QUITE UNMEASUREABLE, INDEFINABLE
If a person chooses to perfect his writing and not his life, "he must refuse a heavenly mansion." Toil will leave its mark: "a raging in the dark." He will feel "the day's vanity, the night's remorse."
-Ron Price with thanks to W.B. Yeats, "The Choice", W.B. Yeats The Poems, editor, Daniel Albright, J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., London, 1990, pp.296-7.
All this writing is for me
a visible sign of the melody
of eternity with the chord
of creation, an attempt to
establish myself in the realm
of divine trust, to bring the
Supreme Concourse to the
door of my life as I play
with the heavens of mysteries,
the colours and riddles of life.
Holding all there is of creative
thought, I produce a spiritual
word and result that is quite
immeasureable, indefineable.1
Ron Price
26 October 1997
1 most of this perspective comes from 'Abdu'l-Baha statement on the cry Ya'Baha'ul-Abha which I have applied to writing. The comparison can be made, but how validly?
Monday, July 2, 2007
Pioneering Over Four Epochs1: Post #1
RESPONSE TO CRITICISM: LAURA RIDING
Early in the new millennium I began to receive criticisms of my prose and poetry. Some of those are found here. In 1936, right at the start of the Baha’i teaching Plan, Laura Riding wrote to a correspondent, "I believe that misconceptions about oneself that one does not correct where possible act as a bad magic…." That "bad magic" has been at work on the reputation of Laura (Riding) Jackson for many, many years. One of the criticisms leveled at her in her later life, and repeated by Dr. Vendler (who predictably finds her, in this, "more than a little monomaniacal"), was that she "spent a great deal of time writing tenacious and extensive letters to anyone who, in her view, had misrepresented some aspect, no matter how minute, of her life or writing." It is true that despite advanced age and failing health, she continued to the end her vigorous (and one might even say valiant) attempt to halt the spread of misconceptions about herself, but the "bad magic" was too powerful to be overcome. (Incidentally, that was the view of "magic" held by a woman who has been accused of witchcraft.)
Why was she so scrupulous in her attempts to correct misconceptions, "no matter how minute," of her life and writing? Because she recognized the importance of details to the understanding of human character. "The detail of human nature is never a matter of infinitesimals," she wrote in an essay published in 1974. "Every last component of the human course of things is a true fraction of the personal world, reflecting a little its general character." –Elizabeth Friedman, “Letter About Laura (Riding) Jackson,” The New York Review of Books, 3 February 1994.
My approach is more diverse. Sometimes I ignore the comment; sometimes I am tenacious and write an extensive response; sometimes I write something brief and to the point. I certainly agree with Riding that we should not be judged by some infinitessimals. After three or four years of written and critical feedback it hardly amounts to much of significance. But I thought this personal comment here would be a useful summary position.
Ron Price
10 March 2007
Early in the new millennium I began to receive criticisms of my prose and poetry. Some of those are found here. In 1936, right at the start of the Baha’i teaching Plan, Laura Riding wrote to a correspondent, "I believe that misconceptions about oneself that one does not correct where possible act as a bad magic…." That "bad magic" has been at work on the reputation of Laura (Riding) Jackson for many, many years. One of the criticisms leveled at her in her later life, and repeated by Dr. Vendler (who predictably finds her, in this, "more than a little monomaniacal"), was that she "spent a great deal of time writing tenacious and extensive letters to anyone who, in her view, had misrepresented some aspect, no matter how minute, of her life or writing." It is true that despite advanced age and failing health, she continued to the end her vigorous (and one might even say valiant) attempt to halt the spread of misconceptions about herself, but the "bad magic" was too powerful to be overcome. (Incidentally, that was the view of "magic" held by a woman who has been accused of witchcraft.)
Why was she so scrupulous in her attempts to correct misconceptions, "no matter how minute," of her life and writing? Because she recognized the importance of details to the understanding of human character. "The detail of human nature is never a matter of infinitesimals," she wrote in an essay published in 1974. "Every last component of the human course of things is a true fraction of the personal world, reflecting a little its general character." –Elizabeth Friedman, “Letter About Laura (Riding) Jackson,” The New York Review of Books, 3 February 1994.
My approach is more diverse. Sometimes I ignore the comment; sometimes I am tenacious and write an extensive response; sometimes I write something brief and to the point. I certainly agree with Riding that we should not be judged by some infinitessimals. After three or four years of written and critical feedback it hardly amounts to much of significance. But I thought this personal comment here would be a useful summary position.
Ron Price
10 March 2007
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