SYNTAX REGAINED

April in Paris or in New York for that matter is a very nice time of the year, everybody knows, but even in Calvesgarden, it isn’t bad at all. After a chilly morning, the sun has been out in a clear blue sky all day, applauding the lovely bloom of the forsythias and the redcurrant (ribes sanguineum ‘koja’ dafo). The purple hyacinths are all out, too, and the finely cupped crown of the rowan tree, which I’ve nursed since it was a twig, is coming into leaves.

When I wrote about magic reads the other day, I would have liked to include a poem by Yeats, which I think is magical, but I could remember neither its title nor where to find it. It’s been a long time since I read Aldous Huxley’s Literature and Science (1963). In the book, he discusses the different views of the world of the two vocations. As opposed to the scientist, he observes, a man of letters has to accept the mystery of life, which is flung in his face. The randomness and shapelessness of his experience, all the ineffable elements in his perception of the world, he must speak of in a language not very well suited for the purpose. Among various means at the artist’s disposal, he mentions

“the magic of unfamiliarly beautiful syntax and sentence construction; the magic of names and words that, for some obscure reason, seem intrinsically significant; the magic of well-ordered rhythms, of harmonious combinations of consonants and vowels.”

Adding that some degree of recklessness may also be of help to the artist, he points to Yeats’ final stanza in Byzantium (1930) as an example of exceedingly reckless poetry.

FINAL STANZA OF BYZANTIUM

“Astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.”

(see full text here)

As usual when rummaging in the library, one thing leads to another. I remember reading somewhere that some people are particularly sensitive to vowels. They see shapes and colours when they listen to a poem. The obvious place to begin looking for the quote would be in Edith Sitwell’s autobiography, I think, but time is getting on, so it must wait.

In the fading light, the transparent, luminescent blue of the sky appears to come from outer space. It lingers on long after dusk as if arguing with itself in the long-winded northern way if the night should fall at all. Eventually, it does, needless to say, but now, only for a short interval. You hardly notice it, if you don’t stay up too late, that is.