In the Labyrinth

Barry Unsworth: Morality Play and The Best Long Sentence

I have respect for authors who manage to write incredibly long, complicated sentences -- but with such consummate skill and daring that I inhale deeply and then read it aloud, trying to see if I can make it to the end in all one exhale. These sentences enter the text to condense a moment into a world of detail and history. More often than not, it serves in its fullness as an expression of the entire novel. And when it arrives (as it always does) early in the book, you experience a novel's emotional content before it fully begins.

I am re-reading Barry Unsworth's remarkable novel, Morality Play, set in the English middle ages. It is narrated by a young priest escaping life in the cloisters and stumbling into a troop of actors on their way to perform for a Lord. He asks to join them in desperate circumstances, primarily for protection and the chance to eat. Reluctantly, but out of necessity, for they need an extra man to complete their cast, they accept him. While relieved to have found help with his situation, the young priest Martin privately reflects on his failures as a priest, his dalliances with women, and his shame at having abandoned the Bishop who treated him kindly. And he sums up his life and character in this one sentence, a complex mixture of apology and remorse mingled with pride and unearned arrogance. 

"First, there was the shame to cause distress to my Bishop, who had given me the tonsure, who had always treated me like a father, because this was not the first time I had left without permission but the third, and always in the May-time of the year at the stirring of the blood and this time the reason was different, but the stirring was the same, I had been sent to act as secretary to Sir Robert de Brian, a noble knight and generous in his benefactions but not of discerning taste in his letters and in short a very vile poet who set me to transcribing his voluminous verses and as fast as I copied them he would bring others." 

And finishes this list of causes with, "All this I endured," which describes by its internal contradictions, a narrator we may like, but should not trust. 

Seriously, so worth reading! A fabulous novel that prefigures the early religious, mystical plays and begins to transform them into an early modern sensibility about theater and storytelling.

When the Tortoise and Then the Hare Sit Down to Write

When it comes to writing novels, I am tortoise. At least with the first half, and there is something thrilling about the second half, like sliding down a long snowy hill, or as in below, leaping off the top step. I am still the tortoise right now. 

For assistance, I return to a 1968 Paris Review interview with the great Canadian author Robertson Davies where he describes his writing process, a laborious and methodical investigation long before the narrative is written. 

"I am at the moment winding up to write another novel, and when I say “winding up” I mean I am making notes and plans and perpetually building up what I will eventually write; that is the way I work. I make very, very careful plans and a great many notes—so many notes indeed that sometimes they are as long or longer than the eventual book. And sketches of characters and suggestions and references to things that will be useful. All that takes a long time. Getting to work on a new novel is a dismal business, for the beginnings never seem to get any easier with the passing of time. I toil like a swimmer who feels himself about to sink beneath the waves at any moment. Like all my novels, this one began with quite a simple idea, but as I work on it a mass of complexities assert themselves, and I have to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by extraneous detail. But then—at least the way I work—when you begin to write, you can write quite briskly because you have done all the preparatory work beforehand. I hope it turns out well. But with novels, like cakes, you never know. Even when I finish a book, I’m never sure whether it is good or rubbish."

So, I will be writing furious notes, plotting, character studies, and the rest -- and I pray the cake will hold. And that will be good. And can I just add, that I love even more that Davies used a food analogy -- another habit of my family when talking about literature that is close to my heart. 

The wonderful illustration is by Guillaume Ospital and you can see more of his terrific work at Cake or Death website. 

Plank'd and Research

One of the greatest pleasures is reading Sicilian folktales midday while drunk on a dense-full-bodied beer (16.2 percent) produced locally in Boulder. Like the beer, the stories are rowdy, naughty, mythic, and full of gullible and wise fools who make donkeys appear to shit gold, drive menial men to do self-destructive things and conspire to make foolish heroes into better men as they chase after fantastic brides. Is there any better Sunday to spend than drunk researching the new novel?

When Struck by Fear of Writing, Refer To The Masters For Help

In anxious moments while working on the current novel, I turn for assistance to a 1968 Paris Review interview with the great Canadian author Robertson Davies, where he describes his writing process, a laborious and methodical investigation long before the narrative is written.

"I am at the moment winding up to write another novel, and when I say “winding up,” I mean I am making notes and plans and perpetually building up what I will eventually write; that is how I work. I make very, very careful plans and a great many notes—so many notes indeed that sometimes they are as long or longer than the eventual book. And sketches of characters and suggestions and references to things that will be useful. All that takes a long time. Getting to work on a new novel is a dismal business, for the beginnings never seem to get any easier with the passing of time. I toil like a swimmer who feels himself about to sink beneath the waves at any moment. Like all my novels, this one began with quite a simple idea, but as I work on it, a mass of complexities assert themselves, and I have to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by extraneous detail. But then—at least the way I work—when you begin to write, you can write quite briskly because you have done all the preparatory work beforehand. I hope it turns out well. But with novels, like cakes, you never know. Even when I finish a book, I’m never sure whether it is good or rubbish."

So, I am making furious notes, plotting, character studies, and the rest -- and I pray the cake will hold. And that will be good. And can I just add, that I love even more that Davies used a food analogy -- another habit of my family when talking about literature that is close to my heart.

Startling Moments from Basile That Still Ring True

I am having a wonderful time reading 16th-century Basile's splendid introductions to stories in his Tales of Tales. And while the tales are wicked-wonderful, these observations on the human condition have me enthralled -- I suspect because they remain surprisingly current. Plus ça change...

"...artisans leave their shops, merchants their trade, lawyers their cases, shopkeepers their businesses to go with open mouth to the barber shops and circle of gossipers to hear false news, invented notices, fabricated news sheets."   Basile describes this as a pleasant activity, listening to fabricated stories and tales and passing the time. But in this day and age, I went first to the current misuse of story, not to distract us entertainingly, but to politicize, weaponize, and invent to thwart one's public enemies. 

"We see crooked and judge straight, but it is so difficult to apply it that few human judgments hit the nail on the head... " Basile, IV, 9, The Crow. 16th c.

 

"Ingratitude, ladies, is a rusty nail which, hammered into the tree of courtesy, makes it dry up; it is a broken drain which wets and weakens the foundations of affection; it is soot which, falling into the cooking pot of friendship takes away fragrance and flavor." Basile "Cagliuso."

The Menacing Virgins: The Commodification of Marriage and Birth II

    Here is an interesting perspective on the complexities of transforming a virtuous maiden into a chaste but sexually productive matron. "How does a maiden shift from bride to matron and" pay the marital debt?" Cristelle Baskins asks in her article "Il Trionfo della Pudicizia" (The Triumph of Modesty), a fascinating study of the economic exchanges negotiated before and after marriage. Baskins also examines the type of goods provided in the exchange that sought to educate the couple on their marital proper roles and reinforce the marriage bond through art.

    "In those negotiations concerning marital chastity, Elizabeth Cohen reminds us, the language of debt, payment, and exchange makes virginity a commodity. Fifteenth and sixteenth wedding furniture, including elaborately painted and historiated lettucci (beds), cassoni (dowry chests), and spalliere (wains-coating), is a domestic commodity employed in conspicuous consumption; it also offers an opportunity to examine Renaissance marriage ideology through the visual imagery geared for the primary spectatorship of brides and grooms." (118)

   Among the upper classes, it was expected that husbands would demonstrate their status and wealth by purchasing elaborately painted wedding furniture, commissioning religious paintings and sculptures, and deshi da parto (birthing trays), which were also painted and given as a gift for a new mother. It would also launch the future husband as a cultured man, purchasing expensive art. The subject matter of the art would have been carefully selected to reflect both the couples' status and "aimed to elucidate using example and perhaps even more concretely to inspire the conception of children and thus the expansion of the patriline. The most popular choice of art, it seems, was a reproduction of the Triumph of Modesty, a poem cycle written by Francesco Petrarca in the 1340s -- describing Cupid/Love being vanquished by Laura/Chastity and often appeared in horizontal panels on a cassoni.  

    "A fifteenth-century Florentine bride would have viewed Petrachan Trionfi on painted wedding furniture with a particular set of expectations and associations; her temporary triumph in the form of a bridal procession prefaced the conquest of her virginity and her transformation into a sexually active spouse...the Petrachan Trionfi trace a development from physical, sexual love to the renunciation of Cupid...For them (the brides), the state of innocence must be overcome but only by a chastened, disciplined conjugal love, not by the irresponsible, unpredictable passion inspired by Cupid." The art on the furniture was meant to "conceal the lack of fit between occasion and subject and thus, to blur the distinction between compliment and coercion...the pictures must simultaneously encourage the bride to abandon her fiercely maintained chastity to the needs of the patriline and yet, renounce illicit, physical passion."

But, to make sure the bride could be gently enticed, there was also an abundance of cassoni which, while it showed marriage events on the outside (and sometimes martial battles,) under the lid were erotic paintings of men and women nude doing the things married couples generally do when trying to create the next generation. More on the cassoni coming up with the next post (along with more on the art of the battle between Cupid and Chastity, cassoni, and birthing trays. 

"Il Trionfo della Pudicizia: Menacing Virgins in the Italian Renaissance Domestic Painting" by Christelle L. Baskins in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, by Marilyn Migiel (Editor), Juliana Schiesari (Editor)

Last Lines and Cool Captains

Near the end of the novel The Pirates of the Levant by Arturo Perez-Reverte, Captain Alatriste finds himself the highest ranking survivor of one of three ships that are battling for their lives against the Turks, who out-gun, out-cannon, and just sheer outnumber the Spaniards. There is a hasty meeting of the remaining "commanders" from the three ships to determine whether they should surrender or fight to an honorable death. One of the commanders is an aristocrat, and he wants to surrender -- mostly because he knows he will be well treated and held for a high ransom. The rest -- will be slaughtered or suffer life as a galley slave, chained to an oarlock. But the decision must be unanimous in order for all three to equally maintain their honor. Captain Alatriste knows full well the horrors that would await them if they surrendered and makes the only decision a seasoned soldier could make: fight to the end and die with honor. For the aristocrat, such a display of grit is new. So we get this brief, sardonic moment:

"He was from the same caste of Spanish aristocrats, although this highly inelegant situation had tempered his arrogance--it's always best to talk to noblemen, Alatriste thought, when they've just been punched in the face..."