But Dickens never did anything better than the short account of Mr. There is an even better example than these of the original humorous insight of Dickens and one not very often remarked, because of its brevity and its unimportance in the narrative. Nothing could be better than the way in which the haughty and allusive conversation between Miss Twinkleton and the landlady illustrates the maddening preference of some females for skating upon thin social ice. Nothing could be truer, for instance, than the manner in which the dazed and drunken dignity of Durdles illustrates a certain bitterness at the bottom of the bewilderment of the poor. This does not mean, of course, that the details are not often admirable in their swift and penetrating humour to say that of the book would be to say that Dickens did not write it. It is as a detective story first and last that we have to consider The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He ended by inventing the new detective story. He began by completing the old romance of travel. It is permitted to Dickens, in short, to come to a literary end as strange as his literary beginning. He drops down dead as he is in the act of denouncing the assassin. Dickens dies in the act of telling, not his tenth novel, but his first news of murder. But Dickens, having had far too little plot in his stories previously, had far too much plot in the story he never told. Any Thackerayan could have completed the plot of Denis Duval except indeed that a really sympathetic Thackerayan might have had some doubt as to whether there was any plot to complete. But to Dickens it was permitted to die at a dramatic moment and to leave a dramatic mystery. But any one can see in Denis Duval the qualities of the later work of Thackeray the increasing discursiveness, the increasing retrospective poetry, which had been in part the charm and in part the failure of Philip and The Virginians. That great novelist, for instance, with whom Dickens is constantly compared, died also in the middle of Denis Duval. This is what separates the case in question from any parallel cases of novelists cut off in the act of creation. He never had but one thoroughly good plot to tell and that he has only told in heaven.
The only one of Dickens's novels which he did not finish was the only one that really needed finishing. It seems rather like the last taunt of some elf, leaving the world, that it should be this story which is not ended, this story which is only a story. Something more seems hinted at in the cutting short of Edwin Drood by Dickens than the mere cutting short of a good novel by a great man. The Pickwick Papers showed how much Dickens could make out of other people's suggestions The Mystery of Edwin Drood shows how very little other people can make out of Dickens's suggestions.ĭickens was meant by Heaven to be the great melodramatist so that even his literary end was melodramatic. Edwin Drood, the last book, was a book designed by Dickens, but ultimately filled up by others. Neville has been found stabbed to death.Pickwick was a work partly designed by others, but ultimately filled up by Dickens. Nicholas Kok (piano) Director Gordon House John Jasper continues to search for proof that his nephew Edwin has been murdered by Neville Landless. Sun 18th Mar 1990, 14:30 on BBC Radio 4 FMĮdwin has disappeared and Jasper is convinced that his nephew has been murdered by Neville Landless.Ī mysterious stranger arrives in Cloisterham and seems to entertain other ideas. It proves to be the last meeting the three will ever have. Piano: Nicholas Kok Directed By: Gordon Houseįirst broadcast: Sun 11th Mar 1990, 14:30 on BBC Radio 4 FMĮdwin and Neville, determined to resolve their differences, agree to attend a Christmas Eve dinner hosted by Edwin's guardian, Jasper. The arrival in Cloisterham of Neville and Helena Landless sets in motion a chain of events leading to murder. Sun 4th Mar 1990, 14:30 on BBC Radio 4 FMīy Charles Dickens, concluded by Leon Garfieldand, dramatised in five parts by David Buck.
0 kommentar(er)
