My OperaJoyce, Robert Aickman & the Muse
Monday, February 15, 2010 5:55:53 PM
Countless, disparate blog entries on the stupefying subject of writing – the thoughts of long dead authors, dry as dust.
Why?
Inhabiting a country where levels of literacy are poor, where declining readership of anything is a basic fact of life, why bother with blog entries concerned with fiction, and dark fiction at that?
Well, it’s my blog. So, why not?
Take a look at Joyce’s FINNEGAN’S WAKE: the first four paragraphs are the suspended tick of time between a cycle just past and one about to begin. They are in effect an overture, resonant with all the themes of the novel. The dominant motif is the polylingual thunderclap of paragraph three -bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoordenenthurnuk!” - which is the voice of God made audible through the noise of Finnegan’s fall.
Narrative movement commences with the life, fall, and wake of Finnegan, who during his wake, at the sound of the word “whisky” – usqueadbaughham! – sits up, threatens to rise Lazarus-like, but then the guests soothe him back to death.
James Joyce, whatever else he may have been, was a vandal. He took a switchblade to traditional English literature and carved it in to new shapes and impossible arabesques of such incredible complexity that to this day academics argue over the nuances of meaning in his compositions. And to demonstrate just how radical was Joyce’s treatment of language, and the traditional structure of the novel at that time, take a look at James’ THE WINGS OF A DOVE and compare its opening with the opening of Joyce’s FINNEGAN’S WAKE.
Ummmmm.
My fascination is with what lies beneath. Like the late, great Robert Aickman, it is human absurdity that makes this life worthwhile; and evidence of how writers translate that “absurdity” in to their fiction is interesting - to me!
"I care about the literary art, and I know exactly what the Ancients meant by 'the promptings of the Muse'. The stories which I consider to be my most successful came to me as if dictated...”
“The true ghost story is akin to poetry: only in part is it a conscious construction, and when the Muse does not speak, you cannot write it."
Robert Aickman (Essay)
Ce n’est pas drôle.
Vous pensez peut-être que je suis saoul?
Ah, yes, yes, I’m drunk on life – on beauty, on the sublime, on the mysterious! And why shouldn’t I be? Why?
For Robert Aickman, much of the beauty had gone from this world, drowned in the terrible roar of steam engines, factories and mass movements:
"I believe that at the time of the Industrial and French revolutions (I am not commenting upon the American one!), mankind took a wrong turning. The beliefs that one day, by application of reason and the scientific method, everything will be known, and every problem and unhappiness solved, seem to me to have led to a situation where, first, we are in imminent danger of destroying the whole world, either with a loud report or by insatiable overconsumption and overbreeding, and where, second, everyone suffers from an existentialist angst, previously confined to the very few. There is a fundamental difference between worrying where one's next meal is coming from and worrying about the quality and reality of one's basic being. The great prophetic work of the modern world is Goethe's Faust, so little appreciated among the Anglo-Saxons. Mephistopheles offers Faust unlimited knowledge and unlimited power in exchange for his soul. Modern man has accepted that bargain."
Thus to Aickman’s mind we have bartered away our very souls to exist in a “modern industrial society” where value is measured in £’s or $’s or the currency of some other monetary system. Where the political and economic buzz word is always GROWTH. For Aickman there can be no real benefits from our “modernity”, we’ve signed a pact with the devil, now we must pay for it!
A view I can unhappily subscribe to, I’m afraid.
Why?
Inhabiting a country where levels of literacy are poor, where declining readership of anything is a basic fact of life, why bother with blog entries concerned with fiction, and dark fiction at that?
Well, it’s my blog. So, why not?
Take a look at Joyce’s FINNEGAN’S WAKE: the first four paragraphs are the suspended tick of time between a cycle just past and one about to begin. They are in effect an overture, resonant with all the themes of the novel. The dominant motif is the polylingual thunderclap of paragraph three -bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoordenenthurnuk!” - which is the voice of God made audible through the noise of Finnegan’s fall.
Narrative movement commences with the life, fall, and wake of Finnegan, who during his wake, at the sound of the word “whisky” – usqueadbaughham! – sits up, threatens to rise Lazarus-like, but then the guests soothe him back to death.
James Joyce, whatever else he may have been, was a vandal. He took a switchblade to traditional English literature and carved it in to new shapes and impossible arabesques of such incredible complexity that to this day academics argue over the nuances of meaning in his compositions. And to demonstrate just how radical was Joyce’s treatment of language, and the traditional structure of the novel at that time, take a look at James’ THE WINGS OF A DOVE and compare its opening with the opening of Joyce’s FINNEGAN’S WAKE.
Ummmmm.
My fascination is with what lies beneath. Like the late, great Robert Aickman, it is human absurdity that makes this life worthwhile; and evidence of how writers translate that “absurdity” in to their fiction is interesting - to me!
"I care about the literary art, and I know exactly what the Ancients meant by 'the promptings of the Muse'. The stories which I consider to be my most successful came to me as if dictated...”
“The true ghost story is akin to poetry: only in part is it a conscious construction, and when the Muse does not speak, you cannot write it."
Robert Aickman (Essay)
Ce n’est pas drôle.
Vous pensez peut-être que je suis saoul?
Ah, yes, yes, I’m drunk on life – on beauty, on the sublime, on the mysterious! And why shouldn’t I be? Why?
For Robert Aickman, much of the beauty had gone from this world, drowned in the terrible roar of steam engines, factories and mass movements:
"I believe that at the time of the Industrial and French revolutions (I am not commenting upon the American one!), mankind took a wrong turning. The beliefs that one day, by application of reason and the scientific method, everything will be known, and every problem and unhappiness solved, seem to me to have led to a situation where, first, we are in imminent danger of destroying the whole world, either with a loud report or by insatiable overconsumption and overbreeding, and where, second, everyone suffers from an existentialist angst, previously confined to the very few. There is a fundamental difference between worrying where one's next meal is coming from and worrying about the quality and reality of one's basic being. The great prophetic work of the modern world is Goethe's Faust, so little appreciated among the Anglo-Saxons. Mephistopheles offers Faust unlimited knowledge and unlimited power in exchange for his soul. Modern man has accepted that bargain."
Thus to Aickman’s mind we have bartered away our very souls to exist in a “modern industrial society” where value is measured in £’s or $’s or the currency of some other monetary system. Where the political and economic buzz word is always GROWTH. For Aickman there can be no real benefits from our “modernity”, we’ve signed a pact with the devil, now we must pay for it!
A view I can unhappily subscribe to, I’m afraid.
scott cummingI_ArtMan # Thursday, April 28, 2011 8:09:59 PM
"carved it in to new shapes and impossible arabesques of such incredible complexity that to this day academics argue over the nuances of meaning in his compositions"
of course because it touches my dream. that is what i want them to say about my life's work.
of course i could eat all of this dynamic writing with a spoon. you have woven a tapestry of words here to the degree that it doesn't matter to me at all which are yours and which are theirs (the attributed authors).
scott cummingI_ArtMan # Tuesday, October 4, 2011 9:06:39 PM