D-I-V-O-R-C-E

I finally finished reading through the "Sonnets" anthology, a good 500-year chunk of 14-line verses in English. It's really fascinating watching the diction morph and change, although there are good long stretches where everyone sounds like they wear doublets and breeches despite the telegraph, the camera and horseless carriages. Is it too much to ask that you talk like a halfway normal human being of your time?


The worst are the Victorians. They imitate the Romantics, talk like pale shadows of Elizabethans and their concerns are shallower than even the layabout gentlemen of the Tudor court. There are some standouts - Browning (Robert, not Elizabeth Barrett, natch), Matthew Arnold, Tennyson. And here's somebody I'd never read before - he's got the neat orderliness of the Victorians, but his tone and themes are way darker and more harrowing.

From "Modern Love"

George Meredith

     17. 
At dinner, she is hostess, I am host. 
Went the feast ever cheerfuller? She keeps 
The Topic over intellectual deeps 
In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost. 
With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: 
It is in truth a most contagious game: 
Hiding the Skeleton, shall be its name. 
Such play as this the devils might appal! 
But here's the greater wonder; in that we, 
Enamoured of an acting nought can tire, 
Each other, like true hypocrites, admire; 
Warm-lighted looks, Love's ephemerioe, 
Shoot gaily o'er the dishes and the wine. 
We waken envy of our happy lot. 
Fast, sweet, and golden, shows the marriage-knot. 
Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine.




See what I mean? This is about as good a piece of work about broken love or marriage unravelling as Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" or Richard & Linda Thompson's "Shoot Out the Lights" or Ryan Adams' "Heartbreaker." And all of "Modern Love" is like this, from what I've read - all decorum and propriety on the surface above a seething cauldron of angst and dread. Sign me up, man.


Nothing makes married people feel happier or more superior than tales of failed unions.