2014年3月23日 星期日
2014年3月9日 星期日
董橋：憶老丁
董橋：
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9,050http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/supplement/apple/art/20131103/18490536
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故交老丁今年中秋前夕在美國辭世。簡妮說丁太太不在了老丁落寞消沉，種花度日，看書解憂，幸虧老早從波士頓遷居舊金山，山青水秀，花香幽微，他喜歡，女兒
一家又住得近，照顧方便。老先生天生和善，人緣甚好，醫生護士都成好朋友，宿疾雖重，折磨不大，殘年風燭悄悄一熄，走得寧靜。老丁比我年長幾歲，一生用
功，愛書成癖，自得安樂：「做了那麼些年生意，我還在暗暗單戀這些離我那麼遙遠的星星月亮太陽，」他說。文學藝術是老丁的星星月亮太陽，幾年前我於是寫了
一篇〈老丁的星星月亮太陽〉。他早年迷戀英國作家弗萊明的諜報金剛○○七小說，讀遍了弗萊明的小說和非小說，讀到弗萊明寫香港的北平菜館，他想起從前的北
京樓和樂宮樓：「吃不到我們當年跟牟潤孫教授常吃的鵝肝了吧？」六十年代上北平館子我們靠牟教授點菜，大菜小菜都帶清末民初的火候，都好吃。牟教授晚年不
喝酒，老丁愛喝，我呷兩口陪陪他，他高興，說天下真有這樣划算的買賣，烈的淡的全歸他乾掉。美好的老歲月一晃消散。八十年代九十年代在美國在香港重逢，老
丁血壓高戒酒了，煙斗還抽，精神爽利，學問更厚，氣度更大，興趣只在藝文，話題不離縹緗，滔滔一陣議論，悄聲唸關漢卿《竇娥冤》一句楔子自嘲：「讀盡縹緗
萬卷書，可憐貧殺馬相如！」縹是淡青色，緗是淺黃色，古人愛用淡青淺黃絲帛做書囊書衣，書卷於是叫縹緗，叫縹帙，叫縹書，叫縹囊。馬相如是司馬相如簡稱。
《竇娥冤》雜劇劇本全名《感天動地竇娥冤》，寫寡婦竇娥受流氓張驢兒迫害，誣控殺人，官判死刑，臨刑竇娥指天為誓，說死後血濺白練，六月降雪，大旱三年，
以白己冤。竇娥父親天章後來當官，冤案昭雪。老丁熟讀雜劇傳奇，京劇崑曲也愛唱，常說他的中文全靠這些戲詞打好底子，喝了酒唱兩句有板有眼，牟教授要他唱
他不敢唱，說牟公懂戲，怕露餡。老丁其實是很靦覥的人，事事低調，陌生人面前話也不多，連他的義父賀卡斯先生都笑他斯文過了頭。賀卡斯是英國傳教士，跟老
丁南京老家是世交，收老丁做義子，一九四八年丁家先南來，一九五○年賀卡斯跟夫人也來了。七十年代他們退休回英國，勸老丁去英國深造老丁不肯，說住波士頓
的台灣舅舅生意做得不錯，命老丁去當助手，老丁一九七二年攜眷去了美國，翌年我也舉家遷居英倫。六十年代老丁帶我上賀卡斯家玩，很和善很幽默的老先生。賀
卡斯夫人也好客，廚藝了不得，中國小菜中國餃子做得好，下午茶糕點也拿手，愛織毛衣愛繡花，十足蓋斯凱爾夫人老小說裏的舊仕女。賀卡斯先生水彩畫畫得很
好，晚年眼疾加重，視力衰退，不畫了。老丁說他義父是十七、十八世紀英國畫家William
Hogarth的族人，不知道是真是假，我沒好意思問賀卡斯先生。維廉．賀卡斯是油畫家，版畫家，藝評家，作品諷刺皇親貴族，同情平頭百姓，銅版畫《時麾
婚姻》和《妓女生涯》很出名，肖像畫也好。少年時代當過銀匠學徒，不久進了私立素描學校，開店做雕版印刷生意。我在老威爾遜舊書店裏看到過《妓女生涯》複
印散片，共六幅，講述農村姑娘在倫敦墮落的悲慘故事。他的自畫像畫他畫油畫的情景，美國國會圖書館珍藏，印過明信片。老丁府上掛了他義父早年畫的一幅水彩
畫，畫南京紫金山南坡中山陵，用色清淺，光影生動，功底甚深。老丁說賀卡斯先生教英文非常嚴格，他小時候天天到賀卡斯家上課，苦得要命，年事稍長才曉得受
用不盡。歷代著名篇章要背誦，日記要寫，作文每星期交兩篇，千字為限。先生不教文法，說讀多了講慣了寫順了整個思維泡在英文裏英文遲早親如母語，深深淺淺
句句都帶英國味：「那叫學會了！」老丁說功課做不完上課前提早躲進廚房找師娘，師娘一聲不響陪他做完一大半，板起面孔說下回不救你，下回還是救了。我羨慕
老丁命好，遇上嚴師教英文。我和老丁這一代人學好中文已然不容易，掌握英文更難了。有一回，幾個讀大二的學生來我家聊天，老丁正好在，一位學生說中文學到
一個境界要花掉大半生光陰，還學英文做甚麼？老丁微微一笑說：「學會英文，別的不說，會讀英文報刊英文好書，人生多了多少樂趣，值了！」那位學生一臉茫
然。老丁收起笑容悄聲補上一句：「英文通了，中文不難獨闢蹊徑，更上一層樓。信不信由你。」那位學生有點不服氣，他問老丁中文英文怎麼叫精通？怎麼叫好？
老丁淡淡說：「寫文章學會不用感歎號，那叫精通，叫好。」幾位學生都笑了。我也笑了。老丁也笑了。感歎號學問大，我和老丁聊過好多次，我們都怕感歎號妖氣
重。說白了，老丁話裏在意的是「感歎」不是「符號」：文章一涉感慨讚歎容易寫得濫情，寫得庸俗；感而不傷，歎而不怨，那才矜貴，境界從而高亮。北宋詩人左
緯有一首五絕老丁很讚賞，當下抄錄了送給那位學生：
短棹無尋處，嚴城欲閉門。
水邊人獨自，沙上月黃昏。
詩題是〈許少伊被召追送至 白沙不及〉。許少伊是許景衡，說是許景衡赴召之前趕不及告訴左緯，左緯得了消息連忙追送，到了白沙，不見蹤影，水邊沉吟。老丁對那位學生說，這二十個字絲 毫不動肝，不挖腸，惜別之情全在字裏，不妨多加揣摩，細心領會。依稀記得那位學生姓張，拿了學士赴美深造，娶美國太太，不回來了，英文一定大佳。我跟老丁 相交數十年，留意他看書做學問每段時期不一樣，選中一個作家集中精神研讀那個作家的作品，花費幾個月光陰讀夠了再換另一位作家。他說他天份不高，悟性不 高，不敢也不能天馬行空博覽群書，只好守拙，一個作家一個作家細細讀，好看難看都讀完。歲數漸大恆心漸小，學會看一兩本看不下去的索性不看，轉去看別的作 家：「這樣，時光也就不那麼浪費了。」二○○三年他來香港探親，告訴我說他那陣子在看勞倫斯，先讀《白孔雀》，再讀《兒子與情人》，然後是《虹》，是《戀 愛中的女人》，是《查泰萊夫人的情人》。「奇怪，」老丁說，「勞倫斯短篇小說真的比他的長篇好，《英格蘭，我的英格蘭》我讀完再讀，真細緻，真沉穩。」遊 記也寫得好，跟他一生寫給友人的信札一樣飽滿一樣冷峭。《查泰萊夫人的情人》老丁說是勞倫斯下大力氣希望寫得出色的小說，可惜肺病病情反覆，心理壓力太 大，許多地方心到筆不到，跟他的畫作一樣，細膩而浮泛。老丁說的也許是小說的整體印象。書中許多片段其實功力都不淺，運筆精煉，收放凝寂，第一百四十七頁 到一百四十九頁一段描述已然惹人低徊，夫人精緻的慾念，獵漢獷盛而陰柔的宣洩，短短一個情節幾乎影射了小說企圖揭示的道統失據和人性憧憬。老丁那天下午來 我家看《查泰萊夫人的情人》初版，我在東京崇文莊書店找到的，一九二八年意大利佛羅倫薩出版，限印一千本，我這本編號三三○，勞倫斯簽名。老丁說他在美國 買到一本美國仿印本，跟佛羅倫薩這個版本一模一樣，也限印一千本，也編號，注明勞倫斯的簽名是印章仿製鈐上去的，Lawrence的「w」和「r」不連 接，有空隙。過了這麼多年了，這個美國仿印本大維最近給我找到了一本，珍貴的是著名裝幀家Fritz Eberhardt一九八○年的精心手工裝潢，彩皮鑲出勞倫斯的鳳凰標誌。弗里茨裝幀的舊書也許做得不多，傳世很少，李儂珍藏兩部，一部是莎翁喜劇，一部 不記得了。弗里茨一九一七年生在波蘭的西里西亞，一九五○年移居美國費城，跟妻子一起創辦裝幀小作坊，執意手工裝幀，開創美國書籍裝幀藝術的新歷程，影響 大極了。簡妮在大維店裏聽說弗里茨裝幀的《查泰萊夫人的情人》歸了我，來電話道賀，感歎老丁看不到這個絕色了。這本書跟美國女作家米切爾的《飄》并肩插在 我的書架上，老丁喜歡《飄》，我家有初版，他來翻閱了好幾次，改編的電影他也喜歡。老派人戀舊，戀星星，戀月亮，戀太陽，我這個老朋友。
短棹無尋處，嚴城欲閉門。
水邊人獨自，沙上月黃昏。
詩題是〈許少伊被召追送至 白沙不及〉。許少伊是許景衡，說是許景衡赴召之前趕不及告訴左緯，左緯得了消息連忙追送，到了白沙，不見蹤影，水邊沉吟。老丁對那位學生說，這二十個字絲 毫不動肝，不挖腸，惜別之情全在字裏，不妨多加揣摩，細心領會。依稀記得那位學生姓張，拿了學士赴美深造，娶美國太太，不回來了，英文一定大佳。我跟老丁 相交數十年，留意他看書做學問每段時期不一樣，選中一個作家集中精神研讀那個作家的作品，花費幾個月光陰讀夠了再換另一位作家。他說他天份不高，悟性不 高，不敢也不能天馬行空博覽群書，只好守拙，一個作家一個作家細細讀，好看難看都讀完。歲數漸大恆心漸小，學會看一兩本看不下去的索性不看，轉去看別的作 家：「這樣，時光也就不那麼浪費了。」二○○三年他來香港探親，告訴我說他那陣子在看勞倫斯，先讀《白孔雀》，再讀《兒子與情人》，然後是《虹》，是《戀 愛中的女人》，是《查泰萊夫人的情人》。「奇怪，」老丁說，「勞倫斯短篇小說真的比他的長篇好，《英格蘭，我的英格蘭》我讀完再讀，真細緻，真沉穩。」遊 記也寫得好，跟他一生寫給友人的信札一樣飽滿一樣冷峭。《查泰萊夫人的情人》老丁說是勞倫斯下大力氣希望寫得出色的小說，可惜肺病病情反覆，心理壓力太 大，許多地方心到筆不到，跟他的畫作一樣，細膩而浮泛。老丁說的也許是小說的整體印象。書中許多片段其實功力都不淺，運筆精煉，收放凝寂，第一百四十七頁 到一百四十九頁一段描述已然惹人低徊，夫人精緻的慾念，獵漢獷盛而陰柔的宣洩，短短一個情節幾乎影射了小說企圖揭示的道統失據和人性憧憬。老丁那天下午來 我家看《查泰萊夫人的情人》初版，我在東京崇文莊書店找到的，一九二八年意大利佛羅倫薩出版，限印一千本，我這本編號三三○，勞倫斯簽名。老丁說他在美國 買到一本美國仿印本，跟佛羅倫薩這個版本一模一樣，也限印一千本，也編號，注明勞倫斯的簽名是印章仿製鈐上去的，Lawrence的「w」和「r」不連 接，有空隙。過了這麼多年了，這個美國仿印本大維最近給我找到了一本，珍貴的是著名裝幀家Fritz Eberhardt一九八○年的精心手工裝潢，彩皮鑲出勞倫斯的鳳凰標誌。弗里茨裝幀的舊書也許做得不多，傳世很少，李儂珍藏兩部，一部是莎翁喜劇，一部 不記得了。弗里茨一九一七年生在波蘭的西里西亞，一九五○年移居美國費城，跟妻子一起創辦裝幀小作坊，執意手工裝幀，開創美國書籍裝幀藝術的新歷程，影響 大極了。簡妮在大維店裏聽說弗里茨裝幀的《查泰萊夫人的情人》歸了我，來電話道賀，感歎老丁看不到這個絕色了。這本書跟美國女作家米切爾的《飄》并肩插在 我的書架上，老丁喜歡《飄》，我家有初版，他來翻閱了好幾次，改編的電影他也喜歡。老派人戀舊，戀星星，戀月亮，戀太陽，我這個老朋友。
2014年3月1日 星期六
the Bard's books；Boydell Shakespeare Gallery ；Shakespeare: An Illustrated Dictionary, OUP 1978/85, by Stanley Wells,
We can't capture Shakespeare
A new 'authentic' portrait of the Bard is causing a stir – but it tells us nothing about what made him unique
-
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 March 2009 14.30 GMT
- Article history
In 1623 the first collected edition of William Shakespeare's works was published by his old colleagues in the King's Men
theatre company. They paid their lately deceased fellow actor, manager,
and author the compliment of transcribing all his plays from actors'
working notes, arranging them as Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies – an
edition that is still the basis of Shakespeare's fame.
And naturally, at the beginning of this big book, the First Folio, they placed Shakespeare's portrait. The engraving shows a man with a tall bald forehead and a long face framed by a ruff collar. His friend and rival Ben Jonson wrote a verse to commend the likeness – "the graver had a strife/ With Nature to outdo the life". And yet, Jonson raises a question about the very value of a visual image of a verbal genius:
Jonson's caution has never been heeded. From 1623 to today, people have sought Shakespeare's image. It's become a kind of obsession. Now a new Shakespeare portrait has been hailed as the most authentic of all; if so, it will eclipse the recent agreement that the "Chandos" portrait in the National Portrait Gallery is the real thing, the true image of the bard. Finding Shakespeare's face is the theme of books and exhibitions as we try to flesh out this most elusive of authors.
So little is known of Shakespeare the man; just bare documentary facts but nothing personal, not even a single letter from his hand. Contrast this with Michelangelo, who by the time he died in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, had seen two biographies of himself into print. Contrast it too with Ben Jonson, who for all his scepticism about portraiture posed for a vivid painting by Abraham van Blyenberch, today in the National Portrait Gallery.
Shakespeare is so obscure that some still deny his very authorship, so mysterious that weaving a biography from the resistant sources is a fascinating scholarly game in books by Stephen Greenblatt, Charles Nicholl and Jonathan Bate. There have in fact been more biographies of Shakespeare this century than of any comparable figure, which like the rage for portraits of him reflects our desire to individualise a writer who so resists our curiosity.
Perhaps we want to pin him down because of the eerie way his plays dramatise every voice, every perspective. Like a Cubist painter, Shakespeare seems to see his world with mind-bending relativism. Wouldn't it be lovely to capture this Proteus, to hold him to a single form. But we can't, and the newly identified, supposedly truly authentic, portrait of him won't do that any more finally that there can be a "final" interpretation of Hamlet.
Put a face on Shakespeare? You may as well try to personify the English language. Ben Jonson reaches a disconcerting conclusion in the First Folio. Yes, he says, it would be marvellous if the engraver could have portrayed Shakespeare's wit –
On
the evidence adumbrated so far, it seems to me to be to be highly
unlikely that the Cobbe portrait is a true lifetime portrait of William Shakespeare, as widely reported today.
I'm assuming there's something that Professor Stanley Wells, who has led the charge towards the identification, has something else up his sleeve – because so far the case seems rather unconvincing.
The story is that the owner of the Cobbe portrait attended the recent Searching for Shakespeare exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, curated by Tarnya Cooper in 2006.
At that exhibition he saw a picture at one time thought to have been of Shakespeare, known as the Janssen portrait, that resembled his own "Cobbe" portrait, and which he felt was probably copied from his own painting.
But even if he is right, and the Janssen portrait was copied from his own, surely that just doesn't work. The Janssen portrait was painted c1610 – but doctored by the 1770s to make it look like Shakespeare. As the Folger Shakespeare Library points out (the owner of the Janssen portrait): "This makes it the earliest proven example of a genuine portrait altered to look like Shakespeare." In other words, unless there is new evidence about the sitter, it is the portrait of some random Jacobean chap which was later altered so it could be passed off as a portrait of Shakespeare (the look broadly based on the 1623 Martin Droeshout engraving, which we know from contemporary evidence to have been a good likeness, whether made posthumously or not).
What we are essentially left with, as far as I can tell, is a portrait of just about the right period of a fellow with roughly the right kind of hairdo (though to my mind looking insufficiently old and bald given the two true likenesses we know about, which are the Droeshout engraving and the Shakespeare memorial bust in Stratford parish church).
Prof Wells also talks about the fact that some of the pictures in the Cobbe collection were handed down by the family of the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron. But there is no documentary evidence that the "Shakespeare" portrait is one of those works.
Tempting as it is with portraits of this period to go for optimistic identifications, surely there has to be a bit more evidence on the table than this?
**** Shakespeare: An Illustrated Dictionary, OUP 1978/85, by Stanley Wells,
Stanley Wells, Emeritus Professor and Chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
現在Wikipedia 對於Boydell Shakespeare Gallery 的介紹，相對豐富得多了。 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boydell_Shakespeare_Gallery
Joshua Reynolds' Puck (1789), painted for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, is modelled after Parmigianino's Madonna with St. Zachary, the Magdalen, and St. John[1]
The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in London, England, was the first stage of a three-part project initiated in November 1786 by engraver and publisher John Boydell in an effort to foster a school of British history painting. In addition to the establishment of the gallery, Boydell planned to produce an illustrated edition of William Shakespeare's
plays and a folio of prints based upon a series of paintings by
different contemporary painters. During the 1790s the London gallery
that showed the original paintings emerged as the project's most popular
element.
The works of William Shakespeare enjoyed a renewed popularity in 18th-century Britain. Several new editions of his works were published, his plays were revived in the theatre and numerous works of art were created illustrating the plays and specific productions of them. Capitalising on this interest, Boydell decided to publish a grand illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays that would showcase the talents of British painters and engravers. He chose the noted scholar and Shakespeare editor George Steevens to oversee the edition, which was released between 1791 and 1803.
The press reported weekly on the building of Boydell's gallery, designed by George Dance the Younger, on a site in Pall Mall. Boydell commissioned works from famous painters of the day, such as Joshua Reynolds, and the folio of engravings proved the enterprise's most lasting legacy. However, the long delay in publishing the prints and the illustrated edition prompted criticism. Because they were hurried, and many illustrations had to be done by lesser artists, the final products of Boydell's venture were judged to be disappointing. The project caused the Boydell firm to become insolvent, and they were forced to sell the gallery at a lottery.
And naturally, at the beginning of this big book, the First Folio, they placed Shakespeare's portrait. The engraving shows a man with a tall bald forehead and a long face framed by a ruff collar. His friend and rival Ben Jonson wrote a verse to commend the likeness – "the graver had a strife/ With Nature to outdo the life". And yet, Jonson raises a question about the very value of a visual image of a verbal genius:
O, could he but have drawn his witThe engraving of Shakespeare's face, points out Jonson, cannot capture his "wit"; it's just an inert picture that does no justice to what made Shakespeare unique, which was the lively play of his language, in speech and on the page.
As well in brass as he hath hit
His face, the print would then surpass
All that was ever writ in brass.
Jonson's caution has never been heeded. From 1623 to today, people have sought Shakespeare's image. It's become a kind of obsession. Now a new Shakespeare portrait has been hailed as the most authentic of all; if so, it will eclipse the recent agreement that the "Chandos" portrait in the National Portrait Gallery is the real thing, the true image of the bard. Finding Shakespeare's face is the theme of books and exhibitions as we try to flesh out this most elusive of authors.
So little is known of Shakespeare the man; just bare documentary facts but nothing personal, not even a single letter from his hand. Contrast this with Michelangelo, who by the time he died in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, had seen two biographies of himself into print. Contrast it too with Ben Jonson, who for all his scepticism about portraiture posed for a vivid painting by Abraham van Blyenberch, today in the National Portrait Gallery.
Shakespeare is so obscure that some still deny his very authorship, so mysterious that weaving a biography from the resistant sources is a fascinating scholarly game in books by Stephen Greenblatt, Charles Nicholl and Jonathan Bate. There have in fact been more biographies of Shakespeare this century than of any comparable figure, which like the rage for portraits of him reflects our desire to individualise a writer who so resists our curiosity.
Perhaps we want to pin him down because of the eerie way his plays dramatise every voice, every perspective. Like a Cubist painter, Shakespeare seems to see his world with mind-bending relativism. Wouldn't it be lovely to capture this Proteus, to hold him to a single form. But we can't, and the newly identified, supposedly truly authentic, portrait of him won't do that any more finally that there can be a "final" interpretation of Hamlet.
Put a face on Shakespeare? You may as well try to personify the English language. Ben Jonson reaches a disconcerting conclusion in the First Folio. Yes, he says, it would be marvellous if the engraver could have portrayed Shakespeare's wit –
But since he cannot, reader, lookGood advice.
Not on his picture, but his book.
A true Shakespeare 'portrait'? Surely not...
On the evidence adduced so far, the idea that the Cobbe portrait is a lifetime portrait of Shakespeare seems optimistic
The Cobbe portrait, unveiled yesterday in London. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images
I'm assuming there's something that Professor Stanley Wells, who has led the charge towards the identification, has something else up his sleeve – because so far the case seems rather unconvincing.
The story is that the owner of the Cobbe portrait attended the recent Searching for Shakespeare exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, curated by Tarnya Cooper in 2006.
At that exhibition he saw a picture at one time thought to have been of Shakespeare, known as the Janssen portrait, that resembled his own "Cobbe" portrait, and which he felt was probably copied from his own painting.
But even if he is right, and the Janssen portrait was copied from his own, surely that just doesn't work. The Janssen portrait was painted c1610 – but doctored by the 1770s to make it look like Shakespeare. As the Folger Shakespeare Library points out (the owner of the Janssen portrait): "This makes it the earliest proven example of a genuine portrait altered to look like Shakespeare." In other words, unless there is new evidence about the sitter, it is the portrait of some random Jacobean chap which was later altered so it could be passed off as a portrait of Shakespeare (the look broadly based on the 1623 Martin Droeshout engraving, which we know from contemporary evidence to have been a good likeness, whether made posthumously or not).
What we are essentially left with, as far as I can tell, is a portrait of just about the right period of a fellow with roughly the right kind of hairdo (though to my mind looking insufficiently old and bald given the two true likenesses we know about, which are the Droeshout engraving and the Shakespeare memorial bust in Stratford parish church).
Prof Wells also talks about the fact that some of the pictures in the Cobbe collection were handed down by the family of the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron. But there is no documentary evidence that the "Shakespeare" portrait is one of those works.
Tempting as it is with portraits of this period to go for optimistic identifications, surely there has to be a bit more evidence on the table than this?
**** Shakespeare: An Illustrated Dictionary, OUP 1978/85, by Stanley Wells,
Stanley Wells, Emeritus Professor and Chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
現在Wikipedia 對於Boydell Shakespeare Gallery 的介紹，相對豐富得多了。 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boydell_Shakespeare_Gallery
The works of William Shakespeare enjoyed a renewed popularity in 18th-century Britain. Several new editions of his works were published, his plays were revived in the theatre and numerous works of art were created illustrating the plays and specific productions of them. Capitalising on this interest, Boydell decided to publish a grand illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays that would showcase the talents of British painters and engravers. He chose the noted scholar and Shakespeare editor George Steevens to oversee the edition, which was released between 1791 and 1803.
The press reported weekly on the building of Boydell's gallery, designed by George Dance the Younger, on a site in Pall Mall. Boydell commissioned works from famous painters of the day, such as Joshua Reynolds, and the folio of engravings proved the enterprise's most lasting legacy. However, the long delay in publishing the prints and the illustrated edition prompted criticism. Because they were hurried, and many illustrations had to be done by lesser artists, the final products of Boydell's venture were judged to be disappointing. The project caused the Boydell firm to become insolvent, and they were forced to sell the gallery at a lottery.
Jane Austen v Emily Brontë: who's the queen of English literature?
Jane Austen v Emily Brontë: who's the queen of English literature?
Author Kate Mosse and academic John Mullan debated the relative merits of the 19th-century pioneer novelists. So who won?
Picking favourites … Emily Brontë and Jane Austen. Photograph: Stock/Montage/Getty Images
Jane Austen v Emily Brontë,
an Intelligence Squared debate, was also John Mullan v Kate Mosse, but
for much of it the professor and the novelist seemed too well mannered,
too eager to eschew negativity. Only Mosse was ready to make an
occasional hostile point, broadly echoing Emily's sister Charlotte's
famous verdict on Austen's work ("a carefully fenced, highly cultivated
garden" where Charlotte wanted "open country – fresh air"; an accurate
portrait of "a commonplace face" where she wanted "a bright vivid
physiognomy"), though tellingly not quoting it – too unsisterly? – as
she complained of the limitations of the worlds of Emma and Pride and
Prejudice.
Explaining his reluctance to be critical at the outset ("I love Wuthering Heights, and slightly love Kate too"), Mullan headed off Charlotte's other accusation – "the Passions are perfectly unknown to her" – by using scenes from Persuasion and Emma, performed by actors, to show that Austen "does do feeling". The somewhat defensive note of this argument disappeared as Mullan went on to extol Austen's brilliance and "wonderful sentences", pointed to the opening scene of Pride and Prejudice to suggest she was "the greatest writer of dialogue in English literature". He went on to call her pioneering use of free indirect style "the most important invention in the history of the novel".
If there was a barbed element in this celebration it was subtle and aimed primarily at Austen deniers. Like Mosse, Mullan recalled, he had found Austen "trivial" and "all about getting married" as a teenager, but lost this silly prejudice when around 26 – you have to be grownup, in other words, to "get her" (so only teenagers, or those hanging on to their teenageriness, the audience were led to infer, preferred Wuthering Heights). Yes, they were "courtship novels", he conceded with a hint of donnish impatience, but this was just the "frame" and to condemn them for that was as callow as dismissing Shakespeare's comedies for being comedies.
Mosse also deployed acted scenes deftly – Dominic West fans were given a tantalising glimpse of his Heathcliff – as she insisted she had been right, at 17, to feel that there must be "more" to fiction than "the pursuit of marriage", and that Wuthering Heights was a multilayered demonstration of what else it could be: not only a love story but a social novel incorporating "all types of people", a tale of ghosts and past and present, a "pantheistic" work linking us to the rest of nature and asking "what it means to be human".
Central to the Women's prize (formerly the Orange prize) co-founder's case was the book's liberation of both sexes – men "allowed to have feelings", women not reduced to husband-hunters. By being more "ambitious", Mosse concluded, Brontë "changed what it was possible for women to write, for women and men to be, and for men to write". She turned out to have won the argument on the night, though not quite the vote. An audience poll at the end narrowly elected Austen as queen of English literature (51% to Brontë's 47%), but as the pre-debate split had been 55% to 24% with 21% don't knows, all the swing vote had gone to Brontë.
Explaining his reluctance to be critical at the outset ("I love Wuthering Heights, and slightly love Kate too"), Mullan headed off Charlotte's other accusation – "the Passions are perfectly unknown to her" – by using scenes from Persuasion and Emma, performed by actors, to show that Austen "does do feeling". The somewhat defensive note of this argument disappeared as Mullan went on to extol Austen's brilliance and "wonderful sentences", pointed to the opening scene of Pride and Prejudice to suggest she was "the greatest writer of dialogue in English literature". He went on to call her pioneering use of free indirect style "the most important invention in the history of the novel".
If there was a barbed element in this celebration it was subtle and aimed primarily at Austen deniers. Like Mosse, Mullan recalled, he had found Austen "trivial" and "all about getting married" as a teenager, but lost this silly prejudice when around 26 – you have to be grownup, in other words, to "get her" (so only teenagers, or those hanging on to their teenageriness, the audience were led to infer, preferred Wuthering Heights). Yes, they were "courtship novels", he conceded with a hint of donnish impatience, but this was just the "frame" and to condemn them for that was as callow as dismissing Shakespeare's comedies for being comedies.
Mosse also deployed acted scenes deftly – Dominic West fans were given a tantalising glimpse of his Heathcliff – as she insisted she had been right, at 17, to feel that there must be "more" to fiction than "the pursuit of marriage", and that Wuthering Heights was a multilayered demonstration of what else it could be: not only a love story but a social novel incorporating "all types of people", a tale of ghosts and past and present, a "pantheistic" work linking us to the rest of nature and asking "what it means to be human".
Central to the Women's prize (formerly the Orange prize) co-founder's case was the book's liberation of both sexes – men "allowed to have feelings", women not reduced to husband-hunters. By being more "ambitious", Mosse concluded, Brontë "changed what it was possible for women to write, for women and men to be, and for men to write". She turned out to have won the argument on the night, though not quite the vote. An audience poll at the end narrowly elected Austen as queen of English literature (51% to Brontë's 47%), but as the pre-debate split had been 55% to 24% with 21% don't knows, all the swing vote had gone to Brontë.
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