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THE WINGED GRADATION I have been a devotee of Henry James for a while now. But this novel has overflowed me. So far this is the most Jamesian writing I have read. May be The Ambassadors is of the same tone and texture, and I would like to immerse myself in it too. Anyway, reading this was like listening to a lullaby that would drag you into a lethargic mood in the early hours of the afternoon. Not a sign of boredom, just a state of undefined bliss. Following James’ account one is pulled into
Soooo you guys, I think missed that day in English Lit 101 when we talked about Henry James, because to me he’s always been one of those authors you merely know OF, and who is important in some vague way but you couldn’t possibly say how, who is not really relevant in our 3G world except for the fact that Merchant Ivory makes mad bank off of this lace-petticoat-and-social-graces kind of thing. But for serious you guys, why did no one never tell me that Henry James is a GENIUS?! I mean, why is th...
My third Henry James, but only the second I managed to complete. He didn't set the world on fire for me with this either, more like a quivering flame. I was hoping for great things, somewhere along the lines of Edith Wharton's brilliant 'The Age of Innocence'. As classic fiction generally goes, it was written impeccably well, but my problems were with the characters, who seemed to drift in and out of my consciousness all too often. Well over one hundred pages in, wasn't doing anything for me. Sl...
In Henry James, we rarely if ever have a villain - a real, horrible blackguard character for whom we feel morally adequate enough to pass severe judgment. There are characters with evil intentions, who do evil thing: who lie and undermine the hero or heroine, Mme. Merle and Gilbert Osmond, of The Portrait of a Lady, may be among the most "evil" duos in the James canon, if only for the tenderness we feel toward the passionate Isabel, who they snare. What is perplexing in James, which frustrates u...
The extent to which one might absorb the vaunted aestheticism of this novel, and the extent to which one might, when lazing long on a chaise longue in the privacy of consistency of constancy, scrabble up every cumulatively confused sentence; in fact, the extent to which one properly limns a sentence, and tolerates the sentence art of the sentence involving words replaced wrongs in orders; the extent within one to manoeuvre around semicolonised thickets of tangent approaching barely anything near...
It was interesting to learn in the introduction that Henry James suffered with acute constipation his entire life. If ever a physical ailment was psychologically eloquent of its sufferer here it is. This entire novel with its cryptic dovetailing prose is wilfully constipated. At one point a character accuses another of being cryptic. It's one of Henry James' little jokes because the comment in question is no more cryptic than just about every other labyrinthine obfuscating sentence in this novel...
“She never wanted the truth . . . She wanted you. She would have taken from you what you could give her, and been glad of it even if she had known it false. You might have lied to her from pity, and she have seen you and felt you lie, and yet—since it was all for tenderness—she would have thanked you and blessed you and clung to you but the more. For that was your strength, my dear man—that she loves you with passion.”
