The Art of Wandering: The Writer as Walker by Coverley Merlin

Author:Coverley, Merlin [Coverley, Merlin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781842436400
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2012-09-30T20:00:00+00:00

Notes

1 Iain Sinclair, Blake’s London: The Topographic Sublime, London: Swedenborg Society, 2011, p. 25

2 Arthur Machen, The London Adventure, or the Art of Wandering, London: Martin Secker, 1924, p. 69

3 This urban metaphor is most powerfully conveyed by De Quincey and Dickens, but is prefigured by Wordsworth in his account of his ‘London Residence’ in Book VII of the Prelude, in which he writes: ‘Private Courts,/ Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes,/[…] May then entangle us awhile,/Conducted through those labyrinths unawares.’ Wordsworth, ‘The Prelude’, in Major Works, p. 473

4 John Gay, ‘Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London’ in Clare Brant & Susan Whyman, eds., Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London: John Gay’s Trivia (1716), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 169–219, p. 170

5 For this reason, those attempting to follow in Gay’s footsteps across London today are likely to be disappointed: ‘In my attempt to walk some of the spaces represented in Trivia, it was abundantly clear that using the poem like a map was impossible because places are not represented in an orderly or logical way – the journey is more like sticking a pin in a map, than following a linear route.’ Alison Stenton, ‘Spatial Stories: Movement in the City and Cultural Geography’, in Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London: John Gay’s Trivia (1716), 62–74, p. 70

6 Gay, ‘Trivia’, p. 185

7 William Blake, ‘London’, in The Complete Poems, ed. by Alicia Ostriker, London: Penguin, 2004, p. 128

8 Blake, ‘Jerusalem’, in The Complete Poems, p. 700

9 Peter Ackroyd, ‘The London that Became Jerusalem’, in The Times, March 3, 2007 and at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article1461686.ece

10 Peter Ackroyd, Blake, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995, pp. 30–1

11 Blake, ‘Milton’, in The Complete Poems, p. 521

12 Blake, ‘Jerusalem’, in The Complete Poems, p. 686

13 Blake, ‘Jerusalem’, in The Complete Poems, p. 725. ‘So here was a very interesting series of instructions’, writes Iain Sinclair, describing this passage, ‘a particular kind of walk, and quite an eccentric journey laid out, a trajectory which is both spiritual and physical’. See Sinclair, Blake’s London, p. 17

14 Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory, London: Granta, 1997, p. 208. Blake has proved crucial in moulding Sinclair’s own perception of the city: ‘The triangle of concentration. A sense of this and of all the other triangulations of the city: Blake, Bunyan, Defoe, the dissenting monuments in Bunhill Fields. Everything I believe in, everything that London can do to you, starts there.’ Sinclair, Lights Out, p. 34

15 Blake, ‘Milton’, in The Complete Poems, p. 554

16 For a practical example of Blake’s influence upon contemporary London walking, see ‘Blakewalking’ by Thomas Wright at http://www.timwright.typepad.com/L_O_S/. Here Blakewalking is described as ‘a new way of conversing, participating, publishing, performing and creating on the hoof. The aim of Blakewalking is to transform an everyday walk into a Visionary Experience. We want you to join us out on the streets, on the web and on your mobile – making notes, recording thoughts and feelings, responding to the world we walk through – and the world within.’

17 Marples, p. 59

18 Marples, p. 60

19 Marples, p. 63

20 Marples, p. 63

21 Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings, ed.

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