Once again I am banging my head against my incomprehension in the face of great works of art.
As already documented on this blog Proust (in the original French no less) already defeated me when I (or Proust) reached the hawthorns - and not only me, apparently, but also an American called Russell Baker whose account of his struggles was sent to me by George from 20011 blog.
Now I am, not for the first time, tackling TS Eliot's Four Quartets. So many people admire these poems, not least, (from my perspective), my dad. I have never sufficiently admired TS Eliot - to the extent that when I heard someone request The Waste Land as their Desert Island book the other day, I actually said out loud, “Noooo, you'll be disappointed; it truly hasn't THAT many depths to reveal.” I don't think The Waste Land is rubbish, by the way, (and actually I know bits of it off by heart, because I have read it so many times). However, while I understand that at the time it was published it must have seemed excitingly unlike anything published before, I don't think it stands up to long, close scrutiny.
And as I begin on Eliot's Quartets I slam up once more against the familiar obstacles: I just don't think Eliot is an exceptionally great poet and it seems to me that, to hide this fact, he often took refuge in being odd and obscure. I acknowledge that many people adore obscurity, perhaps because it gives them a role, an opportunity to project, to create in a way in that empty space where meaning ought to be. But I prefer meaning.
The particular line I have banged up against this time is the one that begins the second section of Burnt Norton:
"Garlic and sapphires in the mud"
Is that genuinely a good image? Does it really speak to anyone with clarity? If it does, what does it say ( beyond conjuring a very peculiar picture in the reader's mind)?”
Though I can supply the next line, somehow I remember the gems as rubies. The American restaurant critic Ruth Reichl named a memoir Garlic and Sapphires. I haven't read the memoir, so I don't know how the sapphires fit in or the mud is omitted.
ReplyDeleteThanks - I've found that book on Scribd. I'd never heard of her before you mentioned her but now I am quite intrigued. My instinct is though, knowing the provenance of the line, that it is quite a high-falutin title for a book by a restaurant critic. But perhaps that demonstrates that I am a snob. ZMKC
DeleteRestaurant critic seems to be a high-falutin job in the US, or anyway in New York. Frank Bruni (who has also published a couple of memoirs, neither with a title from Eliot) was the NY Times bureau chief in Rome before he was its restaurant critic. Is this owing to the trades-union nature of American journalism, where one can start by covering municipal courts and move on to reviewing books, movies, or music? I don't know.
DeleteEnviable job, in any case. A friend in London went to a restaurant the other night where they charge over 60 pounds for main courses - the only way to justify that is if you are eating for your employment.
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