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When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mothers seamstress, and in the affairs of Amys father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr. Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, "Little Dorrit" is one of the supreme works of Dickenss maturity.… (more)
A true delight, Dickens' second masterpiece, coming soon after Bleak House. The 19th of Dickens' 24 major works, and the 11th of his novels, Dorrit was written over a span of two years, and brings us into CD's final act, as he begins to lavish careful attention on his works and aims to realise his characters far more greatly, and tie his works together. Dorrit is more diffuse than Bleak House yet feels even more like a novel rather than a serialised work.
The lead characters, Amy Dorrit - a child of a debt-ridden family, whose essential goodness has created a community in the most unlikely of places - and Arthur Clennam, the soulful sailor uncovering his family's ill deeds, are like most of Dickens' lead characters to date: a bit vanilla. This alone is a step back from Bleak House although they continue to greatly reflect the world around them, and in this case their positive qualities form a part of the novel's plea for sanity and simplicity in an increasingly material world.
The novel excels in its portrayal of Victorian England's ludicrous class system, through the absolutely fantastic caricatures of the Meagles and the Merdles, and in examining the idiocy of a culture that refuses to allow the downtrodden any relief. The Marshalsea - a real debtors' prison in which Dickens' father spent time, which had closed down shortly before the novel was written - is vividly realised, and the delightful supporting characters, from Mrs. Plornish to the conflicted Pancks, from the babbling Flora Finching to the eternally hilarious Mr. F's Aunt, still provide much merriment and intrigue. And the groaning, heaving mass that is Clennam and Co is perhaps Dickens' most powerful individual symbol.
At the heart of the work is Mr. Dorrit, a portrait of pathos like many prior, but far more interesting and realistic than any Dickensian character we have yet seen. A really strong work (with an equally beautiful and faithful BBC adaptation) that I heartily recommend. ( )
As part of my rest-of-my-life project, I tackled another large Dickens novel to start the year. There’s no getting around it: the fact that Mr. Dickens was paid by the installment clearly meant that many of his books are, um, longer than they need to be. Enjoyable? Yes. Amazingly plotted? Yes. Exceptional characters? Yes. Moving? Yes. But increasingly I am coming to the conclusion that they’re too damn long. Of course, Dickens wouldn’t be Dickens otherwise. Still. Which leaves us with this tale of rags to riches to rags, the infamous Marshalsea Prison for debtors (where Dickens’ father spent time), and the absolutely lovable, self-effacing, gentle, too-good-to-be-true (or believable) Little Dorrit. The characters, as always, are much of the attraction; the plot threatens at a few points to be nearly incomprehensible (but never crosses that line); the tying-up of loose ends at the end of the book requires some rather silly inventions but it is, after all, Dickens, and so the novel succeeds despite all of this. If it’s not quite at the level of Bleak House or David Copperfield, it is also not terribly far from those masterpieces either. It took me quite some time to decide which novel to read this year and I read widely to help me decide. Definitely recommended. ( )
Mil Nicholson is once again a marvelous narrator for this Dickens classic. I would strongly recommend her reading, even with the sometimes annoying "This is a Librivox recording..." at the start of every chapter. ( )
This took me two whole months to read. This is a shame, because it starts out pretty good. "Little Dorrit" is really Amy, a girl born in debtors' prison where her father has languished for over twenty years; one could bring one's wife and children along if one desired. All the stuff about how Dorrit came to the prison, and his life there, and Amy's life there, is fantastic stuff, that usual Dickens mixture of the comic and the real. Meanwhile, a man named Arthur Clennam has come home after decades overseas, now that his father is dead, and he soon meets Little Dorrit and aims to help her. His visit to the Circumlocution Office, a government department devoted to stopping the government from doing anything effective, is Dickens at his savage and comic best.
The problem is, every time the narrative moves away from Little Dorrit, it becomes bogged down in some of the dullest characters I can ever remember from a Dickens novel. Who cares about the Meagles or all the rest of them? And yet the novel just goes on and on and on.
Little Dorrit herself is one of Dickens's best psychological portraits: the chapter about her after her family has finally been released from prison and achieved riches once more is utterly devastating. Yet the novel keeps going and going after that point for hundreds of more pages, mostly neglecting its title character, and I lost all interest, even in characters like Clennam who had initially held my attention.
Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
Quotations
Indiani, russi, cinesi, spagnoli, portoghesi, inglesi, francesi, genovesi, napoletani, veneziani, greci, turchi, tutti i discendenti dei costruttori della Torre di Babele convenuti a Marsiglia per i loro commerci cercavano l'ombra …
Il tanfo della prigione gravava su ogni cosa. L'aria imprigionata, la luce imprigionata, l'umidità imprigionata, gli uomini imprigionati, tutto era degradato dalla reclusione. I prigionieri erano pallidi e sparuti come il ferro coperto di ruggine, la pietra viscida, il legno putrido, l'aria viziata e la luce opaca.
L'altro sputò e si raschiò la gola. Subito dopo s'udì anche una serratura raschiarsi la gola e una porta sbatté.
«Guarda la luce del giorno! Giorno! Questa è la luce di otto giorni fa, di sei mesi fa, di sei anni fa, tanto è debole e scialba!»
Era semplicemente un fanfarone, uno sfacciato millantatore; ma quanto a questo, e non solo a questo, in tutte le parti del mondo la sfacciataggine nell'affermare una cosa vale più d'una prova tangibile della sua realtà.
Seguivano le interminabili domeniche dell'adolescenza quando sua madre, viso severo e cuor duro, stava seduta tutto il giorno con la Bibbia davanti, una Bibbia chiusa fra due tavolette di legno durissimo, nude e liscie, che sembravano chiudere anche lei, la copertina adorna d'un fregio che pareva una catena, e le costole delle pagine spruzzate di rosso quasi per collera, come se quel libro, proprio quel libro, fosse un fortilizio elevato contro ogni sentimento di dolcezza, ogni affetto naturale, ogni scambio di gentilezze.
… alla parete, incorniciato e sotto vetro, c'era anche il quadro delle Piaghe d'Egitto offuscato dalle mosche e dal fumo, piaghe di Londra.
Come il metallo più duro possiede gradi diversi di durezza, e lo stesso colore nero ha numerose sfumature, esisteva un'impercettibile differenza nell'asprezza con cui la signora Clennam trattava il resto dell'umanità e la piccola Dorrit.
Le stanze abbandonate e deserte da anni si erano accasciate in un malinconico letargo dal quale nulla avrebbe potuto destarle: i mobili, pochi e massicci, pareva vi si volessero nascondere piuttosto che arredarle, e dappertutto c'era un'aria smorta come se il poco colore d'un tempo fosse fuggito a cavallo d'un raggio di sole smarrito, per farsi assorbire all'esterno dai fiori, dalle farfalle, dalle piume degli uccelli, dalle pietre preziose e così via.
La mendicità pesava su quelle spalle incurvate, si trascinava su quelle gambe malferme, abbottonava e rattoppava, puntava con gli spilli e trascinava i loro vestiti, consumava gli occhielli, trasudava dalle loro persone all'estremità di ogni pezzetto di fettuccia sporca, e usciva dalle loro bocche col respiro fetido di alcool.
Tutti sanno che due file di persone sedute a tavola somigliano stranamente ai due lati d'una strada: vi sorgono una ventina di fabbricati incolori e tutti uguali, alle cui porte tutti bussano o suonano allo stesso modo, salendo una rampa di scalini sempre uguali; tutte le cancellate sono dello stesso modello, e dovunque si scorgono le medesime uscite di sicurezza impraticabili in caso d'incendio; allo stesso modo le teste delle persone sono piene di infissi antiquati e inopportuni, ma tutto è valutato in modo esorbitante…
… in secondo luogo ritenevano come sano assioma nazionale e costituzionale che i forestieri dovessero tornare al loro paese. Non si preoccupavano d'informarsi quanti dei propri connazionali avrebbero dovuto rientrare dalle diverse parti del mondo qualora codesto principio fosse stato universalmente applicato, ma erano persuasi che fosse un principio molto pratico e molto inglese.
Se poche erano le rughe, ciò significava che il cervello non aveva mai scritto nulla sulla sua fronte. Era una donna, fredda, passata, sfiorita, che sembrava fatta di cera, e non si era mai scaldata per nulla. La signora General non aveva opinioni personali. Il suo metodo educativo consisteva nell'impedire che si formassero opinioni. Possedeva un piccolo binario circolare di concetti, sul quale metteva in movimento certi trenini che trasportavano le opinioni degli altri e non si sorpassavano né arrivavano mai in nessun posto.
La peggiore categoria di calcoli che si possa fare nel nostro mondo quotidiano è quella, infatti, di una schiera di matematici i quali applicano la regola della sottrazione a tutto quanto riguarda i meriti e i successi altrui, senza mai calcolare la somma dei propri.
It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it.
Last words
They went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the froward and the vain, fretted and chafed, and made their usual uproar.
When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mothers seamstress, and in the affairs of Amys father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr. Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, "Little Dorrit" is one of the supreme works of Dickenss maturity.
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The lead characters, Amy Dorrit - a child of a debt-ridden family, whose essential goodness has created a community in the most unlikely of places - and Arthur Clennam, the soulful sailor uncovering his family's ill deeds, are like most of Dickens' lead characters to date: a bit vanilla. This alone is a step back from Bleak House although they continue to greatly reflect the world around them, and in this case their positive qualities form a part of the novel's plea for sanity and simplicity in an increasingly material world.
The novel excels in its portrayal of Victorian England's ludicrous class system, through the absolutely fantastic caricatures of the Meagles and the Merdles, and in examining the idiocy of a culture that refuses to allow the downtrodden any relief. The Marshalsea - a real debtors' prison in which Dickens' father spent time, which had closed down shortly before the novel was written - is vividly realised, and the delightful supporting characters, from Mrs. Plornish to the conflicted Pancks, from the babbling Flora Finching to the eternally hilarious Mr. F's Aunt, still provide much merriment and intrigue. And the groaning, heaving mass that is Clennam and Co is perhaps Dickens' most powerful individual symbol.
At the heart of the work is Mr. Dorrit, a portrait of pathos like many prior, but far more interesting and realistic than any Dickensian character we have yet seen. A really strong work (with an equally beautiful and faithful BBC adaptation) that I heartily recommend. (