Pseudo-scholars

The pseudo-scholar. A class of, that apparently 'includes professors who have written large books on the novel as well as all the people who read superficially', to whom E. M. Forster addressed his Clark lectures, somewhat sarcastically, with irony. For they were not true readers; they did not as a true reader would enter into a struggle with the writer. Though the struggle begun will, of course, be one-sided, the writer having done and closed the subject. The reader discourses with a creation independent of its author and can expect no authorial responses, except those from reviewers and critics and teachers and professors should it have become a required text. And even if the latter should be the case and the text is read under some duress, the struggle is still the reader's own, so that he or she will have to make their own judgements and reach their own conclusions, and determine, for instance, why they may be troubled or exercised.
A struggle is also, it's worth pointing out, not determined by length. A slim volume, of say seventy to one hundred pages, can be as equally thought-provoking or maddening as one of such size and weight it makes a good doorstop. The slimmest are not, as is frequently assumed, the simplest, nor the fattest, the more complex. It's very often, in my experience, the reverse, perhaps due to language or style or the psychology of the protagonist, or the historical circumstances covered. The slim can pack a punch, whilst the fat's punches are evenly spaced in-between more slow-paced action, usually ending on a damp note, as too many words by this time had been spent; the reader's struggle having ended some pages ago, past caring, though on they read to the bitter end.
Size, then, (the number of pages or words), can determine the novel's energy, and how too the reader's struggle will be charged. A quick read and the ground on which the reader-writer relationship is built may prove less firm, less secure than the cosy one formed with a confiding narrative made of many words. One may exhaust with its nervous tension, the other may only have moments of it, interspersed with moments of stillness, peace. One's protagonist-narrator may make the reader uncomfortable with his actions, the other less uneasy and more complicit. The writer either indifferent to the reader, or the reader, and their perception, made to feel involved in the story.
Pseudo-scholars know only a little or nothing of these struggles, for they read not to challenge themselves, but because they are told, led, as it were by bestselling lists and the choices of their contemporaries, and so cannot engage with a novel in quite the same way as a true reader or a real scholar.
'The word [genius]', to quote Forster, 'exempts him [the pseudo-scholar] from discovering its meaning.' A genius writes literature; all novelists therefore are geniuses, a class apart from the rest of us, even if the novel, born of the genius' hand and itself declared genius, has not been digested or even partially consumed. The pseudo-scholar, as said before, would rather go around proclaiming their uninformed opinions than sit down alone and read. For, I imagine, if we take the same French critic's definition of the novel as Forster does in his introductory lecture anything above 50,000 words would be too much. A pseudo-scholar would prefer in that instance to place their hands upon it as one might do a Bible and hope some, if not all, of what it contains is transferred to their brain. Perhaps some have tried this?

Picture credit: Scholars at a Lecture, William Hogarth (source: WikiArt).

See Aspects of the Novel by E.M Forster.

Adapted from journal entries, August 2021.

Dead Man's Slave

Having assumed more strange shy ways, as I turned my back on youth, including the possession of its spirit, I have grown more prone than ever, if that's possible for an already contemplative nature, to moods of thought. And although they have mostly led to bewilderment and few gains in wisdom, I would rather entertain them than not. The more I look at the world and all its oddities, the more it exceedingly puzzles me. Men and women, and children especially, as, to echo young Holgrave of Hawthorne's novel, one can never be certain that she really knows them; nor guess what they have been, from what she sees them to be, now.
Humanity is a complex riddle, which to a mere observer, like myself, means becoming more and more a slave to by-gone times – to Death if you prefer – and taking refuge in them, so as, I'm persuaded, to understand the present.
But maybe the Dead Man is not the best way to solve this riddle, for perhaps he is but a dead weight to land ourselves with, and prevents all of us, not just those invested in history, from making our own errors. An idea (close to that of Ralph Waldo Emerson's own) that Holgrave proceeds to explain, in an earnest tone, to Phoebe Pyncheon:

“a Dead Man if he happen to have a will disposes of wealth no longer his own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance with the notions of men much longer dead than he. A Dead Man sits on all our judgement-seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! We are sick of Dead Men's diseases, physical and moral, and die of the same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients! We worship the living Deity, according to Dead Men's forms and creeds! Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us! Turn our eyes to what point we may, a Dead Man's white, immitigable face encounters them, and freezes our very heart! And we must be dead ourselves, before we can begin to have our proper influence on our own world, which will no longer be our world, but the world of another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of a right to interfere.”

And yet interfere, in my own affairs, I let them.

Picture credit: Fan Bearing Slave Girl, Legendary Kings by Erte (source: WikiArt)

See The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Written as a journal entry July 2021.

A Moment to Marvel

I feel I should, as others have before now, take a moment to marvel at Conrad. The Conrad I was ultimately led to by Virginia Woolf. It was her essayist praise that caught my interest, whereas nothing and nobody else had before compelled or managed to persuade me to read Heart of Darkness, which is where I was informed you should ideally start. I'd find a library copy of the said story, glance through and think no, nothing about this appeals to me. But then, it might have been the edition, for I have these hard-to-please preferences when it comes to the size and style of font, and the look and physical feel of a paperback, and that's even if the story has in itself grabbed my attention; but if Mrs Woolf said 'give him a go', give him a go I would.
However, I didn't start with the Heart, but Lord Jim, and then progressed to what has been declared Conrad's finest novel, Nostromo. And though it's really too soon for me to make or offer such a judgement, being still little schooled in Conradian themes, morals and principles, I think it a masterpiece! And can quite believe it is, as the critics and scholars have assessed it, the finest of his novels. In fact, I'm sure that the next of his I choose to read will seem poor by comparison, or that I will expect so much more from it that it is sure to fail to meet those reader expectations, even though I know, purely from a reader's point of view, Nostromo could not be bettered and therefore it would be foolhardy of a writer to attempt it. But then I don't think writers make that attempt; of achieving the same success, yes, but not necessarily in the same epic style, for writing like that can take it out of you. And often what the writer's pleased with, contemporary readers aren't; appreciation of their endeavours sometimes comes in a different period altogether.
It is rare that a novel, or any piece of a writing, is proclaimed 'fine', and then, amidst new writers and new styles of writing, is continued to be thought as such, to be held up as an example.
So, what is there to marvel at? The construction of it is the chief answer. It's so well organised. I don't know how Conrad did it, and I don't think I could conceive of it if I did, but everything felt tightly controlled: the plot, the detail, the characters, as if he always knew (and he may not have done) in which direction everything and everyone was to go. His master stroke, or perhaps I should say just one of them so as not to upset true scholars, was, for me, Captain Mitchell, in part three, as tourist guide, relating the history of what happened. Using his character in this way was unexpected, and provoked a certain warmth towards him, just as one feels for Lord Jim's Marlow. The 'lesser' characters, if you like, for I don't know how else to term them, all had their moment or moments in which to shine and evoke some response in the reader. And that maybe is a sign of a great writer, or the measure of a great novel.

Picture credit: A Northern Silver Mine, 1930, Franklin Carmichael (Source: WikiArt)

See Nostromo by Joseph Conrad.

A journal entry, July 2021.

The Gates of Hell

A work of Auguste Rodin has set up an image in my head of the Gates of Hell being hammered on; of people, singly, or two or three, or perhaps a mob, begging with their mouths and their clenched fists or hardened palms for the gates to open. But they would not; they cannot creakingly or silently swing slowly inwards. They were not operational, or even manned by sentry devils or a three-headed hound, and perhaps had never been.
They were not, as had always been thought, Hell's entry point. Although countless petitioners over the centuries had turned up outside them, and still came. The more recent, perhaps, sent by Rodin, the artist that has embellished them according to his own and Dante's whims. Any mob that gathers, growing in number one by one, mostly chanting the same three words: “Let us in! Let us in!” in the vain hope this might have some magical effect, that they will be the chosen ones to not only see but return from the bowels of Hell. A risk, it seems, they are willing to run, as others, too, have attempted it and been successful, in classic literature that is, though nowhere in their hellish myths were mentioned gates quite like this.
At six metres high and four metres wide, on which had been cast one hundred and eighty figures, they stood ready to receive all who might approach, not to admit them, as forementioned, but rather to admonish them. To fill those who walked up to them with awe; warn them that here, all hope must be abandoned. That ignorant sinners should think earnestly of everlasting punishment. That all those who had hovered on the threshold of genius but hadn't made it were also welcome; welcomed in particular by Despair. That, beyond these gates, should they open, was hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel torture. And to look, to closely inspect some of the figures this vision of Hell was adorned with: Paolo and Francesca fleeing one another; Ugolino and his children; the Old Courtesan, with her aged, naked female form; The Thinker, stuck permanently in his thinking pose; and The Three Shades, transgressing their sins.
Chains! All in chains, of some form or another, clanking them together or dragging them around, and on occasion making low, dismal groans, to comfort or torment themselves further as much as to be heard. Their soul trapped; their last spark of life not yet left.
And it is through this vision newcomers wish to be escorted, to be met at the gates, by a guide – a Rodin, a Dante or a Virgil – and once inside, taken on a whistle-stop tour, shown all the damned souls as depicted and more.
So desperate are some to experience this attraction, they have walked varied paths and up different flights of stairs to gain entrance: Zurich, Paris, the United States of America, Mexico City, Tokyo, and yet at each destination, in spite of their faithful demonstration as outlined above, the Gates of Hell would not open.
Their aspiration unrealisable, regardless of how hard they wished it otherwise, for Hell was in their mind; Hell was Earth.

Picture credit: The Gates of Hell, 1917, Auguste Rodin (Source: WikiArt).

Written July 2021.