Dickens

[Corpsey]

Something to look out for

Prose Poetry - Futility Closet

In scenes of pathos, Charles Dickens often wrote unconsciously in blank verse. These paragraphs from The Old Curiosity Shop, arranged as poetry, show a strong iambic rhythm: And now the bell — the bell She had so often heard by night and day And listened to with solid pleasure, E’en as a living...

www.futilitycloset.com

 

[Corpsey]

“It is not an affectation in me, nor have I the least desire to write them in that metre,” Dickens wrote to an inquirer that April, “but I run into it, involuntarily and unconsciously, when I am very much in earnest. I even do so, in speaking.”

“I am not prepared to say that this may not be a defect in prose composition, but I attach less importance to it than I do to earnestness. And considering that it is a very melodious and agreeable march of words, usually; and may be perfectly plain and free; I cannot agree with you that it is likely to be considered by discreet readers as turgid or bombastic, unless the sentiments expressed in it, be of that character. Then indeed it matters very little how they are attired, as they cannot fail to be disagreeable in any garb.”

But he seems to have grown self-conscious about it. In 1846 he wrote to John Forster regarding The Battle of Life, “If in going over the proofs you find the tendency to blank verse (I cannot help it, when I am very much in earnest) too strong, knock out a word’s brains here and there.”

Bolded that last bit because Dickens clearly was on form even when writing letters.

 

[Corpsey]

This is the most important question I think. This is the key to the cynical Dickens and the revolutionary Dickens

Re-read Orwell's essay on Dickens last night and forgot the emphasis he places on Dickens as a moralist who's totally cynical about society—a revolutionary but one who doesn't really see the point of reforming the system, who ultimately despairs of anything beyond acting well in your private life.

“With the doubtful exception of David Copperfield (merely Dickens himself), one cannot point to a single one of his central characters who is primarily interested in his job. His heroes work in order to make a living and to marry the heroine, not because they feel a passionate interest in one particular subject. Martin Chuzzlewit, for instance, is not burning with zeal to be an architect; he might just as well be a doctor or a barrister. In any case, in the typical Dickens novel, the deus ex machina enters with a bag of gold in the last chapter and the hero is absolved from further struggle. The feeling ‘This is what I came into the world to do. Everything else is uninteresting. I will do this even if it means starvation’, which turns men of differing temperaments into scientists, inventors, artists, priests, explorers and revolutionaries— this motif is almost entirely absent from Dickens’s books. He himself, as is well known, worked like a slave and believed in his work as few novelists have ever done. But there seems to be no calling except novel-writing (and perhaps acting) towards which he can imagine this kind of devotion.

And, after all, it is natural enough, considering his rather negative attitude towards society. In the last resort there is nothing he admires except common decency. Science is uninteresting and machinery is cruel and ugly (the heads of the elephants). Business is only for ruffians like Bounderby. As for politics—leave that to the Tite Barnacles. Really there is no objective except to marry the heroine, settle down, live solvently and be kind. And you can do that much better in private life.

Here, perhaps, one gets a glimpse of Dickens’s secret imaginative background. What did he think of as the most desirable way to live? When Martin Chuzzlewit had made it up with his uncle, when Nicholas Nickleby had married money, when John Harman had been enriched by Boffin what did they do? The answer evidently is that they did nothing... That is the spirit in which most of Dickens’s books end—a sort of radiant idleness. Where he appears to disapprove of young men who do not work (Harthouse, Harry Gowan, Richard Carstone, Wrayburn before his reformation) it is because they are cynical and immoral or because they are a burden on somebody else; if you are ‘good’, and also self-supporting, there is no reason why you should not spend fifty years in simply drawing your dividends. Home life is always enough. And, after all, it was the general assumption of his age. The ‘genteel sufficiency’, the ‘competence’, the ‘gentleman of independent means’ (or ‘in easy circumstances’)—the very phrases tell one all about the strange, empty dream of the eighteenth- and nineteenth- century middle bourgeoisie. It was a dream of complete idleness."

 

[jenks]

Prose Poetry - Futility Closet

In scenes of pathos, Charles Dickens often wrote unconsciously in blank verse. These paragraphs from The Old Curiosity Shop, arranged as poetry, show a strong iambic rhythm: And now the bell — the bell She had so often heard by night and day And listened to with solid pleasure, E’en as a living...

www.futilitycloset.com

Melville was the same - big chunks of Moby Dick are in blank verse. The suggestion is the influence of King Lear which made Herman go back and totally rewrite the novel. I don’t know how much proof there is for that but it’s suggestive to say the least.

 

[version]

I only recently learned Melville wrote a very long poem about his trip to the Holy Land.

Clarel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[jenks]

I read a bit - it’s not good.

 

[Corpsey]

I've started reading great expectations.

What with one thing and another it's been a sluggish start from me and yet I'm already a quarter into it.

I notice that I read a chapter last thing out of night (out of guilt) and then I end up reading three chapters because it's such a page turner.

It's so tight and focused compared to Copperfield (and Biddy is a much more charming love interest (if she is, it's been so long since I read it I can't remember)) which is a virtue in some ways but it's funny how I sometimes pine for the sort of meandering, maddening digressive style of Copperfield from time to time.

Still, totally brilliant so far. I've always found the Havisham stuff a bit TOO MUCH, but grant that this is all a sort of fairy story and objections melt away.

Also absolutely love how narrator pip becomes very quickly more open in his hatred of the "swindler" Pumblechook. Pumblechook, Wopsle, Joe, Pip's sister, Jaggers... There's scarcely an unmemorable character in it. The "slouching" Orlick. (Was wondering if somehow this name got into Murneau's Nosferatu.)

 

[Corpsey]

Also the shot to the heart that it gives me as a reader when Pip declares that he doesn't want to display his clothes at the Jolly Bargemen because they'd make too "common and vulgar" a show of it (words to that effect, taken directly from Estella). I like how Pip is surveying his past life like DC, but unlike DC has some serious stuff to reprimand himself with.

All that stuff about your (in some ways) perfectly satisfactory life turning to ashes in the light of a fantasy, or a brush with a "better" life.

 

[Corpsey]

I think he does a similar thing in GE - where the older Pip narrator steps out of the narrative to judge the younger Pip, often unfairly.

This is what I just mentioned, and so far I don't think he's being very unfair--or at least, he balances his distaste for his budding snobbery with a recognition that he was easy prey to it.

 

[Corpsey]

It seems obvious to me at this point (drunk on Dickens) that he's the greatest English writer after Shakespeare, and NO I HAVEN'T READ 99% OF THE CANON

 

[woops]

and NO I HAVEN'T READ 99% OF THE CANON

i have it was long.

 

[Corpsey]

i have it was long.

Did you read Beowulf

 

[version]

Ray Winstone is Beowulf.

Watched this extraordinary film last night. All star cast they inexplicably decided to render as characters in a budget RPG. Really recommend it. Big Ray is so miscast it must be a practical joke.

www.dissensus.com

 

[jenks]

It seems obvious to me at this point (drunk on Dickens) that he's the greatest English writer after Shakespeare, and NO I HAVEN'T READ 99% OF THE CANON

It's hard to disagree when he's on form like he is in Great Expects - i recently taught a few passages from it to Y9s and i was once more in awe of teh way he works not just at a plot level but at a sentence and paragraph level.

 

[version]

It seems obvious to me at this point (drunk on Dickens) that he's the greatest English writer after Shakespeare, and NO I HAVEN'T READ 99% OF THE CANON

Jeffrey Archer?

 

[Corpsey]

Yeah I mean as a stylist he's on that Shakespearean level. Obviously (as I've gone into at tedious length in this thread) he has a multitude of flaws. So you might not say he's the greatest novelist, because for all I know Middlemarch or Vanity Fair are better novels, from a certain perspective (all this ranking stuff is illogical really).

But having read SOME of Middlemarch, it's tremendously clever and wise and eloquent but it hasn't got that thing Dickens has of writing these stunning little phrases and creating these unforgettable images and characters.

I suppose it's up for debate whether you could be such a magician of style like Dickens AND be naturalistic and 'nuanced', or if he needed the freedom of his creaky plots and melodramatic scenes to let rip.

 

[woops]

Did you read Beowulf

yep was geat

 

[Corpsey]

The theatre thing is what connects him to Shakespeare, ofc, his actorly ambitions, his use of theatrical conventions and character types

Shakespeare's plots aren't always particularly credible or even well worked but it's all a vehicle for the clash of personalities and language

I'm sure there must be a good book or two comparing dickens and shakespeare

 

[version]

Jeffrey Archer?

Yeah I mean as a stylist he's on that Shakespearean level.

!

 

[jenks]

a few years ago i had a go at writing something about GE - i'll attach it here (there are plot spoilers) it's not my final word on it and i always meant to go back and redraft it but here it is, be kind.