Antarctic Notes 1: Edwardian Form

One way to organise literary forms is on a spectrum from those which allow the fewest possible voices to speak to those which allow the most to speak. Thus we might see the possible range of literature running from the most monological, closed, didactic forms (propaganda of one form or another--Upton Sinclair at his worst, for example) to the most polyphonous, dialogic, and open-to-interpretation forms (the more sprawling realist novels, certain forms of experimental poetry, postmodern collage, and so forth).

It is fairly widely accepted that one end of this spectrum is less ethical, progressive, democratic, etc., than the other. That is to say, it is fairly common place to see the didacticism of Sinclair or later proletarian fiction as authoritarian and bad, and to see the openness and polyvocality of, say, Djuna Barnes or Thomas Pynchon as democratic, open-to-debate, and, therefore, good. The multiple voices in the works of these more esteemed writers encourage diversity of perspectives thereby undermining the authoritarian politics embodied in the forms at the other end of the spectrum. Or so the usual reading goes.

Reading Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World suggests a politics of form absent from the typical reading described above. Cherry-Garrard's memoir describes Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated attempt to discover the South Pole, and Charry-Gerrard's own role in it. In many ways, despite the hyper-masculine, perfectly Edwardian subject matter of exploration conquest, and the extremes of human endurance, the book's form appears more typical of later postmodern writers' collage and multiple voices. That is to say, the book's form is remarkably "democratic." Throughout the book, Charry-Gerrard includes other writers' work in the form of scientific papers, diaries, letters home, and later recollections that allow him to elaborate on topics in which he is not expert and events for which he was not present, as well as to give other people's perspectives on events he has already described first-hand. Indeed, at times these quotations almost overwhelm the writer's own voice, taking up pages at a time. His deference, in particular, to Scott's diary tends to render Cherry-Garrard's own voice almost secondary within his own text.

These citations and quotations, however, serve almost the opposite purpose to those usually lauded in polyvocal, dialogic literature. Rather than showing a great diversity of voices contesting each other or illuminating multiple perspectives, the polyphony here serves only to highlight the remarkable unanimity of the voyage's personnel. Every voice agrees as to the purpose and value of the voyage, the nature of the obstacles faced, and the heroism of the men in facing them. The controlling metaphor here is not the multicultural fabric or bustling agora, but one taken from the polar journey itself: multiple men yoked to a sledge, working together to pull in the same direction.

Thus Cherry-Garrard's book suggests a different possibility for multi-voiced literary forms: a distinctively Edwardian vision of many people all speaking to the same purpose, working toward the same goal. There is no postmodern diversity or parallax here; only solidarity and unanimity. Thus emerges from Cherry-Garrard's form something like the Edwardian postmodern or, perhaps, the Edwardian anti-postmodern. Or, perhaps, the last glimpse of a total unity of purpose before World War I would make any such thing inconceivable.