Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [253]
MAILER, NORMAN
See footnote 6.
MARX, KARL
Chap. 36, paras. 3 and 4. Grant’s long harangue is a Difplag of the pernicious theory of history as class warfare embodied in Das Kapital.
MELVILLE, HERMAN
See footnote 12.
MILTON, JOHN
See footnote 6.
MONBODDO, LORD
Chap. 32, para. 3. The reference to James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, demonstrates the weakness of the fabulous and allegorical part of Lanark. The “institute” seems to represent that official body of learning which began with the ancient priesthoods and Athenian academies, was monopolized by the Catholic Church and later dispersed among universities and research foundations. But if the “council” represents government, then the most striking union of “council” and “institute” occurred in 1662 when Charles II chartered the Royal Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. James Burnett of Monboddo belonged to an Edinburgh Corresponding Society which advanced the cause of science quite unofficially until granted a royal charter in 1782. He was a court of session judge, a friend of King George and an erudite metaphysician with a faith in satyrs and mermaids, but has only been saved from oblivion by the animadversions against his theory of human descent from the ape in Boswell’s Life of Johnson. By plagiarizing and annexing his name to a dynasty of scientific Caesars the author can only be motivated by Scottish chauvinism or a penchant for resounding nomenclature. A more fitting embodiment of government, science, trade and religion would have been Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork and father of modern chemistry. He was founder of the Royal Society, and his strong religious principles also led him to procure a charter for the East India Company, which he expected to propagate Christianity in the Orient.
NicGUMARAID, CATRIONA
Like all lowland Scottish litera-teurs, the “conjuror” lacks all understanding of his native Gaelic culture. The character and surroundings of the Rev. McPhedron in Chap. 13, the least convincing chapter in the book, seem to be an effort to supply that lack. As a touchstone of his failure I print these verses by a real Gael. See also MacNeacail, Aonghas.
Nan robh agam sgian ghearrainn as an ubhal an grodadh donn a th’ann a leòn’s a shàraich mise.
Ach mo chreach-s’ mar thà chan eil mo sgian-sa biorach ’s cha dheoghail mi ás nas mò an loibht’ a sgapas annad.
NICOLSON, ANGUS
See Black Angus.
O’BRIEN, FLANN
See footnote 6.
ORWELL, GEORGE
Chap. 38. The poster slogans and the social stability centre are Difplags of the Ingsoc posters and Ministry of Love in 1984.
PENG, LI
Books 3 and 4. These owe much to Monkey, the Chinese comic classic eclectic novel, first Englished by Arthur Waley, which shows the interplay between an earthly pilgrimage and heavenly and hellish supernatural worlds which parody it. (See also KAFKA.)
PLATH, SYLVIA
Chap. 10, para. 10. “I will rise with my flaming hair and eat men like air” is an Implag of the last couplet of “Lady Lazarus,” with “flaming” substituted for “red.”
POE, EDGAR ALLAN
Chap. 8, para. 7. The “large and lofty apartment” is an Implag from the story The Fall of the House of Usher. Chap. 38, para. 16. The three long first sentences are Implag from The Domain of Arnheim. The substitution of “pearly” pebbles for “alabaster” pebbles comes from Poe’s other description of water with a pebbly bottom in Eleonora.
POPE, ALEXANDER
Chap. 41, para. 6. Timon Kodac’s statement “Order is heaven’s first law” is from the poetic Essay on Man.
PRINCE, REV. HENRY JAMES
Chap. 43, Monboddo’s speech. “Stand with me on the sun” is from Letters addressed by H. J. Prince to his Christian Brethren at St. David’s College, Lampeter.
PROPPER, DAN
Chap. 28, para. 7. McAlpin’s statement of Propper’s law is a distorted Implag from The Fable of the Final Hour: “In the 34th minute of the final hour the Law of Inverse Enclosure was rediscovered and a matchbox was declared the