batbones's review against another edition
5.0
'Oh stop, can't you just think of something better and want it?'
'One can't do that to one's mind. You don't understand people like me, like us, the other ones. ... You move, you look about you, you want things. There are others who live on earth and move just a little and don't look -'"
The sea is the governing rhythm of this novel, an impermeable mystery, a slate-coloured restlessness vacillating from tempting calm to roiling distress. Its turmoil-and-tranquility mimicking the repetitive motions of heaving and pulling back, giving, declaring and withholding, yielding and protesting possession, that the characters go through. Their personal illusions are gossamer, shimmering, definitely resolute, so full-mouthed and youth-ripe one moment and then the next, faltering, unsure. The protagonist is the histrionic Charles Arrowby - not in expression but certainly in temperament, regardless of what he may claim. He may have retired from the glittering business of theatre but finds himself unable to escape the business of cutting loose from his old friends, with whom it is clear he has tales (relationships) that are far from finished. It is a glimpse of his lost childhood sweetheart, married and weathered by time, that sets him off to recover a curtailed love, clutching at the dangled promise of recovering the sweetness of youth and the purity of that love...but at the cost of snatching her from her seemingly unhappy marriage? But, is she truly unhappy?
In true Iris Murdoch fashion, emotion is the pulse of the novel but the true core of it is a moral quandary. Her characters find themselves in situations that they respond strongly to with their hearts but also feel the weight of obligation, of behaving adequately or properly in their circumstances. Her people have been described as 'hysterical', having emotions far too intense for plausible daily life, but this reader imagines that the space of The Sea, The Sea demonstrates how affection and nostalgia can transmute into darker forms of delusional possession, or lead irresponsible lives and draw everyone into their mess. Murdoch does it all with unflinching precision.
How to account for an emotion that one seems so sure of but eventually repents of? How to act? How to be responsible for peoples lives and one's own? Especially when one has acted heartlessly? Can we ever see people clearly, as they are? Imagine others vastly different from ourselves? Arrowby's attempts to diagnose his lady love's distress and create a solution of bliss for them both comes up repeatedly against an idea he writes in his diary but I think never fully accepts - that she does not want this, does not want more. Moving on, accounting for that rather ridiculous moment of effusive, chaotic rashness, is a process of shifting of blame, like one shifts a weight from one foot to the other: in order to absolve or explain, the other has to be a 'liar'. How to try to explain ourselves, to explain away in hindsight an embarrassment. The presumptuous things one has to do to achieve a state of comfort living in the world.
The perceptive point is the end of knowledge of the other, the suggestion that despite what everyone has to say, and what the protagonist himself has to say, no one is fully trustworthy, official biographer. Hartley is rock, promise, a 'dead thing' to be resurrected, a damsel in distress, a liar, an image lost forever. Lizzy is ageing, beautiful like a schoolgirl, trusting, fearful, lively, stricken, full of love and waiting for that moment - as Arrowby imagines it with no less self-indulgence - where the object of her affections will give up and fall into her loving arms, or maternal and self-confident. Gilbert is generous, weak, amusing, someone Arrowby sees as beneath him and his actions seem to affirm that. Arrowby sees everyone and is quite sure of his opinions of them, but they still surprise him, but he still thinks he knows them. The reader knows not to trust these pompous readings of character.
Where the black mark of death could have caused an awakening, here it makes a stain, not quite a black hole, and the event passes and life moves along with it darkening the water. Here, to quote Seamus Heaney, there are no 'diamond absolutes' ("Exposure"). There is in time only the ever-changing waves of the sea, the sea.
'One can't do that to one's mind. You don't understand people like me, like us, the other ones. ... You move, you look about you, you want things. There are others who live on earth and move just a little and don't look -'"
The sea is the governing rhythm of this novel, an impermeable mystery, a slate-coloured restlessness vacillating from tempting calm to roiling distress. Its turmoil-and-tranquility mimicking the repetitive motions of heaving and pulling back, giving, declaring and withholding, yielding and protesting possession, that the characters go through. Their personal illusions are gossamer, shimmering, definitely resolute, so full-mouthed and youth-ripe one moment and then the next, faltering, unsure. The protagonist is the histrionic Charles Arrowby - not in expression but certainly in temperament, regardless of what he may claim. He may have retired from the glittering business of theatre but finds himself unable to escape the business of cutting loose from his old friends, with whom it is clear he has tales (relationships) that are far from finished. It is a glimpse of his lost childhood sweetheart, married and weathered by time, that sets him off to recover a curtailed love, clutching at the dangled promise of recovering the sweetness of youth and the purity of that love...but at the cost of snatching her from her seemingly unhappy marriage? But, is she truly unhappy?
In true Iris Murdoch fashion, emotion is the pulse of the novel but the true core of it is a moral quandary. Her characters find themselves in situations that they respond strongly to with their hearts but also feel the weight of obligation, of behaving adequately or properly in their circumstances. Her people have been described as 'hysterical', having emotions far too intense for plausible daily life, but this reader imagines that the space of The Sea, The Sea demonstrates how affection and nostalgia can transmute into darker forms of delusional possession, or lead irresponsible lives and draw everyone into their mess. Murdoch does it all with unflinching precision.
How to account for an emotion that one seems so sure of but eventually repents of? How to act? How to be responsible for peoples lives and one's own? Especially when one has acted heartlessly? Can we ever see people clearly, as they are? Imagine others vastly different from ourselves? Arrowby's attempts to diagnose his lady love's distress and create a solution of bliss for them both comes up repeatedly against an idea he writes in his diary but I think never fully accepts - that she does not want this, does not want more. Moving on, accounting for that rather ridiculous moment of effusive, chaotic rashness, is a process of shifting of blame, like one shifts a weight from one foot to the other: in order to absolve or explain, the other has to be a 'liar'. How to try to explain ourselves, to explain away in hindsight an embarrassment. The presumptuous things one has to do to achieve a state of comfort living in the world.
The perceptive point is the end of knowledge of the other, the suggestion that despite what everyone has to say, and what the protagonist himself has to say, no one is fully trustworthy, official biographer. Hartley is rock, promise, a 'dead thing' to be resurrected, a damsel in distress, a liar, an image lost forever. Lizzy is ageing, beautiful like a schoolgirl, trusting, fearful, lively, stricken, full of love and waiting for that moment - as Arrowby imagines it with no less self-indulgence - where the object of her affections will give up and fall into her loving arms, or maternal and self-confident. Gilbert is generous, weak, amusing, someone Arrowby sees as beneath him and his actions seem to affirm that. Arrowby sees everyone and is quite sure of his opinions of them, but they still surprise him, but he still thinks he knows them. The reader knows not to trust these pompous readings of character.
Where the black mark of death could have caused an awakening, here it makes a stain, not quite a black hole, and the event passes and life moves along with it darkening the water. Here, to quote Seamus Heaney, there are no 'diamond absolutes' ("Exposure"). There is in time only the ever-changing waves of the sea, the sea.
totalum's review against another edition
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
libromir's review against another edition
4.0
Dang, this was just one of those "right place, right time" books for me. I can't recommend it to everyone. It took me a REAAAAAAAALLY long time to get through it. Just nickel and dimed, really, but... I kept going back to see what happened next. It was just Charles' development and insanity and process that I really connected with. His relationship to James was interesting. I've read a couple of her books and I'm always startled by how... timeless and worldly? I can't put my finger on it. She's got a style that makes you feel like you're reading something from the 30's, or even the late 1800's, but with such a modern sensibility. I just like her very much. I am compelled by her. She makes me aware of the universality of the basest human emotions. I don't know if that's worded right, but... I wish I'd underlined all the phrases and passages I kept wanting to underline. I don't think I can re-read it again any time soon and I kept being captured by turns of phrase and moments she'd come up with.
iammandyellen's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
mrears0_0's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
enjoyed but could have been 1/2 the length
awilderm23's review against another edition
3.0
this all kind of unraveled at the end...
‘ we enjoyed and craved for each other’s company. what a test that is, more than devotion, admiration, passion. if you longed and long for someone’s company you love them.
sheer hatred can be a commanding form of madness
ever since i first loved you you live in my mind
my love for you exists in a sort of eternal present, it is almost the meaning of time. i don’t protest too much, such love can live with despair with quietness with resignation with ordinariness and tiredness and silence.
your letter had made an aching emptiness and a need and i shall not be the same
she cried before me with wide open eyes not staunching the tears, her tears fell on my sleeve, on my hand like storm rain. and when at last i told her to go she went like a shadow with silent swift obedience
a furious mutual desire for possession dominated the entire affair while it lasted
extreme love must bring terror with it and great terror like some kind of prayer which lean upon the omniscience of the almighty has a vast unlimited all embracing compass
never so pure and gentle never so intense did it come to me after, that absolute and holy yearning of one human body and soul for another
mercifully one forgets ones love affairs as one forgets one’s dreams
it would have to be love between us but love purged of possessive madness, purged of self, disciplined by time and the irrevocability of our fates. we must find out how at last to be absolutes to each other never to lose each other without putting any foot wrong or spilling one drop of some vessel of truth and history that was held up between us
in the teeth of our fates most exquisite cruelty, in the teeth of all the evidence, we belonged to each other
all art disfigures life
some life we might have had together if i had been different, and she has been different. now it was gone, whatever happened next, and the world was changed
and now it’s ended before it even began and i never imagined itwould all be spoiled and broken at the start. and now i’ve got nothing except my love for you, all wakened up again and rejected, all wakened up again for ever and ever
i love you i’ve never forgotten you and when i saw you i felt it all again but it’s something childish, it isn’t part of the real world. there was never any place for our love in the world. if there had been, it would have won and we wouldn’t have parted.
what shall i do now with my love for you which you so terribly revived by reappearing in my life? why did you come back if you could not content me? what can i do now with a great useless machine of my love which has no work to do?
‘ we enjoyed and craved for each other’s company. what a test that is, more than devotion, admiration, passion. if you longed and long for someone’s company you love them.
sheer hatred can be a commanding form of madness
ever since i first loved you you live in my mind
my love for you exists in a sort of eternal present, it is almost the meaning of time. i don’t protest too much, such love can live with despair with quietness with resignation with ordinariness and tiredness and silence.
your letter had made an aching emptiness and a need and i shall not be the same
she cried before me with wide open eyes not staunching the tears, her tears fell on my sleeve, on my hand like storm rain. and when at last i told her to go she went like a shadow with silent swift obedience
a furious mutual desire for possession dominated the entire affair while it lasted
extreme love must bring terror with it and great terror like some kind of prayer which lean upon the omniscience of the almighty has a vast unlimited all embracing compass
never so pure and gentle never so intense did it come to me after, that absolute and holy yearning of one human body and soul for another
mercifully one forgets ones love affairs as one forgets one’s dreams
it would have to be love between us but love purged of possessive madness, purged of self, disciplined by time and the irrevocability of our fates. we must find out how at last to be absolutes to each other never to lose each other without putting any foot wrong or spilling one drop of some vessel of truth and history that was held up between us
in the teeth of our fates most exquisite cruelty, in the teeth of all the evidence, we belonged to each other
all art disfigures life
some life we might have had together if i had been different, and she has been different. now it was gone, whatever happened next, and the world was changed
and now it’s ended before it even began and i never imagined itwould all be spoiled and broken at the start. and now i’ve got nothing except my love for you, all wakened up again and rejected, all wakened up again for ever and ever
i love you i’ve never forgotten you and when i saw you i felt it all again but it’s something childish, it isn’t part of the real world. there was never any place for our love in the world. if there had been, it would have won and we wouldn’t have parted.
what shall i do now with my love for you which you so terribly revived by reappearing in my life? why did you come back if you could not content me? what can i do now with a great useless machine of my love which has no work to do?
101jun's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Una obra de gran esfuerzo. La creación de un protagonista masculino, con todo y reflexiones, apegos, y tribulaciones, en donde el mar no solo es el mejor protagonista, sino que es determinante en el tejido de esta historia. La infinidad de estados de ánimo de este mar británico nos permite conocer la mejor filosofía de Iris Murdoch...
Me encantó la forma en que los personajes van formando constantemente esta historia, creando fantasías o realidades y sin alcanzar a preveer ningún desenlace. Algunos de los personajes de este libro me parecieron poco verosímiles, pero solo leyendo hasta el final, creo que es posible entrever el propósito de gran riqueza de esta autora.
Me encantó la forma en que los personajes van formando constantemente esta historia, creando fantasías o realidades y sin alcanzar a preveer ningún desenlace. Algunos de los personajes de este libro me parecieron poco verosímiles, pero solo leyendo hasta el final, creo que es posible entrever el propósito de gran riqueza de esta autora.
tscott907's review against another edition
4.0
Rambling and darkly funny, narrated by one of the most unreliable people ever put to paper. I had a lot of fun with this book! Hartley and Charles are both awful and that’s a huge part of why I really enjoyed the book (would I be wrong to say they deserve each other?) I desperately want to read more of Murdoch’s work!
apollonium's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
linagmills's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0