Dappled, brinded, dim; folded, spindled & mutilated

February 27, 2014
Dappled, brinded, dim; folded, spindled & mutilated

Gaspar Stephens called today to thank me for the "shout out" on the February 25th post.  He was thinking, he said about Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty,” which got him wondering about how notions of “purity,” which he called “a dangerous illusion,” inform − or even form − the way we think about one another.  He mentioned Hawthorne’s story, “The Birthmark.”

     I never really want to read Hopkins because I find him in almost equal parts fascinating, exciting, and enjoyable on the one hand and unnecessarily recondite, difficult and self-indulgent on the other.  But, “Pied Beauty” as a hymn to “all things counter . . . fickle, freckled,” flawed, impure − this is why I have a Norton Anthology of Poetry on the shelf above my desk:

Glory be to God for dappled things—       

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;       

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;     

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; 

   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.  

 All things counter, original, spare, strange;  

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)     

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;    

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:        

                                                                    Praise him.

Then this afternoon I sat down and re-read “The Birthmark,” one of my favorite Hawthorne stories.*  The “man of science,” Aylmer, the “eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy,” marries the lovely Georgiana, perfect except for one flaw, the rosy hand upon her cheek. On any other face, he admits, it would be a charm, but she is so nearly perfect that “this slightest possible defect” troubles him, this “visible mark of earthly imperfection”  shocks him.  It follows that it – or its removal – possesses him, so that all he can think of is “the lengths he might find in his heart to go for the sake of giving himself peace” [italics mine]. 

     Our obsessions about purity, Gaspar, they aren’t, it turns out, for the sake of the other, are they, but for our own?

     And we’ll go great lengths to enforce them.  God forbid we be content with “the level of the actual.”  Aylmer’s great experiment, to remove the birthmark from his wife’s cheek succeeds; it departs like “the stain of the rainbow fading out of the sky.”  So also Georgiana fades out of life.

     Because, Gaspar − am I right? − to fix another is to kill them, in the same sense that the law kills, where the wind may give life.

We may not all be obsessed with purity – many of us love speckled, dappled, spotted, freckled, and stippled things we wouldn’t want to change for clear, smooth, and unmarked.  But all of us that write are obsessed with fixing.  Writing is about fixing a moment, pinning it to a page, so it will last; it is about laying out the facts of the matter; it is about explaining why this works the way it does (and, usually, how it could work better); it is about order. It is . . . dogmatic (as in Barth’s Church Dogmatics).  It cannot undergo; it must describe. (It cannot suffer without undertaking a theodicy.)  It cannot embrace; it must explain. And generally it does a pretty poor job of it. A homely example. I wrote last time about A. N. Eaton-Pierson’s writing about Argentinian wines − and she wrote most eloquently, I’ll allow. But even the most evocative words about wine don’t smell or taste like it.

I’m not saying don’t write about things. Just don’t believe what you write. As soon as you start putting words on a page . . . you are wrong, no could be about it.

m

(bicbw)

_______________ 
  *With many others:  "Young Goodman Brown"; "Rapaccini's Daughter"; "My Kinsman, Major Molineux"; "The Minister's Black Veil"; "The Maypole of Merrymount"; "The Canterbury Pilgrims." My enjoyment of Hawthorne is only occasionally marred by his ear for dialogue (or utter lack of it).  Witness (from “The Birthmark”): 

          “There needed no proof,” said Georgiana, quietly.  “Give me the goblet.  I joyfully stake all upon your word.”

          “Drink, then, thou lofty creature!” exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration.  “There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit.  Thy sensivle frame, too, shall soon be all perfect.”

          She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.

          “it is grateful,” said she with a placid smile.  “Methinks it is like water from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive fragrance and deliciousness. . . .  Now, dearest, let me sleep.  My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset.”