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Outlines of English and American Literature
Thomas de Quincey
by Long, William J.
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It used to be said in a college classroom
that what De Quincey wrote was seldom important and always doubtful, but
that we ought to read him for his style; which means, as you might say,
that caviar is a stomach-upsetting food, but we ought to eat a little of it
because it comes in a pretty box.
To this criticism, which reflects a prevalent opinion, we may take some
exceptions. For example, what De Quincey has to say of Style, though it
were written in style-defying German, is of value to everyone who would
teach that impossible subject. What he says or implies in "Levana" (the
goddess who performed "the earliest office of ennobling kindness" for a
newborn child, lifting him from the ground, where he was first laid, and
presenting his forehead to the stars of heaven) has potency to awaken two
of the great faculties of humanity, the power to think and the power to
imagine. Again, many people are fascinated by dreams, those mysterious
fantasies which carry us away on swift wings to meet strange experiences;
and what De Quincey has to say of dreams, though doubtful as a dream
itself, has never been rivaled. To a few mature minds, therefore, De
Quincey is interesting entirely apart from his dazzling style and
inimitable rhetoric.
To do justice to De Quincey's erratic, storm-tossed life; to record
his precocious youth, his marvelous achievements in school or
college, his wanderings amid lonely mountains or more lonely city
streets, his drug habits with their gorgeous dreams and terrible
depressions, his timidity, his courtesy, his soul-solitude, his
uncanny genius,--all that is impossible in a brief summary. Let it
suffice, then, to record: that he resembled his friend Coleridge,
both in his character and in his vast learning; that he studied in
profound seclusion for twenty years; then for forty years more,
during which time his brain was more or less beclouded by opium, he
poured out a flood of magazine articles, which he collected later
in fourteen chaotic volumes. These deal with an astonishing variety
of subjects, and cover almost every phase of mental activity from
portraying a nightmare to building a philosophical system. If he
had any dominating interest in his strange life, it was the study
of literature.
Typical Works
The historian can but name a few characteristic works of De Quincey,
without recommending any of them to readers. To those interested in De
Quincey's personality his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater will
be illuminating. This book astonished Londoners in 1821, and may well
astonish a Bushman in the year 2000. It records his wandering life, and the
alternate transport or suffering which resulted from his drug habits. This
may be followed by his Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the
Depths), which describes, as well as such a thing could be done, the
phantoms born of opium dreams. There are too many of the latter, and the
reader may well be satisfied with the wonderful "Dream Fugue" in The
English Mail Coach.
As an illustration of De Quincey's review of history, one should try
Joan of Arc or The Revolt of the Tartars, which are not
historical studies but romantic dreams inspired by reading history. In the
critical field, "The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," "Wordsworth's
Poetry" and the "Essay on Style" are immensely suggestive. As an example of
ingenious humor "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" is often
recommended; but it has this serious fault, that it is not humorous. For a
concrete example of De Quincey's matter and manner there is nothing better
than "Levana or Our Ladies of Sorrow" (from the Suspiria), with its
mater lachrymarum Our Lady of Tears, mater suspiriorum Our
Lady of Sighs, and that strange phantom, forbidding and terrible, mater
tenebrarum Our Lady of Darkness.
De Quincey's Style
The style of all these works is indescribable. One may exhaust the whole
list of adjectives--chanting, rhythmic, cadenced, harmonious,
impassioned--that have been applied to it, and yet leave much to say.
Therefore we note only these prosaic elements: that the style reflects De
Quincey's powers of logical analysis and of brilliant imagination; that it
is pervaded by a tremendous mental excitement, though one does not know
what the stir is all about; and that the impression produced by this
nervous, impassioned style is usually spoiled by digressions, by
hairsplitting, and by something elusive, intangible, to which we can give
no name, but which blurs the author's vision as a drifting fog obscures a
familiar landscape.
Notwithstanding such strictures, De Quincey's style is still, as when it
first appeared, a thing to marvel at, revealing as it does the grace, the
harmony, the wide range and the minute precision of our English speech.
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