5 Powerful Literary Depictions of London

What Did the Great Minds of Literature Write on London? For centuries, London has been a vibrant cultural, economic and political power centre of the world. A birthplace of a number of eminent authors, intellectuals, thinkers and innovators – Londoners are known for their wit, language, humour, vibe and charisma throughout history. “London and Fog! When these two come […]

What Did the Great Minds of Literature Write on London?

For centuries, London has been a vibrant cultural, economic and political power centre of the world. A birthplace of a number of eminent authors, intellectuals, thinkers and innovators – Londoners are known for their wit, language, humour, vibe and charisma throughout history. “London and Fog! When these two come together, it is time to be a writer!” writes the Turkish contemporary novelist and playwright, Mehmet Murtan Ildan.

Ahead of its time, London has always been an inspiration for diverse groups of people. A hub for events of global importance, and a story of perpetual growth that even at some point was considered to be unimaginable for the human mind.

In this issue for the London Virtual Memoirs, we would like to share from five authors who can help us learn, and educate us a little bit about important aspects of this perpetually growing city. How was life back in the day? or how is life in the more recent years?

Unreal city

May be only partially accurate in this context, however, we are to anyway recall to T.S. Eliot‘s work from 1922, his epic poem, The Waste Land, a gem work of the ripe modernism:

“Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stock of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying: ‘Stetson!
You, who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere!”

London at night / photo credits: Flower M.

T.S. Eliot re-imagined the urban realms of London, and surely tackled one of the greatest questions of his age, or rather a new phenomenon that came with the uprising of such mega cities as London and Paris. He tackled the questions of solitude and alienation that came with population growth. On the other hand, the 21st century still remembers London as a cultural capital of the world, a vibrant hub for businessmen, researchers, scholars, fashion designers, investors.  It could lead us to some interesting questions – what would Eliot write if he were to see London in 2016? How unreal would the city look to him?

London is Personified

However, maybe there is no better author and intellectual than Virginia Woolf who offers maybe the most picturesque descriptions of London of all time. Chances are that if you open to read any of her novels you will stumble upon some magnificent passages that depict the true spirit of London in the first half of the 20th century. In one of her most world-known works, the novel Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925, she writes:

“One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning. I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.”

London today / photo credits: Flower M.

London is personified in Mrs. Dalloway. The city is decoded through the whole book, set on a single day in London, and through two parallel stories – the one about Clarissa Dalloway, who is to throw up a party, and the second sub-story about Septimus Warren Smith, World War One veteran, who is to commit a suicide. The depictions of the mega city can only grow more powerful as you hunt them down the pages. Like this one, again from Mrs. Dalloway:

“One feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.”

London City & the English language

Stephen Fry, English comedian, actor, writer, activist and presenter, is another powerful mind that captures the essence of the UK capital. His words sound like a whole empire in his book The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, where he draws this parallel about the London city and the English language:

“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.”

London – Proud Barbaric & Deeply Civilised  / Photo credits: Flower M.

London, the world capital of imagination

US born author and journalist, Anna Quindlen, writes the following in her book Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City“London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.”

She continues: “It is the glory of London that it is always ending and beginning anew, and that a visitor, with a good eye and indefatigable feet, will find in her travels all the Londons she has ever met in the pages of books, one atop the other, like the strata of the Earth.”

A synonym to diversity

Migration elevates as one of the biggest challenges for the world today. Yet, it is an ever-present human phenomenon since the beginning of our civilization. The British islands as well are associated with a long tradition to it.

“My Dad says that being a Londoner has nothing to do with where you’re born. He says that there are people who get off a jumbo jet at Heathrow, go through immigration waving any kind of passport, hop on the tube and by the time the train’s pulled into Piccadilly Circus they’ve become a Londoner,” writes Ben Aaronovitch in his novel from the Rivers of London serie, Moon Over Sohopublished in 2011.

The rich tradition of migration has certainly elevated London to a point where its urban realms perhaps resemble some unimaginable melting culture pot. Today you can most probably hear more than hundreds of languages spoken on the streets of London.

It lead us to a final question – can such rich diversity, as evident in the city of London, equate the city itself to a synonym for diversity? Is this thought frightening, beyond our comprehension, or just astonishing and memorable human achievement which is yet to be explored?

References:
Woolf, V. 1925. Mrs Dalloway. London: Hogarth Press
Eliot, T.S. 1922. The Waste Land. United States: Horace Liveright
Fry, S. 2005. The Ode Less Traveled: Unlocking the Poet Within. United StatesHutchinson
Quindlen, A. 2006. Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City. United States. National Geographic Society
Aarnovitch, B. 2011. Moon over Soho. United KingdomGollanzc 

Maya
Author: Maya

Our resources section features content from travel writers and experts in vacation rentals, STRs, and alternative accommodations. Our team of writers offers unique perspectives and insightful tips to help you earn more from your property investment. Maya is an amalgam of these writers.

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