Brontë on Austen

I mentioned in my last that Charlotte Brontë was not an Austen fan. I had a vague recollection of some remarks she'd famously made on the subject, and went looking for them. They appear in letters she wrote to the critic GH Lewes, and to her publisher's reader WS Williams, both of whom admired Austen and encouraged Brontë to give her a try. 

“Why do you like Jane Austen so very much?" she complained to Lewes in a letter of 12 January 1848. On his advice she had read Pride and Prejudice, but all she found there was “a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck... [George Sand] is sagacious and profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant."

To Williams she wrote, in 1850, that she had just read Emma: “read it with interest and with just the right degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable—anything like warmth or enthusiasm; anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstration the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outre and extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well; there is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting: she ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound: the Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress."

It's a difference of period as well as temperement, but it's also, I would venture, a misreading. Brontë's own preference for sturm und drang (the aspect of her novels I find least appealing) leads her to read Austen's calm as a preoccupation with surfaces. In fact surfaces are precisely what Austen is concerned to trouble and displace. Customs and courtesies cover a seething multitude of relational subtleties and human failings. Masks and impressions fall before knowledge and revelation. Austen's sharp penetration of civil surfaces makes for inspired comedy and an enduring social realism for which Brontë never strove. 

Jane Austen's inward world

There's plenty to read about the 200th birthday of Pride and Prejudice, but I especially enjoyed this piece from the archives of The Atlantic. It was published in 1863, on the novel's 50th anniversary. It's fascinating to read something so old that feels itself to be modern, so removed from its subject and yet so much closer to it than we are. In general the Victorians were not wild about Austen, preferring Dickens' more florid and surreal portraiture, or George Eliot's wider intellectual and social compass. But this reviewer, one Mrs R.C. Waterson, is warm and eloquent in her praise. She puts her finger on Austen's quiet genius: “Infinite sameness, infinite variety, are not more apparent in the outward than in the inward world, and the work of that writer will alone be lasting who recognizes and embodies this eternal law of the great Author. Jane Austen possessed in a remarkable degree this rare intuition.” 

She quotes the diary of Walter Scott, who wrote in 1826 of Austen's “exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from truth of the description and the sentiment.” And she concludes that though Austen will not be everyone's cup of tea (a nod to Charlotte Bronte, perhaps, who found Austen insipid), yet “while the English language is read, the world will always be provided with souls who can enjoy the rare excellence of that rich legacy left to them by her genius.” I couldn't agree more.

Jane Austen's private world

Pride and Prejudice, the world’s favourite novel, turned 200 last month. And while we’re contemplating its great age, it’s worth remembering that Jane Austen was 21 when she wrote it. It’s hard to name what it is about her novels, this one in particular, that makes them so enduringly appealing. They’re exquisitely observed, of course; nobody skewers a fop, a bore, a ninny, or a flirt like Austen could in one short sketch. They’re comic as well as dramatic and romantic. They’re full of moral marrow, memorable characters, beautifully drawn scenes and finely turned phrases. But I think above all, the reason they delight and intrigue us still is their exploration of a rich and complex inner life. 

Nothing is more often pointed out about Austen than that she turned away from the wider world of history and politics to write about the confined, unvarying world of a small domestic or parochial circle. In fact what she wrote about was not an outer world at all, large or small, but an inner world of immense dimension and substance. Where else but in a fully realised psychological interior do pride, prejudice, sense, sensibility, and persuasion take form? For Austen’s heroines, the stakes are self esteem, personal virtue, rationality and contentment, not the social or pecuniary rewards for which the shallow, morally compromised characters play. Mechanically, the novels resolve in marriages and other social maneuvres, but the real movement of each novel happens in inward reflection, realisation, self-knowledge, and self-command.

Think of Emma’s, (or Marianne’s), blinding realisation of her own error, almost simultaneous with the realisation of her true feelings; Elinor’s bargain with herself to keep Lucy’s secret and prize Edward’s honour above her own happiness. Think of Anne’s tender revelation of her steadfastness to Captain Harville, overheard by Wentworth in that novel’s climactic scene. And think of Elizabeth compulsively re-reading Darcy’s letter: “Till this moment I never knew myself.” The letter is the novel’s turning point, and it’s not Wickham’s shortcomings but her own that shock her, and move her toward knowledge and love. It’s not a world of heroes and cads and dashing romances, but our admission to this private world of deep feeling, long suffering, painful reflection and dawning knowledge that makes these books so endlessly enjoyable. 

Give birth again to the dream

Like Beyonce, Richard Blanco’s poem for Obama’s second inauguration got mixed reviews, but I’m ranged with those who liked it. It was simple and heartwarming, and it comprehended much that was unsaid in its arcs and gestures. It had lovely lines like this one “We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight / of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,” and sweet images of America’s streets and towns and classrooms and backyards abuzz with life. One of its naysayers was The Guardian’s Carol Rumens, who concluded that “the biggest problem with writing a public poem is that crude simplifications are forced on a reluctant poet.” I think it’s a mistake to assume simplifications are crude. Simplifications are the stuff of poetry, and poetry is the stuff of public occasion. If anything, poetry fits public utterance better than prose, since it can smooth without blunting the rough edges of history; it can exhume pain from experience and make it holy; it can be subversive without being threatening; it can sound authentically hopeful. More so than the best speech, poetry can glide clear of cynicism. Beyond the last double-tongued word of oratory, poetry can refresh the promise of language itself, and therefore of the world.

This is what the best inaugural poems can do, and Blanco’s was no exception. Indeed it was similar, in tone and theme, to both Elizabeth Alexander’s “Praise Song for the Day” (which I wrote about a couple of years ago) and Maya Angelou’s poem for Clinton’s first inaugural in 1993 (which I’ve mentioned in passing). All three poems are about struggle, unity, love, fulfillment of the American dream in its waking world. But there is a progression, from Angelou’s grand, primal evocation of time immemorial, through Alexander’s moral yearning toward history, to Blanco’s humble memorial to the diurnal. Are inaugural poems a good way to measure the movement of the zeitgeist? And if so, do these three line up to show a loss of ambition toward immortality? A diminishing of the dream? I don’t know. But of the three, on reflection I like Angelou’s best, and I have a feeling it will wear better than the others, as eternity tends to do. Here it is.

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot ...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

Frost / Kennedy

On Monday, Barack Obama will be sworn in for a second term as America's president. As always, hopes are high for what he might say, particularly given the coincidence of this inauguration with Martin Luther King Day. As well as his speech, for which we have such high hopes, the ceremony will include music and poetry. This year's poet is Richard Blanco, a 44-year-old gay Cuban American civil engineer turned prize-winning poet. Last time around, it was Elizabeth Alexander whose poem, “Praise Song for the Day", I've mentioned before. It's hard to imagine the pressure of conceiving or bringing a poem to that occasion, but I'm glad they still expect someone to try. And what else is poetry good for if not to be the “moment’s monument”? 

I was intrigued to learn that John F Kennedy was the first president to include poetry in the ceremony. The poet was Robert Frost, then 86 years old. Frost had named Kennedy as the next president long before Kennedy announced any intention to run in 1960. In his campaign, Kennedy would often close his stump speech with two lines from Frost: “But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep.” When he was elected, he asked Frost to read at his inauguration, and even named the poem he wanted: “The Gift Outright." Frost agreed, but then wrote another, much longer poem, which he typed up on hotel note paper in Washington the night before the ceremony. On the day, wind and glare made the typed poem hard for him to read, so he simply recited the other poem, Kennedy's first choice, from memory. Afterwards, his advice to Kennedy was to govern with “poetry and power,” to which Kennedy responded: “It's poetry and power all the way!" Read more about the poet and the president here. 

I find the story lovely, but the poem itself less so. It speaks to a different sensibility from the one Blanco will draw on and perhaps, if we're lucky, immortalise. I would have guessed it's not exactly the sensibility surrounding Kennedy's election, either, with its nostalgic backward glance and glorification of settlement, but I wasn't there. Kennedy obviously thought it was perfect for his moment, the monument he required. Here it is:

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.