Here is how Whittaker Chambers concludes his review in Time magazine of Rebecca West’s The Meaning of Treason in 1947:
“[I]n a prosy age, her style strives continually
toward a condition of poetry, and comes to rest in a rhetoric that, at its
best, is one of the most personal and eloquent idioms of our time.”
West published a dozen novels and other fiction,
but it’s as a journalist that she proved her literary worth. I refuse to use
the pretentious label “creative nonfiction” and prefer to say that she was a
great writer. Her essential books, along with The Meaning of Treason,
are A Train of Powder (1955) and her masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon (1941). The latter I’ve read twice and annotated heavily. It’s
simply one of my favorite books.
About midway through the hefty volume, in the
chapter titled “Serbia,” West writes about Milan Obrenović, Milan I, ruler of
Serbia from 1868 to 1889, and his family. She visits his grave in the Krušedol
monastery in the
province of Vojvodina. West calls him “the king who was so little of a success
that he was forced to abdicate,” and tartly describes his portrait (“the wide
cat-grin of a tormented buffoon”) and those of his family. But here is the
half-sentence I underlined: “. . . and more portraits of these unhappy people, preserved
in tragedy like flies in amber.” West’s contempt mingles with sadness. Milan
was less a monster than a clown.
I remembered West’s image when reading some of
Robert Herrick’s poems, including this one:
“I saw a fly within a bead
Of amber cleanly buried ;
The urn was little, but the room
More rich than Cleopatra’s tomb.”
Amber – fossilized tree resin, often encasing
prehistoric organisms -- may be the loveliest substance in the world, more
beautiful than diamonds. Herrick’s precise birth and death dates are unknown. We
know he was baptized on August 24, 1591 and buried on this date, October 15, in
1674.
[Chambers’ review, “Circles of Perdition,” is
collected in Ghosts on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers
1931-1959 (ed. Terry Teachout, Regnery Gateway, 1989).]
2 comments:
I consistently hear, about "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon," that one should read it for the writing, not for the history, which West frequently gets wrong.
Once you start reading "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" you no longer care about the accuracy of the history. You've been seduced by the strength of her observations, the excellence of her writing, and the strangeness of the deadly comic opera world she's traveling through. Hope you'll give it a try.
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