Afbeelding auteur

Thomas Dilworth (2)

Auteur van David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet

Voor andere auteurs genaamd Thomas Dilworth, zie de verduidelijkingspagina.

5+ Werken 70 Leden 1 Geef een beoordeling

Over de Auteur

Thomas Dilworth is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Windsor, Ontario.

Werken van Thomas Dilworth

Gerelateerde werken

David Jones 1895-1974 (1979) — Medewerker — 6 exemplaren

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Geslacht
male

Leden

Besprekingen

The following is a longer version of a review of this book published in PLANET magazine.

**********
In his introduction to this study of the works of David Jones, Thomas Dilworth says that he refrained from calling it a ‘Beginner’s Guide’ as he has included some new discoveries that a more specialist reader would benefit from, but its primary purpose is to function as a commentary on the works of David Jones for the bewildered. The category of ‘bewildered’ readers may contain many who would not otherwise have any difficulty with works of high modernism. Such is the density of allusion to a range of specific matters from First World War soldier-speak to Brythonic lore that adherents of his works, initially friends and colleagues, latterly critics, have sought to explicate the difficulties of both specific allusion and the form of these ambitious literary constructions. Dilworth has formerly explored the ‘Shape of Meaning’ of the poetry in a comprehensive analysis of the typological and structural principles which informed the approach of the poet to his task. Here he offers a way in to the works for the new reader which aims to provide everything needed to come to terms with them.

To do this he adopts the interesting approach of beginning with a discussion of David Jones’ illustrations to The Chester Play of the Deluge. He offers these wood block engravings – reproducing the full set – as a key to understanding Jones’ working method. It has often been observed that the structure of the literary works owes much to techniques of presentation that he developed as an artist and it certainly makes sense to use what is visually present in paintings or engravings to illustrate what is less easily perceived in the structure of a piece of writing.

If a training in spatial design translated across into a working plan for epic-scale literary works (while drafting The Anathemata Jones divided each of the sections as originally written into two in order to arrange them in a concentric pattern) he also had a more fundamental reason for wishing to create such structures. We know that he admired the medieval technique of emboîtement (interfitting). Dilworth also identifies pairing techniques in Coleridge’s The Ancient Mariner, a poem Jones admired and illustrated with a similarly concentric set of engravings as those in the Chester Deluge sequence. But what must also be taken into account here is David Jones’s reading of Jackson Knight’s Cumaean Gates, a work which, as Dilworth notes, provided Jones with an ancient source for this practice in troia and maze patterns in ancient cities and other sites from Troy onwards and the deeply significant – or sign-containing – function of such patterns.

Structural principles are revealed, not only the grand scale concentric design of the longer works, but also in middle-length poems such as ‘The Tutelar of the Place’ in which the maypole dance within a labyrinthine defensive structure is symbolically opposed to the square grids of the ‘World Plan’. The Ram who “squares the world circle” is the image of Imperium, a phallic battering ram. The may pole, by contrast, though equally phallic, represents both fertility and spiritual love but, Dilworth tells us, “Where the Ram dominates there is neither vaginal ‘crevice’ nor a living flower’s phallic ‘stamen’”. Here we move from structure to a consideration of the content of the poems. Dilworth does this not only by commentary and elucidation but by a comprehensive paraphrase of the original works.To some extent this inevitably dilutes rather than extends the texts. The rather bald way, for instance, in which the reader is informed of themes like “the cancellation of fertility” might be appreciated by those, anticipated in Dilworth’s Introduction, who are too busy to read the poems, but this raises the question of how the volume will be used, one that I asked myself several times during my reading of it.

Unlike glossary-style guides where opaque references can be checked during the process of reading to supplement what the poet has already supplied in his extensive notes, this book needs to be read as a para-narrative either before or after, or ideally between two readings, of the texts it discusses. Dilworth concedes that one use to which it might be put is that “some, especially young, academics under pressure, may read this book instead of the poetry”. That, perhaps, is more a statement about contemporary academic life than a judgement on the reading habits of individuals, but that such a “perverse” approach should be a possible use to which a guide composed in this way could be put, whether or not it is “a lesser evil than knowing nothing about Jones’ work” marks it as a utilitarian rather than a gratuitous object.. Dilworth’s concise elucidation of the distinction between utility and gratuity in his introduction states that “a psychologically healthy society is one in which gratuitous values are in approximately equally balance with the sole pragmatic value, efficiency.” His further comment that the emphasis on utility in modern life is “dehumanizing”, if linked to the possible use of the guide as a crib, brings into question not the need for such guides but the nature of their construction. If Dilworth’s use of The Chester Deluge Play engravings is a gratuitously significant innovation in this respect, the paraphrase method of presenting the texts of the major literary works may be felt to err too far in the direction of the utile.

The various levels at which this study operates could be regarded either as maximising its potential use-value or as gratuitously inclusive. But here I fear that the utilitarian benefits do not accrue. Parts of the text, particularly those dealing with In Parenthesis, contain insights from graduate seminars. We are told, for example, that “the relationship implied between cricket and throwing grenades is fraught with irony”, a remark credited in a footnote to the student who came up with it. Admirable as this may be in terms of democratic scholarship, and as appropriate as it also may be in mimicking the concern with the common foot soldiers in the poem, it does indicate the difficulty of finding the right level in this study. At the other extreme, the commentary on the text at times produces passages that, in trying to unpick a density of allusive matter, are scarcely more accessible than the material they seek to elucidate. Here are a few lines from his paraphrase of ‘The Sleeping Lord’ poem:

The vegetation god and goddess emphasize Arthur’s love of, and grief for, Mother Earth/Britain. The wind increases with darkness – in the Dark Ages – where streams flow into a river where the deer run (74) who desire these brooks (as in Psalm 42). The chill is unseasonable, the sun at the equinox, having just left Gemini (Castor and Pollux, brother of Helen) on 15 July (‘Ides of Quintilis’, 75) …

I can’t help thinking that even the ‘academic in a hurry’ would not dwell here long and may prefer to ‘speed read’ the originals. True, Dilworth does supply judgements that such an approach would not bring forth, as critical analysis is another level at which the work is operating. But this only underlines the problem of the multi-faceted nature of the work. Dilworth has provided a detailed critical study elsewhere and the critical analyses here tend to get lost in the para-narratives. It is in the separate sections on the structural principles that the work excels and which readers (and perhaps not only new readers) of David Jones will find most enlightening. The reader is constantly assured that these are important works of modernist literature, not only up there with Joyce, Pound and Eliot but even surpassing them. In Parenthesis is “the Iliad of the modern age” while The Anathemata is “the modern Odyssey”. The tendency to promote the reputation of its subject gives the book the flavour of an introductory guide and I feel the focus could most usefully have remained on this aim.

In one sense Reading David Jones provides readers with everything they might want from a guide but, to take some words from a Geoffrey Hill poem out of context, “this is plenty, this is more than enough”.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
GregsBookCell | Dec 8, 2008 |

Prijzen

Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk

Gerelateerde auteurs

Statistieken

Werken
5
Ook door
1
Leden
70
Populariteit
#248,179
Waardering
4.0
Besprekingen
1
ISBNs
12

Tabellen & Grafieken