Here are some quotes, snippets, and observations pertaining to Charles Dicken's Bleak House, which I have only recently finished.
On false benevolence: "rapacious benevolence"
"Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor, and applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat"
On hope: "long-deferred hopes"
"the sickness of hope deferred"
"don't found a hope or expectation on the family curse!"
On our earthly condition: "perplexed and troublous valley of the law"
"the pernicious cause of so much sorrow and ruin"
"I was born into this unfinished contention"
"But it can't last forever. We shall come on for a final hearing, and get a judgment in our favor"
"and these family affairs smoothed over--as, Lord! Many other family affairs equally has been, and will be, to the end of time"
On making people our trust, rather than money and false hope: "I will accept him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!"
Behind every great man is a great woman, who knows her husband's mind: "give him my opinion. You know it. Tell him what it is"
On the end of an era: "as if all the cousins had been changed into leaves"
And following are some notes from Vladimir Nabokov's "Bleak House" lecture which incidentally, follows the lecture on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park:
"In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort in order to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port. We had to find an approach to Jane Austen and her Mansfield Park. I think we did find it and did have some degree of fun with her delicate patterns, with her collection of eggshells in cotton wool. But the fun was forced. " This is always how I have felt about Austen, as if I am forcing my enjoyment of her. Even when I have found her brilliant, I have found no sparkle. She is so highly restrained. One must wonder if she had been planted in the Garden, instead of Eve, would the Apple ever have been bitten into? Austen herself would not have picked the Apple, although she would have spent a chapter engaged in the impropriety of it, the poor manners, and given us witty observations of Adam and Eve's poor breeding, and called it---Mansfield Park!
"Let us not forget that there are people who have devoted to Jane all their lives, their ivy-clad lives. "
"The study of the sociological or political impact of literature has to be devised mainly for those who are by temperament or education immune to the aesthetic vibrancy of authentic literature, for those who do not experience the telltale tingle between the shoulder blades."
"Lady Dedlock is redeemed by suffering, and Dostoevski is wildly gesticulating in the background."
"Skimpole and, of course, the Smallweeds and Krook are completely the devil's allies. And so are the philanthropists, Mrs. Jellyby for instance, who spread misery around them while deceiving themselves that they are doing good though actually indulging their selfish instincts."
"Literature consists, in fact, not of general ideas but of particular revelations, not of schools of thought but of individuals of genius. Literature is not about something: it is the thing itself, the quiddity."
"[W]ithout the words there would have been no vision.....the image had to have a voice too in order to live."
"A writer might be a good storyteller or a good moralist, but unless he be an enchanter, an artist, he is not a great writer. Dickens is a good moralist, a good storyteller, and a superb enchanter...."
"[T]he art of not only creating people but keeping created people alive within the reader's mind throughout a long novel--this of course, is the obvious sign of greatness."
And this is for fun from Nabokov's "How to be a Good Reader, or Kindness to Authors":
"[I] suggested a little quiz--ten definitions of a good reader, and from these ten the students had to choose four definitions that would combine to make a good reader....Select four answers to the question what should be a good reader:
1. The reader should belong to a book club.
2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero or heroine.
3. The reader should concentrate on the social-economic angle.
4. The reader should prefer a story with action and dialogue to one with none.
5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie.
6. The reader should be a budding author.
7. The reader should have imagination.
8. The reader should have memory.
9. The reader should have a dictionary.
10. The reader should have some artistic sense."
Oh, yes, I do have my own opinions on Bleak House, but I've exhausted myself on other's opinions, and shall not venture further at the moment.
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