Edward's comments are interesting and I agree re: the rather grandiose language cited below. It's reminds me a bit of the voice-overs on 1950s SF movies, solemnly recounting humanity's arrogant foolhardiness before launching into giant man-eating ants action.
My own preference is to focus on the local (which can as easily be a base camp on Everest as a back garden in Surrey) and pare back the language almost to the bone. C. On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 9:06 PM, Edward Picot <[email protected]>wrote: > My problem with this is not so much to do with the ideas behind the Dark > Mountain Project as the language and manner in which they are expressed. > Let's have a look at some typical bits of phraseology: > > Deeper than oil, steel or bullets, a civilisation is built on stories: on > the myths that shape it and the tales told of its origins and destiny. We > have herded ourselves to the edge of a precipice with the stories we have > told ourselves about who we are... Our literature has been dominated for too > long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels... There is an > underlying darkness at the root of everything we have built. Outside the > cities, beyond the blurring edges of our civilisation, at the mercy of the > machine but not under its control, lies something... upon which that thin > crust of lava is balanced; which feeds the machine and all the people who > run it... > > For one thing the language is rather old-fashioned ("the tales told", > "destiny", "citadels"); for another it's rather grandiose ("there is an > underlying darkness at the root of everything"); and it also has a strong > tendency towards rhetorical devices, such as repeating the same thing > several times with variations instead of saying it just once ("outside the > cities... beyond the blurring edges... at the mercy of the machine..."). > Furthermore it tends to deal in symbolic generalisations rather than > specifics: "a precipice", "citadels", "the machine". Not a specific > precipice like the chalk cliff at Dover, or a specific city like Birmingham, > or a specific machine like a lawn-mower, but their non-specific > counterparts, which are charged with a kind of gloomy grandeur and > super-significance, precisely by virtue of the fact that they seem to insist > we should interpret them symbolically rather than imagine them with any > precision. > > One problem with this is that it's directly in conflict with the call for > specific and detailed observation which is made in the "Eight Principles" - > "By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world" and "We > will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of > time". And although the Dark Mountain manifesto declares itself to be set > against human self-importance ("Humans are not the point and purpose of the > planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human > bubble") it does so in such grandiose and self-important language that it's > hard to take it seriously. "Our words will be elemental" declare the > authors. For "elemental" read "archaic and pompous". > > For a project which seems to have initially regarded itself as mainly > literary in character - its first planned offering being "a book-length > collection of uncivilised writing" - the manifesto seems extremely long on > sweeping pronouncements about the state of civilisation, and extremely short > on ideas about literary style. Contrast, for example, Ezra Pound's very > definite ideas about style at the time when he was associated with the > Imagist movement: "Use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not > reveal something. Go in fear of abstractions. Don't chop your stuff into > separate iambs. Don't make each line stop dead at the end, and then begin > every next line with a heave." By contrast, the Dark Mountain project has > the example of its own style, and one talismanic figure - the American poet > Robinson Jeffers. > > A few details about Robinson Jeffers himself will help to set both the > literary style and the cultural ancestry of the Dark Mountain project in > their proper context. Jeffers originally studied medicine, but then enrolled > as a forestry student. He soon gave this up, but when he became a successful > writer he was, according to Wikipedia, "famous for being a tough > outdoorsman, living in relative solitude and writing of the difficulty and > beauty of the wild." He lived in Carmel, California (now, of course, > homeplace of the equally gritty and outdoorsy Clint Eastwood) in a house > called "Tor House and Hawk Tower". Tor is the Celtic term for a large > outcrop of rock. "He built a large four-story stone tower on the site called > Hawk Tower, based on similar structures he had seen while traveling through > Ireland... The romantic Gothic tower... was a gift for his wife Una, who had > a fascination for Irish literature and stone towers." All of this identifies > Jeffers as a disciple of the Celtic Revival, and in particular W B Yeats, > who also lived in a stone tower and wrote poetry with lots of allusions to > fierce heraldic beasts such as hawks. > > Yeats himself was fixated with the importance of willpower, and with the > idea that history was shaped not by mass movements or deterministic forces > but by strong-willed individuals. The hawk is symbolic of this viewpoint > when it is projected into the natural world - it gives us a particular idea > of nature as fierce, amoral and merciless as well as wild and beautiful - in > contrast, for example, to the idea we might receive from poetry about > mushrooms, hedgehogs or ants. Yeats was influenced, in other words, by the > ideas of writers such as Carlisle and Nietzsche, with their interest in > heroically nonconformist individuals and their contempt for conventional > social values and morality. Robinson Jeffers clearly ploughed much the same > furrow: according to Wikipedia, in the nineteen-twenties he "began to > articulate themes that contributed to what he later identified as > Inhumanism. Mankind was too self-centered, he complained, and too > indifferent to the "astonishing beauty of things". Jeffers's longest and > most ambitious narrative, The Women at Point Sur (1927), startled many of > his readers, heavily loaded as it was with Nietzschean philosophy." Jeffers' > poetry, in other words, asks us to set aside our conventional values in > favour of a re-examination of the natural world: but it is the natural world > seen from a particular angle: the natural world as the arena of unfettered > willpower, the amoral, unsentimental and merciless struggle for existence. > In "Hurt Hawks", one of his most famous poems, he mentions "the wild God of > the world" and adds "You do not know him, you communal people, or you have > forgotten him;/Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him..." The words > "intemperate and savage", it will be noted, can be equally well interpreted > as applying to the hawk or to the "wild God" the hawk remembers; the > savagery and intemperance are held up to us as a kind of virtue; and they > are contrasted, by implication, with the conventional virtues of "communal" > people such as ourselves - ordinary people who live communal lives, most > probably urban lives, instead of lonely, wild and individualistic ones. > > This kind of writing isn't necessarily bad. Its most famous modern > representative is Ted Hughes, and I'm a big admirer of Ted Hughes' poetry. > But the weakness of writing of this kind, because of its emphasis on > willpower and thus clarity of purpose, is that it finds it very difficult to > convey certain types of experience - for example hesitation, > misinterpretation or ignorance. Those who write in this style never seem to > be plagued by uncertainties about their own beliefs and intuitions. Their > descriptive style is limited because it seems to lack a certain type of > honesty - a fidelity to what it actually feels like to inhabit a world which > we only partly understand. In a way, despite its attempt to get beyond the > limitations of the human bubble of self-importance, it is simply moving that > bubble to a new place. > > What I would advocate is a style which is less sure of itself, something > more hesitant and provisional, more multifaceted and fragmentary, less > grandly unified. More specifics and less bombast. > > - Edward Picot > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >
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