Lily – as the flower, so the girl

The House of Mirth – by Edith Wharton

A passage or two on a novel I hadn’t read for a long time until last week. I don’t know what brought me to pick up Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth again after so many years, but I am pleased I did. Should I have harboured some notion that a reading now would be no more than a mannered sojourn in the fabled Gilded Age of American society of yore, I was wrong.

Poster for the serialized debut of *The House of Mirth* in *Scribner’s Magazine*(1905)

Wharton’s narrative style of a formal literary realism in the tradition of (her friend) Henry James, is all the more real for springing as it does from the society to which she was born and only too acquainted with. A society alien to most (of us, and certainly me!), it is remarkable the ease in which the reader finds oneself embedded in the scenery somewhere, observing the passing parade of characters; their social ambitions and insecurities, their frivolities and pretensions, and wondering at the ease in which they justify their (bad) behaviour and moral ambiguity.

The novel tells the tale of the young, though soon to be no-longer-so-young and her days of marriageability therefore diminishing (twenty-nine! god forbid!), Lily Bart – beautiful, clever (but only up to a point), without money of her own it is true but well enough situated through kinship and acquaintance – and her travails within the fabulously wealthy New York society at the end of the 19th century; her sense of entitlement and appetites, and the appetites of rapacious husbands, and the jealousies of bored wives, the chances dangled within her grasp and the moments of hesitation under which they evaporated, her sense that there always was something missing, that there would be a next time – until there wasn’t.

In this world, where a young woman’s opportunities are dependent on her possessing two attributes – an impeccable social status and financial means – and where appearances mean everything, it was inevitable that a girl like Lily who attracted attention would also attract greater scrutiny and be the subject of gossip. Such is “society” that her fall from favour may well have been preordained, but the depth of her fall was predicated on her own shortcomings – for too long did she play her role; pursue fashion and pleasures she could not afford, endure false friends and disregard those who were true.

A cracking end

Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize nomination prompts me to finally write some words on The Mirror & the Light – inadequate as they may be. Whilst not exactly putting it off, I just felt, like I said, inadequate – unable to find a way in and unable to cohere my many thoughts. At the time of publication in March, I linked to some various degrees of flattering reviews and there are many more to easily be found around about, so I will only add mention here, and for my own devices, Daniel Mendelsohn’s review in The New Yorker. Firstly, because I always enjoy Mendelsohn’s writing, and secondly, because it errs from the absolutely positive resonance to be found elsewhere – “…bloated and only occasionally captivating…” is less than charitable! – but it is thought provoking anyway, placing as it does this end to the Cromwell saga in the context of the two preceding novels and Mantel’s other work. Also, it does offer a good starting point for me; suggesting some interesting aspects – and doing so sometimes in respect to that which I perceive to be absent.

My copy of “The Mirror & the Light”, Fourth Estate, UK hardback ed.

The New Yorker review is from way back at the beginning of March, and there is no need to get into why that seems now like almost another time – not exactly medieval, but still…! Perhaps, because Mendelsohn’s reading and writing came before the Corona pandemic fully insinuated itself upon us (and what we read, and what we read into that which we read), he doesn’t seem affected by, or least ways lend his criticism to, the pervading atmosphere of death and impending death that at times almost overwhelmed me; be it to come at the gallows, in child-bed – or, and especially, through plague and disease. When the King’s summer tour route has to be meticulously researched and planned to avoid outbreaks of plague [p.680 Fourth Estate ed.], I could do nothing but think of the here and now and thwarted summer holidays. Trivial comparison I know.

Death also finds its extension in the ghosts of the past; omnipresent in the novel and as Cromwell’s constant company – for him, the past is never past (to use Mendelsohn’s expression), nor the dead ever put to rest. Mendelsohn, interestingly, comments more generally in regard to the supernatural in Mantel’s larger body of work – alerting me to an unfortunate gap in my reading, that will be rectified.

Also not mentioned in the review, is the role of rumour and here-say in fuelling discontent amongst the people; the speed at which news and fake-news spreads into far counties (and beyond, to France and the Empire) is startling given the primitive trains of communication, and is eerily reminiscent of the power of social media in this day and age of conspiracies, disinformation and gossip galore. For instance, during the so-called Lincolnshire Rising that anticipated the Pilgrimage of Grace, the folk firmly believe Henry to be dead, a puppet laying in his bed with crown upon its head, and that (the surely to be damned) Th. Cromwell rules in spe, and connives without restraint to demolish the churches, de-frock their clergy, increase taxes and impose draconian levies [p.297].

Booker 2020

Literary awards stop not for this mean, increasingly unpredictable virus making lives miserable – and to various degrees, dependent upon circumstance. Here, then, providing a modicum of distraction, the just announced longlist for The Booker Prize 2020:

The New Wilderness by Diane Cook (Oneworld Publications)
This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga (Faber & Faber)
Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House)
Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze (4^th Estate, HarperCollins)
The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel (4^th Estate, HarperCollins)
Apeirogon by Colum McCan (Bloomsbury Publishing)
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste (Canongate Books)
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (Bloomsbury Circus, Bloomsbury Publishing)
Real Life by Brandon Taylor (Originals, Daunt Books Publishing)
Redhead by The Side of The Road by Anne Tyler (Chatto & Windus, Vintage)
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Picador, Pan Macmillan)
Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward (Corsair, Little, Brown)
How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang (Virago, Little, Brown)

I can only say that I have only read Mantel; and the daunting task of writing my thoughts on her remarkable work remains on my longlist (of things to do)! And, I can only say what I’ve said before, and that is: the United States has any number of major book awards (National, Pulitzer being foremost) why on earth the Brits allowed them in the Booker a few years ago I really don’t know. Well of course one does – $$$! In my opinion, it is becoming too top heavy stateside these days – no antipodean, only one resident (I think) of the African continent, none from southern Asia, or the Caribbean. In fact there are only three listed from the UK which means, the laws of probability being such as they are, one may very well end up with a shortlist without a British writer! I hear already the screams of “Scandal!” – but what would the Booker be without controversy? Rarely has there not been a loud gripe of some sort – in or out, sponsor, judge … What was it last year? Oh, I remember – against all the “unwritten” rules, it was awarded jointly to Bernadine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood.

And I will also say that I haven’t read Anne Tyler for donkey’s years, and she was a constant companion of … let me see… the third decade of my life. Can I read Tyler again without bemoaning my lost youth?

The jury is diverse which is good, and I also note with delight that Margaret Busby leads it and Emily Wilson is another of the judges. Of the latter I need say nought (see my never ending Odyssey project!), but Busby reminds me of The Daughters of Africa, which I would like to read after all these years and then their is last year’s follow up anthology.

The Booker Prize longlist July 28th 2020

Jack & Della

To tantalise and in anticipation of Marilynne Robinson’s continuation of the Gilead saga, The New Yorker has published a short story called “Jack and Della” adapted from the new novel, simply called Jack, which is due out at the end of September, and also a mini-interview with Robinson.

It is said the story is adapted, so I don’t understand it to be an extract, but what it is, is another telling of the meeting between Jack and Della in St. Louis; first related by Jack to Reverend Ames in Gilead and then again by Della to Jack’s sister Glory at the end of Home.

What is it about encounters in the rain? So often looms a sense of rescue and of chance; both redemptive and portentous at the same time. Reading “Jack & Della”, only now do I recognise a parallel between this first meeting and that of Reverend Ames and Lila – instigated too with an opening of the heavens, and opening of a door. As Della’s simple respectful “Thank you, Reverend” inspired by Jack’s funereal attire, so Lila’s “Good morning, Reverend”, are received as a promise, perhaps of salvation, and endure in both men’s memories long after. But, just who is saving whom is not plain, nor saint and sinner unambiguous – and that I suppose is the point.

More than tantalised, I positively ache to read Marilynne Robinson again. I have convinced myself that her words, the grace and wisdom she imparts with her words, make me just a little bit better a person.

The Odyssey (7): Book 12

The Circle of Life

The way to true light is not always clear, obscured as one may be by dark and murky waters and disoriented by an expectation of the lineal course of things, and getting something else instead. What goes around comes around.

I take the opportunity here to refer to (and give a taste of) Gregory Nagy’s The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, the stunning accompaniment text to his edX course (that played a major role in igniting my enthusiasm for the ancient and classical world) of the same name. The following excerpt is I think about as good a bridge from Book 11 to Book 12 as one can imagine (and all the before and afters available freely online):

10§31. After his sojourn in Hādēs, which is narrated in Odyssey xi, Odysseus finally emerges from this realm of darkness and death at the beginning of Odyssey xii. But the island of Circe is no longer in the Far West. When Odysseus returns from Hādēs, crossing again the circular cosmic stream of Okeanos (xii 1–2) and coming back to his point of departure, that is, to the island of the goddess Circe (xii 3), we find that this island is no longer in the Far West: instead, it is now in the Far East, where Hēlios the god of the sun has his ‘sunrises’[…] Before the hero’s descent into the realm of darkness and death, we saw the Okeanos as the absolute marker of the Far West; after his ascent into the realm of light and life, we see it as the absolute marker of the Far East.[29] In returning to the island of Circe by crossing the circular cosmic river Okeanos for the second time, the hero has come full circle, experiencing sunrise after having experienced sunset.[30] Even the name of Circe may be relevant, since the form Kirkē may be cognate with the form kirkos, a variant of the noun krikos, meaning ‘circle, ring’.[31] As we will now see, this experience of coming full circle is a mental experience – or, to put it another way, it is a psychic experience.
Hour 10. The mind of Odysseus in the Homeric Odyssey – Nagy, Gregory. The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

BOOK 12: Difficult choices

pp. 301-315

*Odysseus and the Sirens*, an 1891 painting by John William Waterhouse, Google Art Project

And so Odysseus’ tale continues: of the return to Circe’s island; of the funeral rites due, and promised, to the young Elpenor, and now fulfilled; of Circe’s precise instructions of “what to do next” in their homeward quest. The crew with ears deafened by wax and Odysseus tied firm to the mast, do not succumb to the tempting sounds of the Sirens. But, then, six men fall to Scylla; for Odysseus must choose the lesser of two evils, either confront that gruesome monster or face certain death in the whirlpool of Charybdis; and the lesser claims her tribute as Circe had prophesied and Odysseus reckoned with. Says Odysseus to his Phaecian audience: “That was the most heartrending sight I saw / in all the time I suffered on the sea.” [lines 258-259]

Reaching the island of the Sun God, Helius, and mindful of the warnings of Tiresias and Circe, Odysseus had tried to convince his crew of the foolhardiness of landing on the island. Alas, in vain, for angry and tired and hungry they want only to rest upon this island – and Odysseus in the end cedes to their wishes, demanding only that they feed not from the grazing cattle so prized by Helius. Later Odysseus learns from Calypso, as told by Hermes, that whilst Odysseus slept, his men, persuaded by Eurylochus, slaughter and feast upon the meats, and that on hearing of this a furious Helius pleads with Zeus to redress the situation. And this he does, for once on open sea, Zeus retaliates with all his might and the remaining crew were swept away, depriving them of a homecoming.

Alone now, Odysseus was swept back towards the dangerous waters of Charybdis and Scylla’s rocky home. Only by the will of Zeus did he survive this ordeal, and after ten days adrift reach Calypso’s island. So Odysseus tells it. And so his narration comes a full circle, and the Apologoi that began in Book 9 concludes.

Looking for the real in the fictional

The title in itself is deceptive – “The real Clarissa Dalloway”. How real can a fiction be? Reality is always once removed for the writer in the very process of creating a character, and then again for the reader in the reception.

The article by David Taylor in the Times Literary Supplement (which I can’t seem to adequately date, but there is the suggestion that it was written prior to 2015) is, in the first instance, concerned with Kitty Maxse and by extension her family, rather than the fictional character created by Virginia Woolf – making a modest debut in her first novel (The Voyage Out, 1915) and coming into her own in Mrs. Dalloway ten years later – for whom Maxse may have been inspiration. Given the Stephen family’s intimate connections with the Lushingtons, and some reasonable evidence, it seems more than plausible that Woolf, at least when Clarissa Dalloway made her first appearance, was very well thinking about Kitty.

This, a cross reference with my notes on Virginia Woolf’s diary in which I comment on her entry of 8th October 1922 upon learning of Kitty’s untimely (and unusual) death. She does indeed say that she hadn’t spoken with Kitty since 1908; and this being approximately the time she began talking about Melymbrosia (especially with Clive Bell), and a time in which both Stephen sisters were irredeemably lost to tradition and convention (personified by Kitty Maxse).

Knowing 1922 to have been approximately when Woolf began working on “The Hours” (to become Mrs. Dalloway), I must say I did wonder whether Maxse’s death may have rekindled her interest in Clarissa Dalloway. Returning to my notes, I see that Woolf had in fact written the short story “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” in the summer of that year (though it wouldn’t be published until 1923) and a project with the title “The Hours” is mentioned for the first time (in her diary) in conversation with E.M. Forster in May, 1923.

Capitalized upon

That was quick – so much for the debate I had hoped for! The New York Times will from henceforth capitalize Black when referring to people or cultures of African origin. (To which I made a rare comment asking for clarification concerning, for instance, indigenous Australians – being most certainly black/Black but not of African origin or least ways no more so than everybody else and not in the sense that the Times means. Suffice to say, no clarification was received!).

One could quibble endlessly with the (not very satisfactory) reasoning given, but it makes not much sense to do so – it is their publication and their choice, and certainly one that most reasonable people can live with.

I would only say, the debate may have lasted months in the newsroom (as per the internal letter to staff), but the public discussion certainly was not very long at all – we are just the loyal readers I suppose!

Herewith, a little digression in the interest of another of my grammatical eccentricities (faults!), and that is a tendency to be inconsistent with words with an -ise or -ize suffix – the former favoured/favored [sic] in British English, the latter American English. This comes to mind because I see now, in my first blog entry on this matter, I wrote capitalise and here capitalize.

The Odyssey (6): Book 11

Into darkness and back again

Hades can, and does, confuse – one place or many, a gate keeper or a god? Considering its place in the Christian tradition, is it synonymous to the notion of “hell” – that eternally punitive afterlife afforded all sinners? Or something more? Whichever – how unforgiving, and insufficient; for the ancient Greek god of the dead, Hades, and the underworld where he reigns, belong to a more complex system of mythology; essential to maintaining the tenuous balance that exists between the gods and mortal beings. Hades’ realm has room enough for justice, and for each soul its just deserts. To get one’s bearings right, here is a link to one explanation of this place where nobody wants to go and its inhabitants, and a colourful map of the underworld – and more.

Map of the Underworld – Showing the descents of Odysseus and Aeneas

Its performance having a pivotal function in Book XI, I should say that a nekyia is the cult-practice whereupon the shades (souls, spirits, ghosts) of the dead are called upon, and it is the rite which Odysseus must attend to in order to summon Tiresias. Necromancy may be a more familiar and encompassing word. And it is as the nekyia that this book of The Odyssey has been referred since antiquity.

book 11: The dead

pp. 279-300

Tiresias appears to Odysseus during the *nekyia* of *Odyssey* xi, watercolor with tempera, Johann Heinrich Füssli, c. 1780-85.

Following the darkness to the misty land of the Cimmerians, Odysseus performs all the rites of the nekyia. Only then is he, first, confronted with the unfinished business of the fallen Elpenor, and promises that he will attend to a proper burial upon their return to Circe’s island. Enter then, Tiresias, given voice by the sacrificial blood; and tells Odysseus of the hard trials still awaiting him on his journey but gives also the promise that, should he resist all temptations, he may well return to Ithaca. But his return will not be unconditional, and he will find things not as they were; he must rid his home of those who cause trouble (that is, he must slaughter the suitors), he must make amends with sacrifices. This done, his people will prosper and he will have a long life and a good death.

And he speaks with the shade of his mother, Anticleia, dead from great sadness at Odysseus absence and his father’s ensuing grief, and who relays word of Penelope: “She stays firm. Her heart is strong. She is still in your house. And all her rights are passed in misery, and days in tears…”. More spirits of women gathered to tell their stories, of splendid lovers – gods and legendary heroes all – and sons (they only seemed to have sons!) born to greatness.

The Phaecians listened spellbound to Odysseus tale; enraptured by his prowess as story-teller and poet. Alcinous wonders whether he encountered the spirits of those with whom he fought at Troy and asks that he proceed, and Odysseus accedes to the King’s request. He relates more: of Agamemnon who tells of dying at the hands of Aegisthus and the scheming Clytemnestra, of Achilles, he who so longed for the immortality of a hero and would now rather ‘life’ as a poor peasant, but is still delighted at the news of his son’s success as man and warrior, and Ajax who does not speak and clearly holds a grudge, and those tormented, and Heracles.

Spooked enough by Hades’ ghostly inhabitants, Odysseus tells his audience how he gladly returned to his men, to then cast their ship again upon River Ocean; direction – dawn.