SO FINE (GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS ON STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE)

Gerard Manley Hopkins

     ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ I have read.  You speak of the ‘gross absurdity’ of the interchange.  Enough that it is impossible and might perhaps have been a little better masked: it must be connived at, and it gives rise to a fine situation.  It is not more impossible than fairies, giants, heathen gods, and lots of things that literature teems with – and none more than yours.  You are certainly wrong about Hyde being overdrawn: my Hyde is worse.  The trampling scene is perhaps a convention: he was thinking of something unsuitable for fiction.  I can by no means grant that the characters are not characterized, though how deep the springs of their surface action are I am not yet clear.  But the superficial touches of character are admirable: how can you be so blind as not to see them?  e.g.  Utterson frowning, biting the end of this finger, and saying to the butler ‘This is a strange tale you tell me, my man, a very strange tale.’  And Dr. Lanyon:  ‘I used to like it, sir [life]; yes sir, I liked it.  Sometimes I think if we knew all’ etc.   These are worthy of Shakespeare. 

Excerpt:  Gerard Manley Hopkins, In Defense of Treasure Island and Jekyll and Hyde, from a letter to Robert Bridges, October 28, 1886.

Robert Bridges


The Byrds: So Fine (Link)

STRANGE CASE: THE UNIVERSAL 2

It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought—no, not alleviation—but a certain callousness of soul, a certain acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which has finally severed me from my own face and nature. My provision of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the first experiment, began to run low. I sent out for a fresh supply, and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without efficiency. You will learn from Poole how I have had London ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first supply was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which lent efficacy to the draught.

Note:  Thinking, as I’m often forced to do, about constant misapplied irony citations and repetitions of the banal phrase “the banality of evil,” how redeeming and refreshing it is to taste again the pure impurities of Robert Louis Stevenson's salts and articulate, energetic melancholy.  There’s such a lot of good ways to be bad.  And so many bad ways to be good.   Every politician’s deceptive and hollow cant can be measured  against the great artist’s mettle and valorous honesty.  Where does Susan Rice’s $44M come from?  Just like what you hear with a shell pressed to your ear.  That’s the sea in the trees in the morning.   Mr Hyde is swelling the shadowy boughs. Or is he lurking behind you?

The Small Faces: The Universal (wr. Marriott-Lane) (Link) 

Text:  Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London, Longman, Green & Co, 1886.

I COULDN'T SLEEP AT ALL LAST NIGHT 2

Finally in Tuxedo after several hours' scary driving in a skiddy car, the house is nicely whispering heat.

All the way here thinking about the Arthur Batut (father of aerial photography) picture in first position, which I originally saw covering the Penguin paperback edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  This was the first “good” book I persuaded Jane to read and I’m so glad I did.  

Dr. Jekyll is beautifully written, profound, and deeply moving, as well as (in parts) gasp-out-loud shocking.  I monitored Jane’s progress through the book several summers ago and actually heard the sharp breath intakes.  A great ride for her.

The young man’s portrait above, like the two Batut female portraits below, are pioneering, expressive examples of intentional  double-exposure.

I don’t need to expound on the mystery expressed by being implied in these images, but on this lonely, lonely cold evening I recall one of my favorite pasttimes – asking Jane to look at pictures and describing to me what she sees.

The game started when I annoyed her by persistently looking at "rock stars of my youth" pictures in magazines, ignoring her.  

Jane’s answers were always perceptive, visually acute, and imaginative. That being said, she frequently used the one-word description “hobo,” especially when viewing Bob Dylan and "All Things Must Pass"-period George Harrison images.

 Bobby Lewis -- Tossing and Turning (Link)