How to Write English Prose
4 hours ago
- David Bentley Hart praises Sir Thomas Browne's prose as a perfect gem of English, particularly citing passages from 'On Dreams' and 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' that exemplify Browne's range from glowing beauty to flamboyant density.
- Hart contrasts Browne's ornate style with the King James Bible's simplicity, arguing both represent a continuum from the beautiful to the sublime in pre-Kantian terms, not a simple opposition.
- He claims great prose develops later than poetry, requiring a mature language; English achieved its zenith in the 17th century, enriched by a vast vocabulary mixing Teutonic and Latin elements.
- Hart criticizes 20th-century trends toward simplification and minimalism in prose, calling them an 'official dogma' that produces dull, anonymous writing, and advocates for balancing beauty and sublimity.
- He lists five exemplary prose writers—Robert Louis Stevenson, Sylvia Townsend Warner, J.A. Baker, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Vladimir Nabokov—with passages illustrating rich, evocative style.
- Hart offers 33 rules for writing, emphasizing precise vocabulary (e.g., 'ultracrepidarian,' 'hyaline,' 'pogonotrophy'), elegance over clarity, and rejecting Orwell's and Strunk & White's simplistic advice.
- He champions the semicolon and dash as subtle punctuation tools, advises ignoring unaccomplished critics, and urges writers to aim for posterity, knowing the magic of language to create worlds.
- Hart concludes with personal moments of writing satisfaction, emphasizing that achieving one's intended effect makes all hard work worthwhile.