I was listening to BBC Radio 4 With Great Pleasure yesterday; Sue Townsend (I think) chose a reading from Cigarettes are Sublime by Richard Klein.
Among other things Richard Klein says:
Cigarettes are bad. Cigarettes are not good. Cigarettes are not beautiful. And cigarettes are sublime. And with every contact with cigarettes comes the knowledge that Death and his Might Horde are present. Cigarettes are indeed sublime.
And Klein (who sensibly and determinedly gave up) mourns their loss. I know the feeling, both as an ex-smoker myself, and as an ex-doctor – one who believes the UK National Health Service anti-smoking lobby has never really got to grips with the reality of what it is to "give up". Cigarettes are indeed sublime.
The sublime is traditionally linked to ‘high style’ in writing. I looked at my copy of the New Princeton Book of Poetry and Poetics entry on the sublime; on the ancient and modern history of peri hypsous (Gr) – ‘height elevation’. According to the entry, Immanual Kant pointed out that pleasure in objects could include those that are not beautiful – such as cigarettes. And events when "the terrible and the sublime blaze out together" – such as lighting up.
One thing I liked listening to the reading from Richard Klein’s book is that it is not ‘high style’ writing. It is middle style, or even low style. He is quite matter of fact about cigarettes being sublime. Since so many of us are (or have been) smokers, we all know what he means. He does not need to exagerate.
The same goes for walkingtalkingwriting. When walkingtalking writing began between ak and myself, 5 or 6 years ago it was a sublime moment, something flashed, as the New Princeton Book of Poetry and Poetics quotes:
"Father Zeus, kill us if thou wilt, but kill us in the light".
But that kind of writing would be an exageration, no thunderbolts so far as we are or were aware were thrown. Whatever happened was quite unremarkable. And since then we have proceeded – walking, on foot most of the time – in a middle or low style not unlike Richard Klein’s book. Not ‘high style’. Indeed I’ve called my recent writing ‘under the sea’, writing towards the completion of a work called Wave Requiem. As low style as one can go (without drowning). And it occurs to me that writing from that position can also be sublime.
Beneath the line