Vintage Q&A …

… Alastair Morgan - Alastair Morgan talks to Anthony Burgess | Literary Review | Issue 056. (Ht tip, Dave Lull.)

Yes, language gets in the way, and is meant to get in the way. You’re meant to observe the structure, as well as the message the structure is trying to convey. This is, of course, analogous to music where there is no distinction between structure and content. Indeed, it is possible to regard literature of the class 2 nature, chiefly poetry, as an attempt to recall a non-existent golden age in which language was totally iconic. Of course it never was. We like to believe it was, and when Tennyson writes one of his onomatopoeic lines on the murmuring of innumerable bees and all that sort of stuff, it is an attempt to restore a golden age in which language gave you the referent as much as it possibly could.