July 17, 2018 · 9:51 pm

Aspiring Epicureans: The Colour of Memory by Geoff Dyer

Epicurus writes about friendship:  (Sententiae Vaticanae LXXVIII-translation is my own)  “A man becomes especially noble in mind through wisdom and friendship. Of these the former is a mortal good, but the latter is immortal.” (ὁ γενναῖος περὶ σοφίαν καὶ φιλίαν μάλιστα γίγνεται, ὧν τὸ μέν ἐστι θνητὸν ἀγαθόν, τὸ δὲ ἀθάνατον).  Friendship was an important aspect of his Hellenistic philosophy which promoted the attainment of a happy, carefree life free from pain and fear of death.  In Athens Epicurus had a property called the Garden where his community of friends, which regularly included women, would gather, share common meals and discuss philosophy.

The narrator in Geoff Dyer’s novel The Colour of Memory has no steady job, no real prospects in life, and lives off the dole.  But what he does have is a steady, supportive group of friends: Freddie, Carlton, Steranko, Foomie and Belinda.  The book lacks a true plot, but instead is one description after another of the narrator and these rather well-read and interesting friends hanging out, going to pubs, listening to music, getting high and generally enjoying one another’s company.  Dyer even includes long descriptions of the card games that they play throughout the course of a long, boring winter’s day.  I like to think of them as aspiring, 20th century Epicureans:

On Christmas Eve Steranko invited everyone over to his house for a turkey dinner.  We all sat around the kitchen table which he had dismantled, hauled up the stairs and then re-assembled in his room.  A fire was burning in the grate and more wood was piled up on either side of the fireplace.  All the usual clutter of his room had been cleared away and thrown on his bed or shoved into corners: notebooks, sketch pads, paperback novels.  As always, the walls were covered with unfinished drawings; canvases were stacked up in a corner.  Apart from the fire the only light in the room was from candles on the table and on the mantelpiece.  He had even bought some cheap Christmas crackers.  Everyone had brought booze and grass and we were all drunk and stoned by the time Steranko emerged from the kitchen bearing the turkey ceremoniously before him like a crown on a cushion.

Freddie’s decision to move away from England and the close knit group is what brings about the shocking and unexpected ending of the story.

Since the group all live in the rough neighborhood of Brixton in London, they are constantly trying to avoid pain—that is the physical pain of a random beating or mugging.  The narrator is obsessed with his physical safety and does anything he can to avoid a fight, a mugging, or a burglary in his apartment.  He witnesses a man being beaten on the Tube, but neither he, nor anyone else on the train, steps in for fear of getting attacked himself.  When Freddie is badly attacked on the street his friend’s swollen and deformed head brings him to tears.

Where the narrator and his friends fall short of being true Epicureans is their tendency to engage in recreational substances to the point of hedonism.  I thought it especially astute for the narrator to recognize this flaw:

Waking up the next morning with the odd sensation of being surprised to be alive I threw recklessness to the wind and abandoned my spontaneity programme then and there.  I was fed up with the rigours of impulsive living anyway: I didn’t have the application for it.  I couldn’t cope with being stoned at eleven thirty in the morning and that kind of thing.  Spontaneity seemed constantly to tow regret in its wake.  Living for the moment was all very well, I decided, but you had to pick your moments carefully.

He doesn’t completely give up drinking and getting stoned, but he does back it off to the point where his activities don’t cause him excruciating pain and regret the next day.  I took a break from my epic summer reads to try something a bit shorter and easier to read.  Dyer’s book was a pleasant distraction for a few hours.

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July 13, 2018 · 8:43 pm

Living in the Open: On Not Knowing Greek by Virginia Woolf

After reading Tolstoi’s Love Letters published by The Hogarth Press which collection Virginia Woolf is credited as co-translator although she didn’t know Russian, I reached for Woolf’s essays in which she discusses different cultures and the art of translation.  In “On Not Knowing Greek,” she argues that the Greeks conducted their lives outside, in the open air, and communicated with one another more succinctly and dramatically.  For the English, she argues, who are prone to living indoors, having discussions in the drawing room and writing massive novels filled with thousands of words, Greek literature and culture is something that can never be fully understood.

A people who judged as much as the Athenians did by ear, sitting out-of-doors at the play or listening to argument in the market-place, were far less apt than we are to break off sentences and appreciate them apart from the context.  For them there were no Beauties of Hardy, Beauties of Meredith, Sayings from George Eliot.  The writer had to think more of the whole and less of the detail.  Naturally, living in the open, it was not the lip or the eye that struck them, but the carriage of the body and the proportions of its parts.  Thus, when we quote and extract we do the Greeks more damage than we do the English.  There is a bareness and abruptness in their literature which grates upon a taste accustomed to the intricacy and finish of printed books.  We have to stretch our minds, to grasp a whole devoid of the prettiness of details or the emphasis of eloquence.  Accustomed to look directly and largely rather than minutely and aslant, it was safe for them to step into the thick of emotions which blind and bewilder an age like our own.

She begins the essay by asking why we should bother to learn Greek since the gap between our culture and theirs is so wide.  Her final sentence in the essay answers it perfectly and reminds me how grateful I am to know and study this beautiful language:

With the sound of the sea in their ears, vines, meadows, rivulets about them, they are even more aware than we are of a ruthless fate.  There is a sadness at the back of life which they do not attempt to mitigate.  Entirely aware of their own standing in the shadow, and yet alive to every tremor and gleam of existence, there they endure, and it is to the Greeks that we turn when we are sick of the vagueness, of the confusion, of the Christianity and its consolations, of our own age.

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July 10, 2018 · 9:33 pm

The Soul One Must Learn to Know: Tolstoi’s Love Letters

In 1923 The Hogarth Press published a translation of series of love letters that Tolstoi wrote to his first fiancé, Valeria Arsenev.   In the introduction to this collection of missives,  Paul Biryukov explains that, although Tolstoi didn’t mind having these letters published, his wife Sophia objected to having them read by other people until after she died.  Biryukov respectfully and gladly followed Sophia’s wishes.

The letters were written between 1856 and 1857 when Tolstoi was twenty-eight years old and engaged to the daughter of one of his neighbors.  There seems to have been a case of love at first sight between them and many parts of the letters show the author’s deep affection for Valeria.  In a letter dated Nov. 2nd, 1856 he writes:

I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious—your heart, your soul.  Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know.  Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings.  Forgive me this silly comparison: to love as the silly man does is to play a sonata without keeping time, without accents, always with the pedal down, with emotion, thereby giving neither oneself nor others true pleasure.  But in order to give oneself up to the emotion of music, one must first check oneself, labour, work, and, believe me, there is not a delight in life that can be had without work.   But the more difficult the labour and hardship, the higher the reward.  And there is a great work ahead of us—to understand one another and to preserve each other’s love and respect.

Tolstoi decides that he needs to put their love to the test, so he goes off to Petersburg for several months and hopes that, through their letters, they will get to know each other better.   In the same letter he writes:

I guard my feeling as a treasure, because it alone is capable of uniting us firmly in all our views of life, and without this there is no love. I expect our correspondence to do a great deal towards this.  We shall discuss calmly; I shall try to fathom each word of yours, and you will do the same, and I don’t doubt that we shall understand one another.  All the conditions are favourable, and there is feeling and honesty on both sides.  Argue with me, explain, teach me, seek explanations.

This separation is a calculated risk that ultimately fails in part, I think, because his personality is such that he cannot carry on a relationship merely through letters.  He fails miserably at discussing anything “calmly.”  When he doesn’t receive letters back from her he begs her to write and becomes an emotional mess.  He begins to get jealous because of a rumor of her flirting with another man.  In additional he is prone to lecturing her in his letters which she really doesn’t seem to appreciate, to say the least.  And finally he becomes cold and indifferent, or at least feigns these emotions,  because of his anger.  He repeatedly has to apologize for his bad behavior towards her in his letters.  It’s comforting, somehow,  to see that even a great genius like Tolstoi is not immune to Cupid’s arrows.  One of his last letters to her reads:  “You know my nasty, suspicious, changeable character, and God knows if there is anything that could alter it.  Perhaps, strong love which I have never felt and in which I do not believe.  Among all the women whom I have known, I loved and love you best of all, but all this is yet not enough.”

The book credits S.S. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf as the translators; although she didn’t know Russian, Woolf spent a great deal of time working with the letters to make them accessible to an English speaking audience.  As a result of learning this about Woolf, not only have I been side tracked by reading her essays about Russian literature but I have also been thinking about what a translator’s job entails. Although she was not familiar with Tolstoi’s original language, Woolf’s work with this text justifies her credit as its co-translator.

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July 9, 2018 · 12:55 pm

Frail Vessels: Concluding Thoughts on The Portrait of a Lady

In an essay that explains his process and literary technique in The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James writes:

The novel is of its very nature an “ado,” an ado about something, and the larger the form it takes the greater of course the ado.  Therefore, consciously, that was what one was in for—for positively organizing an ado about Isabel Archer.

One looked it well in the face, I seem to remember, this extravagance; and with the effect precisely of recognizing the charm of the problem.  Challenge any such problem with any intelligence, and you immediately see how full it is of substance; the wonder being, all the while, as we look at the world, how absolutely, how inordinately, the Isabel Archers, and even much smaller female fry, insist on mattering.  George Eliot has admirably noted it—‘In these frail vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affection.’

As I have made my way through the second part of this novel, I could not quite figure out what about Isabel’s story affected me so deeply.  But James’s own words about his heroine, and similar characters in Eliot’s novels, provided me with an answer—she insists on mattering.  Isabel is a charming, beautiful young woman whose inheritance from her uncle gives her what she wants more than anything in the world, freedom and choice.  It is no wonder that she rejects one suitor after another, since marriage, to her, would mean giving up her liberty.  I did feel immensely sorry for her suitors, especially Lord Warburton, who genuinely loved Isabel and had a difficult time putting aside his love.  But reading about Isabel march headlong into a series of choices that make her life wretched was even more painful.

The most brilliant piece of writing in the book is an occasion during which Isabel, late in the night, reflects on the horrible mistake she has made that puts her in the very cage which she was so desperately trying to avoid.  She is duped into making this mistake, but her loved ones try to make her see her error in judgment before she acts.  Unfortunately for Isabel she is naïve and trusts the wrong people.  Once she is plunged into an unhappy life she accepts it with a great deal of stoicism and refuses to do anything to make a better, or at least a more comfortable, existence for herself.  She views her solitude, her fear and her entrapment as a type of penance for her poor choices.  James, himself, acknowledges that Isabel’s inner dialogue is some of best writing in the story and he says about these lines, “Reduced to its essence, it is but the vigil of searching criticism; but it throws the action further forward than twenty ‘incidents’ might have done.”  Isabel’s thoughts during her vigil go on for several pages, but I offer here one of the best, and most chilling, passages:

It was not her fault—she had practiced no deception; she had only admired and believed.  She had taken all the first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found the infinite vista of the multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley with a dead wall at the end.  Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the feeling of failure.

James’s novel has shattered me and, despite the fact that there are several people in her life that love her and want to help her, I still came away with a negative view of the world.  I need to take a bit of a break from James’s novels and to think more about this one.  I have collections of his letters, diaries and essays that will keep me busy for a while.

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July 1, 2018 · 1:14 pm

Such Constant Attention: Some initial thoughts on The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

William Gass astutely describes the literary style of Henry James, “If any of us were as well taken care of as the sentences of Henry James, we would never long for another, never wander away; where else would we receive such constant attention, our thoughts anticipated, our feelings understood?”   As I was struggling to decide which title on my list of  epic books to read first, I opened up a few of them and read a paragraph or two.  After reading only a page of The Portrait of a Lady I knew exactly what Gass was talking about. That’s not to say that some of the other books on my list didn’t appeal, but the language of  The Portrait of a Lady struck me as so  meticulous and precise that I was immediately drawn in:

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony know as afternoon tea.  There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do—the situation is in itself delightful.  Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime.  The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon.  Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality.

I also noticed, and was delighted by, James’s droll sense of humor.  Mr. and Mrs. Touchett, ex-pats from the United States,  have been married for many years, most of which they have lived apart.  It is clear that the couple has not had a successful or happy marriage, and Mrs. Touchett’s reasons for not staying in London with her husband are trite and hilarious:

Mrs. Touchett indulged in no regrets nor speculations, and usually came once a year to spend a month with her husband, a period during which she apparently took pains to convince him that she had adopted the right system.  She was not fond of the English style of life, and had three or four reasons for it to which she currently alluded;  they bore upon minor points of that ancient order, but for Mrs. Touchett they amply justified non-residence.  She detested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked like a poultice and tasted like soap; she objected to the consumption of beer by her maidservants; and she affirmed that the British laundress (Mrs. Touchett was very particular about the appearance of her linen) was not a mistress of her art.

These seem like rather trivial reasons to reject living in a country.  I have to admit that, although I’ve never heard of or had bread-sauce, after looking at photos and recipes it does seem rather unappetizing.

Finally, James’s contrast of American versus British customs, attitudes and characters I found most compelling.  He often lingers on the habits, speech and physiognomy of his American characters.  My impression, so far, is that the English are traditional, reserved, quiet, and, perhaps, a bit uptight.  The Americans, especially in the form of the heroine Isabel Archer, possess a great deal more candor, are less interested in social classes, and, in general, are a bit more carefree.  Isabel, who has been brought to London from New York by her Aunt Touchett after the death of her parents,  is intelligent, speaks on a variety of interesting topics, is well-read, and English men like Lord Warburton, when they first encounter Isabel,  find her more appealing than her British counterparts:  “Lord Warburton was left standing with Ralph Touchett, to whom in a moment he said: ‘You wished a while ago to see my idea of an interesting woman.  There it is!'”

On a rather tangential note, I visited the Frederic Malle store in Manhattan and had the chance to sample his famous Portrait of a Lady scent.  It is spicy, sensual and exotically intriguing.  It is unclear whether or not the scent was inspired by James’s novel or character, but the description of the scent, I think, can be equally applied to what I already know about Isabel: “A rare symphonic perfume appeared: a new oriental rose, a sensuous beauty that attracts people like a magnet, a modern classic: Portrait of a Lady.”

 

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