The Spire: With an introduction by John Mullan

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The Spire: With an introduction by John Mullan

The Spire: With an introduction by John Mullan

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Harford, Tim (8 December 2017). "The Brexit monomania built on blind faith". Financial Times . Retrieved 25 September 2020. Carey, Professor John (2009). William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies . London: Faber and Faber Limited. ISBN 978-0-571-23163-8. But he reached the top at last and squatted there among the ravens. While the sun sank in great stillness he sat there, and all the spire was in his head.

I first read The Spire in my sophomore year of college. The course was ENGL 200 - "The Literary Experience" - in which we were to read a sampling of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. The Spire was our example of a novel. The professor told us up front what the major metaphor/motif was: the church spire Dean Jocelin struggles to raise is a phallic symbol. It's a penis. We all giggled.Golding apparently struggled to write this novel and went through several versions before publication in 1964. It was originally intended to have two settings but the modern day elements were dropped so the finished novel is entirely set in the Middle Ages in an unnamed town. I’d be interested to see Golding’s handwritten manuscript notes which are at the University of Exeter‘s Special Collections archive along with the typescripts. I read this book years ago with the Guardian Reading Group and had a chance to ask Golding’s daughter a question at the end of the month. Many participants did not like the book because the protagonist is not likeable, but I thought it was a very sad and tragic story in the end. Jocelin acquired his job through a family connection and was otherwise completely ill-equipped for the role. He had neither the intelligence or the faith—the spire he sees as his purpose. (He came to mind often during the Trump Presidency.) Because the narrative is a very narrow 3rd person, every event and conversation is filtered through the Dean’s increasingly distorted, self-centred mind. The reader has to read past that to try to understand what is happening.(“The Inheritors” uses a similar technique.)

I like the idea. I really do. But honestly, I kept trying to read this as a wonderfully biting satire and it really didn't QUITE go in that direction. A finger rising toward the sky, to me, sounded like a *middle* finger. All the wonderfully strange descriptions of these people as they do relatively normal things truly delighted me, too, but then the rest of the novel became something of a sermon. As the spire of the cathedral rises, the state of Jocelin, its Dean, declines - a sort of inverse Dorian Grey. Jocelin is the spire, absorbed by it into its stone and timber. As the spire is supported by four pillars of stone, so Jocelin is supported by the Master Builder, the Verger and their wives. Jocelin finds more of himself in each higher level, as the pillars and his supports deteriorate below him. He is insane. And his insanity is contagious. It doesn't quite make sense, or it doesn't make immediate sense. It is like Gerard Manley Hopkins's opening trump, "As kingfishers catch fire …" Kingfishers don't catch fire. Hopkins is using a metaphor to capture the burst of colours given off by the kingfisher. Ted Hughes uses the same idea of combustion for bold colours in "Macaw and Little Miss", a poem from his first book, The Hawk in the Rain: "the macaw bristles in a staring / combustion …" The brilliant extra touch is that adjective "staring" appended to "combustion". All the indignation peculiar to the macaw is there. Lasând la o parte acest aspect, a fost o lectură interesantă. Autorul prezintă cazul unui preot care e chinuit de viziunea de a construi un turn uriaș de catedrală, imposibil de realizat. El se consideră "ales" de Dumnezeu pentru a duce la bun sfârșit construcția, pe care o vede ca un act al credinței. Distincția dintre obsesie personală și chemare divină poate părea inexistentă pentru un cititor neobișnuit cu "treburile religioase", cu toate că preotul nu afirmă niciodată adevăruri care stau la baza credinței creștine și e vădit obsedat de o clădire. Ce mi s-a părut interesant de observat a fost modul în care pentru a continua construcția clădirii bisericii, lasă a se prăbuși congregația (oamenii, adevărata biserică). Va afirma mai târziu "Am schimbat patru oameni pe un ciocan de piatră".In Golding's opening sentence we read "God the Father was exploding in his face …" which is initially as enigmatic as it is dramatic – until it is resolved as a metaphorical description of sunlight streaming through a stained glass window. The delay is important. There is a semantic lag, a slight, postponed understanding throughout The Spire.

Kule; evet bir Sineklerin Tanrısı değil. Ancak şu takıntıdan kurtulalım artık. Bu başka bir roman. (Nasıl da kendi takıntımı sizlere mal ettim ama:) The Spire is distinctly allegorical and there are many references to how the grand medieval cathedral resembles a human body both in structure & function. Workers curse & chant bawdy songs, oblivious to the building's continuing function as a place of worship & one even conducts a sexual liaison within the walls. Another places the model for the spire between his legs to taunt Pangall, the much-beleaguered caretaker of the cathedral, someone whose red-haired wife Goody, becomes the object of continuing lust on the part of the master builder, while also infecting the mind & dreams of Dean Jocelin. For every foot a spire goes up above the church, an increased support system must be put in place below ground. And for every hope that the raising of a monumental steeple will glorify God by reaching toward heaven, there is corresponding, antithetical human depravity occurring below. Day & night, acts of worship went on in the stink & the half dark, where the candles illuminated nothing but close haloes of vapor; and the voices rose, in fear of age & death, in fear of weight & dimension, in fear of darkness & a universe without hope. "Lord, let our cry come unto thee!" There was a rumor of plague in the city. The number of faces--the strained, silent, shining eyed faces before the light that betoken the Host--increased to a crowd.When people tell you it can't be done but you hold all the cards and can have them burned as heretics for denying your will, you MAY or MAY NOT descend into madness while trying to twist yourself into knots trying to make reality conform to your will.

Nu știu exact care e miza autorului, nici nu prea mă interesează. Lectura a fost iar potrivită, având în vedere ultimele "bârfe". Nu condamn construcția de biserici și edificii:)). Poate că pe parcursul istoriei unii capi de biserică au fost mai preocupați de ziduri decât de oameni, fie și așa. Nu sunt oare atât de frumoase?! Bine că le-au făcut! Să nu ne plângem, se preocupă Hristos de noi și noi unii de alții.Canadian-British director Roger Spottiswoode optioned The Spire in the mid-1990s, originally intending to adapt it for screen [20] [21] [22] and cited as a project in development. [23] In November 2012, a play adaptation by Spottiswoode was premiered at the Salisbury Playhouse, directed by Gareth Minchin. [24] [25] [26]



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