Aldous Huxley: Prose Style
 

Huxley writes in a style wonderfully suited to purposes of exposition and discussion. It is a lucid style, forceful and yet elegant. It is free from all kinds of obscurity. It is not too learned but is demands close attention to be understood. The theme is developed in a logical manner. He makes no digressions. Huxley is a persuasive writer with a style that is very useful to a propagandist. His style combines his intellectuality with intelligibility. Nor is it a bare style. It is a sumptuous style and free from what “surplusage”. Huxley often gives us crisp sentences and shows himself a master of the condensed statement. Here are a few examples to show.

[B]“Recognizableness is an artistic quality which most people find profoundly thrilling.”[/B]

[B]“Hence the affirmations of the great obvious truths have been in general incompetent and therefore odious.” [/B]

[B]“It is extraordinary to what lengths a panic fear can drive its victims.”[/B]

Huxley’s style shows a capacity to write both seriously and sarcastically. He can wrote in a tone of mild disapproval and he can wrote in a denunciatory tone, he can wrote in matter-of-fact style and he can become forceful, even aggressive. He can say many things in passing, though he never loses sight of the main idea. It is a style which the discriminating reader with any literary background not only likes but enjoys. His style is distinguished by his intense concern for the plight of mankind and his zeal for reform.

Huxley’s style covers an enormous range not of form but of subject-matter. Apart from his purely creative work, he has written learnedly of painting, music, science, philosophy, religion and a dozen other topics. Yet, considering the breath of his interests and the magnitude of his output, his examined as a whole shows a surprising homogeneity.

Huxley’s style did not make use of the autobiographical material on any big scale but it does make its appearance and lends grace to his essay. Huxley had an intelligence and vast knowledge gained from much traveling, immense-reading and constant meeting with intelligent people. He had a full mind and an unquenchable spirit of inquiry. His essays are relevant to the situation in his time and ours. So his style gives us a real view of the intellectual life of the western man.

Huxley’s style shows his discursive quality which is native to the essay from. In writing his essays he could begin anywhere; anything stated him off, and he proceeded without any jerks or jumps to a serious consideration of one of the many subjects which absorbed him. The word-management and shaping of his material gives us most pleasure.

Huxley’s style is vigorous and economical. His style nearly always makes him easy to read he is never trivial.

Huxley’s style as a life-worshipper urges the reader to explore all possible worlds of experience. He believes that only a new religion can save mankind from the peril into which modern civilization is leading it. This new religion must be one with the aim should be the enhancement of life.

Huxley’s style had matured his world outlook; he was seeking a unitive knowledge of God serenely; his prose technique was not only adequate to the demand he made on it, but he exploited it with a masterly skill.

Huxley’s style awakens our interest and sustains it so easily and imperceptibly that we get lost in his meditations which mostly discuss the dual nature of man, man in society and man in solitude, the nature of ultimate reality and the possibility of our becoming aware of it in our existential condition.

Huxley’s style in “Adonis and Alphabet” urges us not to take language too seriously. Nature presents us with a complexity of material to express which words and sentences are inadequate. Language is serious as in instrument, but it is a crude interpreter of direct experience. So his style rejected abstraction in art as much as in science.

Huxley’s style when dealing with the various subjects does not take just a surface view. He goes deep into every matter. He does not speak just like an amateur; he speaks with authority and seems to know his subject almost like a specialist. He has a highly analytical mind and approach.

The range of Huxley's style is very wide as it attempts to evolve some kind of synthesis from the political, ethical and religious confusions of modern times. As a humanist he had strong belief in the individual but was obsessed with the evil of materialism.

Huxley’s gives evidence of what may be called encyclopedic knowledge. From the very outset he gave evidence of his well-developed interests in philosophy, biology, sociology, economics, religion, anthropology, politics, literature – ancient as well as modern – eugenics, painting, music, sculpture, architecture and metaphysics. Even this list cannot be said to be exhaustive. His fund of knowledge is truly amazing. And, what is more, he writes on all these subjects with great confidence and competence. His writings are both enlightening and provocative.