All art is a revolt against man’s fate

So said Andre Malraux, French adventure and statesman, and author of the 1933 novel Man's Fate.  I read this quote in Don Watson's Obama essay in The Monthly (June), and it's stayed with me. I think it's profoundly true.

Art and revolt seem synonymous in modernism, but what about grand old art, trundling in the broad furrows of classicism, or floating in the current of conformity? Yes, even this kind of art is revolting in its way.

Whatever other fates we can think of - the fate of meaninglessness in tragic isolation, the fate of biology in the black comedy of marriage - the commonest fate is death. Art - all art - is a revolt against death.

It's a way of recording what's constantly slipping away from us. It's an attempt to fix in space and time what is fundamentally unfixable. It's an attempt to aggrandise what we know is subject at last to indignity. Art is a shot at eternity.

I wonder if our general cultural failure at memento mori accounts for our (general) lack of interest in art. Or perhaps, vice versa.  When we entrust eternity to scientists and cosmeticians, art is aimless and death becomes revolting.

Accidental poetry

This morning came the news that Archbishop Desmond Tutu will retire. His own words on the subject sounded like poetry to me:

It is time to sip rooibos tea
with my beloved wife
in the afternoon

A modest proposal

About three weeks ago I received my first (serious) proposal of marriage. To my great relief it was very unromantic, consisting of only four words, but it did make me think about great literary proposals and betrothals, so I’ve collected some of my favourites here. Please add to them if you think of any others!  (I said yes, by the way.)

from Much Ado About Nothing

Benedick. A miracle! here's our own hands against our hearts. Come, I will have thee; but, by this light, I take thee for pity.
Beatrice. I would not deny you; but, by this good day, I yield upon great  persuasion; and partly to save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.
Benedick. Peace! I will stop your mouth.

from Persuasion – Captain Wentworth’s letter.

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W. I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."

from Jane Eyre. There are two proposal scenes in Jane Eyre, both magnificent but both very long. You can read the first one here and the second here.

from The Importance of Being Earnest

Jack. Gwendolen, I must get christened at once—I mean we must get married at once. There is no time to be lost.
Gwendolen. Married, Mr. Worthing?
Jack. [Astounded.] Well… surely. You know that I love you, and you led me to believe, Miss Fairfax, that you were not absolutely indifferent to me.
Gwendolen. I adore you. But you haven’t proposed to me yet. Nothing has been said at all about marriage. The subject has not even been touched on.
Jack. Well… may I propose to you now?
Gwendolen. I think it would be an admirable opportunity. And to spare you any possible disappointment, Mr. Worthing, I think it only fair to tell you quite frankly before-hand that I am fully determined to accept you.
Jack. Gwendolen!
Gwendolen. Yes, Mr. Worthing, what have you got to say to me?
Jack. You know what I have got to say to you.
Gwendolen. Yes, but you don’t say it.
Jack. Gwendolen, will you marry me? [Goes on his knees.]
Gwendolen. Of course I will, darling. How long you have been about it! I am afraid you have had very little experience in how to propose.

If you want to read the rest of this one, you can find it here.

from The Pickwick Papers (my favourite). Mr Pickwick is contemplating employing a manservant (Sam Weller), but his landlady Mrs Bardell misinterprets him.

'Mrs. Bardell,' said Mr. Pickwick, at the expiration of a few minutes.

'Sir,' said Mrs. Bardell again.

'Do you think it a much greater expense to keep two people, than to keep one?'

'La, Mr. Pickwick,' said Mrs. Bardell, colouring up to the very border of her cap, as she fancied she observed a species of matrimonial twinkle in the eyes of her lodger; 'La, Mr. Pickwick, what a question!'

'Well, but do you?' inquired Mr. Pickwick. […]

Mrs. Bardell could only reply by a look.  She had long worshipped Mr. Pickwick at a distance, but here she was, all at once, raised to a pinnacle to which her wildest and most extravagant hopes had never dared to aspire.  Mr. Pickwick was going to propose--a deliberate plan, too--sent her little boy to the Borough, to get him out of the way--how thoughtful--how considerate! […]

'And your little boy--' said Mr. Pickwick […] will have a companion,' resumed Mr. Pickwick, 'a lively one, who'll teach him, I'll be bound, more tricks in a week than he would ever learn in a year.'  And Mr. Pickwick smiled placidly.

'Oh, you dear--' said Mrs. Bardell.

Mr. Pickwick started.

'Oh, you kind, good, playful dear,' said Mrs. Bardell; and without more ado, she rose from her chair, and flung her arms round Mr. Pickwick's neck, with a cataract of tears and a chorus of sobs.

'Bless my soul,' cried the astonished Mr. Pickwick; 'Mrs Bardell, my good woman--dear me, what a situation—pray consider.--Mrs. Bardell, don't--if anybody should come--'

'Oh, let them come,' exclaimed Mrs. Bardell frantically; 'I'll never leave you --dear, kind, good soul;' and, with these words, Mrs. Bardell clung the tighter.

I highly recommend reading the entire scene, which you can find here.

Reading and democracy

At the recent Sydney Writers Festival, NewYork-based Peter Carey told his audience that Australians “are getting dumber everyday…literally [sic] forgetting how to read.” He complained that cookbooks and Dan Brown novels consistently top our bestseller lists, and that we don’t grasp how destructive of democracy is the “cultural junk” we seem to prefer. Carey’s cultural cringe is part of a great tradition, (and one to which Carey’s claim to belong is, I think, dubious). Australian intellectuals, artists and authors, many of them expat, have always been contemptuous of the Aussie predilections for beer and barbecues over boffins and books, and more broadly of Australia’s contempt for intellectuals.

I too lie awake at night fretting about the unhallowed masses who read nothing but junk, and whose nearest approach to high culture is that guy from Masterchef who wears a cravat. And I too treat with a certain misgiving the statistical finding that what with digital books and latte-enhanced book emporiums we are reading more than ever. However, I think Carey’s brand of elitism (which borrows heavily from Patrick White) is unhelpful, and unreflective of literary history.

A bestseller list, or a top 100, or a ‘Borders recommends’, is always going to be an eclectic mix of the good, the great, and the ordinary. That’s because reading matter always has been. Since the invention of printing and the subsequent spread of literacy, reading has been inherently democratic, and democracy, as bestseller lists remind us, inherently involves giving equal weight to the great and the very, very ordinary. Carey wants 14-year-olds to read Shakespeare and Dickens. No doubt 14-year-olds in the 17th century and the 19th were exhorted to read Horace and Sophocles instead of ‘popular’ authors. If Dan Brown is our Dickens it’s a pretty sad indictment on us, but it doesn’t mean that Dickens has vanished from our cultural landscape. He is still there, and anyone who wants to can pick up a cheap edition or download a cheaper file. How democratic is that? A 14-year-old who is lucky enough to discover Shakespeare can pursue her newfound taste to her heart’s content; and no doubt he will lead her to other magicians of the language whose version of human experience is indestructible and irreplaceable. Nothing is stopping her but the serfdom of her peers in the feudal sway of junk.

Why Autumn?

I've been thinking about the assertion in my last post that there are more poems about autumn than about any other season. I'm not going to back it up with any metrics, but I have an inkling it's true. And I have an inkling I know why it's true. 

First of all, spring and autumn both have a more powerful grip on the poetic imagination than summer and winter. Both are voluptuous, abundant; both have infinite variety. Winter has undoubtedly a spare, silent poetics of its own (Christina Rossetti's “Winter my Secret”), and summer inspires a kind of warm, blowsy doggerel (“Sumer is icumen in”). But both are more active than reflective: in winter the action is survival; in summer, play. Spring and autumn induce an imaginative contemplation, not only because of their richer colours and more profuse growth, but because they bring change. They are heralds and harbingers, and therefore more eloquent than the seasons they usher in. They are full of a promise which summer and winter never quite fulfil (CS Lewis' “What the bird said early in the year”).

But why does autumn beat spring? Partly because spring is perfection, and as Samuel Johnson said, you can't praise perfection. But partly I think because autumn is beauty in the act of mortality (Keats' “Ode on Melancholy”). Autumn is the pith and resin of that everlasting truth in the seeds of all creation that nothing lasts. As Gertrude tells Hamlet, all that lives must die. This thought has obsessed the poets since the very beginning.  What we are most enraptured by is what soonest falters and fades.  There is no halting the turn and fall of leaves, but they are rapturously beautiful in their fall, and to hymn that fall is the closest we get to immortality (GM Hopkins' “As kingfishers catch fire”). Autumn is an opera of the great paradox of human being: life is death.