Style and Substance

Long ago, in a time eons forgotten, Anthony Alappat had returned an English term-paper of mine after having first conferred upon my critical appreciation of Matthew Arnold, the delightful honor of awarding a full thirteen marks out of a possible thirteen.

Anthony Alappat, being who he was, also included an admonition in the margin in red-ink: “Do not judge Matthew Arnold by twentieth century standards.”

He had his reasons; one will have to grant him that. Appreciation of Matthew Arnold’s poetry had been severely lacking in my critical ‘appreciation’. Now, don’t get me wrong! I enjoyed reading about the epic battle between Sohrab* and Rustum as much as the next man; what I couldn’t stomach were Arnold’s interminable similes.

Me, I like a man of few words. A succinct sentence here, a pithy comment there, and one was done. (Of course, the same does not apply to my own writing, but who’s handing out prizes, anyway?). My tolerance of similes ran no farther than the common-or-garden: As light as feather, As clear as mud variety. (Funny, every time I heard as clear as mud I thought there might be a water simile to wash the mud away with; turned out I wasn’t as right as rain. There’s no accounting for languages). But I digress… back to Matthew Arnold’s similes. They weren’t so succinct. No Sir! Not by a long chalk! I remember a particularly disconcerting one he had that started something like:

“As when some grey November morn the files…”

which didn’t finish till another fifty-nine lines, till when the great A closed in with a finalé of:

“So spake he; and Ferood stood forth and cried.
—‘Old man, be it agreed as thou hast said!”

What was scary, though, was that he managed to squeeze in not one, but two nested segues of similes within that first one.**

The guile of the man was obvious: after the first simile of fifty-nine lines, who the heck was going to complain about a mere ten?

Anyway – long story short – I was fed up to the back teeth with Arnold’s similes, and when Anthony Alappat’s term paper invited me to appreciate him critically, I let him have the full benefit of my frustration.

I have never regretted that outburst, but sometimes I wonder: should critical appreciation consist of an acceptance of the existence of differences in styles, and the ability to filter the truly beautiful substance within the wrapping, or need it consist of preconceived alignment to a particular set of styles, a personal statement of which wrapping one considers beautiful?

In literature, as in life, we run the risk of fixating on the external and losing the substance inside.

_____________________

*
Shukhrab to nit-picky historians

**
As, in the country, on a morn in June,
When the dew glistens on the pearled ears,
A shiver runs through the deep corn for joy
—So, when they heard what Peran-Wisa said,
A thrill through all the Tartar squadrons ran
…
…
…
But as a troop of pedlars, from Cabool,
Cross underneath the Indian Caucasus,
That vast sky-neighbouring mountain of milk snow;
Crossing so high, that, as they mount, they pass
Long flocks of travelling birds dead on the snow,
Choked by the air, and scarce can they themselves
Slake their parch’d throats with sugar’d mulberries
—In single file they move, and stop their breath,
For fear they should dislodge the o’er hanging snows
—So the pale Persians held their breath with fear.


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Image ©opyright Niladri Roy
Italicised text: Matthew Arnold.