“What I have
said of servitude, I again say of imprisonment, we are all prisoners. What is
our life but a prison? We are all imprisoned in an island. The world itself to
some men is a prison, our narrow seas as so many ditches, and when they have
compassed the globe of the earth, they would fain go see what is done in the
moon.”
Some readers
will be reminded of passages in Spinoza and Blake. Others, already familiar
with Burton’s prose, will be impressed by the relative simplicity and
straightforwardness of the quoted sentences. No Latin tags, no lengthy catalogs
of nouns or adjectives, no astrological lore. In The History of English Prose Rhythm (1912), George
Saintsbury acknowledges centuries of baffled readers when he refers to “all who
have read Burton (and how are they to be half commiserated and half envied who
have not!)” Burton, he notes, “heaps quotation upon original writing, and
dovetails translation into quotation, and piles up lists of semi-synonyms on
casually occurring words.” All true, and Burton’s language is certainly the opposite
of Twitter-speak or text-talk. Burton is word-mad in the best possible sense.
And he loves his accumulated lore. In A
Short History of English Literature, Saintsbury distills for some of us the
charm of reading Burton, and what he shares with some of his gifted near-contemporaries:
“In Burton
it shows itself not so much in the sense of the unattainable infinity of
passion which we find in Donne, of the high feeling of mystery and altitudo that we find in Browne, as in a
sort of quiet but intense taedium vitae—a
wandering of the soul from Dan to Beersheba through all employments, desires,
pleasures, and a finding them barren except for study, of which in turn the taedium is not altogether obscurely
hinted. And it is almost unnecessary to add that in Burton, as in all the
greatest men, except Milton, of the entire period from 1580 to 1660, there is a
very strong dash of humour—humour of a peculiar meditative sort, remote alike
from grinning and from gnashing of teeth, though very slightly sardonic in its
extreme quietness and apparent calm.”
1 comment:
MY favorite quote from the Anatomy (I will point to no individual, public or private, and avoid the gross error of so many Shakespeare directors, who believe that people are unable to draw their own inferences):
"It is an ordinary thing in these days to see a base impudent ass, illiterate, unworthy, unsufficient, to be preferred before his betters, because he can put himself forward, because he looks big, can bustle in the world, hath a fair outside, can temporize, collogue, insinuate, or hath a good store of friends and money, whereas a more discreet, modest, and better-deserving man shall lie hid or have a repulse. 'Twas so of old, and will ever be, and which Tiresias advised Ulysses in the poet, hear how you can make yourself rich, is still in use; lie, flatter, and dissemble: if not, as he concludes, then go like a beggar, as thou art."
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