Kept out of sight in this rogue essay is the classic question: Who's your audience?<p>If you're writing for yourself (and maybe a very small number of equally erudite readers) cut loose! Embrace "anfractuous density and heedless flamboyance." But if you're trying to change people's minds, or share knowledge widely, everything in this essay is defiantly at odds with what's necessary to get the rest of the world to pay attention.
What's interesting to me is that the examples he gives are beautiful because of their sincerity. Even if there is artifice, or they're being formal or playful, their style reflects their reading, their shared culture and of course as you say their audience - which I think for them was a very small elite.<p>Anyone who writes in a flamboyant style now - as the essay's author does - necessarily comes across as a kind of pastiche. There is something camp or affected about it. Maybe that can change. Maybe a new flamboyance can develop. But I think his antiquated style of flamboyance is unlikely to come back to real life.
English prose is one of those things I never quite got well; I grew up having read different versions of the Bible (like King James), old English versions of books, and found it to more "overtly wordy" (found it funny to imagine people talking like that about grocery shopping). I am curious how prose may change in 20-30 years given how cemented internet/social media talk becomes the norm, as well AI (and however education goes during that time). I agree with the author on some points but it depends on the material and subject matter where each matters.
There is something distinctly different from people speaking and writing in English prose in the 1600's versus someone trying to do so today. The person from today is infinitely more likely to be putting on airs than the person who is not commanding attention as an anachronism in the past. To be sure, Royal Societies were all about impressing each other to a certain extent, but also, there were some clever fellows/ladies that hovered and flitted about them.
> A good part of our sleepes is peeced out with visions,<p>Because of current slang, I read this as “peaced out” then realized it’s “pieced out”. Peace out