Enough Mimesis (For Now, Anyway)

For some time I’ve been posting essays on the topic of literary mimesis—also known as representation or world building. The topic is large and, to my mind, quite fascinating, but I feel like a change, so after this essay I will switch to another topic.

Mimesis, world building, often involves some description of the objects (broadly defined) in a fictional world. But writers vary a lot in how much they describe. It’s always interesting to ask why a writer describes or doesn’t describe, but it’s not always easy to answer. Some objects have to be described, if, for instance, they play a role in the plot. In The Lord of the Rings it is absolutely necessary to have a description of the Ring itself, pretty early in the story. But sometimes descriptions don’t matter much to the plot. Most of the descriptions in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark don’t make a difference to the plot; they do, however, make a difference to the readers’ experience of the world of the novel. My feeling—and feeling is perhaps what counts most—is that the descriptions add a kind of weight and solidity to a narrative world.

Some readers are not much interested in descriptions. One reader of this blog commented on one of the early essays in this series that he always skips long descriptive passages, and I’m sure he is not alone. I’ve always been interested in descriptions, perhaps because I wanted to learn how to do them, and I never skip them. But far be it from me to tell other people how to read.

Lately I’ve been reading a novel, R. D. Blackmore’s Lorna Doone, which has some of the best descriptions I’ve ever come across. I didn’t pick this book to read because of the descriptions—I didn’t know about them. I think I picked it up just because I was looking for something new. I had known of the book ever since I was young. I had never known anyone who recommended it. But I think it’s terrific, and I do recommend it.

Blackmore was born in 1825 and died in 1900, so he is solidly Victorian. He received a degree in Classics from Exeter College, Oxford; after he graduated he was Classics master in a school, but then he received an inheritance, quit teaching, and bought a fruit farm, which he owned until he died. He wrote fourteen novels, though Lorna Doone was his only popular success. He also published several volumes of verse and he published a translation of Vergil’s Georgics, a long poem (2188 verses) about farming (and other things).

Lorna Doone is a sort of mixture of a pastoral romance and an historical novel. It takes place mostly in the 1680s, after the English Civil War and the Restoration of the monarchy. It’s interesting for lots of reasons, but in this post I’m just going to look at a description and a comment about descriptions. Here is the description (in a somewhat ornate style) of the time of year when spring has begun but then deceptively turns cold again:

“The spring being now too forward, a check to it was needful; and in the early part of March, there came a change of weather. All the young growth was arrested by a dry wind from the east, which made both face and fingers burn, when a man was doing ditching. The lilacs, and the chestnut trees, just crowding forth in little tufts, close kernelling their blossom, were ruffled back, like a sleeve turned up, and nicked with brown at the corners. In the hedges any man, unless his eyes were very dull, could see the mischief doing. The russet of the young elm-bloom was fain to be in its scale again; but having pushed forth, there must be, and turn to a tawny colour. The hangers of the hazel, too, having shed their dust to make the nuts, did not spread their little combs and dry them, as they ought to do, but shriveled at the base, and fell, as if a knife had cut them. And more than all to notice was (at least about the hedges) the shuddering of everything, and the shivering sound among them towards the feeble sun; such as we make to a poor fire-place, when windows and doors are open. Sometimes I put my face to warm against the soft, rough maple-stem, which feels like the foot of a red deer; but the pitiless east wind came through all, and shook the caved hedge aback, till its knees were knocking together, and nothing could be shelter. Then would any one, having blood, and trying to keep at home with it, run to a sturdy tree, and hope to eat his food behind it, and look for a little sun to come, and warm his feet in the shelter. And if he did, he might strike his breast, and try to think he was warmer.” (132­–3)

This kind of sensuous description goes on for another full page and more. Here are a few snippets: “Every ridge of new-turned earth looked like a broken cob-wall, honeycombed, and harsh and crusty void of spring, and cankery. Every plant, that had rejoiced in passing such a winter, now was cowering, turned away, unfit to meet the consequence. Flowing sap had stopped its course; fluted lines showed want of food; and if you pinched the topmost spray, there was no rebound or firmness.” (132) “Now all this fair delight to the eyes, and good promise to the palate, was matted and buffed by the wind, and cutting of the night-frosts. The opening cones were struck with brown, in between the button buds, and on the scapes that shielded them, while the foot-part of the cover hang like rags, peeled back, and quivering.” (134)

There are many similarly evocative descriptions throughout the novel. These combine sensory perception and the emotions roused by perception. Just at the end of this passage, the narrator pauses to comment on it, and, I would suggest, to teach the reader how to read this kind of description:

“Now this I have told not because I know the way to do it, for that I do not, neither yet have seen a man who did know. It is wonderful how we look at things, and never think to notice them; and I am as bad as any body, unless the thing to be observed is a dog, a horse or a maiden. [. . .] Yet I have spoken about the spring, and the failure of fair promise, because I took it to my heart, as token of what would come to me, in the budding of my years and hope.”

We can perhaps see two lessons here: the first is the lesson of attention. One of the functions of art, I would argue, is the education of various kinds of attention: attention to human relationships, attention to social structures, and here attention to the world around us. All of these we too easily let pass through inattention. The second lesson is that the human world and the world of nature are interfused. Nature is not something that simply sits out there apart from us. We are part of nature and nature is part of us. Blackmore could not have written these descriptive passages if he had not paid close attention to nature, and he would not have paid such close attention if nature had not been part of his being. It’s possible to skip all the descriptive passages in Lorna Doone, but only with a great loss of meaning.