Szirtes, George - Stan Smith (review date 9 January 1992)
Stan Smith (review date 9 January 1992)
SOURCE: Smith, Stan. “Imagining the Suburbs.” London Review of Books 14, no. 1 (9 January 1992): 22-3.
[In the following review, Smith discusses the imagery in Szirtes's book Bridge Passages.]
Whole systems of thought have been founded on the French language's inability to distinguish differing from deferring. Perhaps Napoleon is to blame (‘Not tonight, Josephine’). In Britain, we do things differently. Whereas Baudelaire's vrai voyageur preferred travelling joyfully to the letdowns of arrival—in modern terms, couldn't stop playing with his signifier—Forster's Mrs Moore remains convinced that there is a real India to make her passage to, Conrad's Marlow knows there's a heart of darkness worth all the tourist's little tribulations. From Wordsworth's daffodils to Hughes's brutal snowdrops, objects may flash upon the inward eye of English verse, but they are also carried alive into...
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