delivered in Darjeeling 2000 and (revised) in 2009
An Orientation in Contemporary Literature
(The Darjeeling Lecture.)
The Bible - Homer - Dante - Shakespeare.
These are the four corner stones of world literature and civilization: the Bible as foundation for the three monotheistic world religions, Homer as the firm ground of the whole classical civilization, Dante as the originator of the Renaissance, and Shakespeare as the maker of modern man. These four authorities almost make up half of the history of literature.
Victor Hugo - Charles Dickens - Dostoyevsky - Leo Tolstoy.
These are the four literary giants dominating the 19th century, Victor Hugo by his romantic spirit, Dickens with his humanitarian pathos, Dostoyevsky by his psychology and Leo Tolstoy by his realism.
Then comes the 20th century, but why don't we have giants like this in that age? The First World War destroyed an entire generation of hopes and talents, such a brilliant and promising novelist as Henri Alain-Fournier fell on the western front, many were the poets that shared his fate (like Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen), and the Second World War was even worse. The disasters of the first half of the century made it almost impossible for creative writers of classical literature to exist.
Among the most typical examples are the collaborating couple Romain Rolland-Stefan Zweig, pacifists who detached themselves from the mundane world and almost completely dedicated themselves to writing only biographies, to preserve for the future the lives of real artists and writers, the existence of which a new unhuman age had made impossible. Romain Rolland ended up as a Hinduist, and Stefan Zweig, after perhaps the most brilliant literary career of the 20th century, committed suicide in the third year of the Second World War, being an Austrian and a Jew. He found it impossible to exist in a world which could have brought an Adolf Hitler to power.
All the same, there have been writers in the 20th century, but what kind has dominated it? Affected modernists and posing humbugs like T.S.Eliot, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and other freaks and frauds of unintelligible language distortions. Classical literature has almost completely disappeared, like classical art and music, to be replaced by nonsense, ugliness and noise.
Fortunately there have been exceptions though, and a few examples are worth keeping in mind. In America there are but very few, since vulgarity seems to dominate everything produced there, but in England we have several interesting examples.
Robert Graves had enough of the western world by the First World War and afterwards almost exclusively dedicated himself to classical history and mythology. Joseph Conrad was a Pole but wrote in English, and his greatest admirer was Graham Greene, who must be regarded as one of the most important authors of the century, like the great connoisseur of human nature, William Somerset Maugham. Another underestimated writer is James Hilton, educated at Cambridge, with his sometimes ingenious novels. Among later authors John Fowles should be noted, whose novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman" is a successful attempt at reviving the great 19th century novel.
Let's also remember a few authors outside England. By the epoch-making "Doctor Zhivago", Boris Pasternak continues the great Russian tradition from Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. The dramas of Jean-Paul Sartre are completely original and very effective, while at the same time he continues the tradition of the ancient Greek drama. Another very important modern novel is the Italian Elsa Morante's "History" in its deep neo-realistic settlement with the times of Mussolini and Fascism.
Although the great romantic-realistic story-telling tradition has had its hardest set-backs since the darkest medieval ages, it has survived and is continuing. But the same rule applies as ever: we have nothing else to build on but tradition. We have our great universal examples in the Bible, Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, and we have the great 19th century novelists to look up to; and even if the first half of the 20th century was almost only disastrous adversities, we still have the old examples to keep in mind, continue to learn from and keep up for the future.
Why, then, finally, is that tradition so important? Why bother about reading books? Because in those great immortal sacred books we have all the humanity there is. We have to look to them to find the sources of humanity, humanitarianism, the very identity of civilized man. The great classical writers are those who best understood and knew about man and thus could improve him by setting new examples. That's why I call the writer behind Shakepeare's dramas 'the maker of modern man', for so far no one has understood human nature better and improved it more than he.
----
Concerning the art of writing, there are three things to always bear in mind: concentration, meaning and style. Whatever you write, it must be as concentrated as possible not to be boring, it has to have a meaning – there is never any meaning in nonsense, for instance; while style can only be acquired by diligent practice – it usually comes with the years.
The best practice of all, however, is simply to be a good reader, to read as much as possible of qualified literature, preferably classics, and learn from what others have written. Knowledge is of course perhaps the most important of all, which you can only acquire by lots of reading and practice.
One good book to learn a lot from and a magnificent example of concentration and style, is Somerset Maugham's "The Summing Up", a quite small book that however never can be exhausted for its best possible advice to all readers and writers.
Best of luck!
Essay by Christian Lanciai
Read 594 times
Written on 2009-11-27 at 11:26
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The Darjeeling lecture
An Orientation in Contemporary Literature
(The Darjeeling Lecture.)
The Bible - Homer - Dante - Shakespeare.
These are the four corner stones of world literature and civilization: the Bible as foundation for the three monotheistic world religions, Homer as the firm ground of the whole classical civilization, Dante as the originator of the Renaissance, and Shakespeare as the maker of modern man. These four authorities almost make up half of the history of literature.
Victor Hugo - Charles Dickens - Dostoyevsky - Leo Tolstoy.
These are the four literary giants dominating the 19th century, Victor Hugo by his romantic spirit, Dickens with his humanitarian pathos, Dostoyevsky by his psychology and Leo Tolstoy by his realism.
Then comes the 20th century, but why don't we have giants like this in that age? The First World War destroyed an entire generation of hopes and talents, such a brilliant and promising novelist as Henri Alain-Fournier fell on the western front, many were the poets that shared his fate (like Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen), and the Second World War was even worse. The disasters of the first half of the century made it almost impossible for creative writers of classical literature to exist.
Among the most typical examples are the collaborating couple Romain Rolland-Stefan Zweig, pacifists who detached themselves from the mundane world and almost completely dedicated themselves to writing only biographies, to preserve for the future the lives of real artists and writers, the existence of which a new unhuman age had made impossible. Romain Rolland ended up as a Hinduist, and Stefan Zweig, after perhaps the most brilliant literary career of the 20th century, committed suicide in the third year of the Second World War, being an Austrian and a Jew. He found it impossible to exist in a world which could have brought an Adolf Hitler to power.
All the same, there have been writers in the 20th century, but what kind has dominated it? Affected modernists and posing humbugs like T.S.Eliot, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and other freaks and frauds of unintelligible language distortions. Classical literature has almost completely disappeared, like classical art and music, to be replaced by nonsense, ugliness and noise.
Fortunately there have been exceptions though, and a few examples are worth keeping in mind. In America there are but very few, since vulgarity seems to dominate everything produced there, but in England we have several interesting examples.
Robert Graves had enough of the western world by the First World War and afterwards almost exclusively dedicated himself to classical history and mythology. Joseph Conrad was a Pole but wrote in English, and his greatest admirer was Graham Greene, who must be regarded as one of the most important authors of the century, like the great connoisseur of human nature, William Somerset Maugham. Another underestimated writer is James Hilton, educated at Cambridge, with his sometimes ingenious novels. Among later authors John Fowles should be noted, whose novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman" is a successful attempt at reviving the great 19th century novel.
Let's also remember a few authors outside England. By the epoch-making "Doctor Zhivago", Boris Pasternak continues the great Russian tradition from Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. The dramas of Jean-Paul Sartre are completely original and very effective, while at the same time he continues the tradition of the ancient Greek drama. Another very important modern novel is the Italian Elsa Morante's "History" in its deep neo-realistic settlement with the times of Mussolini and Fascism.
Although the great romantic-realistic story-telling tradition has had its hardest set-backs since the darkest medieval ages, it has survived and is continuing. But the same rule applies as ever: we have nothing else to build on but tradition. We have our great universal examples in the Bible, Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, and we have the great 19th century novelists to look up to; and even if the first half of the 20th century was almost only disastrous adversities, we still have the old examples to keep in mind, continue to learn from and keep up for the future.
Why, then, finally, is that tradition so important? Why bother about reading books? Because in those great immortal sacred books we have all the humanity there is. We have to look to them to find the sources of humanity, humanitarianism, the very identity of civilized man. The great classical writers are those who best understood and knew about man and thus could improve him by setting new examples. That's why I call the writer behind Shakepeare's dramas 'the maker of modern man', for so far no one has understood human nature better and improved it more than he.
----
Concerning the art of writing, there are three things to always bear in mind: concentration, meaning and style. Whatever you write, it must be as concentrated as possible not to be boring, it has to have a meaning – there is never any meaning in nonsense, for instance; while style can only be acquired by diligent practice – it usually comes with the years.
The best practice of all, however, is simply to be a good reader, to read as much as possible of qualified literature, preferably classics, and learn from what others have written. Knowledge is of course perhaps the most important of all, which you can only acquire by lots of reading and practice.
One good book to learn a lot from and a magnificent example of concentration and style, is Somerset Maugham's "The Summing Up", a quite small book that however never can be exhausted for its best possible advice to all readers and writers.
Best of luck!
Essay by Christian Lanciai
Read 594 times
Written on 2009-11-27 at 11:26
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
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