Miss Emily Dickinson Communes with the Great Dictator Mr John Milton . . .

‘Do you ever yearn,’

she was asked,
on a whim,

‘to have been firstborn to
 that Master of the Poem?’

‘Daughter of blind Milton?

Why, it’s true,’
she’d shrugged with the coyest of smiles,
‘for then
I would have intimately known

the Fiend’s bade angels

were verily my own.’ 

Blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost
to his Daughter
by Eugène Delacroix (circa 1826).

Miltonic Homophones Make Mischief.

In emulation of Milton’s daughter, Miss Dickinson transcribed correctly line 344 of Book 1 of Paradise Lost, in countless editions falsely rendered thus:

                             So numberless were those bad Angels seen                                                
                             Hovering on wing under the Cope of Hell

for she recognised, unlike most – if not all – Miltonian scholars, that this dictated masterpiece contains many homophones and bad angels for bade angels is surely an example of the grave pitfalls that lie in wait for orality in versification. 

Even a fair reading of the transcript by Milton’s daughter would not necessarily have singled out the fault, however acute the blind task-master’s ear. And she . . . ? Well, Milton’s daughter – as Emily suspected – may have allowed the error to stand to colour this stern, forbidding, Epic Voice with her own mischievous girlish descant. 

                             Blind Milton: The meaning’s not mistaken, child?
                             Meek Daughter: Bade angels, bade as bidden, Father.

Do you doubt Emily’s insights; those of a preeminent bardic practitioner? Consider Milton’s verses some forty lines earlier, a narrative in which Satan arises from the fiery deep to issue rousing orders, bidding his Fallen Angels in a call to arms.  

On Hell’s. . . 
                             . . . inflamed sea he stood, and called 
                             His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced . . .
                             Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen . . .
                             . . . Yet to their general’s voice they soon obeyed
                             Innumerable. [In other words, Bade Angels.]

After all, for every Production Line worker (in this case, over 10,000 lines!) there are bound to be a few moments for a little idle diversion.

Empress of Calvary.
Though, it has to be added, anyone who personifies themselves as ‘Empress of Calvary’ is perhaps in an invidious position when presuming to find a bum note in one of Christendom’s authentic God-given masterpieces. Except, maybe, after all, an Empress of Calvary should command Bad Angels, for they would certainly deserve to be at her impious imperious bidding. 

Or is that exactly what Emily meant?

Satan calling up his legions
by William Blake
(tempera and gold, circa 1800 - 1805)

 

 

For Great Dictators: Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Barbara Cartland, Edgar Wallace and Co. . . . see . . .
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2012/09/great-dictators-henry-james-joseph.html

•

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2014)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

Great Dictators: Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Barbara Cartland, Edgar Wallace and Co.

I have often thought that there must exist any number of recordings gathering dust made by those ‘great dictators’, the famous novelists over the past century or so who advanced their craft beyond dependence on stenographers by speaking directly to phonograph, dictaphone or plastic disc.

As I noted in my remarks on the Napoleonic Henry James, the ‘Master’, due to rheumatism of the wrist, relied on ‘typewriters’, as shorthand typists were called circa 1900. Similarly, Joseph Conrad.

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/fruits-sec-and-napoleon-of-over.html

How far this vivâ-voce approach to prose conditions a writer’s style is a question that exercises many academics, particularly in the case of James and his tortured parentheses, described by one contemporary critic as ‘phraseologic stress’. Discerning criticism of his times disparaged James’s overcultivation of the parenthetical exposition, suspecting its origin lay in the hesitancies of dictation, a prose manner  that compels the reader ‘to leap the five-barred gates of his parentheses in a game of verbal hide-and-seek’ to keep the writer’s meaning in sight.

In this regard, James’s shunning  of the straightforward was noted by contemporary novelist Mrs Humphry Ward:

‘Personally, I regret that, from What Maisie Knew onward, he adopted the method of dictation. A mind so teeming, and an art so flexible, were surely the better for the slight curb imposed by the physical toil of writing. I remember how and when we first discussed the pros and cons of dictation ... he was then enchanted by the endless vistas of work and achievement which the new method seemed to open out. And indeed it is plain that he produced more with it than he could have produced without it ... Still, the diffuseness and over-elaboration which were the natural snares of his astonishing gifts were encouraged rather than checked by the new method ...’

(Incidentally, Aldous Huxley was the nephew of Mrs. Humphry Ward, whom he described as his ‘ literary godmother’. ‘I used to have long talks with her about writing; she gave me no end of sound advice. She was a very sound writer herself, rolled off her plots like sections of macadamized road. She had a curious practice: every time she started work on a new novel, she read Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau.’ )

So the jury is still out, it seems, when a verdict is demanded on the merits of dictation.

The roll call of the great dictators is long (Dostoevsky, Hardy, James, Milton, Scott, Stendhal, may be mentioned, together with Barbara Cartland) and many of the names will prompt loyal readers to return to consult the texts in attempts to find the nigh invisible seam between authorial longhand and the mechanical transcription of the author’s voice or dependency on a literary amanuensis.

Under such critical scrutiny, it seems, literary works are reweighed to determine where a writer’s distinctive style remains unalloyed, and where it is debased by oratorical flourishes.

That reliance on dictation can give rise to mockery of an author is confirmed by the following anecdote:

Famously, a visitor to the home of Edgar Wallace observed him dictate a novel in the course of one weekend. It became a standing joke that if someone telephoned Edgar and was told he was writing a novel, they would promptly reply, ‘I'll wait!’

PS. I could not find a suitable photo of one of my great dictators so here is another Edgar ... Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1935 dictating one of his books.

See also:
Miss Emily Dickinson Communes with the Great Dictator Mr John Milton . . .
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2019/10/miss-emily-dickinson-communes-with.html

●

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 
see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html