Monday, August 25, 2014

CK and Owen: "their intercourse was literary"

It’s clear that CK was in love with Owen, but — though he was rumoured at the time to have seduced him — the balance of probability is that they were not lovers. Their intercourse was literary. CK admired and championed Owen, and they bonded (really!) with a fierce intensity over their mutual interest in assonance and pararhyme.

Calm down, it’s not CK Stead and Owen Marshall, it’s CK Scott Moncrieff, the translator of Proust, and Wilfred Owen, the World War I poet. Taken from Sam Leith’s Spectator review of Chasing Lost Time: The Life of CK Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator by Jean Findlay.

Still, in a parallel universe. . .