“They were featureless and telic, like lambent gangrene.” This line is one of the best known by lovers and haters of Stephen Donaldson’s writings. As a collection of unfamiliar words it is by no means alone in his stories, but the guardians of good did find it early. It was seized upon by one, and as is the wont of critics everywhere, the jeers have since been proudly echoed and the words giggled and sneered at behind hands.
“He was, I trowe, a twenty wynter oold,
And I was fourty, if I shal seye sooth;
But yet I hadde alwey a coltes tooth.
Gat-tothed I was, and that bicam me weel,
I hadde the prente of seïnte Venus seel.
As help me God, I was a lusty oon,
And faire and riche, and yong, and wel bigon,
And trewely, as myne housbondes tolde me,
I hadde the beste quonyam myghte be.
For certes, I am al Venerien
In feelynge, and myn herte is Marcien.” 1390
That’s ok. Not everyone likes multisyllabic prose. Most like it less when they do not understand it; then go on to suggest no one alive could understand the text it comes from. And yet the Covenant series remains beloved, as much for its purple tones as for the plotlines or philosophy it espouses.
I love it. I love reading it as much as soaking in a warm tub. I love to see the story unfolding more than to read words on a page, as each paragraph creates intense and emotive images.
“Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
Til that capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.” 1600
Of course, purple is not new. It is only in the days since literacy became irrelevant that it has become unacceptable. It was a startlingly brief period in English history where the language was set in stone. Or should I say periods. Words come and go; other languages impact speech; spellings change as once relevant letters become superfluous; phrasing takes on new, and passes over old meanings. And during each period, defined by the professional life of the loudest or most persistent orators, written English is deemed good or bad, acceptable or not.
“Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths. Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward. Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter.
O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself. The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation. All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O LORD, and consider; for I am become vile.” 1611
But it is the attack on complexity that bugs me.
“These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urnlike prow.
But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there; when the ivory tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.
Close to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither before us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens, and every morning perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and spite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp, as though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a thing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for their homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unresting heaved the black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great mundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering it had bred.” 1851
Language changes; I accept that. But as a young adult I preferred reading Dr Seuss; loved the plays on words and sounds, and the fact that made-up words drew images; when I was supposed to enjoy reading Young Adult fiction. I still don’t like Young Adult fiction. I doubt I ever will.
“Yet as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not infrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning and malice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who, by accident, ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were content to ascribe the particular terror he bred, more, as it were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause.” 1851
Short sentences. One idea to a line. Seventeen words, max. Banish commas; banish adverbs; banish adjectives; banish hyperbole and alliteration. KISS!
“They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of the horse not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near, so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh, because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headbanger, putting his hindfoot foremost while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a good poor brute, he was sorry he hadn’t a lump of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be
prepared for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big foolish nervous noodly kind of horse, without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernen’s, of the same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal’s fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in its hump. Nine tenths of them could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring bees; whale with harpoon hairpin, alligator, tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke; chalk a circle for a rooster; tiger, my eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind, somewhat distracted from Stephen’s words, while the ship of the street was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old...” 1920
I do enjoy reading simpler prose. I enjoy reading words that I do not see, because they flow together like a stream that becomes something I am immersed in rather than an endless slogging chore; stop, check, nearly at the end, must be almost finished now!
“Her gray organdie dress, with its cherry-colored satin sash, disguised with its billows and ruffles how childishly undeveloped her body was, and the yellow hat with long cherry streamers made her creamy skin glow. Her heavy earbobs with their long gold fringe hung down from loops of tidily netted hair, swinging close to her brown eyes, eyes that had the still gleam of a forest pool in winter when brown leaves shine up through quiet water.” 1936
But complexity doesn’t make anything worthy of ridicule. Complexity doesn’t confer excellence. Simplicity does not make it clean, it makes it simple. Divorced from skill, simplicity and complexity are only words.
“Run Dick, run. See Dick run. Nip will run.
Nip sees Fluff. Run Fluff, run!” 1958
I like purple prose, well done and beautifully crafted. I like wordy and convoluted. I like words, and sounds, and images, and emotions. I’d rather purple than black and white and grey and beige.
Paint it all red and blue.
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