Clock

This is a photo of my new alarm clock, sat on my desk with my HJ books standing appropriately behind it. (Actually, perhaps inappropriately. I was reading an essay on James' plotlessness as a reaction against the Victorian idea that time is linear. When I said 'appropriately' I was thinking of their shared 'vintage' aesthetic). Anyway, this serves mainly as a desk clock to help me study without the aid of my technological gadgets that all feature their own digital versions of the time. It is part of the Newgate Covent Garden clock range &I love it.

I have noticed that quite a few photographs on my blog feature clocks and I think I know why. Time often gains such a bad press: we have poets lamenting on the passing of time; andeveryday comments such as, "I wish there were more hours in the day!"; "Is that the time? [followed by an expletive]!" I'm prone to making these comments like the best of us-- without the expletives, of course-- but there is something that I find very comforting about time in that it allows me to ritualize certain hours of the day: I like the morning (particularly 8am and then 11am) because it means a fresh start and the chance to drink coffee whilst reading or writing; I take pleasure in the afternoons because they are punctuated by the 3pm coffee, which remedies the drudgery of meetings etc; and, I like the evening too because I can use soft-lighting in my flat and drink hot milk before bed. Yes, my days are defined by hot beverages. I discovered on Monday afternoon that 3pm-4pm is what I term 'Caffiene Rush Hour' in the library cafe. I discovered this after waiting for 10-15 minutes in the queue to buy some long-awaited lunch (I do not normally leave it so late, but I had been absorbed in writing material for my supervisors. As a hall tutor, I buy lunch on campus with my meal card so if I don't leave my flat, there is no food).

I have realised that the time featured here does not show the clock face very well at all, so expect future photos where the hands represent a more photogenic hour (10:10 or 1:50 where the shape is a smile-like 'V'-- although wider than that--which is what retailers call 'Happy Hour').

Seven Men and Two Others

I have started reading Max Beerbohm's Seven Men and Two Others, thus dipping into some Modernist prose for a change. However, fear not, my conversion to Modernism is not imminent: Beerbohm reflects upon the 1890s from an early-20th-century standpoint, so the thesis-related interest is there. I have had this edition since the summer, but it 'posed' unread on my bookshelf until I mused over the possibility of reading it to take a break from my engagements with Henry James yesterday. I am writing a chapter on Henry James and so naturally, have that unique closeness and academic respect for his sobering and heavily-qualified long, spidery sentences. The most frustrating aspect of overdoising on HJ is that every other piece of text you later encounter appears too clean-cut & clipped in its comparative accessibility. Max Beerbohm is refreshing because whilst accessible, his prose is engrained with a rich late-Victorian decadence and the short sentences contribute towards its parodic tone: 'When a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given by Mr.Holbrook Jackson to the world, I looked eagerly in the index for SOAMES, ENOCH. I had feared he would not be there. He was not there. But everybody else was.' This parodic tone is also in the title, right? That coy 'and two others' is an amusing addition. Perhaps a more Jamesian prosaic title would be 'Portraits of Nine Men,' but Beerbohm is ushering in an extra two men, as if they had joined the party late, separating them from the seven other men. This numbers game works by leaving all men at this 'threshold' stage (that is the stage before we have turned to the first page) anonymous. All we know is that seven men have some kind of (unknown) unity. They are caricatures. The outline figure is there (as the illustration of the man with his back to us reinforces), but distorts the essence of the people introduced to us for ease of entertainment & reference.

In 'Enoch Soames' (1912) his description of a Parisian artist-- visiting Oxford in 1893 to 'do a series of twenty-four portraits in Lithograph' of 'doddering old men' (a.k.a Oxford dons 'who had never consented to sit to anyone')-- embodies that modernist modish style, that figure of the bookish artist who has become so iconic (& a Woody Allen prototype?): 'He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was  a wit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Edmond de Goncourt. He knew everyone in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in Oxford.'

I picked this 1954 edition in a second-hand bookshop for £1. Back in 1954, it was 2/6...There is something written in Dutch on the back cover: twensche. At least, I think it is Dutch. I'll ask my Dutch friend tomorrow if I see her.

I have resisted from thinking about the male self-fashioning of Modernism, which is suggested in the title. As if seven men were not enough, two more are included. Contributing to classical modernism Beerbohm is promoting the elitist masculine ambition, thus occluding female representation. I am interested to continue reading this volume to assess whether Beerbohm keeps us in this male-dominated world, this homosocial blockade designed to exclude those who fall short of the masculine elite. I'll keep you posted...

'...not one of you cares for the loss of them now when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box.'

I hate to fall into the category of prototypical arts student, but over the past month, I have subjected myself to that Paterian 'continual vanishing away' and fancied myself as that notorious 'illusive inscrutable mistakable self.' It has been a month since my last proper post and for this I have a list of scapegoats: my energy-deficient camera, no internet in my room, marking first-year coursework, a conference and trying to write a chapter for my thesis. All these things left me in the academic prison-house (really recommend you read some works of Walter Pater if you want to understand these references) and I slumped into feeling quite content about this and refused to lift myself out of my late-winter flatness.

From now on, the blog will take a different form. Rather than take a photo everyday, I will do so as I please. This is more in keeping with the artistic values to which I subscribe and theorize. The theme of inconsistency in late-Victorian aesthetic discourse is one that I am working on now for publication(!!). My proposed inconsistency might frustrate the dedicated 'follower,' but sometimes, the artist cannot afford to satisfy the expectations of her audience.

Also, the activity of taking a photo everyday is immensely tedious and forceful. This, for me, goes against the principles of high art; it makes artistic production utilitarian, turning the whole thing into a machine-run process. Writing on photography in 1871 John Ruskin notes that the photographer only cares for her subject once she realizes the profitable aspects of capturing it for the sake of a brown image, and through doing so diminishes the value of the natural world that she sees through a lense:

'You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for you. That was also a discovery and may some day be useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown but in green and blue and all imaginable colours, here in England. Not one of you ever looked at them then, not one of you cares for the loss of them now when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box.'

And so, like the best of all NY resolutions, this one is officially broken, but in a state of repair. This follows suit with a raft of others such as go to the gym every other day!

For today's picture...This is from Valentine's Day. I didn't take this photo, but rather my other half did, by mistake and to slight artistic effect. On that one day of the year when relationships are commercialized, we sat down to have a meal with a glass of wine. It gave us an opportunity to take a day off from work and relax, which was really great and an essential thing to do in late-winter. Unlit candles. If only they had been lit, which we hadn't thought to do, I could have made another Paterian reference, which is one of my favourite quotes: 'To burn always with that hard gem-like flame and to maintain this ecstasy is success in life.' And on that I return to working on my thesis.