Deadlock by
Dorothy M. Richardson
My rating:
3 of 5 stars
This sixth volume in the Pilgrimage series was sort of a diary with lots of intelligent discourse going on. One cannot miss the brilliant subtlety and a nervous vitality. Gaps in narrative is a thing perfected either knowingly or unknowingly. The lodge gets a new Russian- Jew and they immediately hit it off with Miriam. This is how I like to describe the whole Pilgrimage series . . . But there was a coming in and out. . . . Just think around that and see I have described the whole series.
Look at how Deadlock begins… “Miriam ran upstairs narrowly ahead of her thoughts. In the small enclosure of her room they surged about her, gathering power from the familiar objects silently waiting to share her astounded contemplation of the fresh material.” Isn’t it funny how Miriam is always getting into rooms…here she seems to have been competing with her thoughts. The author intentionally throws you into stream of consciousness. How can one compete with her thoughts in the physical realm?
It is amazing that people thought Miriam who was bookish was the best person to assist Shatov with his English. Look at Shatov trying to lead her on…. "I am most interested in philosophy," he said, glowering warmly through his further, wide-open eye. "It was very good to me. I found myself most excited after our talk of yesterday. I think you too were interested?" of course Miriam was neither here nor there… "Yes, wasn't it extraordinary?" Miriam paused to choose between the desire to confess her dread of confronting a full-fledged student and a silence that would let him go on talking while she contemplated a series of reflections extending forward out of sight from his surprising admission of fellowship…. Meanwhile his eagerness to rekindle without fresh fuel, the glow of yesterday, confessed an immaturity that filled her with a tumult of astonished solicitude.” (She played hard to get)
Here Dorothy M. Richardson (D.M.R) tries to tackle a very sensitive topic on race and how she came out might perhaps leave a sour taste in peoples mouth…but then again is it Miriam or Dorothy to blame?
D.M.R relishes the concept of not attaching any importance to herself or having any future influence but rather is intuitive…addressing the very soul of her readers. It is difficult to classify her in to the conventional literary forms; she was giving herself. This is not an easy thing. In the words of Wilson Follet…
“The effort to "place" her, she would almost necessarily construe as an effort to dispose of her altogether, and on the cheapest terms — to reject her on the one ground on which she offers herself, while accepting her on grounds wholly foreign to her mind and purpose.”
We have to come to a thrilling and life-giving apprehension of the author's personality. By reading you can easily tell what was going on in her life. For example I could tell you that Miriam being bookish was attracted to men who could hold intelligent conversations. A widely read man was a nice challenge for Miriam any day and on any topic. Be it astronomy, metaphysics, religion, psychology, you name it. She seemed to understand all the European languages and their avarices.
There is a huge discussion in this installment about novels and fiction. It seems to conclude that what to read should be fictional novels or maybe to be politically correct - fiction (removing the novel). Here is how Follet captures the definition of a novel “the novel is already so inexpugnable that a clever historian could infer its existence without ever having heard of it, as astronomers calculate the mass of an invisible star to explain the behaviour of visible bodies.”
I will therefore refer to it as works - Such reads on fiction should not be understood easily. In other words what the author intends when doing such works is for the reader too think they got it while they still are a mile away. It is unbelievable that DMR is pointing us to her work and insisting that it is a work of fiction while all along I thought it was sort of an autobiography of her life portrayed through Miriam.
Those topics that people do not want to touch are handled meticulously dealt a thorough upper-hand left stroke of a south paw.
Intelligent conversations…
Misapplication of the term infinite – “If the earth is to be called petty, then the stars must be called petty too. They may not even be inhabited. Perhaps they mean the movement of the vast system going on for ever, while men die. The indestructibility of matter. But if matter is indestructible, it is not what the people who used the phrase mean by matter. If matter is not conscious, man is more than matter. If a small, no matter how small, conscious thing is called petty in comparison with big, no matter how big unconscious things, everything is made a question of size, which is absurd. But all these people think that consciousness dies. . . .”
On humanity - "Humanity does not change," they say. It is the same as it was in the beginning is now and ever will be. . . . The men make sly horrible jokes together . . . the Greeks had only one wife; they called it monotony. . . . the Queen can never ride on an omnibus.”
Shatov on Emerson - "Well, I always feel, all the time, all day, that if people would only read Emerson they would understand, and not be like they are, and that the only way to make them understand what one means would be reading pieces of Emerson."
When discussing Tolstoy – “Why must a book be a masterly study of some single thing?”
Individualism – "I agree to a certain extent that it is impossible. A man is first himself. But the peril is of being cut off from his fellow creatures."
On the subject of the time-expanding swiftness of thought. - "A system," pursued the voice, "very generally corrects the fallacy of the preceding system, and leans perhaps in the opposite direction."
Materialism - "The correlation between physical and mental gives an empirical support to materialism."
Talking about Emerson alluding to Dante? – “Emerson would have hated me. But he thinks evil people are necessary. How is one to know whether one is really evil? Suppose one is. The Catholics believe that even the people in hell have a little relaxation now and again.”
Translations and comparison of languages
“the Russians themselves knew what they were like. "There is in Russia except in the governing and bourgeois classes almost no hypocrisy." What was kinetic. . . . And religion was an "actual force" in Russia!”
This is how English can be frigid –
“the English don't gesticulate . . . but he used no gesticulations; he was aware; that was a deliberate attempt to be English. But his whole person was a gesture, expanding, vibrating. "You mean by intonation only the intonation of single words, not of the whole?" "Precisely, Correctness of accent and emphasis is my aim. But you imply a criticism," he fluted, unshaken by his storm. "Yes. First you must not pronounce each word quite so carefully. It makes them echo into each other. Then of course if you want to be quite English you must be less emphatic." "I must assume an air of indifference?"
"An English audience will be more likely to understand if you are slower and more quiet. You ought to have gaps now and then." "Intervals for yawning. Yew shall indicate suitable moments. I see that I am fortunate to have met-hew. I will take lessons, for this lecture, in the true frigid English dignity."
“the irony of the French or the plebeianism of Germans and Scandinavians,”
“Reading and discussion would reveal ignorance of English literature.”
“typical German arrogance.”
"Of course clerks don't make much, unless they have languages. He ought to learn one or two languages."
“Russian is most beautiful; it is perhaps the most beautiful European language; it is, indubitably, the most rich."
"Certainly it is richer than English, I shall prove this to you, even with dictionary. You shall find that it occur, over and over, that where in English is one word, in Russian is six or seven different, all synonyms, but all with most delicate individual shades of nuance .... the abstractive expression is there, as in all civilized European languages, but there is also in Russian the most immense variety of natural expressions, coming forth from the strong feeling of the Russian nature to all these surrounding influences; each word opens to a whole apercu in this sort .... and what is most significant is, the great richness, in Russia, of the people-language I there is no other people-language similar; there is in no one language so immense a variety of tender diminutives and intimate expressions of all natural things. None is so rich in sound or so marvelously powerfully colorful. . . . That is Russian. Part of the reason is no doubt to find in the immense paysage; Russia is zo vast; it is inconceivable for any non-Russian. There is also the ethnological explanation, the immense vigour of the people."
“the immense range of English was partly due to its unrivalled collection of technical terms, derived from English science, commerce, sports,”
Russian authors - Tolstoy.- “He has a most profound knowledge of human psychology; the most marvelous touches. In that he rises to universality. Tourgainyeff is more pure Russian, less to understand outside Russia; more academical; but he shall reveal you most admirably the Russian aristocrat. He is cynic-satirical."
“... a French translation of a Russian book revealing marvellously the interior, the self-life, of a doctor, through his training and experience in practice. It would be a revelation to English readers and she should translate it; in collaboration with him; if she would excuse the intimate subjects it necessarily dealt with.”
"The French sing their language. It is like a recitative, the tone goes up and down and along and up and down again with its own expression; the words have to fit the tune. They have no single abrupt words and phrases, the whole thing is a shape”
“He used to talk incessantly, as if the whole table were waiting for his ideas. And knew everything, in the most awful superficial newspaper way. They have absolutely no souls at all. I never saw an American soul. The Canadians have. The Americans, at least the women, have reproachful ideals that they all agree about. So that they are all like one person; all the same effect.”
. .
Quotes
“Darwin was bad, for men.”
“it was the business of women to be the custodians of manners. . . . Their "sense of good form, and their critical and selective faculties." Then he had no right to be contemptuous of them. . . .”
"People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say" . . .
“Time is let out on usury.”
"It is a serious mistake to regard enlightenment as pessimism."
"A happy childhood is perhaps the most fortunate gift in life."
“. . . there is a dead level of intelligence throughout humanity.”
'All expectation of gratitude is meanness and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person'
"It is not what people may be made to see for a few minutes in conversation that counts. It is the conclusions they come to, instinctively, by themselves."
"You could not possibly have a better book for style and phraseology in English, quite apart from the meaning."
“. . . Where did women find the insight into personality that gave them such extraordinary prophetic power?”
“to have the freedom of London was a life in itself.”
Bias
“... It ought to be illegal to publish a book by a man without first giving it to a woman to annotate”
“It would never occur to an English doctor to write for the general public anything that could shake its confidence in doctors. Foreigners are different. They think nothing of revealing and discussing the most awful things. . . . Doctors have to specialize when they are boys and they remain ignorant all their lives." …This Is not only for doctors. You have touched the great problem of modem life. No man can, today, see over the whole field of knowledge. The great Leibnitz was the last to whom this was possible."
“Mm. Perhaps the Russians are more simple; less . . . civilized." "Simplicity and directness of feeling does not necessarily indicate a less highly organized psychological temperament."
“. . . don't take up ... a journalistic career on the strength of being able to write; as badly as Jenkins.”
"The greatest Ideas are always simple; though not in their resultants. This dream however, has always been present with Jews."
"Facts are invented by people who start with their conclusions arranged beforehand."
"What is Christianity? You think Christianity is favourable to women? On the contrary. It is the Christian countries that have produced the prostitute and the most vile estimations of women in the world. It is only in Christian countries that I find the detestable spectacle of men who will go straight from association with loose women Into the society of innocent girls. That I find unthinkable."
“With Jews womanhood has always been sacred. And there can be no doubt that we owe our persistence as a race largely to our laws of protection for women; all women. Moreover in the older Hebrew civilization women stood very high. You may read this. Today there is a very significant Jewish wit which says that women make the best wives and mothers in the world."
“first outbreak of American literature was unfortunately feminine.”
“However clever the man might be, his assumptions about women made the carefully arranged and solemnly received display of research, irritatingly valueless.”
“Justice is a woman; blindfolded; seeing from the inside and not led away by appearances; men invent systems of ethics, but they cannot weigh personality; they have no individuality, only conformity or non-conformity to abstract systems;”
Metaphysics
“Theology does not deny the problems of metaphysic, but answers them in a way metaphysic cannot accept."
Good writing
“Sarah said people ought always to wear hats, especially with evening dress . . . picture hats, with evening dress, made pictures.”
“Christ was the first man to see women as individuals." "You speak easily of Christianity. There is no Christianity in the world. It has never been imagined, save in the brain of a Tolstoy. And he has shown that if the principles of Christianity were applied, cIvIlizatlon as we know it would at once come to an end."
"What is Emerson?" - "He is an American," "It is the most perfect English that you could have. He is a New Englander, a Bostonian; the Pilgrim Fathers; they kept up the English of our best period. The fifteenth century."
"A compress or hot fomentations, hot fomentations could not do harm and they might be very good."
How to write good fiction - But they were about the sea; and the fifth form ... "a noble three-bladed knife, minus the blades". . . .
How to read a book – “But if one never found out what a book was a masterly study of, it meant being ignorant of things everyone knew and agreed about; a kind of hopeless personal ignorance and unintelligence; reading whole books through and through, and only finding out what they were about by accident, when people happened to talk about them, and even then, reading them again, and finding principally quite other things, which stayed, after one had forgotten what people had explained.”
Instinctive Nervous Reaction - "That is an illusion, the strength of life in you that cannot, midst good health, accept death.
On employment – “In the train I saw the whole unfairness of the life of employees. However hard they work, their lives don't alter or get any easier. They live cheap poor lives in anxiety all their best years and then are expected to be grateful for a pension, and generally get no pension.”
Stream of consciousness
“But perhaps the things that occur to you suddenly for the first time in conversation are the things you have always thought, without knowing it . . .”
Astronomy
“The sky looked intelligent.”
“Perhaps they mean the movement of the vast system going on for ever, while men die. The indestructibility of matter. But if matter is indestructible, it is not what the people who used the phrase mean by matter. If matter is not conscious, man is more than matter. If a small, no matter how small, conscious thing is called petty in comparison with big, no matter how big unconscious things, everything is made a question of size, which is absurd. But all these people think that consciousness dies. . . .”
View all my reviews
The Tunnel by Dorothy M. Richardson
