A guest post by Elberry, an English teacher based in Germany, and the first of an occasional series of Close Readings.
Patrick Kurp quotes from Henry James´ great The Beast in the Jungle:
Marcher knew him at once for one of the deeply stricken–a perception so sharp that nothing else in the picture comparatively lived, neither his dress, his age, nor his presumable character and class; nothing lived but the deep ravage of the features that he showed. He showed them–that was the point; he was moved, as he passed, by some impulse that was either a signal for sympathy or, more possibly, a challenge to an opposed sorrow.
James, like Proust and Joyce, deters the timid. Such people boast that they gave up on The Golden Bowl on the first paragraph, impatient with such needlessly elaborate prose, as if this demonstrates their rectitude and honesty. James´s prose is not easy; the difficulty is one of deep sensibility, and of deep thought, enacted in the words themselves; that is, James does not render his complications into the mould of words, inertly – rather, he attempts, questions, solves, in the back and forth of language – to understand, we must realise he is only now coming to the thought, the feeling, in these words; that in reading the sentence we retrace the path of feeling and thought. Henry James is alwayspresent.
We wonder at “comparatively lived” – what does this mean? And so James continues, we see that dress, age, social status, are irrelevant here, the line ending strangely “…the features that he showed”. Showed strikes an odd note, it seems weak after “deep ravage”, and yet is thrust into emphasis by its position, closing the sentence. We break. And then James persists “He showed them – that was the point” as if to address the reader, and yet, typically, breaking away, tangential and vital as always, leading to no finality but rather further possibilities – the man invites sympathy, or he faces some concealed sorrow. But here the centre is “that was the point” – this other man is transparent; he has arrived at disclosure, as James´s characters generally cannot (and that is, often enough, their strength).
As in life, so in prose – much is subterranean, and yet it gives amply, to the patient.
I had a superb English teacher who used to teach us through close readings. Very technical, like getting the bonnet up and taking apart an engine. It was very satisfying and a useful thing to learn – not just about literature but about language generally. Despite this rigour he was a bit of a 60s hippy (DHL was his favourite author). I suspect he was a student of Leavis.