My new novel. It starts with the award-winning, BBC broadcast prologue, "The Orphan and the Mob", and continues with Jude's quest for True Love in Tipperary, Galway, the Aran Islands, and Dublin... Love, death, arson, philosophy, and sex. Starring Jude, an orphan who looks the spit of Leonardo DiCaprio. Except for having two penises. Which makes True Love... complicated.
Forum (Talk Talk Talk...) > Moliere
And of course, Oscar!!!
February 5, 2008 |
Razel Ahmed
Razel Ahmed
And Voltaire... although, no, you're right, he's famous for far more than his satires...
I haven't seen the film, Razel, but I definitely will now that you've recommended it so highly.
I'm shamefully ignorant of Molière's stuff. I was put off in my youth, when I found French drama a bit too prone to just having two people bat the play's raw ideas back and forth, rather than having them emerge from action as in Shakespeare...
Plus, I usually hate reading plays (Beckett, Shakespeare and Wilde being exceptions), and Irish theatre is usually dreadful. Yes, must give Molière another go. Another hideous gap in my reading. You have to have respect for the satirical genius of a man who manages to haemorrhage to death onstage while playing a hypochondriac...
Wow, I wrote a sentence back there that contained "too", "to" and "two" in rapid succession. What a trainwreck. I bet that's why so few novelists blog. They can't bear to let anyone see how godawful their first drafts are.
And yes, the blessed Oscar! What a chap. "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." He's jolly good on the subject of the novel, too (my obsession). I'm just going to quote a big chunk of it, and go to bed:
"In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such badly written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style, psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned, are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament, would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender everything that is valuable in him. In the case of the drama, things are a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true, but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art."
If anyone else is reading this, by the way, and it's new to them, I highly recommend "The Soul of Man Under Socialism". I express no personal opinion on whether or not he's right: I just think you should read it. It will enliven your morning greatly. It's all here free:
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html
I haven't seen the film, Razel, but I definitely will now that you've recommended it so highly.
I'm shamefully ignorant of Molière's stuff. I was put off in my youth, when I found French drama a bit too prone to just having two people bat the play's raw ideas back and forth, rather than having them emerge from action as in Shakespeare...
Plus, I usually hate reading plays (Beckett, Shakespeare and Wilde being exceptions), and Irish theatre is usually dreadful. Yes, must give Molière another go. Another hideous gap in my reading. You have to have respect for the satirical genius of a man who manages to haemorrhage to death onstage while playing a hypochondriac...
Wow, I wrote a sentence back there that contained "too", "to" and "two" in rapid succession. What a trainwreck. I bet that's why so few novelists blog. They can't bear to let anyone see how godawful their first drafts are.
And yes, the blessed Oscar! What a chap. "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." He's jolly good on the subject of the novel, too (my obsession). I'm just going to quote a big chunk of it, and go to bed:
"In England, the arts that have escaped best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them they leave them alone. In the case of the novel and the drama, arts in which the public do take an interest, the result of the exercise of popular authority has been absolutely ridiculous. No country produces such badly written fiction, such tedious, common work in the novel form, such silly, vulgar plays as England. It must necessarily be so. The popular standard is of such a character that no artist can get to it. It is at once too easy and too difficult to be a popular novelist. It is too easy, because the requirements of the public as far as plot, style, psychology, treatment of life, and treatment of literature are concerned, are within the reach of the very meanest capacity and the most uncultivated mind. It is too difficult, because to meet such requirements the artist would have to do violence to his temperament, would have to write not for the artistic joy of writing, but for the amusement of half-educated people, and so would have to suppress his individualism, forget his culture, annihilate his style, and surrender everything that is valuable in him. In the case of the drama, things are a little better: the theatre-going public like the obvious, it is true, but they do not like the tedious; and burlesque and farcical comedy, the two most popular forms, are distinct forms of art."
If anyone else is reading this, by the way, and it's new to them, I highly recommend "The Soul of Man Under Socialism". I express no personal opinion on whether or not he's right: I just think you should read it. It will enliven your morning greatly. It's all here free:
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/wilde_soul.html
February 6, 2008 |
Julian Gough
Julian Gough
It's funny you should mention "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" as I once had to write a paper comparing Wilde's visionary utopianism in this essay with D H Lawrence's reactionary, quite bleak outlook on the nature of industrialisation. The essay has stayed with me for a long time (and I'm always mentioning it to my friends, most of whom had no idea that Wilde's oeuvre extended directly into politics).
I think you’ll find Moliere extremely accessible and Absurd (in a good way). You should try to read one of his lesser known plays Le Malade Imaginaire. It’s all about orifices and the release of bodily fluids (like your story!). Enjoy. And thank you for ‘The Divine Comedy’ essay. It’s been inspirational to me and has made me totally re-evaluate the significance of comedy. It’s quite Nietzschean I think. Thank you.
A good PhD topic, it is, if you ever want to do that kind of thing.
I think you’ll find Moliere extremely accessible and Absurd (in a good way). You should try to read one of his lesser known plays Le Malade Imaginaire. It’s all about orifices and the release of bodily fluids (like your story!). Enjoy. And thank you for ‘The Divine Comedy’ essay. It’s been inspirational to me and has made me totally re-evaluate the significance of comedy. It’s quite Nietzschean I think. Thank you.
A good PhD topic, it is, if you ever want to do that kind of thing.
February 6, 2008 |
Raz
Raz
It deals a lot with your own concern about the primacy of tragedy in modern literature and the recuperation of the comedic? The film itself becomes a beautiful meditation on this binary, with a bitter-sweet twist towards the end.
I would love to know what you make of it.
Moliere seems to me to be the GREAT writer in western literature who is revered for purely his satires.