Review: Pilgrimage: Backwater

Pilgrimage: Backwater by Dorothy M. Richardson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The adventures of Miriam continue in the second installation of the pilgrimage. For sure Dorothy M. Richardson (DMR) still got it going on.

The theme on silence persists in the book and how gloriously silence has been exemplified. Majestically introduced in the first chapter... in the little drawing room "the little drawing-room was very quiet with the strange old-fashioned quietness" It is as if DMR is pointing us back to silence in all respects and saying without silence there is nothing. I will point out a few examples of how silence crept in the book….
“The sisters talked quietly, outlining their needs in smooth gentle voices, in small broken phrases, frequently interrupting and correcting each other”
“Listen to the dewy stillness of the garden”
“Streaming in through the madras muslin curtains, everything in the room very silent and distinct; nothing to be heard but the little flutterings of birds under the caves”
“I never have been able to stand a sudden noise. It’s torture to me to walk along a platform where a train may suddenly shriek”
“All things men have invented, trains and canons and things make a frightful noise”
“Make her play the romance first and then the Cavatina without talking in between”

Phrases
“Extracting the stone from a prune”
“Do not lump down on your heels..”
“A family that revels in plumes and hearses...”
“That bright yellow colour meant liver” – Describing sickness...
“vivacious intentness”
“Unhurried exactitude”
“Unnatural infatuation”
“Crimsoning”
“Come to tea”
“far reaching meadows, park-land, deer, the great silent heath, the silent shoulders of the windmill, softness of the sky, harsh streetiness, char womanishness, smarmy, churchy or chapelish sentimentality”
“Humming shreds of a violin obligato”


Stream of consciousness
"Ahead of her, at the end of the long drive, lay 3 sunlit weeks, bright mow in the certainty of the shadow that lay beyond them"
“The room was full of whirling forms swelling and shrinking as they crossed and recrossed the line between the clear vision rimmed by her glasses and the surrounding bright confusion”
Miriam gets into a sort of trance when having bread and reasons “it could be a good thing if she could decide never to have more than two slices...but every slice seems to be better than the last...” she notices the three hollow teeth... wow! And how mouthfuls of solid bread would sort of pad them...
“flower filled garden crowded up against the windows, anything to come out triumphantly together at the end and to stop satisfied...”
Books
There is so much to say about books ... no doubt DMR was keen about reading and books for that matter.
“Line upon line” and the “pilgrim’s progress” were not meant for modern minds
Quotables
“I say, somebody’s been using the ‘Financial Times’ to cut up flowers on. It’s all wet.”
“Good manners and civility make everybody lovely”
“no man could endure a woman’s silence”
“free press that Milton had gone to prison for”
“Flies don’t buzz, …. Why do people say they buzz?”
“She doesn’t approve of general conversation”
“one can always criticize a sermon”
“positively dangerous.. it means leaving your mind open for whatever they choose to say like Rome”
“If you listen only for the good the good will come to you”
“How can people, ordinary people, be expected to be like Christ, as they say, when they think Christ was supernatural?”
“If you can’t have what you like you must like what you have”
“Basement rooms are awfully bad”
“Women are made to find and dispense happiness”
“Even the sunlight paid sort of homage to the fathomless certainty she felt.”
“Life’s like Robinson Crusoe….anything might happen any minute….”


Music
How Miriam talks and experiences music looks like something to live for. She feels the music and loves playing the piano
“After a while everything was dissolved, past and future and present...”
“ceelo –like notes the devout theme of the lyric, Miriam drifted to an extremity of happiness”
The only music we talk about when DMR is at it is classical music. A bit of waltz......maybe....that is the general drift...

Descriptives
North Londoners spoke sideways with a snarling curl of one half of the upper lip and have that resentful way of speaking..
“a fly was hovering about the muslin window blind with little reedy loops of song...”
“The Englishman puts a dirty shirt on a clean body, and the Frenchman a clean shirt on a dirt body”
“Madras muslin curtains”
“German blue eyes”

Similes
“Looking fragile like the alabaster chapelle in the nursery with a candle alight inside.”
“Upright as a dart”
Paradox - “surrounding bright confusion”
Tea seems to have been a tradition of the English and the Germans as well. I like how they eve had tea- time reading to emphasize on how important tea was.

Sarcasm – “cheese how could people eat cheese?”
I like how there was an Ode to men ... “someone ought to prevent the extravagance of keeping whole houses and fires going for women like that”
Interesting to note how Miriam defines faith as just an abnormal condition of the mind with fanaticism on one end and agnosticism on the other... well I sure hope that this was not DMR projecting her faith through Miriam because if that was the case then she got it twisted. The definition of faith according to the Bible is substance of things unseen and hoped for..Maybe she hoped to have a philosophical debate. True bias is seen when she is feisty to consult with “people of faith” who beg the whole question from beginning.
DMR also subscribes to the school of thought that author’s books should be printed and read post-humous; very interesting to note.
I doubt this is how refreshment is defined... “to dance with a girl who can talk sense and doesn’t giggle”

Skewed English – Little dorlings, gels...
As regards that smoking scene....I look at it as rebellion from the norm. Someone can wake up one day and decide to smoke without coughing? I think it is juxtaposition as to a woman rolling her tobacco and the morning world gleamed back at her....

Figure of speech – Pink anemones (go figure)

A classic read!


View all my reviews