Thursday 25 May 2023
Vulgarities and unsightly things
Oh! what a draught of moonlight, sweet, night air, sad and mysterious landscape, deserted of all living. Awful, lonely, beloved; darkness so soft, and lights so dim. In that imperfect light all vulgarities and unsightly things vanish, and the beloved scene presents the image of the dead — who are beautiful and purified by distance, and the dim medium of memory.
Sheridan Le Fanu – A Lost Name (1868)
Le Fanu’s otherworldly character gazes out of his bedroom window late one night. The countryside beyond is deserted, silent and washed with moonlight.
There are many similarly revealing moments for anyone of a contemplative disposition. In my case, a recent one was a curlew’s call over limestone hills. Moonlight is optional. As the natural world frequently reminds us, the modern world accumulates ever more vulgarities and unsightly things.
Climate protesters, the Harry and Meghan show, political scheming, the Phillip and Holly squabble, the mephitic nonsense of gender politics, TikTok videos, celebrity culture. The list is too enormous to tackle. All vulgar, much of it unsightly, never likely to vanish.
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3 comments:
Interesting how those contemplative moments in nature (or sometimes in urban settings, but usually outside) are all unmediated. They are overlaid with meanings (curlews evoke loneliness and wildness rather than food, for example) but the meanings are private. All the other tawdry nonsense is fabricated and worked up by some hired shysters for our consumption.
Le Fanu … longtime since I read any.
Sam - yes they are all unmediated. It seems possible that life was more like that in a slower and less crowded past when the natural world was more important and more closely observed.
James - he's an interesting reminder that not everyone read Dickens at that time.
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