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Opium Fogs
- GenresFiction
158 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1963
About the author
Rosemary Tonks
14 books60 followersRosemary Tonks (17 October 1928 – 15 April 2014) was an English poet and author. After publishing two poetry collections, six novels, and pieces in numerous media outlets, she disappeared from the public eye after her conversion to Fundamentalist Christianity in the 1970s; little was known about her life past that point, until her death.
Rosemary Desmond Boswell Tonks was born October 17, 1928 in Gillingham, Kent and was educated at Wentworth college in Bournemouth. She published children's stories while a teenager. In 1949, she married Michael Lightband (a mechanical engineer, and later a financier), and the couple moved to Karachi, where she began to write poetry. Attacks of paratyphoid, contracted in Calcutta, and of polio, contracted in Karachi, forced a return to England. She later lived briefly in Paris.
Tonks worked for the BBC, writing stories and reviewing poetry for the BBC European Service. She published poems in collections and The Observer, the New Statesman, Transatlantic Review, London Magazine, Encounter, and Poetry Review, she read on the BBC's Third Programme. She also wrote "poetic novels".
Her work appears in many anthologies, including Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (ed. Keith Tuma), Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, British Poetry since 1945, and The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (ed. Sean O'Brien).[citation needed]
Tonks stopped publishing poetry in the early 1970s, at about the same time as her conversion to a form of Christianity. Little was known publicly about her subsequent life past that point. As Andrew Motion wrote in 2004, she "Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years... no trace of her seems to survive – apart from the writing she left behind." The Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, which published three of Tonks' poems in 2001, states that permission to use her poems was obtained from a literary agency, Sheil Land Associates, Ltd. In the 30-minute BBC Radio 4 Lost Voices documentary, "The Poet Who Vanished", broadcast March 29, 2009, Brian Patten observed, from the literary world's pespective, she'd "evaporated into air like the Cheshire cat"; Tonks had disappeared from public view and was living a hermetic existence, refusing telephone and personal calls from friends, family and the media.
Tonks' poems offer a stylised view of an urban literary subculture around 1960, full of hedonism and decadence. The poet seems to veer from the ennui of Charles Baudelaire to exuberant disbelief of modern civilisation. There are illicit love affairs in seedy hotels and scenes of café life across Europe and the Middle East; there are sage reflections on men who are shy with women. She often targets the pathetic pretensions of writers and intellectuals. Yet she is often buoyant and chatty, bemused rather than critical, even self-deprecating.
She believed poetry should look good on a printed page as well as sound good when read: "There is an excitement for the eye in a poem on the page which is completely different from the ear's reaction". Of her style, she said "I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life—with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys."
Rosemary Desmond Boswell Tonks was born October 17, 1928 in Gillingham, Kent and was educated at Wentworth college in Bournemouth. She published children's stories while a teenager. In 1949, she married Michael Lightband (a mechanical engineer, and later a financier), and the couple moved to Karachi, where she began to write poetry. Attacks of paratyphoid, contracted in Calcutta, and of polio, contracted in Karachi, forced a return to England. She later lived briefly in Paris.
Tonks worked for the BBC, writing stories and reviewing poetry for the BBC European Service. She published poems in collections and The Observer, the New Statesman, Transatlantic Review, London Magazine, Encounter, and Poetry Review, she read on the BBC's Third Programme. She also wrote "poetic novels".
Her work appears in many anthologies, including Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (ed. Keith Tuma), Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, British Poetry since 1945, and The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (ed. Sean O'Brien).[citation needed]
Tonks stopped publishing poetry in the early 1970s, at about the same time as her conversion to a form of Christianity. Little was known publicly about her subsequent life past that point. As Andrew Motion wrote in 2004, she "Disappeared! What happened? Because I admire her poems, I've been trying to find out for years... no trace of her seems to survive – apart from the writing she left behind." The Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, which published three of Tonks' poems in 2001, states that permission to use her poems was obtained from a literary agency, Sheil Land Associates, Ltd. In the 30-minute BBC Radio 4 Lost Voices documentary, "The Poet Who Vanished", broadcast March 29, 2009, Brian Patten observed, from the literary world's pespective, she'd "evaporated into air like the Cheshire cat"; Tonks had disappeared from public view and was living a hermetic existence, refusing telephone and personal calls from friends, family and the media.
Tonks' poems offer a stylised view of an urban literary subculture around 1960, full of hedonism and decadence. The poet seems to veer from the ennui of Charles Baudelaire to exuberant disbelief of modern civilisation. There are illicit love affairs in seedy hotels and scenes of café life across Europe and the Middle East; there are sage reflections on men who are shy with women. She often targets the pathetic pretensions of writers and intellectuals. Yet she is often buoyant and chatty, bemused rather than critical, even self-deprecating.
She believed poetry should look good on a printed page as well as sound good when read: "There is an excitement for the eye in a poem on the page which is completely different from the ear's reaction". Of her style, she said "I have developed a visionary modern lyric, and, for it, an idiom in which I can write lyrically, colloquially, and dramatically. My subject is city life—with its sofas, hotel corridors, cinemas, underworlds, cardboard suitcases, self-willed buses, banknotes, soapy bathrooms, newspaper-filled parks; and its anguish, its enraged excitement, its great lonely joys."
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 8, 2021
Первый (хотя на самом деле фиг знает; они вышли практически одновременно с "Эмиром", который, говорят, еще эксцентричнее) "поэтический роман" английской "исчезнувшей поэтессы", чьи остальные романы сейчас практически невозможно найти (хотя поэзия и короткая проза переизданы, так что надежда есть). Написан он драгоценно, хотя отнюдь не ради интриги или сюжета, а ради языка, и читать его лучше соответственно неспешно.
Роузмэри Тонкс - продолжательница жанра и духа "комедий манер" не столько Ивлина Уо, сколько Уильяма Джерхарди, который своей интонацией обязан, конечно, Чехову, а легкой абсурдинкой - Гоголю. А поэтому каждая фраза у нее звонка и остроумна, их цитировать не перецитировать.
И фигура экзальтированного и злоязыкого библиотекаря Жерара, "лишнего человека", брюзжащего на всех и вся, очень симпатична и вневременна. Эдакая смесь Печорина с Чацким, только остроумнее и с нескончаемым внутренним монологом. И он отнюдь не персонаж де Куинси, а "опийные туманы" заглавия - это вовсе не "вьется опиумный дым", как можно себе представить. Там все чуточку сложнее, конечно.
А ключ к роману отыскивается чуть ли не в самом конце, когда становится понятно, что обобщенные "The Young", проживающие в больших количествах в доме Д-ра - это явно компания каких-то веселых прото-рок-музыкантов вместе с "Их Сатанинским Величеством". Это они вводят в ткань романа пространство пост-модерновой свободы - и сразу становится как-то легче дышать, ибо душный "опийный туман" остался явно в прошлом.
Вся Тонкс сама, конечно, - превосходный кандидат для "женского проекта" "Инспирии". Вот Брэд Бигелоу о ее книгах - он чуть ли не единственный ее читатель сейчас: https://neglectedbooks.com/?tag=rosem...
Роузмэри Тонкс - продолжательница жанра и духа "комедий манер" не столько Ивлина Уо, сколько Уильяма Джерхарди, который своей интонацией обязан, конечно, Чехову, а легкой абсурдинкой - Гоголю. А поэтому каждая фраза у нее звонка и остроумна, их цитировать не перецитировать.
И фигура экзальтированного и злоязыкого библиотекаря Жерара, "лишнего человека", брюзжащего на всех и вся, очень симпатична и вневременна. Эдакая смесь Печорина с Чацким, только остроумнее и с нескончаемым внутренним монологом. И он отнюдь не персонаж де Куинси, а "опийные туманы" заглавия - это вовсе не "вьется опиумный дым", как можно себе представить. Там все чуточку сложнее, конечно.
А ключ к роману отыскивается чуть ли не в самом конце, когда становится понятно, что обобщенные "The Young", проживающие в больших количествах в доме Д-ра - это явно компания каких-то веселых прото-рок-музыкантов вместе с "Их Сатанинским Величеством". Это они вводят в ткань романа пространство пост-модерновой свободы - и сразу становится как-то легче дышать, ибо душный "опийный туман" остался явно в прошлом.
Вся Тонкс сама, конечно, - превосходный кандидат для "женского проекта" "Инспирии". Вот Брэд Бигелоу о ее книгах - он чуть ли не единственный ее читатель сейчас: https://neglectedbooks.com/?tag=rosem...
April 30, 2026
Having thoroughly enjoyed Tonks' The Bloater and The Halt During the Chase, and to a lesser degree even The Way Out of Berkeley Square, it pains me to give this such a low rating - but it is a seriously hot mess.
There is some disagreement as to whether this or Emir was written first, but it shows all the hallmarks of an early work, with the author not really having full command of their material. Not only is the very simple story needlessly difficult to follow, but there are very few of the sparkling bon mots contained in her other works. Disappointing - but at least it's short.
There is some disagreement as to whether this or Emir was written first, but it shows all the hallmarks of an early work, with the author not really having full command of their material. Not only is the very simple story needlessly difficult to follow, but there are very few of the sparkling bon mots contained in her other works. Disappointing - but at least it's short.
February 16, 2023
Bizarre but fascinating.
(The ebook has a lot of OCR errors though)
(The ebook has a lot of OCR errors though)
April 3, 2024
Came because I thought the title was Opium Frogs stayed because of Tonks' charmingly eccentric writing.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews