Jane Austen and Others

I dipped into Adam Bede, and my impression that George Eliot will never be among the classical writers  was made a certainty. Her style, though not without shrewdness, is too rank to have any enduring vitality. People call it ‘masculine’. Quite wrong! It is downright, aggressive, sometimes rude, but genuinely masculine, never. On the contrary it is transparently feminine – feminine in its lack of restraint, its wordiness, and the utter lack of feeling for form which  characterises it. The average woman italicises freely. George Eliot of course had trained herself too well to do that, at least formally; yet her constant undue insistence springs from the same essential weakness, and amounts practically to the same expedient Emily and Charlotte Brontë  are not guiltless on this count, but they both have a genuine, natural appreciation of the value of words, which George Eliot never had.

   Jane Austen, now, is different. By no chance does she commit the artistic folly of insisting too much. Her style has the beauty and the strength of masculinity and femininity combined and, very nearly, the weakness of neither.

   In May Chapman’s there is a story by Henry James. His mere ingenuity, not only in construction but in expression is becoming tedious, though one  cannot but admire. Also his colossal cautiousness instatement is very trying. If he would only now and then contrive to write a sentence without a qualifying clause!

                                                                                   - Journal of Arnold Bennett, May 13, 1896

Good Intentions

In the course of conversation today, a man said to me apropos of the question whether he or I was the most energetic: ‘I get up at 6, go out for a walk; breakfast at 8; then an hour’s work, and afterwards to the office; half an hour for lunch . . .’ The detailed programme, made up of alternated work and exercise, stretched out to 11 p.m.

   ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s very good indeed. How long have you been doing that?’

   ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘I’m going to start in the morning!’

   Alcock [a friend] maintained to me at tea that to practice a musical instrument as it should be practised was a fatiguing as creative composition. I deny it.

                                                                                       Journal of Arnold Bennett, May 1, 1896

Portraits and Pictures

This morning (it being the second day of the press view) I spent an hour at the [Royal] Academy. The number of portraits seems to increase year by year. For a man who is engrossed in a single art, this comprehensive selection of portraits of celebrities cannot fail to have a moral value. They remind him that there are several other arts and several hundred other occupations besides his own in which men to genius and men of talent can actually and deeply interest themselves: a fact he is in danger of forgetting. And they do this quite independently of their artistic worth, which in the majority of cases is nearly nil. To study these faces of men and women brings one in contact with activities, ideals, ambitions, of which otherwise one would know little besides the mere names. The attitude of the general public towards a picture – by which they apparently regard it as a story first and a work of art afterwards – is not so indefensible as it seems, or at least not so inexcusable. In the attitude of the perfectly cultured artist himself, there is something of the same feeling – it must be so. Graphic art cannot be totally separated from literary art, nor vice versa. They encroach on each other.

- Journ                                                                                         als of Arnold Bennett, April 30, 1896

Sex in fiction

Talking to Webster about sex in fiction tonight I convinced  him and myself that no serious attempt had yet been made by a man to present essential femininity; also that the chasm between male and female was infinitely wider and deeper than we commonly realized – in fact an absolutely unpracticable chasm.
A woman might draw, and probably has drawn, a woman with justice ad accuracy for her own sex. Buy a woman’s portrait of a woman is not of much  use to a man. Either it is meaningless to him – a hieroglyphic – or it tells him only things which he knew. A woman is too close to woman to observe her with aloofness and yet with perfect insight – as we should do if we had the insight. Observation can only be conducted from the outside. A woman cannot possibly be aware of the things in herself which puzzle us; and our expectations of our difficulties would simply worry her. The two sexes must for ever remain distant, antagonistic, and mutually inexplicable.

                                                                                          Arnold Bennett: Journals - June 9, 1898

STRABISMUS COMES OUT FOR TRUMP!

Dr Heinz Strabismus, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Pathology at the University of Arnis, Schleswig-Fleisburg, pictured below, sends a message of encouragement to Donald Trump, offering eindeutig [unequivocal] support to this great American in the final stages of his triumphant assault on the White House. In his regular column in English in the Hysterische Wähler Chronik of June 3, Herr Dr Strabismus writes:

‘Greetings from all members of the Donald Trump Stützer Verband of the University of Arnis to the voters of America! Unite in support of this wunderbar patriot and leading intellectual of your great country. I am proud to be an associate professor and Doctor of Philosophy of the great Trump University, and in the face of the ignorant criticism of political enemies must proudly report that, unlike the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, the Trump University immediately accepted me as Doktor der Philosophie and außerordentlicher Professor without any question of an impertinent demand for private information about my qualifications. The dispatch of a cheque for twenty thousand Euros, made out to Bearer, immediately resulted in my being named as a member of the University.

‘I appeal to all my readers to support Herr Dr Trump to the best of their financial ability. Money, in any form, may be sent to me in care of the University of Arnis, and you are asked to mark the envelope directing these funds to the project you most admire:

1.      The Trump Mexican Wall Project

2.      The Trump University Profits Fund

3.      The Trump Income Tax Defence Fund

4.      The Trump Hairpiece Maintenance Fund

Posters bearing the message TRUMP AGAINST THE WORLD may be obtained from Dr Strabismus in various languages: viz., TRUMP GEGEN DIE WELT, TRUMP CONTRE LE MONDE, TRIUNFO CONTRA EL MUNDO, &c.

STRABISMUS PLEDGES SUPPORT TO DUTTON

Dr Heinz Strabismus, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Pathology at the University of Arnis, Schleswig-Fleisburg, has offered his services as adviser to the Rt Hon Peter Dutton during the course of the upcoming election. In his regular English-language column in the Schleswig-Flensburg Blatt zum Schutz der wahren Bürger (Journal for the Protection of True Citizens) of May 20 he writes:

‘The Ehrenwerten Herr Doctor Dutton presents an exact argument for the defence of the true citizens of Australia. However I am advising him to take his spektakulär richtigen Ideen to their most effective conclusion, which must be the opening of the borders of Australia for the expulsion of any person who cannot trace his or her ancestry directly to the Ureinwohner von Australien or first inhabitants of the land. It must be that Her Professor Dutton is korrekt in his argument to protect Australian employments, and I advise him to  propose Gesetzgebung [legislation] to deny any kind of paid employment to those who cannot speak at least one of the original tribal languages spoken prior to the säuisch invasion of the country. Any person with the true interests of the country at heart must surely pledge his true devotion to the Herr Doctor and the great Liberale Partei of which he is the so devoted member!’

Blatt zum Schutz der wahren Bürger, May 20, page 45 (€5)

SUPPORT NICK FOLKES - STRABISMUS COMES OUT FOR FREEDOM

Dr Heinz Strabismus, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Pathology at the University of Arnis, Schleswig-Fleisburg, has been made an honorary member of the Australian Party for Freedom after an article published in Die Gute Rassistische Journal

   ‘My admiration for Herr Nicholas Folkes is grenzenlos und ohne Limit’, wrote the Professor. ‘I am not surprised at the admiration in which he is held by all patriotic Australians for his defence of his country. A true Patriot he has rightly earned the respect of all the right-thinking Australians (the so-called  “Dinkum Aussies” as we Germans call them) presently attending our university under the Dr Goebbels Gedenkstipendium scheme, who have kindly collected the funds to enable me to fly to Sydney immediately in order to present myself at the insurrection to be organised at Cronulla to commemorate the celebrated ‘Riot for Freedom’ which took place there ten years ago. Arnis University has allowed me to borrow the celebrated Helmet and Spear of Wotan (Wotans Helm und Lanze) from the Museum of Fascist Thought, to bring with me to parade at the Meeting.’

  With a twinkle in his steel-blue eyes, Professor Strabismus promised: ‘These are symbols only, though should they accidentally come in contact with the head of the schmutzigen linken Verräter [filthy left-wing traitors] I fear there may be bloodshed; however my intentions, like those of the Herr Dr Folkes, will be entirely  unschuldig [innocent] and highly friedlich.’

   While he is in Australia Professor Strabismus says that he ‘hopes to take afternoon tea with Mr Folkes and his very good friend the schöne reine arische Dame Pauline Hanson’, and has brought with him a cake decorated in the Arnis University kitchen with the legend: Mit aller Linke Schweine. [Translation omitted for fear of giving offence: Ed.]

Reference: Die Gute Rassistische Journal (University of Arnis, Vol. xxi, p.7 -  €5).