giselle, I think you're right in assuming that Chesterton is being ironic. To me this has something to do with his position on anarchy. Examine Gregory. He's impulsive, very romantic, very proud and rather sure of himself. He's young, intelligent, with a fiery spirit.. yet perhaps more bullish than knowledgeable. His description as "... a walking blasphemy, a blend of the angel and the ape", I think is very descriptive. The people around him listen to him.. but mostly for entertainment. And Syme dismisses him exactly on his romanticism, his lack of seriousness.
His argument on anarchy is also very romantic. He views anarchy as an artistic expression; in his words: "[an artist] sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen...". To him the act of revolting, of causing anarchy is beautiful and he seems to care nothing of the political aspect of it. He seems somewhat short sighted, yet passionate. Maybe this is why Syme finds him ridiculous, why he assures Rosamond that Gregory will never throw a bomb... because he is more a romantic than a revolutionary.

I suppose this is what Chesterton thinks of the anarchist. He's saying that this is what most revolutionaries look like. Not the big men sitting in dark rooms making ominous plans, but the ones throwing bombs, making protests and rallying the masses. He's making fun of these young idealist men, who are so passionate and yet have no idea of what they're really doing...

giselle wrote:I think another interesting point in Chp 1 is the concern that Rosalind has for Gregory, not for his ideas or something that might please Gregory, but for whether or not he would use 'bombs' in his pursuit of anarchy. She is concerned for his safety but doesn't take his ideas seriously. As an anarchist, Gregory knows that a great many people will just write him off as a wing-nut and laugh behind his back and this does not please him at all, he is a serious anarchist to be reckoned with.

That made me laugh. It reminded me of my mother. She never seemed to care much about the reasons for what I was doing... so long as I wasn't doing anything embarrassing and I was being safe about it. It's as if the winding path a thought might take inside my head didn't matter so long as the actions resulting from it were ultimately acceptable.
Also, Rosamond's introduction is really weird. We're not going to see her at all later on? Yet she's given a lot of importance. She's Gregory's sister and Syme's pretty taken with her... I wonder why that is?

EDIT: I'm making a lot of assumptions here... I hope none of this proves to be wildly innacurate later on xD.

I did some checking and found that this piece was published in 1908. Historically, that would've been when Chesterton saw the anarchist movement in full bloom. To me, chapter 1 truly shows Chesterton's apologetic style of slash and burn against everything that is antithetical to Christian belief. Lucian comes across as rather unhinged and ridiculous in light of the setting. Syme is more "in touch" with society and the park around him. He rightly points out that the light post allows Lucian the privilege of seeing the natural beauty of the tree and that railing against it is nonsensical. Highlighting Lucian's absurdities is a key strength of Chesterton, I wonder at times how he would've handled Christopher Hitchens in a debate. Syme adeptly parries Lucian's argument by pointing out how the anarchist poet desires structure for his argument. "I beg your pardon, I forgot we had abolished all conventions." Beyond these mere points, Chesterton firmly destroys the anarchy of Lucian by pointing out that people utter mere truths without meaning. The statements regarding bombings and the tactics to undertake revolution are true, in the sense that those things follow anarchist beliefs, but Lucian does not mean them. He voices the platitudes and tactics, but doesn't show his heart and meaning in his beliefs, by actually following through with their violent eventualities. This last point really stuck with me in this reading. At this point, I hope chapter 2 contains some twists and turns. The social sciences training in me leads me to believe that Chesterton showed his cards early on this one, I'm curious as to how things will progress from this point. On to more reading.

Pheidippides wrote:At this point, I hope chapter 2 contains some twists and turns.

Heh, I just started reading chapter two... believe me, something twists..

Most of the women were of the kind vaguely
called emancipated, and professed some protest against male supremacy.
Yet these new women would always pay to a man the extravagant compliment
which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening while he
is talking.

marvellous stuff

"Serious!" he cried. "Good Lord! is this street serious? Are these
damned Chinese lanterns serious? Is the whole caboodle serious? One
comes here and talks a pack of bosh, and perhaps some sense as well,
but I should think very little of a man who didn't keep something in
the background of his life that was more serious than all this
talking--something more serious, whether it was religion or only drink."

i'm currently on a Chesterton bender!

devouring "Heretics" ATM, magnificent read (or listen courtesy of librivox)

GKC is so good at coming up with genius aphorisms and working them into his writing.

Heretics, really? You're listening to Heretics?

Next thing you know you will be on to Orthodoxy.

I have just picked up this novel and finished the first chapter....I will attempt a chapter by chapter discussion.

My first impressions of chapter 1 and in no particular order (after so many fine discussions notwithstanding):

I found the two poets slightly irritating (though Syme annoyed me somewhat less but I expect this was the purpose), I suspect mostly because they were so polar and somewhat exaggerated. But I suppose this is likely to be the result Chesterton was aiming for. Plus, being the first chapter the characters are so early in their development. The conversation/debate between the poets was for me somewhere in between how VLML and Giselle considered it. It was as though both characters allowed the debate to get out of hand, to go further than each of them perhaps intended or meant - as though ego or principle or the weight of their ideas took over the conversation and the men themselves.

At the risk of sounding trite - both poets were correct and both poets were wrong. I believe this is the point being made by Chesterton, that the rub between the extremes of chaos and order is more interesting and that the extremes per se are either meaningless or at least naive.

As an aside, I was mildly disappointed by the somewhat shallow portrayal of Miss Gregory and Syme's immediate regard of her. Although I acknowledge that the chapter hints at a deeper reflection in the future and is probably a reasonably accurate description for the time.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest.

Just finished the 1st chapter.

There is one question that keeps me busy: Is this real? The reason I ask, is the description of the scenery in the first chapter (..."the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much as a workshop for artist, but as a fail but finished work of art." - and many more, e.g. the description of the poet, the philosopher and the biologist). Furthermore, there is the subtitle "A Nightmare".

I have asked myself, why I did I ask myself "what is this?" the whole 1st chapter. I am not sure, but it all feels so artificial, as if it really would be a dream that is described.

Did anybody else feel the same way? Or did my imagination run riot??

Aomame wrote:Just finished the 1st chapter.

There is one question that keeps me busy: Is this real?

Good question. After reading a bit further, I see the first chapter as framing the question 'what is the place in society of the thinking man?'