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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #1 on: 08:15:53, 16-01-2008 » |
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Very worthwhile reading indeed, Mr Dish - thanks for this useful link  You've inspired me to dig-out and re-read Kierkegaard... |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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C Dish
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« Reply #2 on: 20:34:04, 16-01-2008 » |
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Kierkegaard is of course not everyone's bag of bricks, but even then one should have a 'response' to him at hand. What I particularly enjoy about this article is the citation of Beckett, and the generally sympathetic analysis of the current condition of Modernism (which of course is the same condition it was in, essentially, when the term attained its current meaning, way back when). If it got out of that straitjacket, then it wouldn't be Modernism anymore (or would it? I'm ready to discuss this if anyone else wants to take the bait).
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inert fig here
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George Garnett
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« Reply #3 on: 22:09:36, 16-01-2008 » |
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There was a passing jab at Beckett though for his sometimes "over-elegant and almost mannered assertions of despair". I suppose I see what Josipovici might mean by that but I can't imagine how Beckett would be without what I think he meant by it. Any thoughts on whether Beckett is guilty as charged (I mean the "over-elegant and almost mannered" bit)?
I was also left wondering, possibly because I couldn't entirely follow the thread of his argument at times, whether it was specifically the legacy of 'Modernism' as such that he was addressing or, more generally, the wider legacy of 'the Enlightenment'. I'll obviously have to have another go but I'm afraid I failed to identify what he saw specifically as important and characteristic of Modernism that wasn't already troubling in post-Enlightenment thought generally. What, in other words, was this extra thing that had 'happened' in Modernism (which 99% of writers, publishers etc are apparently nonetheless merrily going on ignoring) that hadn't already happened as part of Enlightenment thinking?
[Oh, and more importantly I should have made explicit what was meant to be implicit: thanks CD for posting a very interesting article - well two in fact, the A S Byatt one was also well worth a read I thought.]
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« Last Edit: 10:26:30, 17-01-2008 by George Garnett »
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #4 on: 22:11:34, 16-01-2008 » |
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Any thoughts on whether Beckett is guilty as charged (I mean the "over-elegant and almost mannered" bit)? Almost? As far as I could tell he was being charged with being Beckett, as you quite reasonably pointed out. Fair enough, hard for him to wriggle out of a rap like that but I didn't quite see the point...  |
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C Dish
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« Reply #5 on: 22:24:48, 16-01-2008 » |
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The charge is not levelled by GJ, it is merely quoted by him and left standing without dismantlement -- is that the problem you lot have w/ it? I think the author agrees with you lot that Beckett cannot adequately have met the charge because he is Beckett.
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inert fig here
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time_is_now
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« Reply #6 on: 23:24:22, 16-01-2008 » |
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I don't think that's Beckett being charged with being Beckett. Or rather: I think Beckett's get-out from that would not be 'I am who I am' but more to do with the fact that his work generally presents characters who are in some sense taken to 'stand for' their author('s authorial persona). Beckett makes characters who are a synecdoche for himself and gives the 'elegant and almost mannered assertions of despair' to them.
It's not (just) a modernist trick, either.
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The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #7 on: 00:10:18, 17-01-2008 » |
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For myself, I was particularly pleased with the approach to Sartre in the piece, and found myself regretting that I'd read NAUSEA when I was 19 and had probably completely misunderstood it.. (at the time I was exactly the satirised Guardian-reader who imagines his Weltschmerz to be unique and meaningful). Another for the re-reading list (after Kierkegaard). But by coincidence the particular quotation from Sartre came as a heaven-sent gift - it offered exactly the viewpoint I needed to resolve something I'm working on currently. It was duly copied, printed, and stuck on the wall over my desk |
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Andy D
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« Reply #8 on: 00:43:23, 17-01-2008 » |
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Looks an interesting article. I've found Nausea an inspirational book on the several occasions that I've read it but I wonder if I would now. My feelings towards the novel at the present are summed up by the Beckett quote "'The expression that there is nothing to express". So many works of serious fiction seem to take far too many words to say far too little. I'd rather read Ian Rankin - or perhaps he's "serious" too?  |
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #9 on: 06:33:47, 17-01-2008 » |
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Au sujet, Julie Burchill has a piece called "Stop This Stream Of Sob Stories From Middle-Class Writers" in today's, errr.... Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2242058,00.htmlPot. Kettle. Black.
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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