The Lost Other: Lowry's creative process
International audience The recent discovery and subsequent publication of Lowry’s lost novel In Ballast to the White Sea, meant as the Paradiso piece in Lowry’s long-planned Dantesque trilogy, calls attention to the importance of loss in Lowry’s creative process. Indeed, the 1936 typescript edited b...
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ftccsdartic:oai:HAL:hal-02502048v1 2023-05-15T18:43:46+02:00 The Lost Other: Lowry's creative process Delesalle-Nancey, Catherine Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 (UJML) Université de Lyon Institut d'Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles (IETT) Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon Tookey Helen and Biggs Bryan 2020 https://hal.science/hal-02502048 en eng HAL CCSD Liverpool University Press hal-02502048 https://hal.science/hal-02502048 Remaking the Voyage https://hal.science/hal-02502048 Tookey Helen and Biggs Bryan. Remaking the Voyage, Liverpool University Press, In press https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781789621839/ . Malcolm Lowry In Ballast to the White Sea [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences [SHS.LITT]Humanities and Social Sciences/Literature info:eu-repo/semantics/bookPart Book sections 2020 ftccsdartic 2023-04-09T02:15:05Z International audience The recent discovery and subsequent publication of Lowry’s lost novel In Ballast to the White Sea, meant as the Paradiso piece in Lowry’s long-planned Dantesque trilogy, calls attention to the importance of loss in Lowry’s creative process. Indeed, the 1936 typescript edited by Patrick McCarthy and Chris Ackerley, in which the protagonist’s young brother commits suicide, does not readily lend itself to such positioning in the trilogy. However, the very presence of an alter-ego for the protagonist and his disappearing early in the novel point to a process that may be seminal to Lowry’s creative art: the need to generate another self whose loss is the necessary sacrifice to fuel the writer’s creative power. That In Ballast to the White Sea should be a form of Kunstelroman seems to confirm this intuition. It is besides a novel about a novel, very much like Dark As the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, the title of which again highlights loss and grieving for this loss as an important feature of Lowry’s art. Just as Dark as the Grave is a returning to the place where he had written Under the Volcano, so In Ballast to the White Sea is motivated by a desire to meet the author whose works inspired the writing of Ultramarine. However the quest for the origin of creation proves elusive and eventually suggests that the origin is now lost, and perhaps always was. And it is perhaps this very loss which is the true origin of creation for it liberates speech and allows more writing. The fact that Lowry never tried to retrieve the typescript of In Ballast from the White Sea and chose instead to let it survive as a trace, as the presence of an absence, in other works of his and in letters, may actually account for its paradisiac quality: the perfect book that only exists as an absence, a distant horizon always to be reached, which stimulates the writer’s quest and his writing. The special place In Ballast holds in Lowry’s grand-oeuvre as both an absence and a presence could thus designate it as his ... Book Part White Sea Archive ouverte HAL (Hyper Article en Ligne, CCSD - Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) Lowry ENVELOPE(-64.150,-64.150,-84.550,-84.550) McCarthy ENVELOPE(66.543,66.543,-70.404,-70.404) White Sea |
institution |
Open Polar |
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Archive ouverte HAL (Hyper Article en Ligne, CCSD - Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) |
op_collection_id |
ftccsdartic |
language |
English |
topic |
Malcolm Lowry In Ballast to the White Sea [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences [SHS.LITT]Humanities and Social Sciences/Literature |
spellingShingle |
Malcolm Lowry In Ballast to the White Sea [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences [SHS.LITT]Humanities and Social Sciences/Literature Delesalle-Nancey, Catherine The Lost Other: Lowry's creative process |
topic_facet |
Malcolm Lowry In Ballast to the White Sea [SHS]Humanities and Social Sciences [SHS.LITT]Humanities and Social Sciences/Literature |
description |
International audience The recent discovery and subsequent publication of Lowry’s lost novel In Ballast to the White Sea, meant as the Paradiso piece in Lowry’s long-planned Dantesque trilogy, calls attention to the importance of loss in Lowry’s creative process. Indeed, the 1936 typescript edited by Patrick McCarthy and Chris Ackerley, in which the protagonist’s young brother commits suicide, does not readily lend itself to such positioning in the trilogy. However, the very presence of an alter-ego for the protagonist and his disappearing early in the novel point to a process that may be seminal to Lowry’s creative art: the need to generate another self whose loss is the necessary sacrifice to fuel the writer’s creative power. That In Ballast to the White Sea should be a form of Kunstelroman seems to confirm this intuition. It is besides a novel about a novel, very much like Dark As the Grave Wherein My Friend Is Laid, the title of which again highlights loss and grieving for this loss as an important feature of Lowry’s art. Just as Dark as the Grave is a returning to the place where he had written Under the Volcano, so In Ballast to the White Sea is motivated by a desire to meet the author whose works inspired the writing of Ultramarine. However the quest for the origin of creation proves elusive and eventually suggests that the origin is now lost, and perhaps always was. And it is perhaps this very loss which is the true origin of creation for it liberates speech and allows more writing. The fact that Lowry never tried to retrieve the typescript of In Ballast from the White Sea and chose instead to let it survive as a trace, as the presence of an absence, in other works of his and in letters, may actually account for its paradisiac quality: the perfect book that only exists as an absence, a distant horizon always to be reached, which stimulates the writer’s quest and his writing. The special place In Ballast holds in Lowry’s grand-oeuvre as both an absence and a presence could thus designate it as his ... |
author2 |
Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3 (UJML) Université de Lyon Institut d'Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles (IETT) Université de Lyon-Université de Lyon Tookey Helen and Biggs Bryan |
format |
Book Part |
author |
Delesalle-Nancey, Catherine |
author_facet |
Delesalle-Nancey, Catherine |
author_sort |
Delesalle-Nancey, Catherine |
title |
The Lost Other: Lowry's creative process |
title_short |
The Lost Other: Lowry's creative process |
title_full |
The Lost Other: Lowry's creative process |
title_fullStr |
The Lost Other: Lowry's creative process |
title_full_unstemmed |
The Lost Other: Lowry's creative process |
title_sort |
lost other: lowry's creative process |
publisher |
HAL CCSD |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
https://hal.science/hal-02502048 |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-64.150,-64.150,-84.550,-84.550) ENVELOPE(66.543,66.543,-70.404,-70.404) |
geographic |
Lowry McCarthy White Sea |
geographic_facet |
Lowry McCarthy White Sea |
genre |
White Sea |
genre_facet |
White Sea |
op_source |
Remaking the Voyage https://hal.science/hal-02502048 Tookey Helen and Biggs Bryan. Remaking the Voyage, Liverpool University Press, In press https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781789621839/ . |
op_relation |
hal-02502048 https://hal.science/hal-02502048 |
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