Stretching The Imagination

Read Part 3 of Wide Sargasso Sea today - the 'madwoman in the attic' segment. I think I've read it as a whole some five or six times previously, and dipped into it in the classroom many more times than that. It loses none of its hallucinatory power on a rereading; in fact, it gains in intensity.

I can't think of any other treatment of 'madness' in a novel that comes close to being so convincing and so frightening and so destabilising. The moment when we realise Antoinette's seeming account of the fire in which she will perish is not (yet) literal but the conclusion of the premonitory dream that has haunted her since childhood, and she's about to enact that vision in what seems a triumphant manner, is possibly the most stunning moment in a text that at times seems like nothing so much as an assault on the reader's sensibilities.

On the back page of the edition I'm reading it quotes someone as saying the novel is one of the works of genius of the twentieth century. That's not hyperbole by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, stretching our imaginations to make room for the victimised and dispossessed and their pain is what Rhys is so disturbingly good at.

Only Temporary

Noi showed me some video earlier today of one of the big waves generated through the earthquake that hit Sulawesi, Indonesia late on Friday. When she read out the magnitude of the quake, 7.5, it was awfully easy to imagine the scale of the casualties likely to have been inflicted. Following the recent deaths on Lombok this all seems particularly cruel, but there's nothing inherently malicious, of course, with regard to the indifferent power of the natural world.

Whatever sense of security any of us possesses can only be illusory and temporary - fearfully so.

The Possible

Had vaguely wondered about popping down to The Esplanade for the SSO concert this evening. They were doing Mahler 5, so it was a tempting prospect and the Missus was going out to do some exercise with one of her friends, leaving me at a bit of a loose end. But then I found out that the Visual Arts students were putting together their annual Gallery Night, and that decided it. A fine time guaranteed, on the doorstep.

And so it proved to be. I really can't quite explain why I find looking at the work of eighteen-year-old sort-of-artists an uplifting experience. But it is. As I remarked to a few of the ones familiar to me from drama, I inevitably will see at least one piece from each contributor - and usually it's more - that I find not just striking, but positively haunting. Even now, more than two hours later, I can visualise those pieces as I sit writing - which is quite something for someone with as poor a visual memory as mine.

And as I further remarked, I have a powerful sense that if any of them stuck at their work, as more than just a hobby, though, come to think of it, a hobby would be enough, I think they'd develop in ways they do not suspect of themselves. As ever I come away with a feeling I've just witnessed something deliciously mysterious about what we are capable of when we connect with transcendent possibilities.

Spinning

Bought my work diary today for 2019, which was a relief as it's becoming increasingly difficult to find the week-to-a-view type that forty years of use have habituated me to, to the point I can't cope without. But wasn't it just the other day I got hold of my diary for 2018? No, of course it wasn't. The whirligig of time spins ever faster, I'm afraid. Just hope I don't fall off.

A Corking Good Egg

For reasons I don't quite understand I found myself reading Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude today, without quite meaning to. I think it had something to do with the fact that I'd been telling someone how teaching Long Day's Journey had been one of the highlights of my career and I felt some kind of need to re-visit the only great writer I can think of who can be quite spectacularly bad at times, Strange Interlude being one of those times. The basic gimmick of the play, to represent what the characters are thinking along with the spoken dialogue, in the form of interspersed chunks of stream of consciousness, doesn't work at all even on the page - and I've no idea what went on in the theatre. It doesn't work because O'Neill can't do stream of consciousness. The thoughts sound much like the dialogue, except a bit more revelatory and, therefore, more embarrassing. (I kept thinking of just how good Joyce is at convincing the reader that his characters really are thinking, which is a bit unfair on the dramatist, but there you go.)

Anyway, I managed the first two acts, but I'm not sure I can be bothered to keep going - not at the moment, at least. But having said all that, there was one aspect of O'Neill's dialogue I found engrossing, but not in any proper dramatic or literary sense. The colloquialisms associated with a couple of the characters seemed to be straight out of the pages of P.G. Wodehouse. Did the Yanks really refer to each other as good eggs in the early twentieth century? And did they actually say that a girl was a corker? I hope so. And wouldn't the world be a better place if we could bring these gems back? Never such innocence again.

Easily Influenced

Now listening with much enjoyment to some music I downloaded the other day by Malcolm Arnold. The selection mixes three of the symphonies with a number of other compositions, like the English Dances and other bits and pieces. A lot of zestfully tuneful bits but plenty of other more introspective moments.

This is the first music I've purchased this year having made a minor vow, now majorly broken, not to buy anything new until I'd done justice to what I already owned, especially the 'classical' stuff. But I don't feel too bad about betraying myself since I did last out for almost three quarters of the year without dipping into my pockets, and I think I've discovered a composer who deserves one more fan. It will be to my benefit not his, I'm sure.

Actually I blame the chap who maintains the excellent and dangerously informative On An Overgrown Path. I often come away from reading his entries with a keen desire to listen to whatever it is he's got an enthusiasm for since it's invariably exactly on my wavelength. To be honest, I've always been a bit embarrassed about my susceptibility to the enthusiasms of others. It speaks to a certain immaturity, I must confess. But, then, I've gained so much from following blindly in directions that others point that I can't be over regretful. I pretty much made myself like Messiaen since people I suspected knew what they were talking about said I should, and it turned out they were right.

A Useful Comparison

I was on the elliptical trainer in the gym just now, and sort of wishing I wasn't, when I suddenly thought: Well this is a lot better than marking Paper 2 essays. The fifteen minutes of my stint left after that didn't seem anything like as torturous somehow.

Someone Lost

Was reminded of the sad death of footballer Gary Speed today by a particularly striking article in the Sports Section of the online Guardian. Not the sort of thing you could have imagined being published thirty, possibly even fifteen years ago - and certainly not in the sports pages. So some progress has been made with regard to our understanding of what it is to suffer from depression. But still not enough. Possibly there never will be given the mysteriousness of the condition. I count myself lucky not to really be able to grasp it myself since I suppose that's evidence of having the good luck never to have visited for any length of time that awful place.

Something Lost

Just now I finished marking and, for no particular reason, put the telly on and glanced at the films showing. There were two of the more recent Star Wars movies on two different channels and I flipped them between for fifteen minutes or so before getting bored. It occurred to me that I'd enjoyed the original films enough to actually go to the cinema to watch them. There would be zero chance of that nowadays.

Yet the sequences I saw were visually very well done, and there nothing wrong with the acting. In fact, the younger performers struck me as being very good. So it was something of a puzzle to account for my complete lack of interest. All I can say is that it was, for some reason, impossible for me to enter their galaxy - and it felt like my loss, somehow.

But the corollary of all this was a certain relief that I didn't find myself with a new and highly productive way of wasting time.

Not A Good Place

I've discovered a way of almost effortlessly inducing in myself a kind of hapless melancholy, a sense that the wheels are coming off and there's not much that can be done to get the wagon back on the road and running. The secret is to read anything in the news related to Brexit. And if a deeper sense of depression is required it's easy to scroll down to the comments section of anything related to the topic on-line and get a taste of the frenzied disagreements amongst my fellow Brits in relation to the matter.

How did we get to this place?