Ehsan Danish

Nice to be appreciated for doing something useful once in a while! danno_uk 19:50, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

		The Civility Barnstar
		For being civil in times of strife and for tirelessly discussing with the opposition when others get tired of talking.

	The Teamwork Barnstar
	Hi Pincrete. Just a note to let you know the Sexuality of Adolf Hitler article has now been nominated for GA. Thanks again for your help in the clean-up. Diannaa (talk) 16:17, 8 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it has now passed GA review, thanks for helping to get it there. Cheers, Kierzek (talk) 16:03, 9 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Pincrete

Thanks for the message about reverting my reversion on Godot. It's so civilised to get a message of explanation!

To be honest I reverted the edit because I felt that the editor who removed the Laurel and Hardy reference didn't 'get the joke' - but you're right, its relevance to Godot is pretty tenuous. Fair enough. Keep up the good work etc. Gravender (talk) 17:36, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Pincrete, belated greetings and apologies for having not turning up to see off the idiotic sock-puppet accusation by Malagurski's groupie. I presume he was up to something like he and the gang of pals always are (Assume good faith unless tedious experience has taught you better, as they say). I hope his little enterprise got seen off in the manner it deserved.

I'm afraid domestic circumstances became too pressing for me to be able to carry on wasting time on the futilities of coping with people like that and there's no prospect of me being able to return to the fray for a long while. I'm very grateful that you still have the energy and determination not to give up on the endless struggle between good and nonsense. Very best wishes, and thanks for all your efforts. Opbeith (talk) 11:22, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

	Peacemaker67 RfA Appreciation award
	Thank you for participating and supporting at my RfA. It was very much appreciated, and I am humbled that the community saw fit to trust me with the tools. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:01, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

		The Minor Barnstar
		For not editing WP just for the barnstars. DarjeelingTea (talk) 03:33, 20 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		Thanks for maintaining the integrity of the Wikipedia. Zakaria1978 (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

		Holiday cheer
		Here is a snowman a gift a boar's head and something blue for your listening pleasure. Enjoy and have a wonderful 2022 P. MarnetteD|Talk 12:32, 19 December 2021 (UTC) [reply]

		The Copyeditor's Barnstar
		Thank you for your copyediting work on Ukrainian refugee crisis. It's a rapidly expanding page with many contributions from newer editors, and your changes have helped keep it clean and readable. Ganesha811 (talk) 22:44, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

		The WikiChevrons
		Pincrete: I hereby award you the WikiChevrons. Bestowed upon you for your continued contributions in military history and especially in areas where neutrality and careful RS research are vital (and also for willing to lend a hand, as needed). Cheers, Kierzek (talk) 18:37, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Precious

Five years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:02, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Re: Pullman ou write, "Source says he 'borrowed' from these works (among others), not that they influenced him. He unapologetically declares that he borrows from everywhere and anywhere. "His Dark Materials,” drew not only on Milton but also John Keats, Heinrich von Kleist, and William Blake" doesn't mean that they influenced him stylistically (though his respect for Blake is well documented) it means he borrowed ideas from them as well as many others. from them."

With respect, he was influenced by Heinrich von Kleist, as he acknowledges in the Acknowledgements of The Amber Spyglass: "My principle when researching a novel is 'Read like a butterfly, write like a bee', and if this story contains any honey, it is entirely because of the quality of the nectar that I found in the work of better writers. But there are three debts that need to be acknowledged above the rest. One is to the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist, which I first read in translation by Idris Parry in the Times Literary Supplement in 1978. The other is to John Milton's Paradise Lost. The third is to the works of William Blake."^[1]: 1011

So there you have it: von Kleist is one of his three primary influences, alongside Milton and Blake. And Pullman is a Romantic, as Harold Bloom notes in a blurb for his Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm: "All of his gifts, including his prose eloquence and his endless, high-Romantic imagination, are manifested in this marvelous retelling of Grimm." (That quote would be worth adding, though I can't find a source for it besides the blurb. Not surprising Bloom would admire Pullman, given their shared love of Blake.) Charlie Faust (talk) 16:56, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Charlie Faust, then use the actual quotes from Pullman where he says how he was influenced or inspired by Milton, Blake and Kleist, not a New Yorker review that mentions something else about some of them, almost in passing (Blake and Milton are fairly obvious, and widely acknowledged thematic inspirations, Kleist I had forgotten). Even so, it isn't clear whether/how he is saying that he was influenced stylistically by Kleist, or simply inspired by Kleist to write better. He often makes vivid metaphors, that don't 'reduce' easily or reliably. He is of course paraphrasing M Ali with butterflies and bees.

The Bloom quote is Bloom's opinion of what kind of writer PP is, and would have to be rendered and attributed as such, not stretched to say in WP:VOICE that he was influenced by romantic poets or any particular romantic poet. One of the things that astonished me when reading HDM was the range of ideas and sources he had absorbed and modified to his own purposes (without losing acessibility). He boasts of 'borrowing' ideas from all and sundry.

Some of the stuff about his opinion of C S Lewis is also borderline 'essay' IMO. The source it quotes from has PP adopting all sorts of 'hypothetical positions' for the purposes of developing an argument, then punching holes in the argument he himself has previously made. He clearly sees Lewis' writing as joyless though.Pincrete (talk) 20:53, 10 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, T. S. Eliot said "Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal". By that standard (and others), Pullman is a mature writer. Actually, he may have gotten the idea of "Dust" from Eliot ("I will show you fear in a handful of dust") in addition to Blake ("The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy.") And there's Shakespeare's "quintessence of dust", not to mention Genesis ("from dust thou art...")

He gave a lecture on von Kleist's "On the Marionette Theatre", included in Daemon Voices (recommended). I believe von Kleist was the inspiration for Iorek Bynison. I did add the quote from the Acknowledgements to The Amber Spyglass ("read like a butterfly, write like a bee." And yes, I'm sure he's tipping his hat to Muhammad Ali.) You can find it under "Views on writing". But I believe von Kleist (and the Romantics more generally) are worth noting. His Clockwork, or All Wound Up (recommended) is a Romantic fairy tale.

In his Philippa Pearce lecture, he talks about the "multiscient" narrator, who knows many things. He seems to be multiscient. I actually think the Bloom quote would be worth adding, and wonder if Bloom wrote any more on Pullman. (You'll note that the title of my post is a nod to Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence and one of Pullman's favorite books, Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.) Charlie Faust (talk) 02:15, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

He actually seems to have respect for Lewis's critical writing, approvingly quoting "I now like hock, which I know I would not have liked as a child. But I still like lemon squash. I count this as growth or development because, while before I had one pleasure, I now have two." His main objection seems to be to Susan's exclusion from Narnia, and the end of The Last Battle.

I think the Tatar piece ("Philip Pullman's Twice-Told Tales") is worth linking to. If not von Kleist, maybe the following, that poetry taught him that words had "weight and shape and colour and taste as well as meaning."^[2] She says Pullman is a synesthete; I don't know if she means he actually has synesthesia, or is attuned to the color (or colour) of words. By that standard, all great writers are synesthetes. Charlie Faust (talk) 02:32, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Charlie, I'm approaching this from the PoV that simply recording influences, even more 'ranking' them, is not very informative if one can't say how he or someone else says they influenced PP. I'm obviously not going to dispute that he praises Kleist and refers to a huge debt that he owes Kleist. It's just that I'm not convinced that this translates into 1st/2nd/3rd/nth influence, nor how imformative that would be anyway.

I'm sure he, or someone else has recorded explicitly the relationship between Milton and HDM, but something akin to "epic cosmological tale dealing with issues of good and evil", would be my own 'take' of an obvious parallel. Whatever, identifying how other works/writers have impacted HDM/PP is infinitely more valuable IMO than simply recording that they have.

Regarding Lewis, in one of the pieces you cite, PP says something akin to that he doesn't object so much to the presence of the Christian prosletysing as the absence of the primary christian virtues - love or joy in like. Pincrete (talk) 06:22, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's right. He does think Lewis is worth engaging with, even if he objects to his treatment of Susan and the end of The Last Battle.

I thought his Horn Book essay "The Republic of Heaven" was worth adding, as it sums up his views pretty well. So I added it. (It's the last piece in Daemon Voices, which, again, I recommend.) Also in Daemon Voices is "God and Dust", Pullman's notes for a day of study with Robert Harries, Bishop of Oxford. Where could we find a link to that?

I do think Tatar is worth adding. I have not yet read Pullman's Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm, but Tatar is an expert on folklore, and she recommends it. (Pullman's Clockwork, or All Wound Up is a fairy tale which, again, I recommend.) Tatar understands well the anxiety of influence.

Do you know where we could find a link for the Bloom quote? I think it's worth adding. Bloom didn't approve of many contemporary authors (Roth, McCarthy, Pynchon and DeLillo here in the US; Ackroyd, Banville and Byatt in the UK, and the fantasists Ursula K. Le Guin and John Crowley.) That he'd praise someone who is (ostensibly) a children's author is pretty notable, I think. Like him or not, it's hard to ignore Bloom's influence. Charlie Faust (talk) 12:56, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You mentioned stylistic influence. I think there's little doubt that Romantic poetry (and poetry more generally) influenced Pullman stylistically, specifically the lesson that words have "weight and shape and colour and taste as well as meaning."^[3] I agree with you that stylistic influence is more important than whether or not Pullman is a latter-day Romantic. Moreover, adding the lesson that words have "weight and shape and colour and taste as well as meaning" would, hopefully, impart it to readers.

If you're looking for things to read (you may not be!), Pullman's list of favorite books is enlightening; I linked to it on the page. Charlie Faust (talk) 20:13, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The reading list in question. Charlie Faust (talk) 02:46, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Something worth listening to: Pullman in conversation with his English teacher, Enid Jones, moderated by Terry Jones. When he was "twelve or thirteen" he heard older students reciting T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi": "It intoxicated me. That was one of the moments I realized poetry was going to be very important to me. It had a physical effect on me. My skin bristled."^[4] He would have similar experiences with Donne and Milton. I think it would be worth adding to the page. Charlie Faust (talk) 22:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]