I think people above have listed some good reasons as to why in general prose has become more compact over time, so I won’t go over that again, but I think the rule of the masses is a good argument for the watering down of prose.
In general terms I prefer older style Victorian prose and can sometimes be put off by modern styles, not just for the shortness of it, but also for its word choice and interestingly for its artificiality – in short I feel as if they “try” too hard. This may seem a strange angle for someone who in general terms likes older style prose but I will try and express what I mean. Please take into account that I am speaking very much in general terms here and don’t mean to condemn or praise an entire century with two short extracts.
So for an example of what I am getting at here is the opening to Wilde’s Dorian Gray, one of my favourite novels:
Quote:
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch he gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then their fantastic shadows of birds in the flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.
Yes so that is the first two sentences from Dorian Gray, long but I am immediately attracted to that and think, although it is not a prime example of outstanding prose, it is at the very least a good piece of writing and conveys the scent and décor of the studio and the people within in it perfectly. It is very rich and sweet, decadent in nature and actually something which most of the old school Victorians wouldn’t have approved of too much for its sensual nature.
When I handed that to a work colleague once and asked them what they thought of the first page they replied that it was “heavy going” or something of that kind. They didn’t say “wow, that is beautiful can I borrow it?” but that it seemed “heavy going” in other words different from what they were used to reading entirely. In fact I have lent out a copy of Dorian about five times and it has only been read to the end once?
Now here is the opening section to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road which someone lent me at my request, it is a book that I have still not gotten around to reading, though it is a highly respected novel from what I gather:
Quote:
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world. His hand rose and fell softly with each precious breath. He pushed away the plastic tarpaulin and raised himself in the stinking robes and blankets and looked toward the east for any light but there was none. In the dream from which he’d wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light palying over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast.
Now as I say I’m not trying to read too much into this comparison, but I am just not taken with this style of prose too much at all, it seems somewhat forced in nature. I just don’t really believe in the similes too much, two used within this short sequence. I don’t like the immediate forced action of the novel, it doesn’t work for me as part of an opening page. It feels like he understands that he must capture his audience quickly (which modern novelists must I suppose) but I don’t like it nonetheless. I will read it eventually and I must in order to give it a fair chance (no time at the moment) but the prose seems very textbook here, very indicative of a modern novel and it immediately makes me pull a face and sends me reeling for something else, harsh critic that I am.
I think it is just down to personal preference maybe, but I prefer the Wilde style writing to the one just quoted. Of course it is writing suicide to try and write in the Victorian style nowadays for such would be an example of poor style. Imagine handing in an essay for example with about 15 punctuation marks in one sentence - you would be flogged!
I think the balance is to not to try and force anything or mimic something else, but to try to remain true to art and characterisation. To try and be original at least to yourself.
这是第二位朋友的回复。
In general, I think that much of today's novelists cater to the ever shortening attention spans of readers.
As PeterL points out, the percentage of those who qualify as "literate" today is far greater than it was in past centuries which has had the result of diluting the audience. Those who are passionate about books and reading are no less so now than they ever were and demand no less of their reading materials. Personally, reading Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, Jose Saramago, Cees Nooteboom, Gunter Grass, or any number of other contemporary writers, I don't see the inherent simplicity or lack of complexities... in content or in language. Going back to Proust and Joyce I can't say I can think of many writers from any time or place who could match them for richness of prose language.
Compare a Jackson Pollack with a Ruebens. Compare with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with a Coldplay song. The evolution of art seems to be more of a de-evolution into simpler, less complex forms across the board.
How accurate are these examples? How related are the efforts of Pollack and Rubens? One might do far better to compare the abstract, gestural, spontaneous art of Pollack with that of certain Japanese calligraphic artists. On the other hand, Max Beckmann, Picasso, Matisse, Salvador Dali, Bonnard, etc... at their finest can certainly hold their own to the complexity of Rubens... although it must also be admitted that Rubens is one of the absolute towering figures in the history of painting... one that perhaps only Picasso may be said to have equaled in the last century. On the other hand... the comparison of Beethoven and Coldplay is disingenuous at best. You are comparing a master of music as a fine art with popular music. Beethoven's era had its own popular music... minstrels and performers who frequented the bars and taverns... songs of drinking and sex that were certainly far more known among the working classes than Ludwig's Grosse Fugue. Again Beethoven is an almost insurmountable example. Along with Mozart and Bach he is commonly counted as one of the three central figures of Western classical music. One would certainly be hard pressed to suggest any contemporary composer to rival him... but there are undoubtedly any number of composers of real genius working today... or within the recent past: Arvo Part, Henryck Gorecki, Tan Dun, Osvaldo Golijov, Richard Strauss, Carl Orff, Gustav Holst, Benjamin Britten, Herbert Howells, Aaron Copland, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Stravinsky, Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, ... and if you consider the finest jazz composers whom many (myself included) would rank among the finest music contributions of the past century (and not unworthy of sharing space with Ravel, Satie, Debussy... or even Beethoven) one might add Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Theloious Monk, Miles Davis, etc...
I put much of the blame on the arts becoming more of a business than an art. Artists aren't as interested in starving as they once were.
Nonsense. Art has always been a business... a profession. The notion that one must suffer to create... one must be a "starving artist"... is just a sad romanticized notion of what art is. Rubens was a professional who employed numerous assistants and churned out paintings to meet the demand. He was extremely well compensated for his labors. Most old masters were highly regarded craftsmen meeting the demand for what is essentially a luxury product.
Popular authors that have contracts with leading publishing houses have deadlines and are under pressure to produce the next "product." That doesn't give them the time to craft the piece.
And what of Dickens... or even Shakespeare? Having an endless amount of time to labor upon a work of art is a luxury... but not necessarily a necessity. Deadlines and can be a great source of motivation, and craft can be quite labor intensive... but time constraints need not mean a loss of craft.
感慨一下。经常看翻译区大家一起推荐的那个“wonderful websites on Literature”主题中的外文站，还有一个黑塞的英文论坛，里面发言的认真劲儿都相当惊人。不知道大家是不是也有同感。作者: Giorgio 时间: 2009-5-30 21:26 本帖最后由 Giorgio 于 2009-5-30 21:39 编辑
牧人的这个发现很有价值，这确实体现了一个人的美德。有些没有什么人气的人以为是在网络中，谁也看不见谁，可以无所顾忌，所以其“只注重自我”的倾向很严重：看帖不回、回帖敷衍，纯属“拿分走人”、无意义灌水。当然，一些论坛里受欢迎的人也是很注重荣誉的。
一个人在没有人观察他的时候还能自觉注意不随地吐痰或自觉遵守公共道德，那他才是真正的有风度的人。（呵呵，忽然想起我大学时的一位老师。当时我们一起去森林里玩，他有点内急。我说在森林里环境和空气多好啊，可他却坚持要跑很远的路去找厕所，看起来非常的痛苦。其实他又给我上了一课。当然，我不敢肯定他在独自一人的时候会不会这么做。）作者: Godot 时间: 2009-6-3 03:48
我英文水平有限，借助词典花了不少时间终于完整看完了，颇有感触。
1，不能为了耍个性而说内容过分实则空洞无物的帖子；
2，当然不反对提供不成熟的想法和大家一起讨论。但是如果有想法，得按照小论文的要求整理，有理有据。关于“据”，为了方便广大网友交流，也为了加强论述的力度，最好转帖原文。（而我们通常的做法只是提一下作品名字，看人家把大段的《道林格雷的画像》都贴上来了。）；
3，开篇表明了立场，避免了很多不必要的误会。
学习了，这种回帖态度或者说精神有必要在本论坛发扬光大啊~~~~作者: 古越 时间: 2009-6-3 14:03
非常同意楼上的观点，否则很有标题党嫌疑，动辄某作家某作品中的观点（而且有许多是我米看过的……），因此有时候讨论也不明白讨论些什么作者: Bernhardt 时间: 2009-6-3 20:53
话说这么长，我都懒得看了……作者: Bernhardt 时间: 2009-6-3 21:18
关于这个问题，其实我觉得McCarthy这个开头也没什么不好，因为内容决定文体。the road本来就和dorian gray内容完全不同，所以dorian gray开头显得精细而耽美而the road则紧张阴暗。再说是两个国家的作家，对语言的使用也有不同。但是lz提出一点倒是真的： the prose seems very textbook here, very indicative of a modern novel。作者: mu 时间: 2009-6-5 21:00
帖子的作者在文中哪里说McCarthy不好了？他只是简明扼要又很清楚地表明了他的观点：I just don’t really believe in the similes too much, two used within this short sequence……（这也很方便别人来评判和讨论他的这个意见）
Giorgio 和 Godot 的发言正是我很想说的。这个主题有30几篇回复，虽然也不算多，但凡回复都相当认真。而并不只有这一个主题是这种情形，在我读到的帖子里（可能是我看得比较宽泛），没有一篇帖子跑题或有不礼貌的词语。我一直在想，网络不是用来打发时间的。浪费的时间就浪费掉了，在这论坛却能学到许多，因为每个人都认真。
