilberforce, and a year senior to Gladstone. In those days the Union was the recruiting-ground for young politicians; Ministers came down from London to listen to the debates; and a few years later the Duke of Newcastle gave Gladstone a pocket borough on the strength of his speech at the Union against the Reform Bill. To those three young men, indeed, the whole world lay open. Were they not rich, well-connected, and endowed with an infinite capacity for making speeches? The event justified the highest expectations of their friends; for the least distinguished of the three died a bishop. The only danger lay in another direction.

Watch, my dear Samuel, [wrote the elder Wilberforce to his son] watch with jealousy whether you find yourself unduly solicitous about acquitting yourself; whether you are too much chagrined when you fail, or are puffed up by your success.  Undue solicitude about popular estimation is a weakness against which all real Christians must guard with the most jealous watchfulness.  The more you can retain the impression of your being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses of the invisible world, to use the Scripture phrase, the more you will be armed against this besetting sin.

But suddenly it seemed as if such a warning could, after all, have very little relevance to Manning; for, on his leaving Oxford, the brimming cup was dashed from his lips. He was already beginning to dream of himself in the House of Commons, the solitary advocate of some great cause whose triumph was to be eventually brought about by his extraordinary efforts, when his father was declared a bankrupt, and all his hopes of a political career came to an end for ever.

William Wilberforce

***

It is impossible to close this review of Mr. Fox’s parliamentary exertions, without adverting to the object of his very last motion in the House of Commons ; — an object for which he had laboured with many eminent men of all political parties and opinions, for nearly twenty years — its accomplishment which followed but a few months afterwards, would have raised our country, even if she had no other illustration, to stand unrivalled amongst nations, and to look up to God Himself to pronounce— ” Well done thou good and faithful servant” — the ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE leaves every other triumph of humanity and justice almost out of sight behind it, and well entitled Mr. Fox to declare, “that if, during the forty years he had sat in parliament, he had been, so fortunate as to accomplish that object, and THAT ONLY, he should think he had done ENOUGH, and could retire from public life with the conscious satisfaction that he had done his duty.”

One short sentence more belongs imperiously to this subject — the name of WILBERFORCE cannot be separated from it — it is of the utmost importance to mankind perpetually to remember, that immortal honor and reputation are the sure rewards of those by whose virtuous, patient, unconquerable perseverance, the blessed cause of universal freedom has been advanced, and the lingering progression of the world urged on in its slow and mysterious course.

“Poets,” Henri Michaux has written, “love trips.” — Richard Ellmann on James Joyce

Modern Alexandria is scarcely a city of the soul. Founded upon cotton with the concurrence of onions and eggs, ill built, ill planned, ill drained—many hard things can be said against it, and most are said by its inhabitants. Yet to some of them, as they traverse the streets, a delightful experience can occur. They hear their own name proclaimed in firm yet meditative accents—accents that seem not so much to expect an answer as to pay homage to the fact of individuality. They turn and see a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe. His arms are extended, possibly. “Oh Cavafy…”

Yes, it is Mr. Cavafy, and he is going either from his flat to the office, or from his office to the flat. If the former, he vanishes when seen, with a slight gesture of despair. If the latter, he may be prevailed upon to begin a sentence—an immense complicated yet shapely sentence, full of parentheses that never get mixed and of reservations that really do reserve; a sentence that moves with logic to its foreseen end, yet to an end that is always more vivid and thrilling than one foresaw. Sometimes the sentence is finished in the street, sometimes the traffic murders it, sometimes it lasts into the flat. It deals with the tricky behavior of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus in 1096, or with olives, their possibilities and price, or with the fortunes of friends, or George Eliot, or the dialects of the interior of Asia Minor. It is delivered with equal ease in Greek, English, or French. And despite its intellectual richness and human outlook, despite the matured charity of its judgments, one feels that it too stands at a slight angle to the universe: it is the sentence of a poet.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty

May it please Your Majesty:

We, the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge, beg leave humbly to approach Your Majesty with the assurance of our participation in the sorrow which has befallen the Royal House by the death of Your Majesty’s august Mother, Queen Alexandra.

The sixty-two years which have gone by since the date when as an affianced bride She set food upon these shores, and achieved in a day the second Danish conquest of England, more durable than the first, did but strengthen Her hold upon the affections which She had won, and build Her an ever surer home in the hearts of Her adopted people. Those inward and outward graces, that charm of bearing and address which was the visible effluence of a kind and gentle nature, that tender pity for suffering and misfortune, that prompt and overflowing generosity in their relief, will long be treasured in memory by the land which was privileged to know them; and their departure from earth, even in the fulness of years and the due course of nature, is yet mourned as premature. High and low, rich and poor, are united and drawn near to their Sovereign by a common sorrow at the loss of One beloved by all; and we, in loyal attachment to the Person and the Throne of Her Son, presume to lay at Your Majesty’s feet the expression of our deep and reverent sympathy.

One of the highest points of English prose is probably reached in the Authorised Version of the sixtieth chapter of Isaiah. So utterly magnificent is the rendering that even those dolefullest of creatures—the very Ziim and Ochim and Iim of the fauna of our literature—the Revisers of 1870-1885, hardly dared to touch it at all. To compare it with the same passage in other languages is a liberal education in despising and discarding the idle predominance of “the subject.” The subject is the same in all, and the magnificence of the imagery can hardly be obscured by any. Of the Hebrew I cannot unfortunately speak, for at the time when I knew a very little Hebrew I knew nothing about literary criticism; and now, when I know perhaps a little about literary criticism, I have entirely lost my Hebrew. But I can read it with some critical competence in Greek and in Latin, in French and in German; and I can form some idea of what its rhetorical value is in Italian and in Spanish. That any one of the modern languages (even Luther’s German) can vie with ours I can hardly imagine any one, who can appreciate both the sound and the meaning of English, maintaining for a moment. With the Septuagint and the Vulgate it is different, for the Greek of the one has not quite lost the glory of the most glorious of all languages, and has in places even acquired a certain additional uncanny witchery from its eastern associations; while as for the Vulgate Latin “there is no mistake about that.” But we can meet and beat them both. Let us take the overture and the crowning passage in the three, also taking (though with all due ceremony of apology) the liberty of dividing and quantifying all. 

Arise, | shine; | for thy light | is come, | and the glory | of the Lord | is risen | upon thee.‖  For, behold, | the darkness | shall cover | the earth, and gross | darkness | the people; but the Lord | shall arise | upon thee, | and his glory | shall be seen | upon thee.‖  And the Gentiles | shall come | to thy light, | and kings | to the brightness | of thy rising.

The sun | shall be no more | thy light | by day; | neither | for brightness | shall the moon | give light unto thee: | but the Lord | shall be to thee | an everlast|ing light, | and thy God | thy glory.‖ Thy sun | shall no more | go down; neither | shall thy moon | withdraw herself: | for the Lord | shall be | thine everlast|ing light,| and the days | of thy mourning | shall be ended. |

Φωτίζου | φωτίζου | ῾Iερουσαλήμ, | ἥκει γάρ | σου τὸ φῶς, | καὶ ἡ δόξα | κυρίου | ἐπὶ σὲ |
ἀνατέταλκεν. | 
Ἰδοὺ | σκότος | καλύ|ψει γῆν, | καὶ γνὸφος | ἐπ’ ἔθνη, | ἐπὶ δὲ σὲ | φανήσεται |
κύριος, | καὶ ἡ δόξα | αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ σὲ | ὀφθήσεται. | καὶ πορεύσονται | βασιλεῖς τῷ φωτί σου, | καὶ ἔθνη | τῇ λαμ|πρότητί σου.

καὶ οὐκ ἔσται | σοι ἔτι | ὁ ἥλιος | εἰς φῶς | ἡμέρας, | οὐδὲ ἀνατολὴ | σελήνης | φωτιεῖ σοι | τὴν νύκτα, | ἀλλ’ ἔσται σοι | κύριος | φῶς αἰώνιον | καὶ ὁ θεὸς | δόξα σου.  | 
Οὐ γὰρ δύσεται | ὁ ἥλιός σοι, | καὶ ἡ σελήνη | σοι οὐκ | ἐκλείψει· ἔσται γάρ | σοι κύριος φῶς αἰώνιον, | καὶ ἀναπληρω|θήσονται | αἱ ἡμέραι | τοῦ πένθους σου.

Surge, | illuminare! | Jerusalem! | quia venit | lumen | tuum | et gloria | domini | super te | orta est. | Quia ecce | tenebrae | operient | terram | et caligo | populos; | super te | autem | orietur | Dominus | et gloria | eius | in te | videbitur. | Et ambulabunt | gentes | in lumine tuo | et reges | in splendore | ortus | tui.

Non erit tibi | amplius | Sol ad | lucendum | per diem, | nec splendor | lunae illu|minabit te: | sed erit tibi | Dominus | in lucem | sempiternam | et Deus | tuus | in gloriam | tuam. | Non occidet |ultra | Sol tuus | et luna | tua | non minuetur: | quia erit | tibi | Dominus | in lucem |  sempiternam | et complebuntur | dies | luctus | tui.

Here the Seventy undoubtedly cut the worst figure, though they may have the best language: and it might be only fair to give a passage or two from either of the Wisdoms (of Solomon or of Sirach) to show what they could do when they were more at home in matter. They seem to have been dazzled by the imaginative magnificence of the passage. The mere repetition of φωτίζου, though it loses a chance, need not be, and is not, bad in itself; but it certainly is not assisted by the necessary reoccurrence of φῶς, which the Latin also does not escape, but which we luckily do. They have been far too prodigal of short syllables; and though, of course, others may not agree with my footing or quantifying of ἀνατέταλκεν, no arrangement will get rid of the six consecutive shorts. σκότος and γνὸφος is not a pretty assonance, and the rhymes of φανήσεται and ὀφθήσεται are even less appropriate. Nor, yet again, is the homœoteleuton of φωτί σου and λαμ|πρότητί σου at all agreeable, at least to my ears when they remember the close of the Platonic Apology. Still, it is grand (especially the last two verses), but it is very much grander in the Vulgate. The substitution of Surge, illuminare for the double φωτίζου is a great gain, for you get the varied lights of the vowels and the varied cadence of the feet. The dissyllabic possessives tuum, tuo, tui, are a clear improvement on the cases of σύ, especially when it comes after nouns; and mere homœoteleuton is avoided, except in the case of sempiternam and tuam, which hardly counts. But the greatest improvement is in the general rhythm, where St. Jerome may have had the advantage in individual genius, and must have had that of the old “Itala” before him, as well as thorough familiarity with a dialect certainly better in relation to classical Latin than that of the Alexandrian Jews (though, as above observed, not to be scoffed at) was to classical Greek.

Something, nay a good deal, of this improved rhythm has passed into the Authorized Version, of course through its predecessors as well as directly; but the further advance is astounding. In the very opening we have the benefit of that glorious vowel i which, in perfection (though the Germans have something of it in their ei), belongs only to English. Its clarion sound is thrice repeated in five words (“thy” has it slightly modified and muffled in tone) with indifferent consonants preceding and following in each case, and contrasted in the strongest and most euphonious manner possible with the long o’s of “Glory of the Lord,” while the vigour of the contrast shades off into the duller resonances of “risen upon thee.” I have spoken of the bad effect of σκότος and γνὸφος. Tenebrae and caligo are an immense improvement on these, but they cannot compare with the further gain of the retention and amplification in “darkness” and “gross darkness.” In turn of phrase it is the same: a dozen examples could be given, but one will suffice — the unimaginable betterment of “splendor lunae illuminabit te” (good as it is in itself) by “for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee.”

But it is in the total rhythm and harmonic ordonnance that the game is most surely ours. That we borrowed both fiddle and rosin to some extent has been admitted; but we can pay the debt, and keep our own increase, and be rich beyond counting. The opening clause, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come,” is a possible verse; but it is not an obtrusive one, and any suggestion of it being verse at all is at once quenched by the cadence of the second half. It is the same with the next, and throughout; that inevitable nisus towards metre which the ancient critics had noticed being invariably counteracted, neutralised, and turned into “the other harmony” by succeeding phrases which achieve the prose suggestion and negative the poetic. As for the second section (vv. 19 and 20) I do not know how many thousand times in my life (the number is not poetical) I have said these verses over to myself with ever-fresh perception of their inexhaustible sweetness and splendour. Nowhere, perhaps, is the enormous advantage which absence of inflection and its identical terminations confers better illustrated. We have escaped the continued -ου and -εται of the Greek, and wearisome am’s and um’s of the Latin. We are free to devote ourselves to that co-ordination of varied rhythm and vowel-music which belongs to prose. The fluctuation of the phrase-movement, the slight touches of alliteration here and there, the soft trochaic endings not too frequently sweetening the bolder iambs or monosyllables, are ambrosial; and the final phrase of an anapaest and two third pæons gives a dying close that no verse can outgo—that very little verse can equal.

The late Dr. Arnold of Rugby, amongst many novel ideas, which found no welcome even with his friends, insisted earnestly and often upon this — viz., that a great danger was threatening our social system in Great Britain, from the austere separation existing between our educated and our working classes, and that a more conciliatory style of intercourse between these two bisections of our social body must be established, or else — a tremendous revolution. This is not the place to discuss so large a question; and I shall content myself with making two remarks. The first is this — that, although a change of the sort contemplated by Dr. Arnold might, if considered as an operative cause, point forward to some advantages, on the other hand, if considered as an effect it points backward to a less noble constitution of society by much than we already enjoy. Those nations whose upper classes speak paternally and caressingly to the working classes, and to servants in particular, do so because they speak from the lofty stations of persons having civil rights to those who have none. Two centuries back, when a military chieftain addressed his soldiers as ‘my children,’ he did so because he was an irresponsible despot exercising uncontrolled powers of life and death. From the moment when legal rights have been won for the poorest classes, inevitable respect on the part of the higher classes extinguishes for ever the affectionate style which belongs naturally to the state of pupilage or infantine bondage.

That is my first remark: my second is this — that the change advocated by Dr. Arnold, whether promising or not, is practically impossible; or possible, I should say, through one sole channel — viz., that of domestic servitude. There only do the two classes concerned come hourly into contact. On that stage only they meet without intrusion upon each other. There only is an opening for change. And a wise mistress, who possesses tact enough to combine a gracious affability with a self-respect that never slumbers nor permits her to descend into gossip, will secure the attachment of all young and impressionable women. Such a mistress was Mrs. K———. She had won the gratitude of her servants from the first, by making the amplest provision for their comfort; their confidence, by listening with patience, and counselling with prudence; and their respect, by refusing to intermeddle with gossiping personalities always tending to slander. To this extent, perhaps, most mistresses might follow her example. But the happiness which reigned in Mrs. K———‘s house at this time depended very much on special causes. All the eight persons had the advantage of youth; and the three young female servants were under the spell of fascination, such as could rarely be counted on, from a spectacle held up hourly before their eyes, that spectacle which of all others is the most touching to womanly sensibilities, and which any one of these servants might hope, without presumption, to realise for herself — the spectacle, I mean, of a happy marriage union between two persons, who lived in harmony so absolute with each other, as to be independent of the world outside.

How tender and self-sufficing such an union might be, they saw with their own eyes. The season was then in midwinter, which of itself draws closer all household ties. Their own labours, as generally in respectable English services, were finished for the most part by two o’clock; and as the hours of evening drew nearer, when the master’s return might be looked for without fail, beautiful was the smile of anticipation upon the gentle features of the mistress: even more beautiful the reflex of that smile, half-unconscious, and half-repressed, upon the features of the sympathising handmaidens. One child, a little girl of two years old, had then crowned the happiness of the K———‘s. She naturally lent her person at all times, and apparently in all places at once, to the improvement of family groups. My brother and myself, who had been trained from infancy to the courteous treatment of servants, filled upon a vacancy in the graduated scale of ascending ages, and felt in varying degrees the depths of a peace which we could not adequately understand or appreciate. Bad tempers there were none amongst us; nor any opening for personal jealousies; nor, through the privilege of our common youth, either angry recollections breathing from the past, or fretting anxieties gathering from the future. The spirit of hope and the spirit of peace (so it seemed to me, when looking back upon this profound calm) had, for their own enjoyment, united in a sisterly league to blow a solitary bubble of visionary happiness — and to sequester from the unresting hurricanes of life one solitary household of eight persons within a four months’ lull, as if within some Arcadian tent on some untrodden wilderness, withdrawn from human intrusion, or even from knowledge, by worlds of mist and vapour.

How deep was that lull! and yet, as in a human atmosphere, how frail!

August 26, 1853

Trouville

To Louise Colet

What seems to me the highest and most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, nor to arouse our lust or rage, but to do what nature does—that is, to set us dreaming. The most beautiful works have this quality. They are serene in aspect, inscrutable. The means by which they act on us are various: they are as motionless as cliffs, stormy as the sea, leafy, green and murmurous as forests, forlorn as the desert, blue as the sky. Homer, Rabelais, Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Goethe seem to me pitiless. They are unfathomable, infinite, manifold. Through small apertures we glimpse abysses whose sombre depths turn us faint. And yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary tenderness. It is like the brilliance of light, the smile of the sun; and it is calm, calm and strong.” 

(translated by Francis Steegmuller)

When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired — though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it’s just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better to stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighborhoods need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on — in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It’s clear you’re not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

Why did I turn to poetry?

Ideas of a certain kind, thoughts of a certain nap, can properly be expressed in no other way, not merely one-take ideas, rather substances requiring a specific form, the way brandy suitably calls for a snifter, absinthe a drip glass, and champagne an eight-ounce “tulip.” Any vehicle of a creative sort is a challenge, furthermore, and to discover a way to say things or to paint things or to sing things is arguably to have them already half done. 

(The Lollipop Trollops)

Mr chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.

And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their meaning was revealed to me.

Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsman: we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity.

You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name.

But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out of their bondage, nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightenings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw. 

“Oh, yes, let people compare me to Joyce by all means, but my English is patball to his championship game.” — Nabokov

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, — glittering like the morning-star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour, and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiments, and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

Remarkably material also is the writer’s attempt to control his own energies so he can work.  He must be sufficiently excited to rouse himself to the task at hand, and not so excited he cannot sit down to it. He must have faith sufficient to impel and renew the work, yet not so much faith he fancies he is writing well when he is not.

For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. If you were a Zulu warrior banging on your shield with your spear for a couple of hours along with a hundred other Zulu warriors, you might be able to prepare yourself to write. If you were an Aztec maiden who knew months in advance that on a certain morning the priests were going to throw you into a hot volcano, and if you spent those months undergoing a series of purification rituals and drinking dubious liquids, you might, when the time came, be ready to write. But how, if you are neither Zulu warrior or Aztec maiden, do you prepare yourself, all alone, to enter an extraordinary state on an ordinary morning?

4 ἀλλ’ ἐν παντὶ συνιστάνοντες ἑαυτοὺς ὡς θεοῦ διάκονοι, ἐν ὑπομονῇ πολλῇ, ἐν θλίψεσιν, ἐν ἀνάγκαις, ἐν στενοχωρίαις, 5 ἐν πληγαῖς, ἐν φυλακαῖς, ἐν ἀκαταστασίαις, ἐν κόποις, ἐν ἀγρυπνίαις, ἐν νηστείαις, 6 ἐν ἁγνότητι, ἐν γνώσει, ἐν μακροθυμίᾳ, ἐν χρηστότητι, ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ, ἐν ἀγάπῃ ἀνυποκρίτῳ, 7 ἐν λόγῳ ἀληθείας, ἐν δυνάμει θεοῦ· διὰ τῶν ὅπλων τῆς δικαιοσύνης τῶν δεξιῶν καὶ ἀριστερῶν, 8 διὰ δόξης καὶ ἀτιμίας, διὰ δυσφημίας καὶ εὐφημίας· ὡς πλάνοι καὶ ἀληθεῖς, 9 ὡς ἀγνοούμενοι καὶ ἐπιγινωσκόμενοι, ὡς ἀποθνῄσκοντες καὶ ἰδοὺ ζῶμεν, ὡς παιδευόμενοι καὶ μὴ θανατούμενοι, 10 ὡς λυπούμενοι ἀεὶ δὲ χαίροντες, ὡς πτωχοὶ πολλοὺς δὲ πλουτίζοντες, ὡς μηδὲν ἔχοντες καὶ πάντα κατέχοντες. 11 Τὸ στόμα ἡμῶν ἀνέῳγεν πρὸς ὑμᾶς, Κορίνθιοι, ἡ καρδία ἡμῶν πεπλάτυνται·

4 But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, 5 In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; 6 By pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, 7 By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, 8 By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; 9 As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; 10 As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. 11 O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged.

“Roderick Hudson” was my first attempt at a novel, a long fiction with a “complicated” subject, and I recall again the quite uplifted sense with which my idea, such as it was, permitted me at last to put quite out to sea.  I had but hugged the shore on sundry previous small occasions; bumping about, to acquire skill, in the shallow waters and sandy coves of the “short story” and master as yet of no vessel constructed to carry a sail.  The subject of “Roderick” figured to me vividly this employment of canvas, and I have not forgotten, even after long years, how the blue southern sea seemed to spread immediately before me and the breath of the spice-islands to be already in the breeze.  Yet it must even then have begun for me too, the ache of fear, that was to become so familiar, of being unduly tempted and led on by “developments”; which is but the desperate discipline of the question involved in them. They are of the very essence of the novelist’s process, and it is by their aid, fundamentally, that his idea takes form and lives; but they impose on him, through the principle of continuity that rides them, a proportionate anxiety.  They are the very condition of interest, which languishes and drops without them; the painter’s subject consisting ever, obviously, of the related state, to each other, of certain figures and things.  To exhibit these relations, once they have all been recognized, is to “treat” his idea, which involves neglecting none of those that directly minister to interest; the degree of that directness remaining meanwhile a matter of highly difficult appreciation, and one on which felicity of form and composition, as a part of the total effect, mercilessly rests.  Up to what point is such development indispensable to the interest?  What is the point beyond which it ceases to be rigorously so?  Where, for the complete expression of one’s subject, does a particular relation stop—giving way to some other not concerned in that expression?

Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so.  He is in the perpetual predicament that the continuity of things is the whole matter, for him, of comedy and tragedy; that this continuity is never, by the space of an instant or an inch, broken, and that, to do anything at all, he has at once intensely to consult and intensely to ignore it.  All of which will perhaps pass but for a supersubtle way of pointing the plain moral that a young embroiderer of the canvas of life soon began to work in terror, fairly, of the vast expanse of that surface, of the boundless number of its distinct perforations for the needle, and of the tendency inherent in his many-coloured flowers and figures to cover and consume as many as possible of the little holes.  The development of the flower, of the figure, involved thus an immense counting of holes and a careful selection among them.  That would have been, it seemed to him, a brave enough process, were it not the very nature of the holes so to invite, to solicit, to persuade, to practise positively a thousand lures and deceits.  The prime effort of so sustained a system, so prepared a surface, is to lead on and on; while the fascination of following resides, by the same token, in the presumability somewhere of a convenient, of a visibility-appointed stopping-place.  Art would be easy indeed if, by a fond power disposed to “patronise” it, such conveniences, such simplifications, had been provided.  We have. as the case stands, to invent and establish them, to arrive at them by a difficult, dire process of selection and comparison, of surrender and sacrifice. The very meaning of expertness is acquired courage to brace one’s self for the cruel crisis from the moment one sees it grimly loom.

New York Review of Books

January 30, 1986

To the Editors:

In your issue of September 26, 1985, a D.J. Enright reviews Leon Wieseltier’s review in The New Republic, May 20, 1985, of my chap-book, Women and Angels, which was published in a limited edition by The Jewish Publication Society of Philadelphia; and he also, in part, refers to the pieces in the book; and he does it so oddly and so unacceptably that he ought to be answered.

Mr. Enright does not like my book or me—I have never met him—but he does not contradict Wieseltier’s review to any great degree—or so it seems; the matter is not clear—and Mr. Wieseltier, blackguarding me as he goes along, refers to my work as “Brodkey’s literature” and this is, I am afraid, a major claim. Enright does not clearly disavow it so much as he takes a threatening stance towards it. Wieseltier began his review by wondering at the silence which surrounded “Brodkey’s literature” and he “sensitively” ascribed it to a prejudice against small presses. Wieseltier and I met but only once and we did not speak for more than a few minutes. In his review, he perhaps meant that I was willfully self-determined and had in my keeping a literary power I had negotiated with no one when he used the phrase “an unpleasant man.”

Now, the imputation of mediocrity to the NYR is a sorer thing than it would be for any other publication. When Enright writes that he agrees with Wieseltier that of the three pieces, “the first two pieces are chiefly impressive in establishing that Brodkey is an unpleasant man immensely alive”—and then Enright retracts the “immensely”—Enright’s remark seems to be grounded in personal knowledge of me and of my life and is supported by the authority of the NYR. A piece of writing cannot establishanything very much about its author’s life—it can supply grounds for conjecture. The issue in a review in the NYR is whether I am an unpleasant writer or not and if so why. I know of no other occasion in the last few decades on which such a remark, as a figure of speech concerning the narrative tone, or directly meant, has been applied in English in a review to a living writer. One must assume here that the reviewer and the NYR were showing off that they felt they could do as they liked in relation both to a text of mine and to my life.

Considering the extent and persistence and violence of misquotation from the stories in Enright’s review and the wild foolishness of the literary statements, including the ones of praise, and the personal and even sexual and extraordinarily intimate tone of the piece, it seems to me the NYR, when it decided to publish Enright’s review, should have placed it among its Personals. But the piece was placed among the reviews; and that calls into question the professionalism of the NYR.

To list the misquotations with the correct quotations and to correct the inaccurate or wrong literary statements in Enright’s rather short piece takes approximately nine thousand (boring) words; I’ve done it, somewhat talentlessly. And the space I would be allotted here is 3,500 words, not enough to disentangle one review from the other, not enough to deal with imputations, oddities of diction, not enough, in short, to be honest with readers. I think that being honest with readers comes first, particularly in a “shameless age” such as this one when the compact of honesty between journals of opinion and readers has so often been broken. Anyone who wants to see the rather dreary account of misquotations and foolish remarks in Enright’s piece can by writing to me at 255 West 88th Street, NYC, NY, 10024, and enclosing an addressed and stamped envelope; and I will send them the long answer. I will pay for the Xerox of the long answer, if not with pleasure, with resignation: but in the name of honesty.

I do wish that the editors of the NYR would be more direct in making public whatever it is they do think. I wish that the standards of the NYR required it of them. After all, what comes first in any given literary moment is not ever a text—now or in any literary period—but the preeminence of editors and entrepreneurs of culture. I am not being ironic. The importance of a text appears only over time and only person by person and not politically but only in relation to meaning—(and action).

Harold Brodkey

New York City

Much has been written about the life of the mind.  I find the phrase itself markedly dreamy.  The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so its owner, but I would be hard put to call it living.

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer—such as it is—is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation.  Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world. This explains why so many books describe the author’s childhood.  A writer’s childhood may well have been the occasion of his only firsthand experience.  Writers read literary biography, and surround themselves with other writers, deliberately to enforce in themselves the ludicrous notion that a reasonable option for occupying yourself on the planet until your life span plays itself out is sitting in a small room for the duration, in the company of pieces of paper.

Inside the small room, the writer is deeply occupied with things hitherto undreamed of.  He finds himself inventing wholly new techniques in the service of his art.  

Once, for instance, I had an office in the halls of a university English department, which was of course deserted nights and weekends.  There I began writing a terrifically abstract book of literary and aesthetic theory.  The kindly secretaries gave me a key to the faculty lounge so I could boil water for coffee at odd hours.  The faculty lounge was around the corner and out of my earshot; it had a sink, a single stove burner, and a teakettle.  The first night I used this arrangement I forgot all about the water I was boiling and scorched the kettle.  It smelled terrible, and I confessed the next day.  The secretaries said they would give me another chance.  

It was an interesting kettle.  Life is so interesting. It was a whistling kettle, but the secretaries did not want it to whistle, so they jammed the circular, perforated lid of an old percolator in its mouth.  This aluminum lid became a hot item in the teeth of all that steam, so someone had devised a method of removing it with a springy wooden clothespin.  Perhaps that same someone had carried the clothespin to the office for that purpose.  Pretty soon people simply left the clothespin clamped on the aluminum percolator lid, which in turn jutted from the kettle’s mouth. This is how things were when I got there. 

After I burned the kettle, I had to discover a method to remind myself that I had water boiling on the stove in the faculty lounge, so I stuck the clothespin on my finger.  It was, as it happened, a strong clothespin, and I had to move it every twenty seconds.  This action, and the pain, kept me in the real world until the water actually boiled.  This was the theory, and it worked.  So that is how I wrote those nights, wrote a book about high holy art:  moving a clothespin up and down my increasingly reddened little finger.  Why people want to be writers I will never know, unless it is that their lives lack a material footing.

The materiality of the writer’s life cannot be exaggerated.  If you like metaphysics, throw pots. How fondly I recall thinking, in the old days, that to write you needed paper, pen, and a lap.  How appalled I was to discover that, in order to write so much as a sonnet, you need a warehouse. You can easily get so confused writing a thirty-page chapter that in order to make an outline for the second draft, you have to rent a hall.  I have often “written” with the mechanical aid of a twenty-foot conference table.  You lay your pages along the table’s edge and pace out the work.  You walk along the rows; you weed bits, move bits, and dig out bits, bent over the rows with full hands like a gardener.  After a couple hours, you have taken an exceedingly dull nine-mile hike. You go home and soak your feet.

ACHILLES.  Add “fleet of foot”: people will think you’ve read Homer.

AMERICA.  Famous example of injustice: Columbus discovered it and it is named after Amerigo Vespucci. If it weren’t for the discovery of America, we should not be suffering from syphilis and phylloxera.  Exalt it all the same, especially if you’ve never been there.  

BACHELORS.  All self-centered, all rakes.  Should be taxed.  Headed for a lonely old age.  

BLONDES.  Hotter than brunettes.  

BOOK.  Always too long, regardless of subject.

BRUNETTES.  Hotter than blondes.  

CHATEAUBRIAND.  Best known for the cut of meat that bears his name.

CHIAROSCURO.  Meaning unknown.

CONSERVATIVE.  Politician with pot belly.

DESCARTES.  I think, therefore I am.

FUNNY.  Should be used on all occasions: “How funny!”

GREEK.  Whatever one cannot understand is Greek.

HAREM.  Always compare a rooster amid the hens to a sultan in his harem.  Every college boy dreams of this.

ILIAD.  Always followed by “Odyssey.”

LADIES.  Always come first. 

John Currin, Stamford After-Brunch

LANGUAGES (MODERN).  Our country’s ills are due to our ignorance of them.

MACHIAVELLIAN.  Word only to be spoken with a shudder.

MAESTRO.  Italian word meaning Pianist.

MELANCHOLY.  Sign of a refined heart and elevated mind.

MELON.  Nice topic for dinner-table conversation: is it a vegetable or a fruit?  The English eat it for dessert, which is astounding.

MOOSE.  Plural “meese” — an old one, but always good for a laugh.

PROGRESS.  Always “headlong” and “ill-advised.”

PROPERTY.  More sacred than religion.

PROSTITUTE.  A necessary evil.  A protection for our daughters and sisters, as long as we have bachelors.

PRUNES.  Keep the bowels loose.

PYRAMID.  Useless edifice.

SYPHILIS.  Everybody has it, more or less.

(Translated by Jacques Barzun)

SEPTIMUS:  (With his eyes on the letter) Why have you stopped?

(THOMASINA is studying a sheet of paper, a ‘Latin unseen’ lesson.  She is having some difficulty.) 

THOMASINA:  Solio insessa… in igne… seated on a throne… in the fire… and also on a ship… sedebat regina… sat the queen…

SEPTIMUS:  There is no reply, Jellaby.  Thank you.

(He folds the letter up and places it between the leaves of ‘The Couch of Eros.’)

JELLABY:  I will say so, sir.

THOMASINA:  …the wind smelling sweetly… purpureis velis… by, with or from purple sails—

SEPTIMUS:  (To Jellaby) I will have something for the post, if you would be so kind.

JELLABY:  (Leaving) Yes, sir.

THOMASINA:  …was like as to — something — by, with or from lovers — oh, Septimus! — musica tibiarum imperabat… music of pipes commanded…

SEPTIMUS:  ‘Ruled’ is better.

THOMASINA:  …the silver oars — exciting the ocean — as if — as if — amorous —

SEPTIMUS:  That is very good.

THOMASINA:  Regina reclinabat… the queen — was reclining — praeter descriptionem — indescribably — in a golden tent… like Venus and yet more —

SEPTIMUS:  Try to put some poetry into it.

THOMASINA:  How can I if there is none in the Latin?

SEPTIMUS:  Oh, a critic!

THOMASINA:  Is it Queen Dido?

SEPTIMUS:  No.

THOMASINA:  Who is the poet?

SEPTIMUS:  Known to you.

THOMASINA:  Known to me?

SEPTIMUS:  Not a Roman.

THOMASINA:  Mr. Chater?

SEPTIMUS:  Your translation is quite like Chater.

THOMASINA:  I know who it is, it is your friend Byron.

SEPTIMUS:  Lord Byron, if you please.

THOMASINA:  Mama is in love with Lord Byron. 

SEPTIMUS:  (Absorbed) Yes.  Nonsense.

THOMASINA:  It is not nonsense.  I saw them together in the gazebo.  Lord Byron was reading to her from his satire, and mama was laughing, with her head in her best position.

SEPTIMUS:  She did not understand the satire, and was showing politeness to a guest.

THOMASINA:  She is vexed with papa for his determination to alter the park, but that alone cannot account for her politeness to a guest.  She came downstairs hours before her custom.  Lord Byron was amusing at breakfast.  He paid you a tribute, Septimus.

SEPTIMUS:  Did he?

THOMASINA:  He said you were a witty fellow, and he had almost by heart an article you wrote about — well, I forget what, but it concerned a book called ‘The Maid of Turkey’ and how you would not give it to your dog for dinner.

SEPTIMUS:  Ah.  Mr Chater was at breakfast, of course.

THOMASINA:  He was, not like certain lazybones.  

SEPTIMUS:  He does not have Latin to set and mathematics to correct.

(He takes Thomasina’s lesson book from underneath Plautus and tosses it down the table to her.)

THOMASINA:  Correct?  What was incorrect in it?  (She looks into the book.)  Alpha minus?  Pooh!  What is the minus for?

SEPTIMUS:  For doing more than was asked.

THOMASINA:  You did not like my discovery?

SEPTIMUS:  A fancy is not a discovery.

THOMASINA:  A gibe is not a rebuttal.

SEPTIMUS:  (Firmely) Back to Cleopatra.

THOMASINA:  Is it Cleopatra? — I hate Cleopatra!

SEPTIMUS:  You hate her?  Why?

THOMASINA:  Everything is turned to love with her.  New love, absent love, lost love — I never knew a heroine that makes such noodles of our sex.  It only needs a Roman general to drop anchor outside the window and away goes the empire like a christening mug into a pawn shop.  If Queen Elizabeth had been a Ptolemy history would have been quite different — we would be admiring the pyramids of Rome and the great Sphinx of Verona.

SEPTIMUS:  God save us.

THOMASINA:  But instead, the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue.  Oh, Septimus!  — can you bear it?  All the lost plays of the Athenians!  Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides — thousands of poems — Aristotle’s own library brought to Egypt by the noodle’s ancestors!  How can we sleep for grief?

SEPTIMUS:  By counting our stock.  Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady!  You should not more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old.  We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind.  The procession is very long and life is very short.  We die on the march.  But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.  The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language.  Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again.  You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Alexandria had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?  I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide, was described on papyrus.  Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow.  Now, where are we?  Let me see if I can attempt a free translation for you.  At Harrow I was better at this than Lord Byron.

(He takes the piece of paper from her and scrutinizes it, testing one or two Latin phrases speculatively before committing himself.)

Yes — ‘The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne… burned on the water… the — something — the poop was beaten gold, purple the sails, and — what’s this? — oh yes, — so perfumed that —

THOMASINA:  (Catching on and furious) Cheat!

SEPTIMUS:  (Imperturbably) ’— the winds were lovesick with them…’

THOMASINA:  Cheat!

SEPTIMUS:  ’… the oars were silver which to the tune of flutes kept stroke…’

THOMASINA:  (Jumping to her feet)  Cheat!  Cheat!  Cheat!

SEPTIMUS:  (As though it were too easy to make the effort worthwhile) ‘…and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes.  For her own person, it beggared all description — she did lie in her pavilion —’

(THOMASINA, in tears of rage, is hurrying out through the garden.)

THOMASINA:  I hope you die!

(Arcadia)

March, 1886

Moscow

To Nikolay Chekhov

You have often complained to me that people did not “understand” you.  Goethe and Newton did not complain of that… Christ alone did, but He was speaking not of His ego, but of His teaching.  You are perfectly well understood.  And if you don’t understand yourself, it is not the fault of others.  

I assure you that as a brother and a friend I understand you and sympathize with you heartily.  I know all your good qualities as I know my five fingers; I value and deeply respect them.  I can enumerate those qualities if you like, to prove that I understand them.  I think you are kind to the point of spinelessness, sincere, magnanimous, unselfish, ready to share your last copper; you are free from envy and hatred; you are simple-hearted, you pity men and beasts; you are trustful, not spiteful, and do not remember evil.  You have a gift from Heaven such as others do not possess:  you have talent.  This talent places you above millions of people, for only one out of two million on earth is an artist.  Your talent sets you apart:  even if you were a toad or a tarantula, you would be respected, for to talent everything is forgiven.

You have only one fault.  Your false position, your unhappiness, your intestinal catarrh are all due to it.  It is your utter lack of culture. Please forgive me, but veritas magis amicitiae.  You see, life sets its terms.  To feel at ease among cultivated people, to be at home and comfortable with them, one must have a certain amount of culture.  Talent has brought you into that circle, you belong to it, but—you are drawn away from it, and you waver between cultured people and the tenants opposite. 

Cultured people must, in my opinion, meet the following conditions:

1.  They respect human personality, and for this reason they are always affable, gentle, civil, and ready to give in to others.  They do not raise a rumpus over a hammer or a lost eraser; when they live with you they do not make you feel that they are doing you a favor, and on leaving they do not say:  “Impossible to live with!”  They overlook noise, cold, overdone meat, jokes, the presence of strangers in their rooms.

***

5. They do not belittle themselves to arouse compassion in others.  They do not play on other people’s heart-strings so as to elicit sighs and be fussed over.  They do not say:  “People don’t understand me” or “I have frittered away my talent,” because all that is striving after cheap effect; it is vulgar, stale, false.

6.  They are not vain.  They do not care for such paste diamonds as familiarity with celebrities, the handclasp of the drunken P——-, the raptures of a stray spectator in a picture gallery, popularity in beer halls…. The truly talented always keep in the shade, among the crowd, far from the show.  Even Krylov said that an empty barrel is noisier than a full one.

7.  If they possess talent they respect it.  They sacrifice peace, women, wine, vanity to it.  They are proud of their talent; they are aware that their calling is not just to live with people but to have an educative influence on them.  Besides they are fastidious. 

8.  They develop their aesthetic sense. 

***

And so on.  This is what cultivated people are like.  In order to educate yourself and not be below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to have read Pickwick Papers and memorized a monologue from Faust.  It is not enough to come to Yakimanka, only to leave a week later.  

What is needed is continuous work, day and night, constant reading, study, will-power… Every hour counts.

Trips to Yakimanka and back will not help.  You must make a clean break.  Come to us; smash the vodka bottle; lie down and read—Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not read.  Give up your conceit, you are not a child.  You will soon be thirty.  It is time!

I am waiting… We are all waiting.

Yours, 

(translated by Avrahm Yarmolinsky)