Darwin the Writer by George Levine (review)
- Darwin the Writer by George Levine
“Twiners entwining twiners,” twenty-three-year-old Charles Darwin wrote in his journal in Brazil. “Tresses like hair—beautiful lepidoptera—Silence—Hosanna.” His granddaughter Nora Barlow, editing that journal, describes how he wrestled with writing: “There seems to be,” he said, “a sort of fatality in my mind, leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form.” But the Beagle made him a writer. That “Hosanna” encapsulates the wonder and relish in his looking which jumps like an electric current into his language.
One book he took on the Beagle was the New Testament in Greek; though we do not know (said skeptical Nora, who later became my grandmother) that he ever opened it. He certainly opened Paradise Lost: the Origin too is about reacting to loss. [End Page 147]
Darwin’s style is inseparable from his thought, and it is thrilling to read a master critic, passionately alert to language (and nature), giving him full linguistic and critical attention. He would be so pleased. His sense of urgent connection to all he sees seems to call out the best in the very best: this book is a human as well as literary treat.
Ruth Padel’s book Darwin—A Life in Poems is a biography in lyric poetry of her great-great grandfather Charles Darwin. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a radio speaker for the BBC on music, poetry, and conservation, her publications include nine poetry collections, most recently The Mara Crossing, and a first-hand account of tiger conservation, Tigers in Red Weather. She is a council member of the Zoological Society of London.
