Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

"We've all got knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians!"

No, I didn't forget. I was simply detained . . . unavoidably.

THE SC PLAYERS PRESENT:

The Lion in Winter by James Goldman

Gallagher- Henry II
Anna- Eleanor of Aquitaine
Barbour- Richard
Wilson- Geoffrey
Paige- John
Myself- Phillip II
Ardith- Alais

This is such a great play, and I've seen both movie versions of it. I actually prefer the newer one, I have to say . . . but that's beside the point.

In an unusual turn of events, we had just enough people, but one too many girls. So Paige got to take on Prince John. It actually worked, in a strange and amusing sort of way. I enjoyed my brief onstage time as Phillip II, particularly the infamous bedroom scene. Poor Barbour never saw it coming . . .

And so we brought the fall '04 season to a successful conclusion with one of the more unconventional Christmas plays I know of . . . Jolly good times for everyone, and on to next semester!

"A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love."

-- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I, Sc. ii

Well, I just finished The Sorrows of Young Werther in-between two of today's finals, and . . .

Oh, brother!

Sappiest. Book. Ever.

I groaned louder and cringed more visibly as I got closer and closer to the end. Reading a bit aloud to Moore and Wilson improved things a bit, but then I was once again reading alone. It made me want to sick up.

I thought I was into the movement. I thought I was a Romantic. But this . . . this was thick and heavy and sticky and saccharine. It was melodramatic and self-centered. It was idealistic and impractical. It was overenthusiastic and far, far too passionate. If everyone in the world were a Werther, everyone in the world would be a dead Werther.

Does that mean that I don't get to be a Romantic? Can you be a conditional Romantic? How about a cynical Romantic? A Romantic Cynic?

Hmmm . . . I like this idea. We'll call it Cynimanticism. Any takers?

Frigging Goethe . . . Maybe I should stick with the British Romantics. Come to think of it, I'm not really a big Wordsworth/Keats fan, either. And Shelley is just "alright." That leaves Coleridge and *angelic choir voices* Lord Byron . . . but I'd still rather read Wilde and the others who came after him. And don't get me started on those bloody Americans . . .

Romanticism! Bah! Ick!

Grrr.

An Evening of Baguette-Dunking à la France

THE SC PLAYERS PRESENT:

The School for Wives by Molière

Wilson- Arnolphe
Gallagher- Horace
Paige- Agnés
Bryan- Chrysalde
Myself- Alain
Anna- Georgette
Scholl- Notary
Sharpton- Oronte
Barbour- Enrique

Well, I for one am not afraid to give France a rousing cheer when it deserves one. And it certainly deserves one for Molière. This is a hilarious little comedy about that universal subject that has the power to make everyone laugh . . . regardless of time or place: Matters of Love. The characters are hilarious and their relationships intertwine in wonderfully engaging and surprising ways. And the entire play is written (mostly) in rhyming couplets.

My favorite line (and not just because it was one of mine):

Likewise, a man's wife is his soup, you see?
And he'll be well pissed off if somebody
Starts dunking his baguette in it.

I'd really like to see this on film. The basic plot runs something like this:

Arnolphe's attitude towards marriage has become jaded and cynical after observing virtually every husband he knows turn into a cuckold. His solution? He buys a four-year old peasant girl named Agnès and has her raised in a convent. Thirteen years later, he pulls her out so he can marry her . . . but a funny thing happens on the way to the altar. While he is out of town, his old friend and fellow playboy Horace shows up and steals Agnès' heart. Arnolphe comes back to town, and Horace confides in him . . . not knowing who he is actually stealing the girl from (Arnolphe has changed his name to "de la Souche" since last they saw each other).

What follows, as Horace pulls "Don Juans" left and right, Arnolphe attempts to betray him, Agnès attempts to betray him, and Arnolphe's servants, the warring married couple Georgette and Alain, generally enjoy themselves (between blows), provides about as much fun and entertainment as one can reasonably expect out of your average Thursday night with the crew.

Très magnifique!

December's Featured Books

12/22 - The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pene du Bois (o o o o o)

Professor William Waterman Sherman sets out from San Francisco in a hot air balloon in the summer of 1883, hoping to make the first flight across the Pacific. Three weeks later he is picked up in the Atlantic, surrounded by the wreckage of, not one, but twenty balloons. How did this come to be? Herein lies the tale of his fantastic visit to Krakatoa, a remote volcanic island whose European inhabitants have become fabulously wealthy from the Krakatoan diamond mines. These people have created a Utopian society centered around a "gourmet government" and a dazzling array of marvelous inventions, many of which involve hot air balloons.

During Sherman's brief stay on Krakatoa, in the few weeks before the small civilization is shattered forever by a cataclysmic eruption, he learns everything there is to know about the island and its people. And the reader is along for the highly enjoyable ride. This book is a cleverly written and hilariously conceived tongue-in-cheek look at what a little ingenuity and a whole lot of money can accomplish in an island paradise. It had me sold on the concept of "gourmet government" when I first read it at age 13, and I still think it's a brilliant idea. Check this book out . . . it's quick and fun.

12/16 - The Tower of Geburah by John White (o o o o o)

First in a five-book series (although third chronologically), this abnormally-thick children's fantasy novel attempted to put a new spin on an old idea: Christian allegory thinly disguised as engaging entertainment. As I recall, it generally succeeds, in spite of being rather derivative.

I first read this book sometime after completing The Chronicles of Narnia (pre-1st grade) and before I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (4th grade), although I don't remember precisely when. At the time I thought it was the greatest book ever (it would be replaced in 4th grade, see above).

The story begins with Wesley, Lisa, and Kurt discovering four magical television sets in their uncle's attic. These TVs suck them into the magical land of Anthropos, separating Lisa from the boys, and the adventure is on. They are sent on a quest to fulfill a prophecy and restore the imprisoned king of Anthropos to the throne by retrieving a number of magical items that have lain for centuries in the enchanted Tower of Geburah.

Yes, White shamelessly rips off Narnia in a big way. Duh. But does he do it well?

I would say that he does in this case, especially considering in particular the age group in question. I have read three of the six books in the series (The Iron Scepter and The Sword Bearer), the third being vastly inferior to the first two. Judging from the excerpts and synopses I've read of the others, the remaining books go into something of a quality tailspin . . . but this first one entertained me. It doesn't do anything radically new, but maybe you can find a younger sibling to read it to.

A Miscommunication About Communication

Last Wednesday at about 2:30 pm I drove off campus with Ashley, Audra, Rachel, and Uncle Doug, bound for West Texas. I had spent the lion's share of the preceding 72 hours writing two and a half papers. In fact, I finished revisions on my History of the English Language paper in the computer labs, sent a copy to Dr. Watson, printed out a copy for myself, and walked directly outside to climb into the car so we could leave.

I was quite satisfied with my paper, as I had successfully incorporated three of my favorite subjects (myth, literature, and communication) and kept the length down to five pages. Of course, I discussed the entire topic mostly in very general terms as any further detail would have required at least four times the length. I might have the inclination to write such a thing, but I certainly don't have the time.

Ironically, the main title of the paper itself applies equally well to the circumstances surrounding both it and me over the course of the next few days.

Uncle Doug read my paper and we discussed it during the drive. My mother read it the following evening, and . . . Yeah. She read it. And Asa read it in the car the following afternoon as we drove to Plainview and we discussed it. I had plans to post it here upon my return, and all was well.

All was well, that is, until late Saturday evening when, during a calm after-dinner discussion, a few careless remarks about the paper erupted into an abnormally violent tempest in a teacup. To make a long story short, I was provoked into picking a fight with three people who hadn't the foggiest idea what I was trying to say in my paper, but generally disagreed on principle, and in fact were quite offended by the implications of a few of my conclusions.

In an ill-advised move on my part, I didn't even attempt to exercise any restraint, arguing loudly and abrasively . . . I know how these people think, and I know where their blind spots are, and on issues involving religion (and, hey, what doesn't?) they have a blind spot you could hide a train in.

It could have been a discussion. We could have engaged in a mutual sharing of ideas and opinions. But they chose to be deliberately obtuse and take offense instead. And I chose to be annoyed by their narrow-mindedness rather than sympathetic and helpful. The results were disastrous. Perhaps someday soon I will prepare a post that will fully explain my views on the subject we discussed . . . But for now I will just post my paper instead.

Comments and criticisms are welcome. And if you choose to be offended as well, tell me why, and with what . . . I am almost always more reasonable when discussing something in writing than when I am arguing something in person.

Allusion is an act or instance of referencing an outside source without specifically identifying it. It is almost always expected that the audience will know the source of, or at least be familiar with, the reference and so either achieve a more complete understanding of the speaker’s meaning or share in the camaraderie of mutual knowledge.

In other words, allusions are the inside jokes of the surrounding culture. However, modern Americans show an increasing apathy towards the most lasting and significant allusions their past has to offer, relying almost exclusively on popular culture instead. The slowly dying cause of past-cultural literacy and past-cultural allusion is worth championing in order both to preserve and perpetuate what has come before as part of the growing group consciousness of the story (and stories) of human existence since time immemorial.

The more culturally literate people are, the more common ground they will potentially be able to find with others. Additionally, human beings naturally tend to use allusions in conversation, especially when they are, or wish to seem, familiar with each other. However, too much reliance on allusions only serves to block or dilute effective communication. The use of allusions brings about a sort of catch-22 for the culturally literate communicator.

Say, for instance, that you’re planning a vacation with the help of a travel agent and he is discussing the possibility of visiting various European cities with you. The first option sounds good, and as you continue to listen you realize that none of the other options will work. Returning to the first choice, you say to him, “Well, we’ll always have Paris.” Now, that remark might amuse you personally, but the entire point of making it was to share the joke. However, unless your travel agent is familiar with the 1942 movie Casablanca, he will have no idea that your remark meant anything unusual. In this case, he understands that you wish to travel to Paris, but he has failed to get your joke. This is a mild example, particularly since an allusion is often meaningless and even nonsensical when divorced from its original context.

And yet, an examination of our most common and lasting clichés, myths, and allusions reveals reason behind their perennial value. The use of clichés, for instance, becomes an easy way out of investing enough effort to coin one’s own metaphor, idiom, or analogy; one can simply substitute a phrase that is or was true enough to become overused. Clichés are seen, particularly in creative writing, as being the unoriginal products of a lazy mind, and they’re despised for it; yet everyone knows exactly what the words convey precisely because they have heard them before.

Take, for instance, the commonplace expression “right as rain.” The original context of this cliché is unknown beyond the fact that it originated in Britain, probably in the late nineteenth century. But although we have no real idea why it was phrased that way, we know that it means that whatever it is applied to is in good order.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his chapter on language from Nature, discourses very eloquently (although not always correctly) on a number of interesting points. His principle on the development of language applies to cliché as well:

Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right originally means straight; wrong means twisted. Spirit primarily means wind . . . We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are, in their turn, words borrowed from sensible things and now appropriated to spiritual nature (Emerson 889).

Over time, clichés, like words themselves, come to mean something more broad than what they formerly meant. The semantic ranges of the phrases can widen to include the commonplace definition. In some cases, the number of words needed to express a potentially complex idea also shrinks. “In like manner, the memorable words of history, and the proverbs of nations, consist usually of a natural fact, selected as a picture or parable of a moral truth . . . In their primary sense these are trivial facts, but we repeat them for the value of their analogical import. What is true of proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, and allegories” (Emerson 892).

Myth reveals a different aspect of the same principle. The myths of the human race are composed of those elusive, yet deeply resonant truths that run through the rich themes and ideas common to all great literature from the dawn of civilized thought until the present day. The label “myth” does not necessarily imply that the content to which it is applied is fictional. In a way, it means precisely the opposite. While the story told by a myth may or may not be literally true, the concepts it expresses are truer than anything in the physical world could ever be.

The Bible serves as the perfect example of a myth that conveys truth, from Genesis to Revelation, whether every story is taken literally or not. Much of the Bible is literally true, and can be taken to mean precisely what it says. However, the Bible also makes heavy use of metaphor and simile, as in the parables of Jesus. For instance, to use a simple and hopefully uncontroversial example, the Kingdom of Heaven is not a literal mustard seed. However, it can be likened to one in order to achieve a resonance of familiarity with the human audience which will successfully transmit meaning to the reader or listener.

These are not the dreams of a few poets, here and there, but man is an analogist, and studies relations in all objects . . . And neither can man be understood without these objects, nor these objects without man. All the facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren like a single sex. But marry it to human history, and it is full of life . . . The motion of the earth round its axis, and round the sun, makes the day, and the year. These are certain amounts of brute light and heat. But is there no intent of analogy between man’s life and the seasons? And do the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos from that analogy? (Emerson 890)

We can apply this theory to the poetry and prose of myth in addition to the facts in natural history, and to the human soul in addition to human history.

For instance, taken by themselves, the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling are charming and entertaining children’s books about the magical education of a young boy. But to anyone even basically familiar with British and Classical literature, history, and culture, the books are steeped in archetypal images and symbolic meaning. Was this accidental? Certainly not. A significant reason for the wild popularity of the series stems from the fact that these eternal themes echo within the most profound reaches of our hearts, souls, and minds.

Cliché, then, communicates by means of a universal phrase, understood by everyone. Myth communicates by means of a universal meaning, felt by everyone. And it is in allusion that these two modes of communication are united. Allusion can be viewed as a means of communicating a complete meaning through the use of a widely-known phrase. Allusions emerge into writing or conversation fully formed, with a host of connotations behind them.

If, in conversation, someone were to say mournfully “I am a man more sinned against than sinning,” you would probably understand what they mean (Shakespeare 72). But how much more would you understand if you knew that those words are spoken by King Lear, an old man who has been turned out into a storm by his daughters after dividing everything he owned between them. There is a great deal more to the story than can be summed up rapidly, but to anyone familiar with it the entirety is called immediately into the mind at the use of the allusion. Certainly one could simply say “I’ve been wronged,” and if one’s audience would not know the other reference, then certainly, in a sense, this would be better. However, if the connections can be made, the sense of one who has been wronged is carried much more fervently by linking one’s situation to the plight of King Lear.

It is perhaps an oversimplification, but still somewhat accurate, to say that allusion can be used to connect with someone at the level of deeper meaning in myth with the rapidity and simplicity of the clichéd phrase. Emerson believed that words and clichés were borrowed from the natural world, which is in turn a reflection of the spiritual world.

Myths, too, are linked to the spiritual world, reflecting truth and meaning through symbols. The mythologist believes that myths are “dynamic factor[s] everywhere in human society; [they] transcend time, uniting the past (traditional modes of belief) with the present (current values) and reaching toward the future (spiritual and cultural aspirations)” (Guerin et al. 156-157).

Allusions seem to operate on the same principles. In the same way that myths unite us through commonalities in the human character and clichés through commonalities in the human language, allusions unite us culturally, not only with our contemporaries, but with our ancestral roots as well.

If the resources are available, educating oneself as thoroughly as possible in both past and current culture through the study of literature and history is an important responsibility. Educating others in allusion, sharing the richness of human culture, and bringing them into “the joke”, are duties of the culturally literate, and should be taken seriously for this reason. Equally important is that the cultural and intellectual gaps between created by unshared knowledge should not be allowed to widen if they can be narrowed.

Learn as much as you can about your own cultural history and literature, and those of others. Use your knowledge to gain understanding of and to foster communication and connection with others. But do not make the mistake of building walls with incomprehensible words, for that flies in the face of everything that makes language, myth, and allusion what they are.

Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature." The American Tradition in Literature, Vol. 1. Ed. George Perkins, and Barbara Perkins. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 881-908.

Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle G. Labor, Lee Morgan, and John R. Willingham. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Hirsch, E. D., Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.

International Bible Society. The Holy Bible, New International Version. Nashville: Cornerstone Bible Publishers, 1984.

Shakespeare, William. King Lear. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1998.

Wheeler, Jared. "The Case for the Defense: Harry Potter as Wholesome, Valuable Christian Fantasy." 24 June 2004. Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama. The Shadow Council. 23 Nov. 2004 https://www.shadowcouncil.org/todostienen/archives/003257.html.

And you say there's no butler?

THE SC PLAYERS PRESENT:

The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie

Paige- Mollie Ralston
Barbour- Giles Ralston
Myself- Christopher Wren, Mr. Paravicini
Rachel- Mrs. Boyle
Scholl- Major Metcalf
Anna- Miss Casewell
Gallagher- Detective Sergeant Trotter, Mr. Paravicini

This play is a smashing little murder mystery, with a healthy dose of comedy thrown in and most of Agatha Christie's favorite stereotype characters present. Many of the standard Christie elements are present in the plot, and I'd love to go into what they are . . . but that would give away whodunit, now wouldn't it?

The reading worked fairly well all around, despite the unfortunate circumstance of having only two copies of the play. The inevitable result was a general crowding around books on opposite sides of the room, so the wild pacing we normally engaged in was excluded.

*sigh* If I could only find more copies of plays . . . There are so many good ones, dagnabbit!

Transfiguring the Tradition

Fiddler on the Roof and I go way back, deep into the murky, lugubrious mists of my formative years. I don't believe that I was any older than five when I saw it for the first time. I remember two scenes from that viewing: "If I Were a Rich Man" (which I love . . . although I couldn't pick a favorite song) and "Miracle of Miracles" (which is the only song in the movie that I loathe). And unless I am very much mistaken, I was unceremoniously put to bed before the end of the movie. Such is the plight of the five-year old.

It was not until I was beginning my senior year in high school, in fact, that I rediscovered this delightful cinematic opus. My grandparents had given my family a two-video VHS copy and, being bored late one night, I popped it into the player.

Three hours and two minutes later I had nearly talked myself into rewinding it and playing it again.

Although I settled for a good night's sleep in the end, I watched it at least three or four more times that year, and I hadn't been at LeTourneau for even a full semester when I had the irresistable urge to get my hands on another copy.

I had talked Bryan (my roommate at the time) into going to Blockbuster with me where we had acquired and made use of a membership card, and it was there that I turned in my hour of need for a shiny DVD copy of Fiddler on the Roof.

In addition to having Bryan (who had never seen it) with me, I somehow also managed to collar Wilson and Uncle Doug (neither of them had seen it either), and the four of us enjoyed ourselves enormously.

I purposed then and there to ask for my own DVD copy for Christmas, and it was duly given unto me. With that, I assumed the mantle of the proud office of "Keeper of the Fiddler" . . . and I have worn it ever since.

That spring I watched it with Martinez (who also had not seen it before) and half a dozen or so of the Penn 2 guys. The following fall I watched it with Anna and Moore (they hadn't seen it) plus Wilson, Sharon, Scholl, etc. Last spring, we regulars were joined at the screening by Gallagher (who had seen it) and . . . Well, in short, it has become accepted practice to have a showing of Fiddler on the Roof during every semester I am at college.

And this semester was no exception. Quite far from it, in fact. I am currently taking "World Literature Through Film" as an Honors, junior-level lit elective, and the class requires students to form groups. This is in order that the entire last half of the semester may be spent showing movies based on works of world literature and presenting a comparison/contrast on the original work to the class.

After promptly forming a partnership with my close associates, Wilson and Martinez, we began to rack our brains for an appropriate selection. My initial tentative suggestion (Lolita) was shot down by Dr. Solganick (although he did it reluctantly, I must say), but it wasn't long before Fiddler came to mind. In the end, I'm rather shocked it wasn't the first thing that popped into my head.

The long and short of all this is that our presentation took place Thursday night, and was quite as successful as any presentation I have given before or could hope to give in future. And there was the added benefit of having nearly 20 people there for this semester's showing of the movie. I don't remember who exactly, but there were at least five there who hadn't seen the movie before.

What follows below the fold is the paper that Wilson, Martinez, and I wrote to go with the movie. Martinez wrote the beginning (on the book), Wilson wrote the middle (on the author and historical context), and I wrote the end (on the movie itself) . . . with Martinez fitting the three portions together and covering introduction and conclusion. This was followed by polishing and re-polishing and . . . blah blah blah. I'm rambling.

Read the paper if you have the time. And if you find yourself in the area, be sure to join us next semester for Fiddler on the Roof!

Sholem Aleichem’s novel Tevye the Dairyman is a classic piece of Yiddish literature. Fiddler on the Roof, the film based on Aleichem’s work, is likewise a beloved masterpiece. Many of the characters and plots overlap between the two versions; their ultimate theme is also the same, but it is expressed in slightly different ways and in a different tone. Although the film is based on the book, its approach to difficult questions of faith is significantly more playful.

Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman is a collection of short stories about a man who argues with God. Tevye, the main character, leads a difficult life and cannot understand why he is so poor while other Jews are so rich. Tevye struggles to reconcile the injustice of the world with the character of his God. The later stories tell of Tevye’s problems in marrying off his daughters; each one reveals a perspective on the Jewish tradition. Despite constant and recurring problems, Tevye remains true to his faith in God, which gives him courage to endure difficult times.

The early stories, particularly “Tevye Strikes it Rich” and "Tevye Blows a Small Fortune,” have a lighthearted tone. Tevye makes many amusing comments, such as the observation his horse is “only human too […] or else why would God have made him a horse,” or that an event “took place exactly a dog’s age ago, nine or ten years to the day, if not a bit more or less” (Aleichem 3). Such verbal acrobatics are entertaining to the audience, and they take some of the edge off of the otherwise-depressing subject of poverty. This lightness for the reader is reflected in Tevye’s nearly carefree attitude. He grumbles and complains about his lot in life, but he accepts that things “were meant to be” the way they are (13). He has faith in God and believes that He knows best. This faith provides the foundation for everything Tevye does; it gives him an anchor in times of difficulty.

The later stories, however, are not as lighthearted. All of Tevye’s daughters give him troubles, some more depressing than others. The sequence in which Tevye concocts a dream to cover Tzeitel’s marriage to the tailor Motl Komzoyl is amusing, but the family’s parting with Hodl is tinged with sadness, and Chava’s elopement leaves Tevye bitter throughout the remainder of the book. Later, Shprintze commits suicide after her failed engagement, and Beilke ends up living in poverty in America after driving Tevye mad with worry. Tevye describes his daughters as “too smart for their own good,” but he loves them all dearly, as he shows in dealing with their marriage problems (52).

But Tevye’s troubles do not end with his daughters. At the beginning of “Tevye Leaves for the Land of Israel,” Tevye tells of losing his wife, Golde (99). Then, Motl Komzoyl, Tevye’s son-in-law and Tzeitel’s husband, dies between that story and “Lekh-Lekho,” leaving Tevye responsible for his eldest daughter and her children (118). To round out his troubles, the village policeman tells Tevye that he (along with all the other Jews) must leave his home and move to another town.

In these later trials, Tevye’s faith begins to wobble. His conversations with God become more accusatory, and his rants against the injustice of life become more bitter. His problems with his daughters seem to harden his heart somewhat, so that by the end of the book he does not know whether God is really listening. At times, Tevye’s faith is little more than the mortar holding him together with his fellow Jews.

But there are two rays of hope in the darkness of Tevye’s life. First, Chava returns and reconciles with Tevye. Second, and more importantly, Tevye clings to his faith in God, shaky though it may be. The book ends with Tevye encouraging Jews everywhere “not to worry: the old God of Israel still lives” (131). The community of Jews still exists. But despite the positive elements, the ending carries overtones of bitterness and confusion as Tevye struggles with his faith.

The parting message from Tevye to his people indicates Aleichem’s preoccupation with the concept of community. In typical Jewish literary fashion, all of the Tevye stories show a profound attention to history and the fellowship of faith. The reader may gain a much more thorough appreciation for Aleichem’s work through a study of its literary and historical context.

According to Hillel Halkin’s introduction to the book, Tevye the Dairyman is “perhaps the only [novel] ever written in real time, that is, according to a scale on which time for the author and time for his characters are absolutely equivalent” (xxi). Because the novel was written over twenty years as a series of short stories, and is set within Aleichem’s own surroundings, the reader can follow a remarkable progression in the author’s thinking. The writing unfolds against the background of late Tsarist Russia, a time of growing persecution for Jews. This historical context provides a sense of urgency to the narratives; Tevye’s growing doubt is driven by the isolation and disenfranchisement of his people, which suggest a breakdown in the promises of their faith. Aleichem thus makes a strong statement about the condition of the Jewish people in his lifetime.

Sholem Aleichem shielded himself from scrutiny not only by using Tevye as a mouthpiece, but also by crafting a new persona for himself as the author; the writer Sholem Aleichem was actually the rabbi Shalom Rabinovich. The author used these fictional mediators to pose difficult questions to his readers. Joseph Sherman observes that Tevye the Dairyman often transfers familiar religious formulae to new situations, creating paradoxes of faith. He notes, for example, that “every time Tevye quotes from the Hallel [a prayer of praise], the effect of his quotation is to challenge the existence of the mercies that it celebrates in the everyday experience of ordinary folk like himself” (10).

David Booth explains further: “Tevye has no sense of the clear cause-effect nature of God’s will as evoked in earlier Jewish responses to catastrophe. In this strange new world, all that he can count on is his family and his community.” God is silent during Tevye’s troubles; at the end of the book, hope seems to come not from the fact that “God still lives” (since He has not been generous with deliverance) as much as from the fact that there is still a community of believing Jewish brethren scattered across the globe. In Booth’s view, Tevye has taken his questions so far that “the affirmation becomes more important than what is affirmed, the storyteller more important than the story” (302). This existential tone marks Tevye the Dairyman as a vital part of the modern Jewish literary tradition, a tradition preoccupied with the challenges posed by philosophical rationalism as well as human suffering.

In 1894, Jewish identity papers in Russia were marked with the word “Jew;” in this year, Sholem Aleichem wrote the first Tevye story. In 1905, Aleichem witnessed a pogrom in Kiev and subsequently left Russia; this is the date of “Chava,” the first truly tragic story in the series. In 1914, the flood of Jewish emigration from Russia was cut off by World War I; this year saw the end of the series with “Lekh-Lekho,” in which Tevye, although denied his dream of living in the Holy Land, is separated from his home forever (Halkin xiv-xv).

But the saga of Tevye did not end with “Lekh-Lekho;” Tevye the Dairyman was adapted into a stage play, which was later adapted into a film. The plot of the film is drawn entirely from the book, specifically following the plots of “Today’s Children,” “Hodl,” and “Chava” and including elements from “Tevye Strikes it Rich” and “Tevye Blows a Small Fortune.” The later, more depressing stories are absent, except for the common ending, in which Tevye is forced from his home.

One of the most important things to note about the adaptations is that both are musicals. The use of music is the primary distinction between the novel and the film; the poetic features of Aleichem’s prose are adapted to the screen in song form. The movie uses music to capture the feel of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe. However, the reasons for the selection of this particular artistic medium run a bit deeper than that, and the decision to tell the stories of Sholem Aleichem through music works beautifully.

Music can overcome the barriers of language and culture in order to communicate directly to the heart and soul of the listener. In fact, we see this in the movie during the song “To Life,” as the Russians and Jews set aside their differences for a time of celebration. The music acts as an emotional unifier. It brings the characters in the movie together as they sing, and it draws the viewer in with them as well. This echoes the theme of community that is so prevalent in Tevye the Dairyman; the musical element in the film subtly reinforces this theme for the viewer.

Music is used effectively in a number of different ways throughout Fiddler on the Roof. Most of the songs fall into more than one of the following categories. First, music cultivates and reveals deeper connections between characters in a number of instances (e.g. “To Life,” “Miracle of Miracles,” and “Do You Love Me?”). Some of the songs, such as “Matchmaker” and “If I Were a Rich Man,” give added depth to the characters. The forming of connections extends beyond individuals to the cultural level; a number of the songs draw deeply on Jewish culture, bringing out the importance of various Jewish beliefs and traditions. This is perhaps most apparent in the song “Sabbath Prayer,” a montage of Jewish families celebrating the Sabbath together in different homes throughout the village. The influence of Jewish customs can also be seen in dance during the “Wedding Celebration” number.

Another function of the songs is to emphasize a point or theme beyond what could be accomplished with normal dialogue. “Sunrise, Sunset,” “Far From the Home I Love,” “Tradition,” and “Anatevka” all fit into this category. In fact, “Tradition” sums up the major theme of the film: Jewish traditions form the foundation of Jewish identity. In “Anatevka,” furthermore, it becomes clear that this Jewish community consists of something much deeper and more lasting than the few dilapidated houses that make up the small Russian village. A bond far stronger than mere location binds these characters to one another.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, some songs are heavily symbolic. The best example of this in Fiddler is the “Chava Ballet Sequence.” The sequence is one of the linchpins of the movie, using music and dance to summarize the progression of the story to that point. As instrumental music plays, Golde silently teaches Chava to dance, after which Chava walks out to join her older sisters. The three dance together to the tune of the Fiddler (more will be said about this enigmatic character later), until the two eldest are joined by their respective spouses and dance away from their sister. Chava is left dancing alone until she feels the luring call of Fyedka. There is a brief struggle as the Fiddler tries to hold her back, but in the end Chava runs (but does not dance) to join Fyedka. Symbolically, this represents how the girls have been taught to “dance” to the tune of tradition by their mother, and how the first two have been joined in the dance by their husbands. Chava, on the other hand, has abandoned the dance completely; she has broken with tradition and community, leaving behind everything and everyone she has ever known, as her heartbroken father watches.

The musical numbers are not the only important elements at work within Fiddler on the Roof, however. The title character, who ties everything together as the movie’s chief metaphor, is quite musical in nature. He could effectively symbolize a number of different things, but the most significant is shown by what Tevye says at the beginning of the film: “A fiddler on the roof. Here [. . .] you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. You may ask [. . .] how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition!” The Fiddler represents both tradition and the spirit of Jewish community.

The Fiddler appears several times during the movie, each one a key point in the plot or in the changing of Tevye’s fortunes. The first such appearance is in the opening credits, after Tevye has introduced the concept of tradition to the audience. After this, the Fiddler does not return until Tevye hears news of the pogrom, after an evening of carousing with Lazar Wolf. Here he moves from an emotional high to an emotional low, and this is one of several points in the movie where he questions God. It is here that the Fiddler appears to pull him back out of despair and lead him home.

The Fiddler’s role in the vital ballet sequence has already been mentioned. His fourth and final appearance in the movie comes just a few moments before the closing credits begin to roll. Tevye and his family have just left behind their home, and are slogging slowly through the half-frozen mud of a road in the middle of nowhere. They, like countless Jews before them, have been cast adrift in the world, and Tevye seems despondent. Then he hears the quiet playing of the Fiddler behind him. Turning, he spots the musician, who stares back with a mischievous glint in his eye. Tevye motions him to follow with his head, and then, as the Fiddler follows and plays joyfully behind him, strides purposefully onward with his head held high. The message seems to be that so long as the Jewish people keep their traditions with them, their fellowship with God and each other will remain intact, and they will have nothing to fear.

Here we see a significant departure from the message of Tevye the Dairyman. Both the novel and the film grow more serious as they progress, but the book has moments of utter sadness (e.g. the deaths of Shprintze and Golde), while the film remains relatively optimistic. In the book, the hope expressed at the end of the last story is almost half-hearted after Tevye’s recent expression of doubt. In contrast, the film ends with the lilting, happy strains of the Fiddler’s music, which accompanies Tevye and his family (which includes Golde, who is still alive in the film) as they travel. The film’s ending is almost happy; it certainly celebrates the stoic resolve of the Jewish people.

In short, the novel Tevye the Dairyman carries an almost bitter tone as it reflects on what seems to be God’s abandonment of the Jews. At the same time, it maintains that faith in God is necessary, if for no other reason than for the community it gives the Jews. The film Fiddler on the Roof has a similar focus on community, but its happier tone reflects a more hopeful outlook and faith in God.

Aleichem, Sholem. Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories. Trans. Hillel Halkin. Schocken Books, 1987.

Booth, David. “The Role of the Storyteller—Sholem Aleichem and Elie Wiesel.” Judaism 42.3 (1993): 298-312.

Fiddler on the Roof. Screenplay by Sholom Aleichem and Joseph Stein. Dir. Norman Jewison. MGM/UA Home Entertainment, 1971.

Halkin, Hillel. Introduction. Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories. By Sholem Aleichem. Trans. Halkin. Schocken Books, 1987.

Sherman, Joseph. “Holding Fast to Integrity: Shalom Rabinovich, Sholem Aleichem and Tevye the Dairyman.” Judaism 43.1 (1994): 6-18.

Of Ravens and Whalers and Very Fine Rods

Today was the day of the grand and portentous presentation by Randy, Gallagher, and Yours Truly on Messrs. Poe and Melville for American Literature I. This means two things: First, I haven't posted in a few days because I've been trying to spend all of the time when I was anywhere near a computer drowning myself in information on said authors. Second, this is the first of the major projects, papers, and presentations discussed in an earlier post and that means that I will be swamped from now until the end of the semester.

In fact, even if the only use I had for my time was to do schoolwork, I would be swamped. But that isn't all there is . . . *sigh* Anyway, it's not as if I cared, so I don't know why I'm complaining. I suspect that the answer is something like "Because I can." But I'm getting off the subject . . . Let's talk presentation.

The basic outline ran something like this. Gallagher got up and gave a short devo. I got up and (literally) raced through the European Romantics ("The Dry, Musty Gallery of Old, Dead White Guys"), then transitioned into the American Romantics. After doing little more than mentioning that they existed (Dr. Olson already spent a whole class period on them, and will be spending many more in future) I jumped straight to the men themselves: Herman Melville and Edgar Allen Poe.

After a few minutes talking about why Poe is . . . well, worth reading, I guess . . . I turned it over to the guy in charge of his biography. He talked, blah blah blah. Randy talked about the darker elements of Poe, focusing on a few stories in particular. We had a copy of The Simpsons version of "The Raven" but we hadn't been able to get it to work. So that sucked . . . we could have used the break in talking. Then the girl who was doing Poe's romantic poetry stood up and talked and read a few of them and so on and so forth, etc.

Then I got up and transitioned from Poe to Melville. The biography guy got up and talked about Melville, blah blah blah. And then Gallagher took over and told us about Moby Dick, Billy Budd, and "Bartelby the Scrivener" (which is so great).

Then it was time for our dramatic reading of "The Lightning-rod Man" (full text provided with link). I read the non-dialogue portions, Gallagher played the narrator, and Randy played the title character. We used a black-and-red plastic pitchfork as the lightning rod, and very few other props. But nevermind that. I want to talk about the story.

Here's what I think it means: The Lightning-rod Man is a traveling fire-and-brimstone evangelist, the lightning rod is "salvation," and the Narrator is a Romantic, unbound by traditionalism.

Note the portrayal of the title character in the story. He is by turns furious and terrified, but strangely impotent throughout. While the Narrator is free to roam about his cabin, standing in whatever spot is most comfortable, the Lightning-rod Man is paralyzed in the center of the room, dripping water. ("I am better here, and better wet." What do you think that is a reference to?)

As for the sales pitch, the Lightning-rod Man is very loud and insistent, assuring the Narrator that immediate and certain destruction is the inevitable consequence of refusing to purchase a lightning rod. He refuses to provide any empirical reasons for his views when the Narrator asks. He insists that his lightning rod is somehow of higher quality than other rods (which are worthless).

In fact, this is the reason given as to why a girl was struck while holding rosary beads (one of the only directly "Christian" references in the story). When the Narrator points out that even those who purchased the superior rods have been struck by lightning, the salesman blames improper installation rather than his product.

The Narrator, realizing that there is no malicious, judgmental force at work in the midst of the thunderstorm, glories freely in its beauty and majesty. He attempts to romanticize the Lightning-rod Man as an avatar of the thunder god, and is soundly reprimanded for speaking in "pagan" terms.

Finally, the Narrator stands up to the salesman, calling him "Tetzel" and stating definitely that there is nothing to fear from God or Nature. "Tetzel" responds, true to form, with accusations of heresy . . . And is promptly thrown out on his ear.

The story ends with a warning to the reader that "the Lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man."

It all seems really bleeding obvious when I say it like this, (plus, Mr. Fry had already pretty much given that away in his comment a few months back . . . which I had completely forgotten about until recently), but it took me three or four readings to fully figure out what was going on. Anyway . . .

Cool story. Ultimately fun presentation.

A Double Dose of Shakespeare Goodness

THE SC PLAYERS PRESENT:

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Gallagher- Macbeth, etc.
Anna-Lady Macbeth, Third Witch, etc.
Myself- Macduff, Banquo, Ross, etc.
Wilson- Duncan, etc.
Paige- First Witch, etc.
Ardith- Second Witch, Ross, etc.
Sharpton- Donalbain, etc.
Barbour- Malcolm, etc.
Scholl- Doctor, etc.

AND

All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare

Paige- Helena, Mariana
Wilson- Bertram, Second Gentleman
Anna- Countess of Rousillon, Diana, Violenta
Myself- Parolles, Duke of Florence, First Lord, First Gentleman
Gallagher- Lafeu, Lavache, Widow, First Lord, Second Lord, Fourth Lord
Bryan- King of France, Rinaldo, Second Lord
Scholl- Bertram, Lafeu, Messenger
Scott- Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Play

No, this week wasn't a double-header by any means, I just didn't get around to posting on last weeks last week. Macbeth was fun, but I totally lost my voice from trying too hard on the Scottish accent.

And speaking of Scottish accents . . . Yeah. We murdered them. Like, really . . . I've heard worse attempts than ours (and some were actually not too bad), but the problem of attempting to sustain the thing for hours at a time is one that we failed (as a group) to surmount.

As if we cared.

Ah, and I couldn't possibly neglect to note the performances of Ardith, Anna, and Paige as the three witches. *cackles* Woooooooow, that was special. I'll refrain from making the obligatory snide remarks about type-casting. Instead, I'll just say that they had me convinced.

As for the latter play . . . we were bad. No, scratch that. We were horrible. I can't possibly go into detail, but nearly every person involved in that play (with the exception of Bryan) played up the already prevalent innuendo to absolute maximum effect.

Wilson: Shakespeare must have been in heat when he wrote this play.

Paige: No, I think he wasn't getting any.

It wouldn't be too far-fetched to suggest that both of these theories existed in concert at the time of writing . . . I don't know. But I would prefer to never again play a role where . . . Awww, nevermind. I'm still not going there.

Blogging about Slogging

And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and it is spring again and yet again and the small streams that run over the rough sides of Gormenghast Mountain are big with rain while the days lengthen and summer sprawls across the countryside, sprawls in all the swathes of its green, with its gold and sticky head, with its slumber and the drone of doves and with its butterflies and its lizards and its sunflowers, over and over again, its doves, its butterflies, its lizards, its sunflowers, each one an echo-child while the fruit ripens and the grotesque boles of the ancient apple trees are dappled in the low rays of the sun and the air smells of such rotten sweetness as brings a hunger to the breast, and makes of the heart a sea-bed, and a tear, the fruit of salt and water, ripens, fed by a summer sorrow, ripens and falls . . . falls gradually along the cheekbones, wanders over the wastelands listlessly, the loveliest emblem of the heart's condition.

And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and the field-mice draw upon their granaries. The air is murky and the sun is like a raw wound in the grimy flesh of a beggar, and the rags of the clouds are clotted. The sky has been stabbed and has been left to die above the world. filthy, vast and bloody. And then the great winds come and the sky is blown naked, and a wild birdscreams across the glittering land. And the Countess stands at the window of her room with the white cats at her feet and stares at the frozen landscape spread below her, and a year later she is standing there again but the cats are abroad in the valleys and a raven sits upon her heavy shoulder.

And every day the myriad happenings. A loosened stone falls from a high tower. A fly drops lifeless from a broken pane. A sparrow twitters in a cave of ivy.

The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity.

And Titus Groan is wading through his boyhood.

--Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast

And so life marches on, even though I haven't been talking about it here. I go about my daily routine . . . hang out with friends, watch movies, read, sleep, and (when no other options present themselves) get my homework done.

Everything from Fall Break or so is pretty much a blur. I went to the R. W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport last Tuesday, and that was really fun. I was motivated primarily by a need to see the page from a Gutenberg Bible they had on display there (Ps. 18-20) for extra credit in History of the English Language, but that turned out to be one of the least impressive things there.

By far my favorite thing there was a hallway of 16 fantasy-architecture sketches by Giovanni Battista Piranesi called "The Prisons." They were just about the first things we looked at, and Scholl, Randy, and I returned for a second look at the end while Anna and Rachel wandered the gardens. The drawings really looked the way I picture portions of Gormenghast Castle. Incredibly cool.

They had a great collection of antique guns that we enjoyed . . . some tapestries . . . lots of bronze sculpture (Too. Many. Horses.) . . . rare books . . . antique globes . . . The list goes on and on. We enjoyed ourselves.

Besides that one event, I'm drawing a complete blank on the last ten days. I know I've been doing things, but I have no clear idea as to what. My life feels like the above excerpt, and I'm just waiting for it to snap back into focus. I hope it doesn't take too long.

On a lighter note (tee hee) go take the Machiavelli Test. I scored a 79, and I'm guessing I'm low-end for this crew.

And, on a random note, remember: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." (Lisa Grossman)

Use the Life Force, Tanner

THE SC PLAYERS PRESENT:

Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

Gallagher- John Tanner, Mrs. Whitefield, Miss Ramsden, Don Juan, Rowdy Social-Democrat
Paige- Ann Whitefield, Violet Robinson, Maid, Doña Ana, Anarchist
Myself- Roebuck Ramsden, The Statue, Malone Sr., Narrator, Sulky Social-Democrat
Wilson- Octavius Robinson, Mendoza, The Devil, Duval
Barbour- Hector Malone, Henry Straker
Scholl- Narrator, Henry Straker

This play is . . . Well, I suppose that depends on how you read it. Sans Act III, this is a witty, light-hearted comedy with some great twists and turns, on a level with something like The Importance of Being Earnest. With Act III, however, what we have is . . . something altogether different and a good deal more like Faust. So much so that it hardly seems as if it could possibly have been intended for performance on the stage in this form, functioning rather more as a vehicle for Shavian philosophy (Shavian, by the way, is an extremely cool word) than something meant to entertain the shallow, theater-going public.

The extended (as in "comprising roughly a third of the play") dream sequence in Act III is a magnificent tour de force. It consists chiefly of a debate/discussion that takes place in hell between Don Juan (yes, the Don Juan), his former lover Doña Ana, a statue of her father (visiting from heaven, killed by Don Juan in a duel), and Satan himself. The first half of the dream focuses on the natures of heaven, hell, life, death, the human race, civilization, and other such trivialities. The second half is devoted to Woman.

It is very long, but as the Statue observes: "Instead of merely killing time we have to kill eternity."

The result of all this (Don Juan does most of the talking) is a crystallized brand of cynicism that is as . . . "advanced" as any I have ever seen. Everything is turned completely on its ear (see themes mentioned above for a partial listing of "everything"), with the institution of marriage being scorned and ridiculed above all things. Ultimate cynicism is a black, black pit indeed.

I think, after reading this play, that I have noticed at least that distinct difference between "Christian" and "secular" cynicism. The Christian cynic believes, or at least I believe, that having faith in the existence of pure motives behind any action taken by any human being, and above all in the purity of your own motives, is a mistake.

The secular cynic applies the same principle, not only to his fellow humans, but to their Creator . . . Not that he believes in a Creator, of course. That is precisely the problem. For if there is no Creator, then human beings uphold all of the wrong institutions and social conventions for all of the wrong reasons, constrained by a nonexistent morality which the secular cynic does not even perceive. After all, if there's no reason for it to be there, why should it trouble you? In other words, as Oscar Wilde put it, the undiluted cynic is "a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Perhaps a further discussion of the particular -isms which I subscribe to or admire, sometimes with reservations, sometimes without (romanticism, idealism, and aestheticism in addition to cynicism . . . just to name a few) is in order sometime in the future. For now, I sense that I have gotten far off track.

Read the play.

I will leave you with this quote from the end of the last act, which is so devastatingly and inevitably true (although, perhaps, not so tragic as it might at first seem) that it almost seems depressing to attempt denial:

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

And also with this quote, another piece of Shavian (I love that word!!!) wit. Though it is not from this play, keep it in mind if ever you read it lest you be swept away by an encroaching tide of semi-nihilistic philosophy and mock theology that sounds a good deal more convincing than it has any right to:

"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

--Isaac Asimov

It occured to me tonight as I studied for my American Lit I midterm that there are many who still operate under a common misconception about our relations with Native American tribes. Namely, most people think that we continually pushed Indians westward, then eastward, then into the grave as we settled North America simply because we wanted their land. These same people are under the impression that we couldn't have it while they were on it because settlers who tried that had a nasty habit of winding up scalpless.

These people would be wrong. And if you'll hold on for just a second, I will dramatically change paragraphs and tell you why.

Okay, you still with me? Good. The reason we couldn't suffer the Indians to stay put clearly had nothing to do with pretty fields or bloody heads. It was a matter of national pride. It was a matter of self-respect. It was a matter of no longer having to feel the pricks of the razor-edged, rapier wit of an "inferior" people.

In short, we couldn't take the zingers anymore.

I had to read some Native American oratory and one speech in particular made me cringe, separated though I am by two hundred years and half a continent. I give you (and don't worry, it's pretty short):

The Speech of Red Jacket - Having lived as an MK for the lion's share of my life to date, I couldn't help but empathize with the targets of this speech (missionaries asking for permission to set up a mission among his people). In fact, I'm almost positive that one of my first thoughts was, "Ha! Sucks to be them!"

Brother! This council fire was kindled by you. It was at your request that we came together at this time. We have listened with attention to what you have said. You have requested us to speak our minds freely. This gives us great joy, for we now consider that we stand upright before you, and can speak what we think. All have heard your voice and all speak to you as one man. Our minds are agreed.

Brother! Our seats were once large, and yours were very small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets. You have got our country, but you are not satisfied. You want to force your religion upon us.

Brother! Continue to listen. You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind; and if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right, and we are lost. How do you know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as for you, why has not the Great Spirit given it to us; and not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people?

Brother! You say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?

Brother! We do not understand these things. We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down, father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we received, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.

Brother! The Great Spirit has made us all. But he has made a great difference between his white and red children. He has given us a different complexion and different customs. To you he has given the arts; to these he has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since he has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may not we conclude that he has given us a different religion, according to our understanding? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for his children. We are satisfied.

Brother! We do not wish to destroy your religion, or to take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.

Brother! We are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while, and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good and makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again what you have said.

Ouch. I mean . . . what do you . . . can you . . . even say to that? Nothing!

1)Hang head, 2)Tuck tail between legs, and 3)Go home. And take the other whites with you. You lose.

Or . . .

Well, you could just . . .

*whispers* Kill them . . .

Y'know, it just flat-out sucks that the intellectual victory is never really enough. Might doesn't make right . . . But then, it doesn't need to.

Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it.

Murder! (sans Butlers, Candlesticks, and Conservatories)

The Shadow Council Players present:

Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot

Wilson- Archbishop Thomas Becket
Anna- Chorus of Women, Messenger
Myself- First Tempter, First Knight
Scholl- First Priest, Second Tempter, Second Knight
Barbour- Second Priest, Third Tempter, Third Knight
Andrew- Third Priest
Paige- Fourth Tempter, Fourth Knight

I had never read this one before, or much of anything else by Eliot for that matter. This play is really cool. And no, it isn't a mystery or anything like that.

In case you haven't read it, or couldn't tell from the cast, the play is about the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, in . . . the 1100s (I forget the exact year). He had been using his position to make geopolitical waves in England, France, and Rome and Henry II was rather upset about it. He made no secret of this fact and . . . Well, Becket wound up rather conveniently dead a few days after Christmas one year when some half-drunk knights managed to temporarily mislay their good sense in favor of loyalty.

Anyway, the style of the thing somehow made me think of Stanhope's pastoral play in Descent into Hell. Each character spoke in a very distinct style at particular times, and I would love to see this performed if it was properly directed. There is some amazing alliteration and poetry, and Becket's Christmas sermonette is really neat.

But my favorite part, of course, is where each of the four knights steps forward in turn and addresses the audience after the murder takes place, justifying their actions for posterity. That just rocked. I think I'll be spending a few more weeks in this period. I've enjoyed myself here (what with The Lion in Winter and History of the English Language, etc.).

"Foolery, sir, does walk about the earth like the sun; it shines everywhere."

-- Twelfth Night, Act III, Sc. i

The Shadow Council Players are back in action! I am very happy. We started the new season with . . . well . . . Twelfth Night. Duh.

Cast listing:

Ardith- Viola, Maria
Wilson- Duke Orsino, Malvolio, 1st officer
Gallagher- Valentine, Feste, 2nd officer
Myself- Sebastian, Sea Captain, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Priest
Scholl- Curio, Sir Toby Belch
Scott- Antonio, Fabian
Anna- Lady Olivia

In one of the more distressingly well-cast roles of my limited experience, we had Ardith as the scheming cleaning wench, Maria. Ardith, you had too much fun destroying Malvolio's life with practical jokes. Just thought I'd mention that.

And speaking of Malvolio . . . ah, nevermind. We won't speak of the yellow-stockinged, cross-gartered, grinning fool. That was disturbing.

And now, the sequence of lines that . . . well, quote Scholl:

"Wow, I think Shakespeare just offended me."

Feste: Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard.

Viola (disguised as a man): By my troth, I'll tell thee, I am almost sick for one, though I would not have it grow on my chin.

In the spirit of all great Shakespearean comedy there were plenty of baudy jokes, some transvestitism, mistaken identity, large quantities of sack, crazy elaborate practical jokes . . . *contented sigh*

Hooray for Play Time.

A Wilde Shot in the Dark

As you can see on the right, we watched Wilde last night. It was fairly disturbing . . . and I thought movies had stopped disturbing me awhile ago. I do not recommend it to . . . well, anyone, really.

But I wouldn't have minded nearly so much if they hadn't been so disgustingly incorrect in their characterization of Oscar Wilde. It's positively criminal . . . like the screenwriter penned a movie on the great author without reading anything he'd written. They actually did quote him at length in the movie, of course, but it's as if they weren't paying attention to what they were reading while selecting the quotes and so forth . . . Gross negligence!

I suppose I was also more than a little distraught by all of the familiar faces involved (the movie had a ridiculous number of famous actor types) . . . and what those faces were . . . ah . . . doing. You can get a full cast list for yourself if you want it . . . I will simply mention in passing that this was Orlando Bloom's film debut.

Now, on to the main point:

Wilde's character was reduced to that of your average quiet, sardonic wit . . . no flavor or flamboyance, no spring in the step, no gaiety. Well, okay, there was gaiety all right, it just wasn't the kind I'm talking about. If you're going to be gay, dammit, be gay!

Whatever. I sense that I am straying slightly from my original aim. The chief problem with the movie was this: It turned Oscar Wilde into a victim, not only of his society, but of other young men. He is seduced, to begin with, by a man younger than himself, and he proceeds to be swept into affair after affair as if he doesn't want to be involved at all, really.

Always he is the too-quiet voice of reason and propriety and moderation and discretion, simply unable to assert himself in the face of his lover's belligerence. Did any of them actually read all of De Profundis? (I have previously quoted pertinent portions of this letter, written to Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas on this blog.)

Wilde wants to do the right thing, or, failing that, he wants to be discrete about doing the wrong thing, but he is unable to get past the beautiful vision he seems to have of so-called "ideal love" as he believes it existed in Ancient Greece between master and disciple.

Meh. Again, whatever. All this and more I could have accepted as potentially believable, (or at least acceptable), twists on the actual character, but then they went and blew the moral of the story, and a movie with great potential for a powerful illustration of redemption becomes a self-righteous (and rather late) sermon for gay rights.

Oh, yes . . . Wilde found a moral. Well, fine, the movie found a moral as well, it just wasn't a moral moral. Or, rather, it was amoral moral. Uhhh . . . yeah. I just hope you aren't reading this out loud to someone for whatever reason.

Anyway, the point is, as the excerpt from De Profundis and the following excerpt from the poem he composed while he was in prison clearly show, Wilde was getting it. He spent the last few years of his life getting it, becoming a Catholic on his deathbed. He certainly didn't spend that time with Bosie.

From "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (The "he" referred to repeatedly is a murderer, recently hanged)

And thus we rust Life's iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make no moan:
But God's eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the Lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul from Sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat,
And the stark and staring eyes,
Waits for the holy hands that took
The Thief to Paradise;
And a broken and a contrite heart
The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law
Gave him three weeks of life,
Three little weeks in which to heal
His soul of his soul's strife,
And cleanse from every blot of blood
The hand that held the knife.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal:
And the crimson stain that was of Cain
Became Christ's snow-white seal.

The Case for the Defense: Harry Potter as Wholesome, Valuable Christian Fantasy

The Harry Potter topic has by now, of course, grown quite out of control to the point where I couldn't hope to cover it all in a simple blogpost, or even in a book of any modest length.

I mean, it's not as if I would only have to contend with the five books in the series that have been published thus far, (and the combined total is already approaching 3,000 pages of material). There is also the matter of the 15+ (and still counting) books about Harry Potter. Some of these books discuss The Issue, some attempt literary criticism and analysis, and some delve into the background and origins of the unique blend of mythoi that Rowling has drawn from to create her own world. And besides all of that, there is the legion of articles that have been published in periodicals of every size, type, and description, plus the weighing in of opinion from famous figures of all types, both major and minor, and organizations who have this to mention or that to mention (all available on the Internet) . . . The sheer quantities of ink and human thought (or the lack of it) involved in this thing are as dizzying as a Sicilian's intellect.

Well . . . I don't even want to read all of that stuff, let alone comment on it. I just have one point to make in this post (Deep breath . . . prepare for a run-on sentence) . . . It is my intent to prove, (or at the very least assert and provide compelling evidence to support my thesis), that not only is Harry Potter neither evil or satanic in nature, but on the contrary, when properly read through the critical lens of Christian interpretation (if that's your thing and you've never heard of reading for the purposes of fun and entertainment . . . you poor dear) the Harry Potter series turns out to encompass a worldview which is inherently in concordance with the ideology of any well-educated, theologically grounded, and reasonably enlightened individual who happens to be a follower of Jesus Christ, and (if you so desire) can be used as a valuable tool from which to draw worthwhile and interesting life (and even spiritual) lessons for the instruction of developing minds, both young and old.

Anyway, I'll be chunking all the pro-Harry Potter ammo I've got at you, and I'll try to be as orderly as I can in my arguments . . . But you all know how I write, and worse, how I think.

Eat your heart out . . .

When it comes to the opinions of people that I know, (and I've asked a lot of people what they think during the three or so years that I've been more or less actively engaged in investigating this question), the statistical response to the question "Is Harry Potter evil or harmful?" is overwhelming.

-100% of people that I have asked personally who have actually read the Harry Potter series have responded "No." I haven't spoken with a single, solitary reader of the series who has responded in the affirmative. Perhaps someday I will . . . It won't change my opinion any, but I will no longer be able to rely on that impressive "one" followed by its two zeroes.

-100% of people that I have asked personally who responded "Yes" had not actually read the series or seen the movies. As I say . . . maybe someday, but for now the statistics are on my side. (I should note, for the record, that there are certainly a number of people with whom I have spoken who said either "Maybe" or "I don't know." None of them had read the books either, although some had seen one or more of the movies.)

That is what I know from talking to people. It is what I knew before I ever picked up the first book, and in the two years since that happened, nothing has changed yet. So:

I shall begin by contending that the Harry Potter series is written, from both a literary and a spiritual perspective, in the classic Inklings vein (books by said authors having long been accepted without question by all but the most foolish Christians worldwide).

If asked what my favorite class has been thus far here at LeTourneau, I would have to say it was last fall's Inklings class, (with only the slightest hesitation while I consider Watson classes and Social Backgrounds). It was truly an excellent class, and it helped me to see with particular clarity how even fantasy that is not strictly allegorical can appeal to the more spiritual aspects of our nature, and can present a very Christian worldview via symbolism and the various workings of plot, characters, and dialogue which promote any number of ideals, virtues and truths.

Last semester, as I was taking that class, I started to apply some of those principles to various things, and we even briefly discussed Harry Potter a couple of times in class (once as a result of a fascinating essay of sorts that I found, which I'll be linking to shortly). Meanwhile, I was frequenting a very small discussion board that had about 12 members at the time. Besides my roommate, Bryan, I was the oldest member, and when a Harry Potter discussion got started, I dove into it fairly quickly.

The following is an excerpt from a post I made near the beginning of the Inklings class:

I attended a class last night which was truly excellent and highly relevant to this discussion. Much of it was a discussion of myth and what it is and what it means to humanity. Essentially we have two very distinct spheres in existence in our universe: that of the Human and that of Heaven. Throughout history there have been instances were the heavenly intrudes in upon the human and it is in and from these points of intersection that myths are born. Myths are the human attempt to form a window through which they may view that which is divine, and in all of them we can catch glimpses and reflections of the hereafter. The Bible of course, is a True Myth, the one composed from the other side of the spectrum rather than by humans and it gives us a true, complete picture.

This, then, is what gives so many of us our love of fantasy, etc. It is a subject that C. S. Lewis was always talking about: That of the longing we all feel for something more beyond the material world that we see, and fantasy, (because of what it is, what it means, and where it comes from), partially satisfies that longing. Harry Potter is one example of a modern-day myth, and as such it contains any number of connections to the supernatural which are fascinating to observe. A large part of the structure of the thing is a crude model of the two spheres I described above, although here it is the wizard world that is intrusive upon the human.

That specific element is what a lot of kids love about it . . . This idea of another world out there, one which is grander, more exciting, more colorful than our own. And, more importantly, one which is accessible only to a select few. Sound familiar? It should . . . Especially if we have any die-hard Calvinists out there.

Even aside from this, the series raises some very serious questions about the nature of good and evil, and the implications of a struggle between the two. What is right? What is wrong? How can you decide between them? It's deep stuff (as you will find that all good children's literature is).

I'm not quite sure why I thought it would be a good idea to drop Calvinists into the mix . . . so nevermind that. No one knew what I was talking about anyway, I'm afraid. Anyway, the following excerpt is from a post I made once the class was over, after a few people had expressed confusion regarding my earlier post.

While it is certainly true that fantasy is appealing because it provides an escape from the humdrum of everyday life, I was trying to get at something beyond even that. Think of two circles, side by side, but separate. One is the natural, one is the supernatural. At one time, those two circles were one, and then the Fall happened. Now we are separated from God and the supernatural in everyday life because of sin . . . But we still catch glimpses of the beyond.

There are still intrusions of the supernatural on the natural, the circles still have a slight overlap. We see it through miracles, God working in people's lives, etc. And this what true fantasy is all about: A window into worlds and situations where those circles are still very much a part of each other.

The next part isn't the easiest to get across. If you're a big fantasy fan, you'll know what I'm talking about. There is a certain indefinable something to the genre, I have learned to refer to it as an "otherness" simply because it is not anything that we can truly know, or understand, or experience in this life except in fleeting glimpses. In both The Last Battle, and the movie version of Return of the King, I think it is explained a bit.

The last chapter of The Last Battle concerns the "Shadowlands," (the world we live in), which is a dim reflection of what lies beyond, "further up and further in," waiting for us after death. In the movie, Gandalf says something to Pippin concerning death that really struck me, something to the effect of: "The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back, and all changes to silver glass, and then you see it . . . White shores, and beyond . . . a far green country under a swift sunrise."

So it's right there: This other world. But our eyes are closed to it until after we die . . . and then the dull, grungy curtain is pulled away and we realize that even the most beautiful things we know in this life are but dim reflections of something greater and more beautiful and more wonderful by far than anything we have or could have experienced while we lived on earth, and in the midst of that is God, defying description. And to me, this is what fantasy provides a glimpse of. This is what it's all about. It's even there a good bit in Harry Potter . . . the otherness, the something more.

I think a lot of times, Christians (and especially adults) have a hard time separating reality from would-be fantasy. They don't quite understand the concept of fiction that contains truth . . . it may sound like an oxymoron, but it isn't. And they especially don't understand that in fiction, the rules can be different without changing the fundamentals.

I cannot use what we mere mortals think of as genuine "magic," apart from demonic activity, in this world. But fantasy is not set in the world that we know . . . that's why it's fantasy. In the same way that Peter Pan can fly by thinking happy thoughts, (a physical impossibility in our world), Harry Potter can cast spells with a magic wand and not be a Satanist, (a spiritual impossibility in our world).

As far as measurable effects of this perceived danger, I would guess that roughly the same number of children have jumped out of windows with huge smiles on their faces after reading Peter Pan as have made contact with demons via spells they learned from Harry Potter.

Anyway, my point is that fantasy, far from being Satan's foothold in your life, is actually a window into a world of spritual truth and light. You just have to know what you're looking for . . .

That's basically what I got out of Inklings, in a nutshell. I mean . . . there was a lot of really cool stuff, but this new (to me) concept of fantasy and myth was my favorite bit, probably because I was sick of fighting this battle without any really compelling arguments to rely on, and equally sick of being vaguely uncertain from time to time that I was on the right side. So much for that.

So long as I've made a passing mention of Harry Potter being specifically targeted when other books are left alone, let me go a bit deeper into that. I found this piece from the Censorship News during my online wanderings and, while I realize that Christians taking a hardline will dismiss this as irrelevant, coming from a non-Christian as it does, I think it raises some important points. It was written by Judy Blume (another author whose books have often been banned), and this is the quote I'd like to focus on:

I knew this was coming. The only surprise is that it took so long -- as long as it took for the zealots who claim they're protecting children from evil (and evil can be found lurking everywhere these days) to discover that children actually like these books. If children are excited about a book, it must be suspect.

I'm not exactly unfamiliar with this line of thinking, having had various books of mine banned from schools over the last 20 years. In my books, it's reality that's seen as corrupting. With Harry Potter, the perceived danger is fantasy. After all, Harry and his classmates attend the celebrated Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. According to certain adults, these stories teach witchcraft, sorcery and satanism. But hey, if it's not one "ism," it's another. I mean Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" has been targeted by censors for promoting New Ageism, and Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" for promoting racism. Gee, where does that leave the kids?

The question is not whether these books, or any books for that matter, are potentially harmful to children. Heck, eating out at fast food restaurants and driving your kids to school through heavy traffic are potentially harmful . . . The question is whether or not you can and will teach them to think critically about whatever it is that they are choosing to read rather than snatching away every book they seem to be enjoying a little too much and force-feeding them the latest dumbed-down Christian alternative.

In other words, there are two basic choices:

1) You can bulldoze stumbling blocks (real or perceived) out of their way as they grow up, until they leave the nest and not only can you no longer remove said blocks, but the kids don't see them because they don't know what blocks look like.

2) You can teach your children what stumbling blocks look like and show them how to step over said blocks.

Don't misunderstand me, I don't believe that the Harry Potter series actually is a stumbling block . . . but it is certainly something that children who know how to evaluate and analyze and think critically about what they are reading will be able to appreciate more. The uses of said skills clearly extend beyond the realm of stumbling block recognition and avoidance.

From this article (which I was quite pleased to find) we see an excellent explanation of where Harry Potter fantasy-magic diverges completely from Satanic "magic" and witchcraft (to the point where the two genuinely have absolutely nothing to do with each other). As such, and for other interesting bits of information and further discussion of Rowling's resemblance to the Inklings (and Tolkien specifically), I highly recommend that you read it in its entirety. It is excellent. The selection that I would like to highlight, however, is one that draws attention to one of the sterling "life lessons" that I mentioned earlier:

The clarity with which Rowling sees the need to choose between good and evil is admirable, but still more admirable, to my mind, is her refusal to allow a simple division of parties into the Good and the Evil. Harry Potter is unquestionably a good boy, but, as I have suggested, a key component of his virtue arises from his recognition that he is not inevitably good. When first–year students arrive at Hogwarts, they come to an assembly of the entire school, students and faculty. Each of them sits on a stool in the midst of the assembly and puts on a large, battered, old hat—the Sorting Hat, which decides which of the four houses the student will enter. After unusually long reflection, the Sorting Hat, to Harry’s great relief, puts him in Gryffindor, but not before telling him that he could achieve real greatness in Slytherin. This comment haunts Harry: he often wonders if Slytherin is where he truly belongs, among the pragmatists, the careerists, the manipulators and deceivers, the power–hungry, and the just plain nasty. Near the end of the second book, after a terrifying encounter with Voldemort . . . he confesses his doubts to Dumbledore.

"So I should be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desperately into Dumbledore’s face. "The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin’s power in me, and it—"

"Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly. "Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand–picked students. Resourcefulness . . . determination . . . a certain disregard for rules," he added, his moustache quivering again. "Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think."

"It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "Because I asked not to go in Slytherin. . . ."

"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from [Voldemort]. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Harry sat motionless in his chair, stunned.

Harry is stunned because he realizes for the first time that his confusion has been wrongheaded from the start: he has been asking the question "Who am I at heart?" when he needed to be asking the question "What must I do in order to become what I should be?" His character is not a fixed preexistent thing, but something that he has the responsibility for making: that’s why the Greeks called it character, "that which is engraved." It’s also what the Germans mean when they speak of Bildung, and the Harry Potter books are of course a multivolume Bildungsroman—a story of "education," that is to say, of character formation.

In addition to the many virtues demonstrated over and over again by the characters (great stuff like loyalty, friendship, tolerance, compassion, wisdom, courage, generosity, tenacity, trust, perseverance, humility . . . and I could go on . . .), the series repeatedly and reliably addresses the larger issues and questions of right and wrong, good and evil, life and death, appearance and reality, and coming of age.

But my original assertion hangs on more than a simple illustration of the possible teaching opportunities available in the Harry Potter series. This is the piece that I found while I was in the Inklings class. It is an excerpt from the book "The Hidden Key to Harry Potter: Understanding the Meaning, Genius, and Popularity of Joanne Rowling's Harry Potter Novels" which I found to be quite a fascinating read (I am currently trying to acquire the book in its entirety on inter-library loan). Again, the entire bit is quite a good read (although I don't necessarily think he's 100% correct . . . the important thing is that he can draw those conclusions), but there is a particular portion that I would like to quote:

Chamber as Morality Play

Christian morality plays were the first theater in Western Europe. They were almost without exception either portrayals of Bible stories or 'Everyman' allegories of the soul's journey to salvation through thick and thin. Imagine medieval street dramas at public markets and fairs by itinerant players putting on variations of Pilgrim's Progress and the Passion Play. The finish to Chamber of Secrets, as morality play, is the clearest Christian allegory of salvation history since Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Let's look at it in detail.

Harry, our 'Every Man', enters the Chamber of Secrets to find and rescue Ginny Weasley. He finds her but she is unconscious and Harry cannot revive her. He meets Tom Riddle. He had thought Riddle was a friend and asks for his help in restoring Ginny. No deal.

He learns then that Riddle is anything but his friend; Tom Riddle is the young Lord Voldemort, Satan's 'stand in' in the Harry Potter books, the Dark Lord or Evil One. Far from helping him revive Ginny, Riddle has been the cause of her near death. Harry boldly confesses his loyalty to Albus Dumbledore and his belief that Dumbledore's power is greater than Voldemort's.

The Chamber is filled with Phoenix song at this point, heralding the arrival of Fawkes, Dumbledore's Phoenix, who brings Harry the Sorting Hat of Godric Gryffyndor. The Dark Lord laughs at "what Dumbledore sends his defender" (page 316) and offers to teach Harry a "little lesson". "Let's match the powers of Lord Voldemort, Heir of Salazar Slytherin, against famous Harry Potter, and the best weapons Dumbledore can give him"(page 317). He releases the giant Basilisk from his reservoir and the battle is joined.

The look of the Basilisk is death so Harry, eyes closed, runs from it. The Phoenix attacks the charging Basilisk and punctures its deadly eyes. Harry cries for help to "someone - anyone -" (page 319) as the Phoenix and blind Basilisk continue to battle; he is given the Sorting Hat- by a sweep of the Basilisk's tail. The Harry throws himself to the ground, rams the hat over his head, and begs for help again. A "gleaming silver sword" comes through the hat (page 320).

The Evil One directs the blind Basilisk to leave the Phoenix and attack the boy. It does. Harry drives the sword "to the hilt into the roof of the serpent's mouth" when it lunges for him - but one poisonous fang enters Harry's arm as the Basilisk falls to its death. Harry, mortally wounded, falls beside it. Phoenix weeps into Harry's wound as Riddle laughs at Harry's death.

Too late, Riddle remembers the healing powers of Phoenix tears and chases away the Phoenix. He then confronts the prostrate Harry and raises Harry's wand to murder him. The Phoenix gives Harry the diary and Harry drives the splintered Basilisk fang into it. Riddle dies and disappears as ink pours from the diary. Ginny revives and they escape. Holding the tail feathers of the Phoenix, they fly from the cavern "miles beneath Hogwarts" to safety and freedom above. Harry celebrates with Dumbledore.

Now let's translate this Morality Play. First, the cast of characters, the dramatis personae:

Harry is 'Every Man'

Ginny is 'Virgin Innocence, Purity'

Riddle/Voldemort is 'Satan, the Deceiver'

The Basilisk is 'Sin'

Dumbledore is 'God the Father'

Fawkes the Phoenix is 'Christ'

Phoenix Song is 'Holy Spirit'

Gryffyndor's Sword is 'the Sword of Faith/Spirit' (Ephesians 6:17)

The Chamber is 'the World' and

Hogwarts is 'Heaven'

The action of the drama, then, goes like this: man, alone and afraid in the World, loses his innocence. He tries to regain it but is prevented by Satan, who feeds on his fallen, lost innocence. Man confesses and calls on God the Father before Satan and is graced immediately by the Holy Spirit and the protective presence of Christ.

Satan confronts man with the greatness of his sins but Christ battles on Man's side for Man's salvation from his sins. God sends Man the Sword of Faith which he 'works' to slay his Christ-weakened enemy. His sins are absolved but the weight of them still mean Man's death. Satan rejoices.

But, wait, the voluntary suffering of Christ heals Man! Man rises from the dead, and, with Christ's help, Man destroys Satan. Man's innocence is restored and he leaves the World for Heaven by means of the Ascension of Christ. Man, risen with Christ, lives with God the Father in joyful thanksgiving.

If I look closely, I can imagine where different types of Christians might disagree with this thumbnail sketch of Everyman's salvation drama in emphasis and specific doctrines. It would be a very odd Christian indeed, though, who could not understand what the story was about and would not admire the artistry of the allegory. Using only traditional symbols, from the 'Ancient of Days' figure as God the Father to the satanic serpent and Christ-like phoenix ('the Resurrection Bird'), the drama takes us from the fall to eternal life without a hitch. Nothing philosophical or esoteric here (can you say 'no alchemy'?).

Rowling illustrates here that her books are Christian and in bold opposition to the spiritually dangerous books our children are often given. Chamber of Secrets is an example in the genre of an engaging, enlightening, and edifying reading experience for children - and a powerful rebuke and wake-up call to her Christian critics.

What is Chamber of Secrets about? Rowling, perhaps in response to the absence of intelligent discussion of Stone's meaning, in her second book clearly reveals to the discerning reader that she is writing Inkling fiction, i.e., stories that will prepare children for Christian spiritual life and combat with evil. Talk about baptizing the imagination with Christian symbols and doctrine!

I really don't know whether you can actually contend that Rowling did that on purpose, but it is undeniably there to be found. And this isn't an isolated incident within the series, either. Consider the first book for a moment. Again we have Harry himself as the "Every Man" character. Think of the entire opening portion as a metaphor for a spiritual journey.

Harry spends the first part of his life in darkness, surrounded by people who are blind to the truth around them. It is not until his 11th birthday that he discovers he is not of this world at all, and a whole new world opens up right before his eyes, where a wholly new and different life awaits him. And in this new world, he is the focal point of a battle between good and evil. Although he had received the mark of Voldemort at a very young age, and Voldemort still makes every effort to get at him, he is safe so long as he stays near Dumbledore (the only wizard that Voldemort fears).

And, at the climax, even when Dumbledore seems to have disappeared, leaving Harry to try and take care of things himself, we discover that there is more protecting him than we knew about all along.

"Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign . . . to have been loved so deeply . . . will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good."

I'm sure that someone like Granger could explain it more neatly . . . I probably could as well, but I don't think I need to spend anymore time on it as it should be very clear. Things like this don't just sneak in by accident, and the Harry Potter series is literally riddled with similair allegorical/symbolical scenarios, just waiting to be discovered.

Before I bring this post to a close, let's review the facts one last time:

1) The Harry Potter books fall directly into the classic classification of fantasy/myth/faerie as outlined by Tolkien and Lewis. As such, they serve as symbols of spiritual truth on the deepest, most subconscious level that can appeal to the human psyche and clearly identify Rowling as a mythopoeic subcreator of the highest caliber.

2) The Harry Potter books are perfect for teaching children valuable skills related to discernment, critical thinking, and literary analysis and evaluation . . . not to mention the pure enjoyment of reading and healthy dose of cultural literacy that can be acquired.

3) The Harry Potter books are a veritable gold mine of excellent lessons just waiting to be taught and pressing issues just waiting to be discussed concerning any number of subjects, virtues, and important questions.

4) The Harry Potter books are crammed to the very rafters with imagery that is blatantly Christian and obvious symbolism which is easily linked to many, if not most, (if not all) important Christian ideals and doctrines. This makes them excellent witnessing tools as they have already come crashing into mainstream culture in a big way that we would be remiss to ignore or denounce.

5) The Harry Potter books are a genuinely good read.

The Defense rests . . .

Jared's Salute to Saki

After a ride from Gilbert Hall to Phys. Plant in the back of a pickup . . . in the pouring rain . . . after a long day of dabbing paint in corners and along edges . . . I am clearly ready for a blogpost. Clearly.

I promised a post on Saki and his Complete Works, and this is about the best I can do in just a few hours. Watson's copy of The Complete Works is nearly 950 pages long, and I certainly can't do that justice in terms of sheer quantity (to say nothing of the high quality). Hopefully, however, I can convey at least a sense of what I gleaned of the man who wrote it. As to his work, I highly recommend that you read some of it yourself.

I'll try and hit a few of the high points insofar as I judge they are important to understanding Hector Hugh Munro (aka Saki), but I encourage you to drop by Project Gutenburg and read some of his earlier short stories for yourself (unless you either already have, or you've heard those which I have read aloud from time to time).

Anyway, without further ado, we shall dive right in:

On this particular morning the sight of Lady Bastable enthroned among her papers gave Clovis the hint towards which his mind had been groping all breakfast time. His mother had gone upstairs to supervise packing operations, and he was alone on the ground-floor with his hostess--and the servants. The latter were the key to the situation. Bursting wildly into the kitchen quarters, Clovis screamed a frantic though strictly non-committal summons: "Poor Lady Bastable! In the morning-room! Oh, quick!" The next moment the butler, cook, page-boy, two or three maids, and a gardener who had happened to be in one of the outer kitchens were following in a hot scurry after Clovis as he headed back for the morning-room. Lady Bastable was roused from the world of newspaper lore by hearing a Japanese screen in the hall go down with a crash. Then the door leading from the hall flew open and her young guest tore madly through the room, shrieked at her in passing, "The jacquerie! They're on us!" and dashed like an escaping hawk out through the French window. The scared mob of servants burst in on his heels, the gardener still clutching the sickle with which he had been trimming hedges, and the impetus of their headlong haste carried them, slipping and sliding, over the smooth parquet flooring towards the chair where their mistress sat in panic- stricken amazement. If she had had a moment granted her for reflection she would have behaved, as she afterwards explained, with considerable dignity. It was probably the sickle which decided her, but anyway she followed the lead that Clovis had given her through the French window, and ran well and far across the lawn before the eyes of her astonished retainers.

That brief passage offers just a taste of the hilarity that awaits anyone who is fortunate enough to discover the adventures of Reginald and Clovis. It pretty much sums up everything I've loved about reading Saki . . . most of his stories are about that funny (of course, that particular story, "The Stampeding of Lady Bastable," has some good build-up and concluding remarks, but you get the gist . . .). But there's more to Saki and his writing than just the really funny stuff, as I hope to show in the rest of this post.

Now, a coupla weeks back I had just finished reading "When William Came" by Saki. Published early in 1914, it is basically a rather searing, pro-war indictment of England's general state of being. It is set in the not-too-distant future (as of publication date, of course) and it is an account of what happens after Germany has successfully defeated the British Navy and invaded and occupied England. Very interesting, being pre-WWI and all that . . .

I had my eye on a particular passage, near the end of the book, that I wanted to be sure and quote here. The main character is riding a train out into the country and he is joined by a Hungarian. The character (Yeovil, an Englishman) pretends to be from Russia in order to hear the Hungarian speak his mind on what he thinks of the current state of affairs.

A few excerpts:

In religion they had come to look on the Christ as a sort of amiable elder Brother, whose letters from abroad were worth reading. Then, when they had emptied all the divine mystery and wonder out of their faith naturally they grew tired of it . . . but they were not virile enough to become real Pagans; their dancing fauns were good young men who tripped Morris dances and ate health foods and believed in a sort of Socialism which made for the greatest dullness of the greatest number . . .

They grew soft in their political ideas. For the old insular belief that all foreigners were devils and rogues they substituted another belief, equally grounded on insular lack of knowledge, that most foreigners were amiable, good fellows, who only needed to be talked to and patted on the back to become your friends and benefactors . . . Ah, the British lion was in a hurry to inaugurate the Millennium and to lie down gracefully with the lamb. He made two mistakes, only two, but they were very bad ones; the Millennium hadn't arrived, and it was not a lamb that he was lying down with.

The Hungarian gets off at the next station and he is replaced by an Englishman who is glad to hear that our hero is also English. He doesn't like travelling with foreigners. They begin to discuss the current state of affairs, and the new arrival expresses nothing but mindless optimism . . . He is certain that England can rebuild their army and navy and get Germany out of the country.

This is nonsense, of course, and Yeovil tells him so. As much as Yeovil would like for this to be true, he sees the depressing reality of the situation, and he expresses this in no uncertain terms to the other man.

"Here's my station and I'm not sorry," said the fisherman, gathering his tackle together and rising to depart; "I've listened to you long enough. You and me wouldn't agree, not if we was to talk all day. Fact is, I'm an out-and-out patriot and you're only a half-hearted one. That's what you are, half-hearted."

And with that parting shot he left the carriage and lounged heavily down the platform, a patriot who had never handled a rifle or mounted a horse or pulled an oar, but who had never flinched from demolishing his country's enemies with his tongue.

"England has never had any lack of patriots of that type," thought Yeovil sadly; "So many patriots and so little patriotism."

I feel like this from time to time . . . and I suspect that if I was more vocal about what I thought sometimes, I'd feel even more beat-down by all the blasted, rabid patriots running about with stars (and stripes) in their eyes.

Anyway, I've quoted Saki on occasion during the course of my reading of his complete works. He picked up the mantle of dry, witty social commentary dropped by Oscar Wilde (publishing his first collection of short stories in 1902).

When WWI started, although he was overage, he joined the army . . . For some reason, he turned down a commission, enlisting as an ordinary soldier. He was killed in France, by a sniper, in late 1916.

Dreadful waste.

At least, however, we had Wodehouse on hand to step into the role . . . and he proceeded to fill it for the next three decades or so. No single volume collections of his complete works, let me tell you this. But I'll be readin' 'em as I happen upon 'em.

Anyway, back to Saki . . . I think that the difference between him and Wilde or Wodehouse is the razor-sharp edge that he seems to have developed over the course of his writing. His earliest collections of short stories show a kind of good-natured tolerance of the quirky existence led by the upper-crust of society. However, as time goes on, the stories get a good bit darker, and a great deal more vindictive.

His foolish characters are quite likely, at any given moment, to be devoured by wolves or to drown after falling through a patch of thin ice (for instance). One hapless woman is savaged to death in her own shed by a mad weasel. Another particularly amusing (though gruesome) episode has "Suffragetae" of Ancient Rome being torn apart by an arena full of dozens of ravenous wild beasts. His protagonists gradually shift from dryly dropping cute, witty one-liners (of the Wilde variety) while nibbling at muffins to staring seriously off into space and delivering solemn (albeit unconventional) speeches on the meaning of life and death. His antagonists go from being offended to being offed.

His novel, "The Unbearable Bassington," (1912) shows this shift in microcosm. The entire beginning is fairly light-hearted and includes all of the usual elements. Comus Bassington is Saki's typical Clovis/Reginald character, hopping in and out of amusing scrapes with sickening ease and generally causing his mother and uncle grief within their snooty social circle. But he has to get himself a rich wife, because he is one of those leeches who will never really be able to support himself and he hasn't got a large family fortune holding him up . . . but when he blows that, his mother (Francesca) exiles him to a colonial post in deepest darkest Africa.

His going-away party is one of the most dreary scenes I've ever read, full of dark foreshadowing omens hinting that he will never return from Africa alive. In the very next scene, we find him there, grimly contemplating his fate:

It was almost a relief to turn back to that other outlook and watch the village life that was now beginning to wake in earnest. The procession of water-fetchers had formed itself in a long chattering line that stretched river-wards. Comus wondered how many tens of thousands of times that procession had been formed since first the village came into existence. They had been doing it while he was playing in the cricket-fields at school, while he was spending Christmas holidays in Paris, while he was going his careless round of theatres, dances, suppers and card-parties, just as they were doing it now; they would be doing it when there was no one alive who remembered Comus Bassington. This thought recurred again and again with painful persistence, a morbid growth arising in part from his loneliness.

Staring dumbly out at the toiling sweltering human ant-hill Comus marvelled how missionary enthusiasts could labour hopefully at the work of transplanting their religion, with its homegrown accretions of fatherly parochial benevolence, in this heat-blistered, fever-scourged wilderness, where men lived like groundbait and died like flies. Demons one might believe in, if one did not hold one's imagination in healthy check, but a kindly all-managing God, never. Somewhere in the west country of England Comus had an uncle who lived in a rose-smothered rectory and taught a wholesome gentle-hearted creed that expressed itself in the spirit of "Little lamb, who made thee?" and faithfully reflected the beautiful homely Christ-child sentiment of Saxon Europe. What a far away, unreal fairy story it all seemed here in this West African land, where the bodies of men were of as little account as the bubbles that floated on the oily froth of the great flowing river, and where it required a stretch of wild profitless imagination to credit them with undying souls. In the life he had come from Comus had been accustomed to think of individuals as definite masterful
personalities, making their several marks on the circumstances that revolved around them; they did well or ill, or in most cases indifferently, and were criticised, praised, blamed, thwarted or tolerated, or given way to. In any case, humdrum or outstanding, they had their spheres of importance, little or big. They dominated a breakfast table or harassed a Government, according to
their capabilities or opportunities, or perhaps they merely had irritating mannerisms. At any rate it seemed highly probable that they had souls. Here a man simply made a unit in an unnumbered population, an inconsequent dot in a loosely-compiled deathroll. Even his own position as a white man exalted conspicuously above a horde of black natives did not save Comus from the depressing sense of nothingness which his first experience of fever had thrown over him. He was a lost, soulless body in this great uncaring land; if he died another would take his place, his few effects would be inventoried and sent down to the coast, someone else would finish off any tea or whisky that he left behind--that would be all.

He sees some African children playing outside . . .

Those wild young human kittens represented the joy of life, he was the outsider, the lonely alien, watching something in which he could not join, a happiness in which he had no part or lot. He would pass presently out of the village and his bearers' feet would leave their indentations in the dust; that would be his most permanent memorial in this little oasis of teeming life. And that other life, in which he once moved with such confident sense of his own necessary participation in it, how completely he had passed out of it. Amid all its laughing throngs, its card parties and race-meetings and country-house gatherings, he was just a mere name, remembered or forgotten, Comus Bassington, the boy who went away. He had loved himself very well and never troubled greatly whether anyone else really loved him, and now he realised what he had made of his life. And at the same time he knew that if his chance were to come again he would throw it away just as surely, just as perversely. Fate played with him with loaded dice; he would lose always.

One person in the whole world had cared for him [his mother], for longer than he could remember, cared for him perhaps more than he knew, cared for him perhaps now. But a wall of ice had mounted up between him and her, and across it there blew that cold-breath that chills or kills affection.

The words of a well-known old song, the wistful cry of a lost cause, rang with insistent mockery through his brain:

"Better loved you canna be,
Will ye ne'er come back again?"

If it was love that was to bring him back he must be an exile for ever. His epitaph in the mouths of those that remembered him would be, Comus Bassington, the boy who never came back.

And in his unutterable loneliness he bowed his head on his arms, that he might not see the joyous scrambling frolic on yonder hillside.

The next chapter is the last chapter and his mother receives a telegram which she knows will inform her of his death. She puts off opening it, hoping to delay the news a little while longer (he is still alive so long as she does not know he is dead). Her brother comes in to deliver some bad news of a relatively trivial nature and mistakes her anguished expression, prattling on and on in an attempt to cheer her up.

Francesca sat in stricken silence, crushing the folded morsel of paper tightly in her hand and wondering if the thin, cheerful voice with its pitiless, ghastly mockery of consolation would never stop.

And that's the end of the book. Dismal stuff.

From what I can gather after reading all of his writings, I would say this: Saki was a fairly cynical individual, but he was also an idealist and his intellect was offended more and more by what he saw of both the social and the political atmosphere of England as he got older. He knew that the world was changing very drastically and he was frustrated by two large segments of the population: 1) Those who were stagnating in the past, refusing to let go of the old ways even though the results of holding on were potentially disastrous. 2) Those who were stupidly happy about a forthcoming "modern age" and were ready to welcome it in for all the wrong reasons and banish the past entirely without learning anything from it. As you can imagine, this accounted for a rather large percentage of the population . . .

There's a deeper sense of melancholia buried in there somewhere as well, and I don't know where it comes from. I suspect that he . . . well:

"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."
-Horace Walpole

That about sums it up, really. Anyway . . .

Here's to a great author who died before his time . . .

*raises glass of Japanese rice wine*

"Be thou armed for some unhappy words."

The Shadow Council presents "The Taming of the Shrew" (and here you thought I'd forgotten! Ha!)

Scholl- Petruchio
Anna- Hostess, Katherine, Bianca, Widow
Gallagher- Bartholomew, Bianca, Grumio, Gremio, Lucentio, Vincentio, Pedant, Widow, Haberdasher
Wilson- Lord, Lucentio, Tailor, Philip
Myself- Cristopher Sly, Curtis, Hortensio, Biondello, Nicholas
Sharptiano- 2nd Huntsman, 2nd Servant, Player, Tranio, Nathaniel
Randy- 1st Huntsman, 1st Servant, Baptista Minola, Joseph
Scott- 3rd Huntsman, 3rd Servant, Gremio

And so we end the dramatic season at LeTourneau . . . out with a bang, not a whimper. I think that's everyone. That's the problem with having to wait nearly a week before I get around to typing this up. Nevertheless, it was buku fun, especially with our resident squabbling couple playing the fictional brawlers. One thing mystified me, though. We've all seen Scholl get clobbered good and proper, both with and without cause, on a fairly regular basis. But when Anna, playing Katherine, was instructed by the stage directions to deliver a well-deserved clout to Petruchio, she barely made contact with that fist. Scholl should only be so lucky in real life . . .

Kudos to Gallagher on playing nine characters . . . that I remember. So much fun . . . in that last scene we had, what . . .? Playing a character, the same character's father, the man pretending to be that character's father, that character's wife, one of that character's former rivals for the affections of said wife, the wife of that character's other former rival, and the resident wise-cracking servant. *deep breath* Phew!

I now have this version of the play on the way from Netflix. I only saw bits and pieces of it in Shakespeare class, but from what I did see, you haven't seen fireworks until you've seen Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor squaring off. Yikes. Trust me, you don't want none of this. Or this. That woman is a menace.

And with that, I officially declare the season to be at a close. As if it weren't already. See you next season, folks . . . I hope.

Sunday's Supplementary Smattering

Well, I did a bit of reading today, on the side . . . Just a few things from the Norton Anthology that caught my eye (amusing/interesting/worthwhile excerpts included below the fold):

"Why the Novel Matters" by D. H. Lawrence

Quite a special little essay this. And I'm sure you'll all recognize some familiar worldviews in the included excerpt . . . Not to mention some very ripe heresy and/or blasphemy. However, that's hardly the point of the thing. I can't help but get a bit of enjoyment out of someone who takes the idea that The Novel is the be-all and end-all of human existence and runs with it in such a brilliantly winning fashion . . . And then, with only the slightest bit of chutzpah, quite naturally asserts that novelists are, therefore, the supreme beings.

Oh, yes. And what's that you ask? Was he . . .?

Yes, D. H. Lawrence was a novelist. Clearly.

"Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" by George Eliot

The title of this (rather lengthy, as it turned out) essay just caught my eye . . . I can't imagine why. I was highly amused at the idea of George Eliot writing such an essay, so I read it, and it was quite good. She isn't just addressing women authors, either, I don't think . . . That is, it seemed to me that this is the sort of essay that every novelist should have to read, and could probably profit from.

In any case, that isn't the point of the essay. No doubt she would have addressed herself to all novelists if her purpose had been to halt (or slow . . . or discuss . . . or whatever) the production of silly novels. What she is doing, however, is imploring the women who insist on writing these monstrosities to cease and desist forthwith, as they are giving the entire gender a bad rep and slowing positive progress considerably. Imagine that . . .

"The Daughters of the Late Colonel" by Katherine Mansfield

When I started this short story, I thought it was rather morbidly funny, but by the end it was . . . quite poignant. It simply follows the activities of two spinster sisters (Josephine and Constantia . . . or "Jug" and "Con") as they struggle not to let their world fall completely apart in the mess of events after the death of their father: interacting with well-wishers, attending the funeral, trying to go through his things and set his affairs in order. Basically, they have to try to figure out where they're headed after what is the first real disruptive thing that has ever happened in their lives . . . Lives which they've never been in charge of before.

It's hard to tell from the ending of the story, but I wasn't sure that they really had anywhere to go. The story is set during the same time as it was written, I presume (the early 'twenties), and the sisters are now one tiny, isolated remnant of a society that had been dead for nearly a decade (at least), and dying for a few decades before that. Unless they can break through that bubble (and they seem to be right at the barrier, as you read the last bit of dialogue, pushing at it, but not breaking through), then they're pretty much stuck in a rather inane and safe, but purposeless, existence for their remaining years (however long or short those may turn out to be).

Interesting story . . . lots of interesting themes and ideas . . . no time to put any further thought or energy into it this week. Blast and bebother . . . G'night.

Excerpt from "Why the Novel Matters"

Nothing is important but life. And for myself, I can absolutely see life nowhere but in the living. Life with a capital L is only man alive. Even a cabbage in the rain is cabbate alive. All things that are alive are amazing. And all things that are dead are subsidiary to the living. Better a live dog than a dead lion. But better a live lion than a live dog. C'est la vie!

It seems impossible to get a saint, or a philosopher, or a scientist, to stick to this simple truth. They are all, in a sense, renegades. The saint wishes to offer himself up as spiritual food for the multitude. Even Francis of Assisi turns himself into a sort of angel-cake, of which anyone may take a slice. But and angel-cake is rather less than man alive. And poor St. Francis might well apologise to his body, when he is dying: "Oh, pardon me, my body, the wrong I did you through the years!" It was no wafer, for others to eat.

The philosopher, on the other hand, because he can think, decides that nothing but thoughts matter. It is as if a rabbit, because he can make little pills, should decide that nothing but little pills matter. As for the scientist, he has absolutely no use for me so long as I am man alive. To the scientist, I am dead. He puts under the microscope a bit of dead me, and calls it me. He takes me to pieces, and says first once piece, and then another piece, is me. My heart, my liver, my stomach have all been scientifically me, according to the scientist; and nowadays I am either a brain, or nerves, or glands, or something more up-to-date in the tissue line.

Now I absolutely flatly deny that I am a soul, or a body, or a mind, or an intelligence, or a brain, or a nervous system, or a bunch of glands, or any of the rest of these bits of me. The whole is greater than the part. And therefore, I, who am man alive, am greater than my sould, or spirit, or body, or mind, or consciousness, or anything else that is merely a part of me. I am a man, and alive. I am man alive, and as long as I can, I intend to go on being mand alive.

For this reason I am a novelist. And being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble. Which is more than poetry, philosophy, science, or any other book-tremulation can do.

The novel is the book of life. In this sense, the Bible is a great confused novel. You may say, it is about God. But it is really about man alive. Adam, Ave, Sarai, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Bath-Sheba, Ruth, Esther, Solomon, Job, Isaiah, Jesus, Mark, Judas, Paul, Peter: what is it but man alive, from start to finish? Man alive, not mere bits. Even the Lord is another man alive, in a burning bush, throwing the tablets of stone at Moses's head.
_ _ _

I don't believe in any dazzling revelation, or in any supreme Word. "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the Word of the Lord shall stand for ever." That's the kind of stuff we've drugged ourselves with. As a matter of fact, the grass withereth, but comes up all the greener for that reason, after the rains. The flower fadeth, and therefore the bud opens. But the Word of the Lord, being man-uttered and a mere vibration on the ether, becomes staler and staler, more and more boring, till at last we turn a deaf ear and it ceases to exist, far more finally than any withered grass. It is grass that renews its youth like the eagle, not any Word.

We should ask for no absolutes, or absolute. Once and for all and for ever, let us have done with the ugly imperialism of any absolute. There is no absolute good, there is nothing absolutely right. All things flow and change, and even change is not absolute. The whole is a strange assembly of apparently incongruous parts, slipping past one another.
_ _ _

In life, there is right and wrong, good and bad, all the time. But what is right in one case is wrong in another. And in the novel you can see one man becoming a corpse, because of his so-called goodness, another going dead because of his so-called wickedness. Right and wrong is an instinct: but an instinct of the whole consciousness in a man, bodily, mental, spiritual at once. And only in the novel are all things given full play, or at least, they may be given full play, when we realize that life itself, and not inert safety, is the reason for living. For out of the full play of all things emerges the only thing that is anything, the wholeness of a man, the wholeness of a woman, man live, and live woman.

Excerpt from "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists"

"Be not a baker if your head be made of butter," says a homely proverb, which, being interpreted, may mean, let no woman rush into print who is not prepared for the consequences. We are aware that our remarks are in a very different tone from that of the reviewers who, with a perennial recurrence of precisely similar emotions, only paralleled, we imagine, in the experience of monthly nurses, tell one lady novelist after another that they "hail" her productions "with delight." We are aware that the ladies at whom our criticism is pointed are accustomed to be told, in the choicest phraseology of puffery, that their pictures of life are brilliant, their characters well drawn, their style fascinating, and their sentiments lofty. But if they are inclined to resent our plainness of speech, we ask them to reflect for a moment on the chary praise, and often captious blame, which their panegyrists give to writers whose works are on the way to become classics. No sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective talent, than she receives the tribute of being moderately praised and severely criticised. By a peculiar thermometric adjustment, when a woman's talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is at the boiling pitch; when she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer heat; and if ever she reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point. Harriet Martineau, Currer Bell, and Mrs. Gaskell have been treated as cavalierly as if they had been men. And every critic who forms a high estimate of the share women may ultimately take in literature, will, on principle, abstain from any exceptional indulgence towards the productions of literary women. For it must be plain to every one who looks impartially and extensively into feminine literature, that its greatest deficiencies are due hardly more to the want of intellectual power than to the want of those moral qualities that contribute to literary excellence -- patient diligence, a sense of the responsibility involved in publication, and an appreciation of the sacredness of the writer's art. In the majority of women's books you see that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any high standard; that fertility in imbecile combination or feeble imitation which a little self-criticism would check and reduce to barrenness; just as with a total want of musical ear people will sing out of tune, while a degree more melodic sensibility would suffice to render them silent. The foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print, instead of being counterbalanced by any consciousness of the intellectual or moral derogation implied in futile authorship, seems to be encouraged by the extremely false impression that to write at all is a proof of superiority in a woman. On this ground, we believe that the average intellect of women is unfairly represented by the mass of feminine literature, and that while the few women who write well are very far above the ordinary intellectual level of their sex, the many women who write ill are very far below it. So that, after all, the severer critics are fulfilling a chivalrous duty in depriving the mere fact of feminine authorship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attraction, and in recommending women of mediocre faculties - as at least a negative service they can render their sex - to abstain from writing.

Excerpt from "The Daughters of the Late Colonel"

Well, at any rate, all that part of it was over, though neither of them
could possibly believe that father was never coming back. Josephine had
had a moment of absolute terror at the cemetery, while the coffin was
lowered, to think that she and Constantia had done this thing without
asking his permission. What would father say when he found out? For he
was bound to find out sooner or later. He always did. "Buried. You two
girls had me buried!" She heard his stick thumping. Oh, what would they
say? What possible excuse could they make? It sounded such an appallingly
heartless thing to do. Such a wicked advantage to take of a person because
he happened to be helpless at the moment. The other people seemed to treat
it all as a matter of course. They were strangers; they couldn't be
expected to understand that father was the very last person for such a
thing to happen to. No, the entire blame for it all would fall on her and
Constantia. And the expense, she thought, stepping into the tight-buttoned
cab. When she had to show him the bills. What would he say then?

She heard him absolutely roaring. "And do you expect me to pay for this
gimcrack excursion of yours?"

"Oh," groaned poor Josephine aloud, "we shouldn't have done it, Con!"

And Constantia, pale as a lemon in all that blackness, said in a frightened
whisper, "Done what, Jug?"

"Let them bu-bury father like that," said Josephine, breaking down and
crying into her new, queer-smelling mourning handkerchief.

"But what else could we have done?" asked Constantia wonderingly. "We
couldn't have kept him, Jug--we couldn't have kept him unburied. At any
rate, not in a flat that size."

Josephine blew her nose; the cab was dreadfully stuffy.

"I don't know," she said forlornly. "It is all so dreadful. I feel we
ought to have tried to, just for a time at least. To make perfectly sure.
One thing's certain"--and her tears sprang out again--"father will never
forgive us for this--never!"
_ _ _

If mother had lived, might they have married? But there had been nobody
for them to marry. There had been father's Anglo-Indian friends before he
quarrelled with them. But after that she and Constantia never met a single
man except clergymen. How did one meet men? Or even if they'd met them,
how could they have got to know men well enough to be more than strangers?
One read of people having adventures, being followed, and so on. But
nobody had ever followed Constantia and her. Oh yes, there had been one
year at Eastbourne a mysterious man at their boarding-house who had put a
note on the jug of hot water outside their bedroom door! But by the time
Connie had found it the steam had made the writing too faint to read; they
couldn't even make out to which of them it was addressed. And he had left
next day. And that was all. The rest had been looking after father, and
at the same time keeping out of father's way. But now? But now? The
thieving sun touched Josephine gently. She lifted her face. She was drawn
over to the window by gentle beams...

Until the barrel-organ stopped playing Constantia stayed before the Buddha,
wondering, but not as usual, not vaguely. This time her wonder was like
longing. She remembered the times she had come in here, crept out of bed
in her nightgown when the moon was full, and lain on the floor with her
arms outstretched, as though she was crucified. Why? The big, pale moon
had made her do it. The horrible dancing figures on the carved screen had
leered at her and she hadn't minded. She remembered too how, whenever they
were at the seaside, she had gone off by herself and got as close to the
sea as she could, and sung something, something she had made up, while she
gazed all over that restless water. There had been this other life,
running out, bringing things home in bags, getting things on approval,
discussing them with Jug, and taking them back to get more things on
approval, and arranging father's trays and trying not to annoy father. But
it all seemed to have happened in a kind of tunnel. It wasn't real. It
was only when she came out of the tunnel into the moonlight or by the sea
or into a thunderstorm that she really felt herself. What did it mean?
What was it she was always wanting? What did it all lead to? Now? Now?

Philip Larkin, James Fenton & The Memorial Obsession

(Note: Poems discussed are "beneath the fold" in the Extended Entry.)

Again, we have a case of four poems by four poets being assigned, and I find myself making an executive decision to focus on two of them. I picked these two because of the connections, as you can possibly tell. In true Forster fashion, we like connections, and these fit quite nicely into some previously addressed topics . . .

Larkin's "Church Going," first of all, was fun for me to read, managing, as it does, to evoke nostalgia over the loss of a locale (churches) that is still quite easily found (perhaps too easily, lest we take it for granted) in the world. The poem makes one feel as if the day of the church is over, or at least as if its day is waning, and I feel nostalgic. The speaker steps inside a church when he knows nothing is going on in there, and shuffles about a bit inside, checking things out, half-reverent, half-idly curious, and never fully knowing why he has decided to stop and pursue this seemingly pointless investigation.

And then he starts to speculate on what will happen to churches when we stop using them, as he feels we inevitably will. When he said that, I couldn't help but leap immediately to the "Hymn to Proserpine." We're speaking of the same thing here: A religion over thrown and falling slowly into disuse and decay, it makes sense to look to it for guidance in helping us imagine how this new scenario will play out. Of course, what would you like to think about your church? That it wouldn't fall into complete disuse, right? That perhaps you'll have "dubious women come to make their children touch a particular stone?" But you and the poet both know quite well that this cannot last, and then what? You've still got an abandoned sanctuary. Who comes to visit it now, and why?

Think of the ruined temples of Ancient Greece, in fact, think even of the ruins where Early Christian church services were once held (in places like Ephesus, Galatia, and Philippi) . . . Do we not have all the types of people he names here visiting such places? Think of LeTourneau students, happily trooping along behind Dr. Hummel as he leads them tromping through a place like this. Which category do they fall into? “The crew that tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?” Do we not know that, in the end, most of the people that show up to gawk will fall into the "bored, uninformed" category? How do we deal with that?

Larkin successfully places us, as Christians, in the position that Swinburne's Roman Poet is in, or rather will be in before he dies, but is not in quite yet. In this new world, the quiet shrines of our religion are, inevitably, fading away in a most pathetic fashion. Not even allowed to rest in solemn and dignified peace but constantly plagued by the irreverent feet of the ignorant or the curious or the morbidly fanatical. That is, of course, not all there is to this poem, but it struck me.

Second, we have "A German Requiem," a very quiet, moving, written tribute to the German Jews who were killed by the Nazis during World War II. The horrible way in which they were taken from the world makes it necessary to remember them, (the poem tells us) not from what is left behind, but rather from what is not. This is how they are remembered, then: Through what is missing, and through people meeting together to remind themselves of where they have gone, for they left so little behind. This is illustrated in a sadly funny . . . a humorously melancholy . . . fashion in the verse concerning the bodies buried with only the little plaques and cards, which they used to direct their visitors in life, to mark where they are now in death. That was all that could be done, if even that much, for the deceased.

And the poet reminds us that: "Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then." (NA 2855) This, too, is part of why they remember. I chose to look at this poem in particular (in addition to the other) for two reasons (not counting the fact that I particularly liked it).

First, because I think it connects in a very small, but important way with the themes I discussed from the Voices of World War I. The poetry that came out of that war showed us a generation and a world that was forever changed by the horrors they encountered on the battlefield. This poem, although it was written in 1981, nevertheless captures the sense of how our world has once again been changed by the shocking discovery of the “inhuman” depths to which humanity is capable of sinking, even now, in what many had thought to call a modern, and a civilized, and especially an enlightened time. Many people came out of World War I with the hope that humanity could learn from its mistakes, even as it was in the process of repeating them, and that led directly to this atrocity, in which all of humanity is somehow implicated. As dark and terrible as World War I was, things could still go downhill, and they did.

Second, because I think in both this poem and the other one I mention we see a certain recognition of a passing or a fading away of memory. Larkin sees this as inevitable, and merely spends his energies conjuring up visions of the future. In what different ways will people respond to the slow decay of the symbols of a major world religion? Fenton, on the other hand, actively dredges up the reasons why we can, will, and should remember, and his poem itself serves as a reminder, lest we forget even as we read it. I suppose this makes Fenton the more responsible poet, and I think I prefer his active response to humanity’s notoriously short attention-span over Larkin’s passive acceptance of it.

"Church Going" by Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

"A German Requiem" by James Fenton

It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the space between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
It is not what you have written down.
It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.
What you must go on forgetting all your life.
And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.
You will find out that you are not alone in the enterprise.
Yesterday the very furniture seemed to reprach you.
Today you take your place in the Widow's Shuttle.

The bus is waiting at the southern gate
To take you to the city of your ancestors
Which stands on the hill opposite, with gleaming pediments,
As vivid as this charming square, your home.
Are you shy? You should be. It is almost like a wedding,
The way you clasp your flowers and give a little tug at your veil. Oh,
The hideous bridesmaids, it is natural that you should resent them
Just a little, on this first day.
But that will pass, and the cemetery is not far.
Here comes the driver, flicking a toothpick into the gutter,
His tongue still searching between his teetch.
See, has not noticed you. No one has noticed you.
It will pass, young lady, it will pass.
How comforting it is, once or twice a year,
To get together and forget the old times.
As on those special days, ladies and gentlemen,
When the boiled shirts gather at the graveside
And a leering waistcoat approaches the rostrum.
It is like a solemn pact between the survivors.
The mayor has signed it on behalf of the freemasonry.
The priest has sealed it on behalf of all the rest.
Nothing more need be said, and it is better that way--

The better for the widow, that she should not live in fear of surprise,
The better for the young man, that he should move at liberty between the armchairs,
The better that these bent figures who flutter among the graves
Tending the nightlights and replacing the chrysanthemums
Are not ghosts,
That they shall go home.
The bus is waiting, and on the upper terraces
The workmen are dismantling the houses of the dead.

But when so many had died, so many and at such speed,
There were no cities waiting for the victims.
They unscrewed the name-plates from the shattered doorways
And carried them away with the coffins.
So the squares and parks were filled with the eloquence of young cemeteries:
The smell of fresh earth, the improvised crosses
And all the impossible directions in brass and enamel.

"Doctor Gliedschirm, skin specialist, surgeries 14-16 hours or by appointment."
Professor Sargnagel was buried with four degrees, two associate memberships
And instructions to tradesmen to use the back entrance.
Your uncle's grave informed you that he lived on the third floor, left.
You were asked please to ring, and he would come down in the lift
To which one needed a key . . .

Would come down, would ever come down
With a smile like thing gruel, and never too much to say.
How he shrank through the years.
How you towered over him in the narrow cage.
How he shrinks now . . .

But come. Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then.
And it seems there is no limit to the resourcefulness of recollection.
So that a man might say and think:
When the world was its darkest,
When the black wings passed over the rooftops
(And who can divine His purposes?) even then
There was always, always a fire in this hearth.
You see this cupboard? A priest-hole!
And in that lumber-room whole generations have been housed and fed.
Oh, if I were to begin, if I were to begin to tell you
The half, the quarter, a mere smattering of what we went through!

His wife nods, and a secret smile,
Like a breeze with enough strength to carry one dry leaf
Over two pavingstones, passes from chair to chair.
Even the enquirer is charmed.
He forgets to pursue the point.
It is not what he wants to know.
It is what he wants not to know.
It is not what they say.
It is what they do not say.

Jewish History According to Antichrist

I am currently reading All Hallow's Eve by Charles Williams . . . and, oh, is it good. The following page-long paragraph struck me when I read it as being the perfect example of why I love Charles Williams. This is the beginning of a long section involving the thoughts of the Antichrist figure in the novel as he contemplates his place in the world and how history and, later, his own life have led to this point. Below is, as you can tell from the title, his view of Jewish history. Note the brilliant way that he has it just off . . . magnificently deceptive, with a few interesting truths poked in to throw you off . . .

Anyway, it's cool. Read it.

Indeed that august race had reached in this being its second climax. Two thousand years of history were drawing to a close; until this thing had happened it could not be free. Its priesthood- the priesthood of a nation- had been since Abraham determined to one End. But when, after other terrible wars had shaken the Roman peace, and armies had moved over Europe, and Caesar (being all that Caesar could be) had been stabbed in his own central place, when that End had been born, they were not aware of that End. It had been proposed that their lofty tradition should be made almost unbearably august; that they should be made the blood companions of their Maker, the own peculiar house and family of its Incarnacy- no more than the Gentiles in the free equality of souls, but much more in the single hierarchy of kindred flesh. But deception had taken them; they had, bidding a scaffold for the blasphemer, destroyed their predestined conclusion, and the race which had been set for the slavation of the world became a judgement and a curse to the world and to themselves. Yet the oaths sworn in heaven remained. It had been the Jewish girl who, at the command of the Voice which sounded in her ears, in her heart, along her blood and through the central cells of her body, had uttered eveywhere in herself the perfect Tetragrammaton. What the high priest vicariously spoke among the secluded mysteries of the Temple, she substantially pronounced to God. Redeemed from all division in herself, whole and identical in body and soul and spirit, she uttered the Word and the Word became flesh in her. Could It have been received by her own people, the grand Judean gate would have been opened for all peoples. It could not. They remained alien- to It and to all, and all to them and- too much!- to It. The Gentiles, summoned by that other Jew of Tarsus, could not bear their vicarious office. Bragging themselves to be the new Israel, they slandered and slew the old, and the old despised and hated the bragging new. Till at last there rose in Europe something which was neither, and set itself to destroy both.

And then, a few pages later, we get to the following really crazy paragraph, concerning the Antichrist himself, and something more:

He was not, in fact, much different from any man, but the possibiliites slowly opened to him were more rare. There shaped itself gradually in his mind a fame beyond any poet's and a domination beyond any king's. But it was fame and domination that he desired, as they did. That his magical art extended where theirs could never reach was his luck. The understanding of his reach had come when he first assisted at a necromantic operation. As the dead body stood and spoke he felt the lordship of that other half of the world. Once, as he had learned the tale, the attempt at domination had been made and failed. The sorcerer who had attempted it had also been a Jew, a descendant of the house of David, who clothed in angelic brilliance had compelled a woman of the same house to utter the Name, and something more thant mortal had been born. But in the end the operation had failed. Of the end of the sorcerer himself there were no records; Joseph ben David had vanished. The living thing that had been born of his feminine counterpart had perished miserably. It had been two thousand years before anyone had dared to risk the attempt again.

That is the most marrow-freezing paragraph I have ever read, I think. The full implication is of immeasurable proportions, but nevermind that . . .

Is there something to this, you think? *notes horrified looks* Wait, let me clarify that. Is there anything to this idea of the Antichrist simply seeing himself as the culmination of the second attempt in history to gain dominance over the human race through some sort of higher powers that he mysteriously finds that he alone possesses? Go ponder that for a bit. Or don't . . .

Bible study time . . . *evil grin*

Edward Morgan Forster & The "Hook-Up" Obsession

Ummm . . . right. I want to say right at the beginning that the fact that Forster was gay is utterly irrelevant to everything. With Wilde, that was *it* . . . here it most certainly *is not.* Really. No, seriously. Geez, will you stop obsessing about it already? Oh, and of course it has absolutely nothing to do with my selection of titles! Oh my goodness! Get your mind out of the gutter! This can't go anywhere good, I'm abandoning paragraph . . .

Alright. The happy news is that I have none of the author's work to paste in here. It's all way too long and this is a review of the movie version of one of his novels anyway. Title: "A Passage to India," and let me just say that it was good movie which I thoroughly enjoyed and . . . I should probably go into this a bit better. Hold on. Let me switch paragraphs again.

There. As I was saying, I had a very good time watching this movie. Dr. Watson swears that the guy sitting behind him (presumably when he originally saw the movie in '84?) said nothing happened in the movie. Outrageous! Or, at least, if it is true, I was far too busy trying to look at the movie and watch it at the same time to notice whether this nebulous concept of "something" was actually going on. The really cool thing about the movie, I think, was that it succeeded enormously at making India itself a central character. From the single chapter I read of the novel, and what I picked up from watching the movie and looking at Forster's key ideas, I think that this is absolutely vital.

The portrayal of India is what makes the movie rich and full of flavor. I remember especially a very breath-taking shot near the beginning of the train traveling across a vast, empty plain. You can tell that the plain is very green and that the railroad track is the only real sign of human civilization in it, but the shot is taken at night and there are stars overhead and so forth. And right in the foreground of the shot is the statue of some sort of Hindu god I believe, with all of the arms and everything. It takes up probably a third of the screen, and it seems to be gazing imperiously out over this huge domain that it owns, (whatever the British may think), while studiously ignoring the insignificant train as it crawls by. That particular shot is one among many that captured my imagination and drew me into the movie. The acting was quite superb, as well.

The basic plot of the movie is this: An elderly Englishwoman named Mrs. Moore is journeying to India to visit her son, who is the City Magistrate of Chandrapore. She is accompanied by Adela Quested, her son's fiancée. Both of them are eager to experience "the real India" while they are there. Upon arrival, this desire is frustrated by what they rightly perceive as the insufferable attitude of superiority that all of the other Brits in India hold with respect to the native Indians.

However, this notwithstanding, Mrs. Moore strikes up a chance friendship one night with an Indian named Dr. Aziz, and it is through the combined efforts of Dr. Aziz and Mr. Fielding, the principal of the local university who also happens to be the only British citizen in the city who does not hold himself above the Indians, that the two women will be able to experience India as they wish to experience it. Incidental, but strangely important, to these activities is Professor Godbole, the "Inscrutable Brahman," (hilariously portrayed by Alec Guinness).

Their endeavors will lead to Miss Quested rethinking the basis of her entire life, including her love of Ronny, to Dr. Aziz closely considering the question of whether the English and the Indians can successfully form friendships that bridge the differences of culture and race, to Mr. Fielding examining just how far his well-balanced respect of all men can stretch, and, ultimately, to an explosive trial, centered around all of the major characters, which brings Chandrapore, and perhaps all of India, to the brink of bloody revolution.

Are we drooling yet? No? *shrugs* Oh, well . . . We can't all be me, I suppose. And, let me be the first to point out, it would be dashed inconvenient if we were.

It is a fascinating look at the cultural barrier between the East and the West, the British Colonial system circa World War I, the loss of innocence that contact with a more "advanced" culture inevitably brings, and, of course, with the importance of making connections (or forming friendships, if you prefer). It is a movie that is full of significant suggestion and allusion, if comparatively little significant action. But enough dancing around it all . . . time to dive into the heart of the thing. What is the point of it all?

I am quite reluctant to focus entirely on the "making connections" angle because Dr. Watson covered that one in class, and I'm all about doing my own thing in these journals . . . but I gotta say something about it, both because it is huge and because it is meaningful to me.

It would appear that a big part of this movie, if not the big part of this movie, is that the best thing you can do with life is to go through it making connections with people. Now, I arrived at something very much like this conclusion nearly three years ago, and have been developing it ever since, but from an entirely different basis. The center and key to life, Forster would say, is in human relationships . . . and I would nearly agree. Relationships, one in particular, are the center and key, and human relationships are very near to that center.

Forster was working from the assumption that this *throws arm out in sweeping arc* is it. Do what you're going to do on this planet, because life does not proceed beyond it. Therefore, in addition to simply making for a better life, and here I make a fun little jump over to the philosophy of Big Fish and its ilk, interacting and connecting with people will allow you to retain life beyond death. This is what makes you matter. Now, when I look at the question, I remember the overused statement, "You can't take it with you," continuously applied to material possession. I'm pretty stubborn when it comes to statements like that, and I contend that you most certainly can take it with you. The key lies in exactly what you are taking . . . I'm bringing relationships, myself.

Horribly irrelevant side note that I really shouldn't be indulging in: I always wondered, if heaven is so grand, what exactly do I care if I haven't gone that extra mile and put forth the effort to receive bucketloads of "crowns" when I get there? I mean, do I really care that you've got 1300 crowns to my 3 because you spent all your time doing Longview Blitz and evangelizing people who have just seen The Passion while I was in bed? I think not . . . I mean, how many crowns can you wear at once, for goodness sake? I don't know about you, but I have no more than a single head on my shoulders. And who really wants a crown, anyway? I mean, sure, it would be kind of cool, but . . . you're in heaven . . . where does the extra-crown-coolness-factor fit in with all that?! You don't need a crown unless it's, like, your little water park bracelet thing that lets you ride the rides . . . but that doesn't even make any sense, so forget I mentioned that.

What I'm leading to is this: What if these treasures you're storing up for yourself are directly related to the relationships you are building here on earth . . . After all, think of any work that you know of anyone doing for God, ever . . . What, of that, does not involve some degree of networking, often on a massive scale? What better way to get the good times going in heaven than if you fit right in with everyone there? As the Jewish mother says brightly, "You'll have a basis." Anyway, whatever. Time to move on.

So, clearly, relationships are, in the end, really vitally, inescapably important here, but I'd like to spend just a second or two on the question of culture because I have a bit of experience here. I can say, from that experience, that one can most definitely make friends in spite of, and/or around and through, culture differences, but those differences will always be there for the friendship to work around and to work through and to work with . . . the question must be taken and asked again with each particular friendship: Is this one strong and versatile enough to withstand that pressure? And, regardless of the answer, one must continue to try, for this, if it is not where *it* is at, is at least where *it* begins. Ummm . . . Make of that what you will . . .

Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon & The War Obsession

"The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

"They" by Siegfried Sassoon

The Bishop tells us: "When the boys come back
"They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
"In a just cause: they lead the last attack
"On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
"New right to breed an honourable race,
"They have challenged Death and dared him face to face."

"We're none of us the same!" the boys reply.
"For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
"Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
"And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
"A chap who's served that hasn't found some change."
And the Bishop said: "The ways of God are strange!"

"The General" by Siegfried Sassoon

"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He’s a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

The reading for this day was lumped under the general heading "Voices from World War I," and we actually read works by four different poets (the other two being Ivor Gurney and, of course, Wilfred Owen). Of the four, Brooke and Owen died in the war (Brooke in 1915, Owen in 1918). Brooke died of dysentery and blood poisoning on board a troopship en route to Gallipoli. Owen died in the fighting a week before the war ended. Sassoon got sniped in the chest in mid-1917, but survived and was sent back to England. At that time, he made public a statement he had sent to his commanding officer:

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

He was diagnosed with shell shock and bundled off to a hospital in Edinburgh where he actually met Wilfred Owen. The two became good friends while they were there, and Sassoon had a great influence on Owen's poetry. Owen returned to the front in late 1917, and Sassoon returned in 1918. Sassoon was wounded again and returned to England for the remainder of the war. He didn't die until 1967.

So there's your background . . . now on to the poems. You can't help but note the violent contrast between Brooke and Sassoon . . . less a contrast resulting from differences between the men themselves, perhaps, and more because of what took place between 1914 (when the first was written) and 1916-17 (when the other two were written).

Brooke's "The Soldier" is proudly, even nauseatingly, patriotic. I can't help but think of Maturin here: ". . . patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile." Clearly we are dealing with a rather advanced case of Type-II patriotism here. When you know what lies ahead, ready to challenge this simple, innocent idealism as it marches into the meat grinder with a cocky grin and a twinkling eye, or perhaps with an honest, earnest expression of hope and a quiet knowledge that it is fighting for a just cause . . . Well, if you can think of that without wincing a bit, you're a right cold one and no mistake.

Note what England is made into in "The Soldier." It is not a country so much as an ideal, a cause, a collective consciousness of good and right, a loving mother producing faithful children . . . Ugh. And we, the English, (sic) carry England inside of us. No matter where we die, that spot becomes a little piece of England, and is improved thereby. And, of course, the heart is purified through dying a martyr's death for England's sake and rests in peace forever. Beautiful. It almost seems a mercy that he died thinking this.

Now, sit there for a second and think of two years of trenches and shelling and machine gun fire and mud and rats and disease and mustard gas and no man's land and barbed wire and unimaginable waste of lives . . . It's a wonder Sassoon could still write. I'd have been a babbling idiot (no comments regarding whether I already am or not, thank you).

So, look at "They." A Bishop, sitting safely at home, speaks authoritatively of a war he hasn't experienced. He promises that soldiers will not be the same when they come back home again. And he's right. Nobody is the same as they were. They're all mutilated . . . missing limbs, lacking senses, full of holes, crippled by disease, probably half-crazed . . . all different. So what does the Bishop say to this? "The ways of God are strange!" That'll turn your stomach . . . revoltingly callous and trite. It's not just that the poem's cynical . . . I can handle cynical. I am cynical, when it suits me. Ironic also . . . I love irony. But it is so very bitter.

We have the same issue in "The General," slightly comic in tone, perhaps, through some abortive attempts at levity, but still reeking chiefly of bitter irony. We have a General deigning to grace the troops with his presence just before he sends them on an idiotic and suicidal offensive. A couple of the soldiers think he's all right. Well, that won't save them from dying as a result of his poor tactics.

The Battle of Arras, by the way, which is referred to in the poem, was a major British assault that started on April 9th, 1917. It resulted in something like 160,000 casualties, and was considered (more or less) a victory for "our" side, as the Canadians managed to capture a very important strategic defensive position. 84,000 of the battle's casualties were British soldiers. Imagine if you left for the weekend and when you got back, everyone in Longview, plus 10,000 of their visiting relatives and friends, had died in a very violent and gory manner . . . use your imagination to walk through town for just a second and try to take that in. That would be just the British casualties.

In any case, it is fascinating, albeit sickening and more than a little disheartening, to watch the attitudes, worldviews, hopes, dreams, etc. of an entire generation hinge and shift around and through two short poems. There was a saying in Britain after World War I: "We went to war with Rupert Brooke, and came back with Siegfried Sassoon." Yeah. Yeah they did. I've gotten a double dose of WWI this semester in both Western Civ and American History, but looking at it that way is a bit different. A proper study of history seems almost to require supplementation from just a bit of the mind and heart of the common man, as expressed through the literature of the time. History draws the picture, literature colors it in.

Oscar Wilde & The Hedonistic Obsession

While there was never any doubt that I'd be doing an entry on Oscar Wilde, I was briefly at a loss as to whether I ought to do The Importance of Being Earnest, (which we actually read), or The Picture of Dorian Gray, (which we merely watched). I finally settled on the latter because I think it has a lot more to do with who Wilde was as a person than Earnest does. However, I am at a slight disadvantage. I have never (yet) read The Picture of Dorian Gray. I'm getting there, but there are a lot of freaking books in the world.

Anyway, I don't feel quite right about diving directly into the movie without a few words from Wilde himself. The first item in my lovely Appendix (extended entry) is the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. It's short, cracking good stuff, and you'll get a good idea of his philosophy from it.

To sum it up with the short short version, this is: "Art for art's sake." That's the key here. And now, on to the novel . . . err . . . movie.

In brief, (and I do mean brief . . . I hope), Dorian Gray is a gentleman living in London in the late 19th century. He is the very picture of unspoiled youth and innocence . . . So much so that his friend Basil Hallward, (an artist), is painting his portrait, and already more than half-believing that it will be his masterpiece. As Dorian poses for the portrait as it is completed, he makes the acquaintance of another of the artist's friends, Lord Henry Wotton. Lord Henry, from what little I’ve read, is the classic Wilde character: indolent, casual, and given to constant, penetrating, and quietly hilarious observations on the world around him. I think I can more or less sum this guy up with two of his quotes:

"If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable."

"There's only one way to get rid of temptation, and that's to yield to it."

He lounges in the studio and languidly touts his life philosophy of living for pleasure and only for pleasure. Basil completes the picture and it is indeed a masterpiece . . . the sight of himself preserved forever at the peak of perfection, and the power of Lord Henry's words move Dorian to wish that he could remain forever as he is, and that the portrait should age instead. *camera zooms in significantly on an Egyptian deity, a cat goddess, which sits imperiously on a nearby table, stoically observing the proceedings*

Of course, the wish is granted, and Dorian discovers this as he gets to know Lord Henry better and begins to live out the life philosophy that Lord Henry is always talking about (more on that in a moment). His excesses lead him deeper and deeper into the worst kind of vice and sin imaginable (for the most part this is only vaguely hinted at in the movie through dim shots of the locales he frequents and the persistent, general rumors that float around). Eventually his past comes back to haunt him. The painting is stored away where no one can see it, of course, and it is aged and disfigured past all recognition. One man in particular nearly succeeds in killing him to avenge a female relative that Dorian has . . . wronged.

The key scene, reminiscent of Dr. Faustus, comes when Basil discovers the truth and begs Dorian to repent and pray for forgiveness. Dorian doesn't think this is possible, and he ends up killing Basil. Finally, at the end, Dorian decides that he must destroy the painting, but in stabbing it, he kills himself. The painting suddenly looks as it did originally, and the hideous appearance is transferred to the Dorian's dead body.

You should know by now that I absolutely detest summarizing . . . that may or may not be why I'm so bad at it, but the point is that I hate it. However, I can't exactly upload the movie, or assume that everyone has seen it, or paste in a script, or . . . andthing like that, so I do what I can. That's the gist. Now, what does the movie mean? What's the point?

Personally, I think it is best examined as a parallel to the life of Wilde himself. With this in mind, I include two more things in the Appendix below. One is an excerpt from De Profundis, which will require a bit of explanation, I suppose. In 1895, not long after the first performance of The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to two years hard labor. See, he was having this affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, a "handsome young poet" who happened to be the son of the marquis of Queensbury. So Wilde went up the river, Douglas did not.

In prison he was allowed one sheet of paper at a time to write letters on, and De Profundis is the letter he wrote to his . . . ummm . . . to Douglas. I think it is fairly easy to see how his life more or less parallels Dorian's from what he says of it here. In any case, it is an interesting read.

So, if you took the time to read it (and it takes a little time, I confess), you can see, at least, what he thinks happened to his life. He (quite modestly) claims to have been the king of his world, more or less, if not the world (symbolically speaking), and talks of "eternal youth" and so forth . . . And then look where he goes. He starts living entirely for pleasure . . . but not the usual kind of pleasure necessarily. He plunges into the depths, perversity is mentioned, as is desire.

He has totally pulled a Dorian, as it were. And society doesn't notice, apparently, because he is still hailed far and wide . . . he's still got it all. Earneast is a huge success when it comes out, but as soon as everything hit the fan it dropped out of production for several years.

After Wilde was released from prison he, of course, left England (there's no way he could have stayed) and lived out the very short remainder of his life (three years . . . prison completely ruined his health) mooching off of friends in France under an assumed name.

"E Tenebris," the other item I have included, was written 14 years before all this, and it is . . . a little strange. I wonder what he was thinking when he wrote it and what happened to that thought process once it was written. He's grasping at something here, but did he miss? It almost sounds like Cowper's The Castaway . . . but for the ending.

(Side note: I hurt for that guy. I really do. I get depressed whenever I think about him.)

Basically, here's the big question . . . I read (or watch . . . whatever, shut up) Dorian Gray and Earnest which are, obviously, madly different, and I read De Profundis and it seems like Wilde got it . . . and then he didn't. And I read about his life and what he did with it, and I just have one question. What was this guy's deal?! He was a freakin' genius and he chucked it for . . . *gags*

Did he ever really get it, in the end? A verse I keep thinking up in connection with all this (I think it may have cropped up somewhere in all the compulsive reading I've been doing on the subject): "For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" You almost think he has in De Profundis but there's this strange lack . . . he talks as if he will be his own salvation, as if he knows he was off, but he's got it figured out now, and all he's got to do is kill the old self and take in all the experience that he has attained from the bad times, becoming something new.

Somehow, it sounds suspiciously like Dorian's scheme to stab his portrait . . . Perhaps the cause of Wilde's death, coming so close on the heels of his release from prison, was more poetic than the rational mind might at first be led to believe . . .

Nah.

Appendix

Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

From De Profundis

I must say to myself that neither you nor your father, multiplied a thousand times over, could possibly have ruined a man like me, that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to do so. I am trying to do so, though you may not think it at the present moment. If I have brought this pitiless indictment against you, think what an indictment I bring without pity against myself. Terrible as what you did to me was, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. I had realized this for myself at the very dawn of my manhood, and had forced my age to realize it afterwards. Few men hold such a position in their own lifetime, and have it so acknowledged. It is usually discerned, if discerned at all, by the historian, or the critic, long after both the man and his age have passed away. With me it was different. I felt it myself, and made others feel it. Byron was a symbolic figure, but his relations were to the passion of his age and its weariness of passion. Mine were to something more noble, more permanent, of more vital issue, of larger scope.

The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy, intellectual daring. I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art. I altered the minds of men and the colors of things. There was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder. I took the drama, the most objective form known to art, and made it as personal a mode of expression as the lyric or the sonnet, at the same time that I widened its range and enriched its characterization. Drama, novel, poem in rhyme, poem in prose, subtle or fantastic dialogue, whatever I touched I made beautiful in a new mode of beauty. To truth itself I gave what is false no less than what is true as its rightful province, and showed that the false and the true are merely forms of intellectual existence. I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as a mere mode of fiction. I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me. I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.

Along with these things, I had things that were different. I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensations. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be Lord over myself. I was no longer the Captain of my Soul, and did not know it. I allowed you to dominate me, and your father to frighten me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute Humility. Just as there is only one thing for you, absolute Humility also. You had better come down into the dust and learn it beside me.

I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said -

'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark
And has the nature of infinity.'

But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility.

It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at which I have arrived, the starting-point for a fresh development. It has come to me right out of myself, so I know that it has come at the proper time. It could not have come before, nor later. Had any one told me of it, I would have rejected it. Had it been brought to me, I would have refused it. As I found it, I want to keep it. I must do so. It is the one thing that has in it the elements of life, of a new life, Vita Nuova for me. Of all things it is the strangest. One cannot acquire it, except by surrendering everything that one has. It is only when one has lost all things that one knows that one possesses it.

I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite simply, and without affectation that the two great turning-points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison. I will not say that prison is the best thing that could have happened to me: for that phrase would savour of too great bitterness towards myself. I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.

What is said, however, by myself or by others, matters little. The important thing, the thing that lies before me, the thing that I have to do, if the brief remainder of my days is not to be maimed, marred, and incomplete, is to absorb into my nature all that has been done to me, to make it part of me, to accept it without complaint, fear, or reluctance. The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is right.

"E Tenebris"

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand,

For I am drowning in a stormier sea

Than Simon on Thy lake of Galilee:

The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,

My heart is as some famine-murdered land

Whence all good things have perished utterly,

And well I know my soul in Hell must lie

If I this night before God's throne should stand.

'He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,

Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name

From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten height.'

Nay, peace, I shall behold, before the night,

The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,

The wounded hands, the weary human face.

"There was more foolery yet, if I could remember it"

(Quoth Casca, Act I, Sc. 2)

The Shadow Council Players present "Julius Caesar":

Sharptiano- Julius Caesar, Titinius, Lucillius, Strato, Ghost of Caesar, Second Citizen, Second Soldier, etc.
Ardith- Octavius Caesar, Calpurnia, Cinna, Soothsayer, Claudio, etc.
Wilson- Mark Antony, Casca, Flavius, Cinna the Poet, etc.
Gallagher- Marcus Brutus, Carpenter
Myself- Caius Cassius, Murellus, Publius, Clitus, Fourth Citizen, etc.
Scholl- Trebonius, Lepidus, Popillius, Artemidorus, Pindarus, Messala, Cobbler, Servant, Third Citizen, Third Soldier, etc.
Randy- Lucius, Metellus Cimber, Caius Ligarius, Cicero, Varrus, Volumnius, First Citizen, First Soldier, etc.
Anna- Portia, Decius Brutus, Cato, Dardanius, Poet, Messenger, etc.

Well, as anyone can probably tell from the cast listing, there are a few more speaking parts than usual in this one. If I forgot any roles that anyone played, or mixed up any roles, I'm sorry . . . It was a lot to keep track of.

So, I know that Julius Caesar is a good play . . . of course . . . but I didn't expect to get quite that . . . level of enjoyment out of it. I don't know if it was sleep deprivation or what, but . . . Wow.

Gallagher, it was a pleasure to . . . ummm . . . yell at you and stuff. We'll have to try that again sometime . . . or something. Oh yeah, and one more thing: Durst not!

Anyway, kudos to Wilson for that magnificent rendition of Antony's famous speech . . . that was fun. And the jumping between Casca and Antony a few times was quite impressive. In fact, way to be versatile, everyone.

Oh, yes, and my apologies to everyone as well. Leaving Wilson (as Antony), Scholl (as Lepidus), and Ardith (as Almighty Caesar) in charge of the Roman Empire at the end there . . . That was clearly poor planning on my part.

*considers historical ramifications*

*shudders*

Algernon Charles Swinburne & The Pagan Obsession

"Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)"

Vicisti, Galilaee

I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
Thou art more than the day or the morrow, the seasons that laugh or that weep;
For these give joy and sorrow; but thou, Proserpina, sleep.
Sweet is the treading of wine, and sweet the feet of the dove;
But a goodlier gift is thine than foam of the grapes or love.
Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold,
A bitter god to follow, a beautiful god to behold?
I am sick of singing: the bays burn deep and chafe: I am fain
To rest a little from praise and grievous pleasure and pain.
For the gods we know not of, who give us our daily breath,
We know they are cruel as love or life, and lovely as death.

O gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day
From your wrath is the world released, redeemed from your chains, men say.
New gods are crowned in the city; their flowers have broken your rods;
They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate gods.
But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare;
Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.
Time and the gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof,
Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love.
I say to you, cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace,
Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease.
Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take,
The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake;
Breasts more soft than a dove's, that tremble with tenderer breath;
And all the wings of the Loves, and all the joy before death;
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears:
Why should he labour, and bring fresh grief to blacken his years?

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath;
We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death.
Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.
Sleep, shall we sleep after all? for the world is not sweet in the end;
For the old faiths loosen and fall, the new years ruin and rend.
Fate is a sea without shore, and the soul is a rock that abides;
But her ears are vexed with the roar and her face with the foam of the tides.
O lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods!
O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted gods!
Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,
I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.

All delicate days and pleasant, all spirits and sorrows are cast
Far out with the foam of the present that sweeps to the surf of the past:
Where beyond the extreme sea-wall, and between the remote sea-gates,
Waste water washes, and tall ships founder, and deep death waits:
Where, mighty with deepening sides, clad about with the seas as with wings,
And impelled of invisible tides, and fulfilled of unspeakable things,
White-eyed and poisonous-finned, shark-toothed and serpentine-curled,
Rolls, under the whitening wind of the future, the wave of the world.
The depths stand naked in sunder behind it, the storms flee away;
In the hollow before it the thunder is taken and snared as a prey;
In its sides is the north-wind bound; and its salt is of all men's tears;
With light of ruin, and sound of changes, and pulse of years:
With travail of day after day, and with trouble of hour upon hour;
And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour:
And its vapour and storm of its steam as the sighing of spirits to be;
And its noise as the noise in a dream; and its depth as the roots of the sea:
And the height of its heads as the height of the utmost stars of the air:
And the ends of the earth at the might thereof tremble, and time is made bare.
Will ye bridle the deep sea with reins, will ye chasten the high sea with rods?
Will ye take her to chain her with chains, who is older than all ye gods?
All ye as a wind shall go by, as a fire shall ye pass and be past;
Ye are gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things,
Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings.
Though the feet of thine high priests tread where thy lords and our forefathers trod,
Though these that were gods are dead, and thou being dead art a god,
Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head,
Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.

Of the maiden thy mother men sing as a goddess with grace clad around;
Thou art throned where another was king; where another was queen she is crowned.
Yea, once we had sight of another: but now she is queen, say these.
Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays.

Ye are fallen, our lords, by what token? we wist that ye should not fall.
Ye were all so fair that are broken; and one more fair than ye all.
But I turn to her still, having seen she shall surely abide in the end;
Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.
O daughter of earth, of my mother, her crown and blossom of birth,
I am also, I also, thy brother; I go as I came unto earth.
In the night where thine eyes are as moons are in heaven, the night where thou art,
Where the silence is more than all tunes, where sleep overflows from the heart,
Where the poppies are sweet as the rose in our world, and the red rose is white,
And the wind falls faint as it blows with the fume of the flowers of the night,
And the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of gods from afar
Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star,
In the sweet low light of thy face, under heavens untrod by the sun,
Let my soul with their souls find place, and forget what is done and undone.
Thou art more than the gods who number the days of our temporal breath;
For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death.
Therefore now at thy feet I abide for a season in silence. I know
I shall die as my fathers died, and sleep as they sleep; even so.
For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span;
A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man.
So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep.
For there is no god found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.

Before I even get started, I must briefly digress. Anyone named Algernon Charles Swinburne is fated to write poetry. That name is too good to waste on anything else (except, perhaps, the Church . . . if you lacked the necessary talent . . . which you wouldn't, with a name like that). Anyway . . .

Are we sensing a little hostility here? Are we sensing a little well-justified hostility here? Before we go any further, I should explain something. I can't analyze this poem from a Christian perspective, at all (Meaning: I can't put the traditional "positive Christian spin" on it.) If I tried to analyze this by slanting a Christian lesson into it through the author . . . that would be wrong. It's not there, people. There's no hidden message. Swinburne isn't just taking on a persona here, this is what he thinks. Moving forward . . .

My lovely footnotes tell me that the Latin words you see just under the title ("Vicisti, Galilaee") were spoken by Julian the Apostate in 363, as he was dying. He had attempted to revive paganism, (Christianity having been officially made permissible in 313), and had not succeeded. Obviously, he's a little bitter about this. The words, as you can probably tell, mean "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean."

The speaker in this poem is a Roman patrician and poet who, like Julian, prefers the pagan gods. Proserpine, of course, is known in Greek mythology as Persephone. You can read her story here if you need to refresh your memory.

In brief, the poem proceeds thusly: The speaker alternates chiefly between praises for Proserpine and curses (or perhaps they are closer to threats . . . or merely observations?) for "the Galilean." He compares his gods with the new one in various ways and finds the new one wanting. He compares his goddess with the new one's mother, and finds her wanting. He talks about how short life is, and the sweet release of death. And then, after that wonderful section about the ocean of change, he assures himself that this new religion won't really last, in the end. "Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead."

Right. When I start quoting in my summary . . . Well, he isn't telling a story here, he's making a point that is already well summarized and perfectly stated by him. You need to read the poem for yourself. Go do that, and then come back.

The brief biography I read about Swinburne links him with Shelley in terms of ideas and themes. Ummm . . . Yeah. Definitely. (See my entry on Shelley from the last round of English Journals.) He has taken the principles of Ecclesiastes, as communicated by Percy Shelley, and applied them not only to the things of this world, but to the gods themselves. And he's got a point . . . historical precedent is on his side. Dominant religions may have a longer average lifespan than dynasties, but which of them has ever remained dominant anywhere near forever (if there is such a concept)?

The speaker loved the gods that he served, and he liked their style. He finds this whole compassion, mercy, and pity game to be more than a little pathetic, compared to what he had before. "Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean?"

So, the speaker reminds us that we aren't here for very long. Life is short, enjoyment of life is key. "A little while and then we die; shall life not thrive as it may?" Christianity, from that perspective, cannot even pretend to compete with the old religion. It is all about being wholly focused on what comes next and so encouraging its followers to ignore, or even deprive themselves of, the finer and more beautiful things in this life . . . That's a real bummer when laid next to the earthly splendor and majesty and nobility and moral abandon and riotous fun of Rome's pagan beliefs. ". . . the world has grown gray from thy breath."

Next, he carries his thought processes out to their logical conclusion. He may not last for long, but neither will this new religious craze. As his gods cast down those who came before, and were in their turn cast down, so will the new god someday be usurped. Nothing lasts, save one thing. And that's where the last laugh will belong to Rome and her gods. For death is the all-powerful god that cannot be beaten . . . and death is the only god(dess) he has left to serve (in the form of Proserpine). "Though these that were gods are dead, and thou being dead art a god . . . there is no god found stronger than death."

The Galilean may have won for a season, but death will be back in the end. By then, of course, Proserpine (to whom he has remained faithful) will have brought the speaker unto herself, into blessed sleep. And he takes his satisfaction and comfort from the forthcoming oblivion. "Thou art more than the gods who number the days of our temporal breath; For these give labor and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death . . . and death is a sleep."

I did that very badly, I know, because the poem speaks so beautifully for itself, but it would be redundant simply to quote key sections of it. If you didn't see this stuff already, hopefully I've pointed you in the proper direction. Now, on to the point.

The deep, dark secret of life is this: Not that it is meaningless, or perhaps even that our gods are not there . . . but that they are enslaved to death and change just as surely as we are. For the unbeliever who has just had his religion supplanted, there can be no greater truth than that. Nothing is, or ever could be more certain. This is Ecclesiastes with God cut out, and only god left behind.

"Time and the gods are at strife; ye dwell in the midst thereof, Draining a little life from the barren breasts of love. I say to you cease, take rest; yea, I say to you all, be at peace, Till the bitter milk of her breast and the barren bosom shall cease."

Those are your instructions. Much joy may they bring you. Meanwhile, it's time for me to be a Christian again.

You know when I read this poem, I can't help but think of poor old Salieri, patron saint of mediocrity. We're in a similar fix, he and I. However, it is late, so I'll leave you with this. First, if you haven't seen Amadeus, don't bother trying to figure out what I'm thinking. Second, the rough parallel is this: If I were Salieri, and Swinburne were Mozart, what would I be thinking right now, more or less, about serving God with the gifts you have and the distribution of artistic talent?

What disturbs me the most about this poem, (aside from the fact that I really like it), is that I think Swinburne sees matters far more clearly than a lot of Christians do . . . he's just got things backwards. Many Christians believe without seeing (often without looking, either, but that's another issue). Swinburne (and/or the speaker in the poem) sees without believing. He's spotted the angles, knows what it all means, and has the Galilean’s “game” figured out; he's just not buying any of it. Now that's depressing.

If Only I Had an Inner Tube

I have been reading a bit of Virginia Woolf this evening. "What on earth could prompt you to such a foolish action?" Well, that's a good question, sorta. It was assigned for English Lit II.

Quite a depressing thing, really. Just before I started reading, I couldn't prevent myself from flipping forward through the remainder of the Norton Anthology to see what lay ahead . . . Names come popping out at me: James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett. None of them are on the syllabus, we haven't time for them, and that makes me a little sad. I hardly dare to . . . but I do anyway . . . turn backwards and look again at who we skipped over on our way here: Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Lewis Carroll, George Bernard Shaw, Rudyard Kipling.

Oh, look. I'm shedding a tear.

Buck up, old chap. Time to read Woolf. So I do, starting with a brief biography . . . just a few key details about her life and times and so forth.

Oh, my.

Oh, my.

So that would be where that whole Orlando thing came from, then. Special. Well, let's see what she has to say for herself.

Ah, wonderful. My mind is already in the midst of its usual roiling turmoil (I'm not agitated, but there's so much to think about . . . random English Lit reading assignments are the least of my worries right now. In fact, they aren't a worry at all. They're rather fun. Clearly I should have more assignments like this. More classes like this. There isn't nearly enough required concentrated reading going on. Far too many random worksheets floating around. Anyway, I've never been the most linear thinker around, exactly. Nasty tendency to hijack my own trains, and I often wonder if I subconsciously set up my room in such a way that I could be constantly distracted by "shiny objects." But I digress . . .) and I have no idea now where I was going to end the pre-parentheses sentence anyway, so whether I digress or not is no longer important. Better jump to a new paragraph.

Oh, yes. In the midst of all the pleasant buzzing of my brain, I may or may not be able to focus on traditional prose or poetic writing at any given time. The question is simply this: How am I supposed to focus when the author's mind was apparently doing just what mine is whilst she wrote? But it's so much fun.

I feel like . . . well, I feel like there's a dense pea-souper and not much else between my ears right now (no comments from the Peanut Gallery . . . or the rest of the SC, either, please), but nevermind that. I feel like I'm lazily listening to myself think, or perhaps listening to a few of my friends converse in the special way they have . . . And it's really quite pleasant. I'd describe the sensation further for you, but I'd like to let the piece speak for itself.

The Mark on the Wall

It's quite short and it would be a reasonably pleasant read even if it did nothing but meander aimlessly, starting from nowhere and nothing and leading to the same destination . . . But don't be deceived! I hope that you, like me, will get at least a small chuckle out of the last line.

Have a little fun. If Literature were a water park, this would be its lazy river.

Or . . . ummm . . . something . . .

A Consummate Spouse . . . Yeah, good luck with that!

The Shadow Council Players present "An Ideal Husband":

Martinez- Sir Robert Chiltern, Harold
Myself- Lord Goring
Ardith- Mabel Chiltern, Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Basildon
Anna- Lady Chiltern
Gallagher- Lord Caversham, Mrs. Marchmont, Lady Markby
Scholl- Phipps, James, Mason
Randy- Vicomte de Nanjac
Moore- Mr. Montford
Sharon- Lady Markby
Sharptiano- Mason

So . . . Yes. This is quite a fun play, like nearly everything by Oscar Wilde, but it isn't, of course, quite as good as "Earnest." Nevertheless, he balances it out nicely by making the characters less shallow (at least a little). But then, triviality was kind of the point of the other one. However, I digress . . .

I ought to mention that when I picked this play, I rather thought there'd be a smaller crew than usual, and there rather wasn't. We were at least up to full size. So, sorry to everyone who only got one minor (or even very minor) role. Hmmm . . . That sounds really funny when put that way, but whatever. Anyway, we'll see what we can do next week.

I suppose I really ought to chronicle Anna's delivery of the following speech (despite the fact that she sounded as if wild horses were dragging it out of her by main force):

"A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses."

Actually, the following exchange was my personal favorite:

Caversham: What I say is that marriage is a matter for common sense.

Goring: But women who have common sense are so curiously plain, father, aren't they? Of course I only speak from hearsay.

Caversham: No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex.

Goring: Quite so. And we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it, do we, father?

Caversham: I use it, sir. I use nothing else.

Goring: So my mother tells me.

Caversham: It is the secret of your mother's happiness.

Followed closely by this one:

Mrs. Cheveley: The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women . . . merely adored.

Sir Robert: You think science cannot grapple with the problem of women?

Mrs. Cheveley: Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.

Sir Robert: And women represent the irrational.

Mrs. Cheveley: Well-dressed women do.

*sniggers* Oh, yes . . . Another thing: Ardith seemed quite disturbed at first by the role-swapping that was so prevalent among her characters in Act I. Really, Ardith . . . The rest of us have been doing this for weeks! Surely you can't have forgotten already that Gallagher had sword fights with himself twice only last Friday?

Be that as it may, I should certainly register the fact that I am quite disturbed by her proficiency with jumping at a moment's notice from the sweet, silly Mabel Chiltern to the ruthless, chiseling Mrs. Cheveley. Yikes. It occurs to me that . . . *stops to think* . . . Ummm . . . That there really isn't anywhere good I can go in further analyzing this state of affairs.

Good work, everyone. And won't next week be a trip? *cackles gleefully* Until then . . . *resumes normal blogging activities*

"If all the year were playing holidays . . ."

The Shadow Council Players present "Henry IV, Part One":

Martinez- King Henry the Fourth, Gadshill, Messenger, Carrier, Bardolph, Servant
Myself- Hal Prince of Wales, Earl of Worcester, Ostler
Wilson- Hotspur, Prince John, Peto, Sheriff
Gallagher- Sir John Falstaff, Sir Walter Blunt, Earl of Douglas, Lady Mortimer
Ardith- Owen Glendower, Sir Richard Vernon, Archbishop of York, Poins, Second Carrier
Anna- Earl of Westmoreland, Earl of Worcester, Sir Michael, Lady Percy, Mistress Quickly, First Carrier, Traveler, Messenger
Scholl- Earl of Northumberland, Bardolph, Chamberlain
Moore- Earl of Westmoreland, Poins
Sharon- Earl of Worcester
Ziggy- Francis
Spiff- Earl of March

This is the only Shakespeare play that I've had to do which I've never read before. And it was quite enjoyable, I must say. If only all of his histories were this . . . ummm . . . "not dry." We had excellent good fun and marvelous performing all around. I simply must mention Ardith's Archbishop . . . because that was funny. She crosses herself as she walks onstage . . . and it went downhill from there. I'm pretty sure a female Archbishop is, like, flaming heresy . . .

Oh, yes. And through poor casting on my part, and a general lack of people present to step in anyway, Gallagher had a swordfight with himself. Twice. So ridiculous . . . But by far the most enjoyable scenes were the robbery and the looooooooooong pub scene (Act II, scenes 2 and 4), of course. Falstaff is so great. But you knew that.

Closing thought: "Hang thyself in thine own heir-apparent garters!" -Falstaff, to Prince Hal

Wheeler's Conference Epic

Right. So I'm still blogging, obviously. Congratulations. You're all frigging geniuses. Except for those of you that clearly aren't. Clearly, Mr. Fry has me pegged. I am completely addicted to publishing myself on a regular basis. In a brief aside before we move on, I hope you all played The Worm Game that was linked in that last post of mine.

I would also like to note an incident that occured in English Lit II on Wednesday. Dr. Watson was sitting in Mr. Payton's office, yakking about Conference stuff, when the bell rang for class. I decided to hang about the door so I could just happen to run into him when he came out a few seconds later. He proceeded to sign me up for a time to do volunteer work on Friday, and then I asked him if he would be attending class. He would.

I followed him down to his office, and informed that the day's topic of discussion was Joseph Conrad when he asked. Then we went to class. Power Point wasn't working, he was having a little trouble pronouncing certain words, and he had brought the wrong textbook. He sent someone to get the right one, and looked out at the rest of us.

Dr. Watson: After the Conference this weekend, I'll get my life back, and then things will be better.

Myself (Yeah, like I'm gonna let that go by . . .): *respectfully raises hand*

Dr. Watson: Yes, sir?

Myself (in an eager and curious tone): When do we get our lives back?

Anyway, I wanted to record that because opportunities to even attempt something that resembles a *zing* don't surface around Dr. Watson on anything like a regular basis.

And now it's time to talk about . . .

The 7th Annual C. S. Lewis and the Inklings Conference

I had a lot of fun. This was an amazing experience, and I am very bitter that we don't get this kind of thing more often. I essentially got to spend an entire day talking shop with several dozen hardcore and intelligent Inklings nerds, (as opposed to the average garden-variety one finds wandering at large amongst the general student body), not to mention scholars. It was a long day, yes. I had to wake up at 6:30 to get ready to attend. And I had to get myself all dressed up and wear a tie, which I am not particularly fond of doing (for various reasons . . . most of them attached to laziness and an aversion to discomfort). But I really didn't care about all that.

I met Scholl coming out of SAGA and sent him off to put on something that wasn't shorts and sandals before meeting Ardith inside the Education building. In due time, Anna came along, and Scholl eventually returned. Wilson showed up after the opening general session, and we were all there for the entirety of the day.

I shall now attempt to record the portion of the conference that I attended as briefly as possible.

8:00- Dr. Woodring addresses everyone together, giving a 15-minute devotion on the subject of "Who is Jesus?" He quoted both Dorothy Sayers and C. S. Lewis extensively. He clearly started off on the right foot . . . with a jab at the SC members present. "I'll go ahead and start now, and everyone else can come in late and sit down. I'll just feel like it's another one of my classes . . . Yeah, I see some of the same people, in fact." *pointed look at us* You think I just have some kind of persecution complex? His first response upon seeing me walk into the building ten minutes before was not a pleasant "good morning" but a bitterly humorous expression of amazement that I had managed to get up and look so awake when I slept through so many of his Bib Lit classes last semester.

8:15- Bruce Edwards of Bowling Green State University, our keynote speaker, talked for about an hour on "Re-enchanting the Christian Imagination: C. S. Lewis and the Inklings." I quite enjoyed his talk. He was a good speaker, and his address was essentially a quick recap of the most important themes we covered in last semester's Inklings class. He used a lot of the same quotes that Dr. Woodring would read regularly, and generally discussed things like the Inklings' aversion to allegory and preference for "Religious Myth," as well as their vanguard action (as it were) in bringing fantasy and science-fiction out into the light of respectability amongst mainstream Christians.

9:25- Four sessions to choose from . . . AGH! There will be 12 papers presented during the next hour and twenty minutes, and I can only hear three of them. Scholl and I choose Section D. Anna, Ardith and Wilson decide to go attend Section C (which looked, and apparently was, quite excellent . . . perhaps one of them will post on the stuff they got to hear that I missed).

-Paper #1: Pam Jordan of Taylor University (specialty, Victorian Lit) presented "Reflections on Hamlet from the Inklings." Very interesting, for the most part. She actually looked at criticism written by Lewis, Williams, MacDonald, and Chesterton . . . Not all of them are Inklings, but they all have legitimate business being there. Her paper was a bit ambitious . . . clearly she could have written as much as she had just from the criticism of one of those authors. As it was, hers was the longest paper in the session, and she said she had cut a number of chunks out of it. In any case, it was interesting to note where the four men agreed and disagreed. All of them were very similair in their ideas, especially concerning the question of Hamlet's hesitation, (they all seemed to agree with the theory that Hamlet does not, in fact, hesitate at all, but acts when he needs to, and just as he wants to), but each had quite unique and fascinating reasons to back up those ideas.

Paper #2- E. B. Hawkins of Lamar State University (specialty, Old and Middle English Lit) presented "What About the Heroes? -- Tolkien's Answer." This was a very fun paper, providing an in-depth examination of how Tolkien treats the subjects of immortality and an afterlife for the various species in Middle Earth . . . especially the manner in which he rewards the main heroes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. She noted that, while there is some sort of hope of an afterlife implied indirectly, Tolkien absolutely refused to spell out the answer to those questions. Instead, he grants extended lifespans and other rewards to his main characters as more tangible positive benefits for their heroic actions . . . but they all still die. I was somewhat amused in the discussion afterwards when it became quite evident that Dr. Hawkins was rather bitter about the lack of a confirmed happily-ever-after ending to the trilogy. She obviously had that passion for the work that I am always pleased to discover in a new acquaintance.

Paper #3- Sheba Kulothungan of Southwestern Assemblies of God University (specialty, Early American Lit) presented "Allegory and Symbolism in Lewis' Poems: His Definitions, His Display, His Dynamism." In terms of the overall balance between presentation, choice of topic, and excellent analysis, this was the most enjoyable paper I heard today. Dr. Kulothungan contrasted Lewis' poetry with the poetry of the American Puritan writers and of Emily Dickinson. She noted particularly that both Lewis and the Puritans wrote about "mere" Christianity, but she was curious to discover what precisely Lewis was doing that made his writing so much more profound, accessible, and alive than the writings of the Puritans. She referred to the Puritans as "scaling the mountain of an unknown God with the pitons of symbolism and allegory." Lewis, on the other hand, "scaled the mountain of symbolism and allegory using the pitons of the truths about God that he recognized intrinsically." She drew attention to the fact that, while the Puritans regarded the spiritual realm as incorporeal and ethereal in comparison to the solid, concrete "real world," Lewis saw the "real world" as merely a dim, dirty shadow of the reality of the spiritual world. Very cool stuff, and I just can't get enough of it . . . There was a lot of other cool stuff, as well, but I don't remember it in such detail. Scholl was exceptionally pleased when Dr. Kulothungan, as he put it, ripped into Emily Dickinson, but I digress.

10:45- Break time . . . We all gather in the hallway to confer and generally agree that this is really awesome. And we eat some really really delicious blueberry muffins. Dr. Watson comes along and drops a task on us (chiefly Scholl) as volunteers. Namely, to track down pertinent information on a number of local tourist attractions and put it together on one piece of paper to be distributed. We all accompany him upstairs to the labs (there being only ten minutes of break left) and grab what we can. Wilson, Ardith, and Anna trickle off to Section B, while I go to Section C, saving a seat for Scholl as he toddles off to repackage the information we have accumulated. He fails to show up, but Ardith suddenly wanders in, so I give her his seat.

Paper #4- Melanie Hix of Oklahoma City University (Graduate Student) presents "Consumption of the Inner Spirit: Gagool and Tolkien's Gollum." I was very interested in this paper for two reasons. First, King Solomon's Mines is one of my favorite books of all time and Gagool's death is one of the more memorable scenes. Second, I was interested in hearing a paper that was doing basically the same thing that I was doing. That is, comparing something from Tolkien's work to something from another author's and suggesting that he might have drawn from that source in the process of creating his own work. If you've ever read King Solomon's Mines you can start drawing half a dozen parallels right away, and if not then I won't be able to clarify things by elaborating further. Good paper, though.

Paper #5- Joe Cristopher of Tarelton State University (some variety of Doctor or another) presents "A Four-fold Interpretation of the Narnian Father Christmas." This paper was thick . . . excessively so, I thought. It was kind of hard to follow and by the end of it I wasn't quite sure what point he was trying to make. Also, the intent of the paper got a bit diluted in the after discussion when he spent a good five minutes discoursing on a tangent. All I know for sure is that he was examining different ways of explaining the presence of Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

12:25- Time for lunch . . . Scholl, Ardith and I get our food and spot Dr. Hawkins sitting in a nice, neutral, empty sort of spot, so we surround her. We had a good time discussing this and that with her, mostly at random. Anna showed up after she finished doing . . . that whole volunteer thing (I wasn't paying attention, so I don't know what it was). Loius Markos, of Houston Baptist University, gets up and does a drama that he had already done in chapel that morning: Screwtape's Millenial Toast. In it, he pretty much eviscerated modern teen culture, much to the amusement of the very much non-teenagers that the crowd mainly consisted of. In fact, here's the entire thing, online.

At the end of his monologue, he made reference to signals from "Chairman Muckrake" at the back of the room. I turned around to glance at Dr. Watson (the Conference Chair) and he was looking right at me with a rather funny expression of surprise, confusion, and amusement. Then he got up to dismiss us and so forth at the end of the thing.

Dr. Watson: As Chairman Muckrake, I must say that was one hell of a speech!

1:30- After walking briskly back to my room to retrieve a hard copy of my paper, I returned once again to the Education Building to attend the John Brown University Student Forum. I wasn't particularly keen on any of the papers in the next two sets of sessions, so I figured I'd see what the students from Andy's school had to offer. Scholl, Sharptiano, Barbour, Dr. Solganick, and Dr. Hawkins were all in attendance. I can make this fairly brief, I think. Three of the papers were essentially Power Point presentations and the computer was being mean and hateful. So Scholl got to play techie while the one student that didn't have her paper associated with the computer got up to read.

Paper #6- Evelyn Baldwin (Junior, English Education) presents "Gods by Machine: The Semi-Pelagianism of J. R. R. Tolkien's deus ex machina Resulotions." This was by far the most delectable title on the entire program, and the paper did not disappoint. She took a look at how Tolkien manages to get away with having main characters who are, ultimately, never able to save themselves without some outside help, and still stay believable. There was, of course, a brief discussion of important things like the origins of the term deus ex machina and its use and abuse in literature in general. Clearly I can't do this one justice, but it was good stuff.

Paper #7- Mariam DiPasquale (Sophomore . . . I think, Anthropology) presents "Boxen and C. S. Lewis's Childhood." It was all about the fantasy world of Boxen that C. S. Lewis created with his brother Warnie when they were children, and it included all sorts of illustrations that he had done and so forth. As far as that goes, it was rather interesting. It would have been a lot more interesting if she had spent a decent amount of time showing us how these childhood games influenced his later work, but whatever . . . It was too long considering the lack of substantial material, her Power Point really could have used help, and I think it would be safe to say that I was at least mildly bored by the end. Scholl, apparently, was ready to scratch out his own eyeballs and use them to plug his ears, but then, he is a person given to much excess.

Paper #8- Megan Lein (Sophomore . . . I think, ironically I have no idea what her major is) presents "The Great War, Tolkien, and the T. C. B. S." This one was considerably better than the previous one. The Power Point worked better, it didn't drag as much, etc. It was a report on Tolkien's small (4 guys), close group of college friends and the influence that they had on his early life, as well as a brief recap of what happened to them in WWI. Two of them died, and Tolkien was, of course, deeply affected by this. Again, there was some analysis of the influence that this had on him, but I thought that it needed more to really give it a point. However, I found the topic itself to be quite interesting, personally, never having heard the full story before. Scholl was quite weary of Power Point by this time.

Paper #9- Ruby Vasquez (Sophomore, History) presents "Tolkien's Revisions in the History of Middle Earth." I thought this one was rather good. She examined the three different versions that Tolkien wrote of the story of Turin Turambar and paid special attention to the differences in the workings of fate in each version. I don't remember who told us this, or when, but sometime during the Inklings class I remember hearing that if the audience of your paper could just watch your Power Point presentation and eliminate you from the picture entirely . . . Well, that's problematic. Ummm . . . duh. This paper would have benefited enormously from simply being read, as we didn't really need to see any pictures or anything of that kind. That notwithstanding, it was a worthy effort.

3:40- Now the real "fun" begins, with everyone I know (and myself) presenting practically all at once. I sat and listened to Anna Ross present "The Presence of Eros in The Screwtape Letters" and to Ardith present "Stereotype Used Effectively:Portrayals in That Hideous Strength." Both excellent, of course . . . I had heard portions of Anna's, as she was in my group last semester, and I had also heard Ardith's, of course.

4:45- The final session . . . Randy and Scholl both go before I do. I hadn't heard Randy's paper, "Unusual Women: Luthien and Orual." Clearly, I need to hear it again. I liked what I heard, but I probably only caught one word in four . . . I was a bit distracted. Scholl presented his "Creation and Afterlife: A Comparison of the Worldviews of Two Inklings." Naturally I'd heard that one before . . .

And then it was my turn . . . last paper of the day for everyone in the room ("What Dreams May Come: The Purgatory of Dante and Tolkien"). Interesting crowd we had managed to collect . . . I guess it was one of the occupational hazards for being in a session with Scholl after pretty much attending the same sessions with him all day. He had collected quite a following by this point.

Upon later reflection, it reminded me of one of those storybooks for very small children which follows a day in the life of the main character. They journey throughout the day, meeting new people and having new experiences and so forth, and then at the climax of the thing all of the people he has encountered throughout the story gather together with this main character as the center of whatever is going on . . . I'm not sure if I'm quite getting across what I mean, but there it is.

The entire JBU contingent snagged one wall, apparently returning the favor of our attendance at their session (and Scholl's generous helpings of technical assistance). We had been pestering Dr. Hawkins the entire day, of course, so naturally she slipped in. Even Dr. Jordan, of the Hamlet paper, found her way to this session, somehow or other. And naturally there was the mandatory contingent of available SC members, available, as always, to show some friendly, semi-questionable support. Gallagher and Martinez had come dragging in from . . . wherever for the previous session . . . Anna had just presented in the same room the session before . . . etc. Dr. Olson was heading up the session, due to yet another recent schedule change, and she was clearly having far too much fun with all of the goings-on. There were people there, and I knew virtually all of them, that's what I'm saying. It was weird, but clearly more enjoyable that way.

And then it was essentially over. I opted out of the dinner and seeing Shadowlands performed that evening in favor of attending Hootenanny (and I'm clearly not getting into that right now). The Conference was truly an epic experience, and I expect it will be handy discussion fodder for some time to come yet. You should go find yourself one to attend, because it is very much a lot of fun.

And speaking of epic, I can't help but wonder if this post is a record-breaker . . . for me, I mean. I have no idea how long the longest blogpost ever might be . . . Are you still reading this?! Good grief! Clearly I wrote this particular post with the express purpose of keeping certain details fixed in my own memory. If, for some reason, you're still there, it is clearly time for both of us to go find something constructive to do.

Personally, I'm casting a vote for sleep. *looks around* Clearly I am talking to myself as I am the only one in the room. That makes it unanimous. Good night.

Please tell me this is a dream, Part I

The Shadow Council Players present A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Martinez- Theseus, Peter Quince, Prologue, Mustardseed
Scholl- Egeus, Tom Snout, Wall, Peaseblossom, Fairy Chorus
Wilson- Lysander, Oberon, Snug, Lion, Cobweb, Fairy Chorus
Myself- Demetrius, Nick Bottom, Pyramus
Anna- Hermia, Hippolyta, Robin Starveling, Moonshine, Moth, Fairy, Fairy Chorus
Ardith- Helena, Titania
Gallagher- Philostrate, Puck, Francis Flute, Thisby

Ah . . . this play = many much w00ten. We had fun. I would especially like to note the fact that the Elfin Ethicist and the Vengeful Cynic both appeared as fairies in our production. I wish I had a tape of the Fairy Chorus in action, "singing" Ardith to sleep. They sounded like the Boondock Saints or something . . . "And shepherds we shall be, for thee my Lord for thee, etc." Creepy.

I must say, also, that Wilson, speaking as if he were a bit . . . "thick" (as the lion) was quite amusing. But not as funny as Martinez suddenly busting out his John Wayne accent on us, completely at random. I kinda went sideways, laughing, and missed the part of the couch that I was aiming at . . . Fortunately, the floor was reasonably soft.

And . . . oh my goodness . . . for some reason this post is giving me all kinds of trouble. I just can't seem to do anything with it. I think I'm coming down with something nasty, too . . . And there's so much to do this week.

That notwithstanding, I'll leave it at this for now and . . . we'll see what happens tomorrow. Part 2 is forthcoming . . .

A Profusion of Triviality

So . . . It finally got here. And by "it" I mean the week where we got to do my most favoritest play: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. *does happy dance* It's really just too much fun. And we all enjoyed ourselves . . . ummm . . . mightily. Yeah. On to the cast listing:

Wilson- Jack "Ernest" Worthing
Myself- Algernon Moncrieff
Anna- Gwendolyn Fairfax
Ardith- Cecily Cardew
Gallagher- Lady Bracknell
Sharptiano- Rev. Dr. Chasuble
Sharon- Miss Prism
Scholl- Lane
Uncle Doug- Merriman

Of course, in a play like this, every part and member of the cast is rather important. And they all worked, I must say, rather well. Ummm . . . apologies to Gallagher, as always. Lady Bracknell isn't easy to pull off at the best of times, and you have that special handicap when it comes to playing female roles . . . not being one yourself, and all. I swear I'll give you two whole male roles in our next play. Now, won't that be nice?

Kudos to both Anna and Ardith for very convincing portrayals of empty-headed bimbo types. You were very very good at it. I'm sure that was quite a struggle for the two of you. At least, I hope so.

I should like to draw attention to the minor roles played by our illustrious butlers. Most impressive, those . . . To still have fun acting when one has sucked all of the emotion from one's voice . . . Very nice. Uncle Doug is always busting out with something I don't expect whenever I actually get him to participate, and . . . wow. Except for that one line where he tried to go all French and stuff, it was both effective and funny.

*also stores memory of good times from the performing of the infamous muffin scene at the end of Act II* I'd like to play through that one again, for the heck of it . . . The situation is just so ridiculous! *shakes Wilson's hand again* "Doctor . . ."

And I'm sure everyone is quite grateful to Scholl for making the connotations of the term "Bunbury" quite clear to all present. I should have thought they'd have caught on before he said anything, but . . . in any case, I'm glad I had him wait until we finished the play before revealing it. It would have been quite impossible to continue to use the term at all for the remaining two Acts, otherwise.

Dr. Watson, of course, was kind enough to enlighten my English Lit II class the next day, leaving us with that pleasant thought to mull over during Spring Break. I think he quite put the majority of the room off of Oscar Wilde, or at least off of "Earnest." Pity. He did, at least, point them towards Saki and Wodehouse. Which was how I wound up actually getting commended for reading in class. Watson was talking about Saki, you see . . . and he noticed that I was reading. And he asked, on the off-chance . . . and . . . yeah. I was reading The Complete Saki he had loaned me.

And speaking of all that, Dr. Johnson spun me a little morality tale the other day right before American History . . . something about a student who didn't graduate because he kept reading books that Dr. Watson had loaned him.

What's that you ask? Ummm . . . Yes, I have been reading Saki in Dr. Johnson's class, from time to time. He's quite the storyteller, by the way. You should stop by and get him to tell it to you sometime.

Now, what was I posting about again?

Oh, right.

Cracking good play . . . Simply smashing performances by all . . . Look forward to working with you people again in the future . . . *wanders off to enjoy Spring Break*

Plot Summary: Love makes people do stupid things. Duh. Hilarity ensues.

This week's bit-o-fun was Love's Labour's Lost, which is a very special play. I picked it as my second choice of six possibilities to do my Outside Reading Report on for class, having read it before. My first choice was All's Well That Ends Well . . . but they were numbered more or less at random.

Love's Labour's Lost is a lot like . . . well, okay, so it's a lot like every single other comedy that Shakespeare ever wrote. Weird love triangles, mix-ups, mistaken identity, general tomfoolery and hilarity. But specifically it reminds me of Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew. It has a very heavy focus on sharp wordplay between characters of opposite sexes and so forth (although LLL has by far the largest number of rhyming couplets that I've seen in a Shakespeare play thus far . . . it's outrageous).

The key difference is that in Much Ado, the conflict between the sexes is defused by a couple of benevolent outside parties and everybody wins. In Shrew, the man takes matters in his own hands and does it his way, resulting in a very clear (and disturbing) victory for malekind. In LLL there are no benevolent outside parties. The closest thing is Boyet, and he's too busy being amused by the lovers' foibles (and his wooing of all the ladies on the side) to really do anything. And there are no male characters with enough . . . gumption (some would call it backbone, some would call it crass lack of feeling) to come galloping in and sweep the ladies off their feet by whatever method works best (i.e. starving and beating them). As a result, we have a play where the women come out on top in a very big way. They make all the men look like complete idiots and have them bowing and scraping and agreeing to "enter hermitages/minister to the sick/abase themselves in general" for a full year and a day before they'll even think about coming back to consider marriage. Definitely not a traditional comedic ending . . . but quite a funny one, all the same.

Wilson- King Ferdinand, Holofernes, Mercade, Winter
Myself- Biron, Don Armado, Sir Nathaniel, Forester, Costard, Spring
Moore- Longueville
Sharptiano- Dumaine, Dull, Longueville, Sir Nathaniel
Anna- Princess
Ardith- Rosaline, Princess
Sharon- Maria, Catherine
Rachel- Catherine
Sarah- Jaquenetta, Rosaline
Scott- Mote, Dull, Dumaine
Scholl- Boyet
Gallagher- Costard, Longueville, Dumain, First Lord, Maria, Don Armado
Martinez- Costard
Lewis- Boyet

I especially feel the need to note that even I had a hard time not getting severely annoyed at Lord Biron (pronounced burr-OON . . . go figure). That guy can talk . . . it's insanity. Of particular note is his soliloquy in defense of love at the end of Act IV. Oh . . . my . . . goodness. I didn't time it, but I'm sure I was talking for at least two straight minutes. And it's hard to get a breath in between words when you're doing the whole "impassioned lover" thing, let me tell you. I was about to pass out from lack of air . . . seriously . . .

Things got very interesting at the end of Act V. See, after they've just made complete jackasses out of themselves in front of the ladies, the lords have to put up with watching another performance from some of the local commoners (and Don Armado . . . I have no idea whatsoever what practical explanation there could be for his presence in this play, he is extremely random). Anyway, the decide they can save face by totally ripping into the performance and slicing it to ribbons with their razor-sharp wit. Which they proceed to do. The thing is, you've got the king and lords played by Wilson, Scott, Sharptiano and me . . . and then you've got the performers played by Gallagher and, uhhh . . . Wilson, Scott, Sharptiano and me. So there was a bit of role-swapping, and a bit of making fun of . . . ourselves as two different characters. It was fun, and it was trippy . . . and the random security guy standing by with his hand on the light switch (it was time to lock up Longview Hall) made things just generally interesting on all sides.

In some ways it is rather a difficult play, though. Pronunciation is rough with some characters (I certainly don't envy Wilson the part of Holofernes with his horrible pseudo-Latin and whatnot), and if you don't pay attention things change really fast and you aren't quite sure what happened. It was a lot better with different people doing different parts, but when I read this one myself last summer I remember having to actually reread two or three scenes because I hadn't the faintest idea what had just happened. So . . . not an easy play to do well, and we had fun with it. Good stuff. Time to go to bed now, for sure.

It's a madhouse . . . a madhouse!!!

Well, I feel more than a little irresponsible for unleashing this particular monster on the world at large. And by monster, I mean play. And by the world at large, I mean . . . myself and whoever else was in the least disturbed by certain performances.

However, clearly, I am rather irresponsible, so I suppose it's alright to feel that way every now and then. And this week's play is my personal favorite (of Shakespeare's) so I don't care.

Anyway, this week we performed King Lear. Now I have it on . . . ummm . . . "authority" that this is the most difficult of Shakespeare's plays. Obviously I'm referring here to a certain class that I'm taking . . . You know, if there's one thing I'm tired of hearing about, it's the criticisms and difficulties that "modern readers" (that's almost a complete oxymoron) have with the plays we're reading. Modern readers are generally idiots. This is an awesome play.

Whatever. Time for this:

Wilson- King Lear
Milton- King of France, Edmund, Oswald
Anna- Regan, Goneril, Duke of Burgundy
Scholl- Duke of Cornwall, Edmund
Moore- Duke of Albany, Lear's Fool
Myself- Earl of Kent, Curan, First Servant, Oswald, Captain, etc.
Sharptiano- Earl of Gloucester, Knight, Gentleman, Second Servant, etc.
Ardith- Cordelia, Goneril, Regan
Ziggy- Edgar
Gallagher- Lear's Fool, Third Servant, Edgar, etc.
Sharon- Goneril
Scott- Edmund, Messenger, Gentleman, etc.
Uncle Doug- Old Man, Herald

You'll note the presence of a few new players this week. Uncle Doug was kind enough to lend us his geezer voice in between roller blading in all directions. And Ziggy displayed his talents as a madman. Good stuff. There are so many intense scenes here and there, but there were generally solid performances all around. Wilson obviously thought that King Lear was difficult to get a handle on, but then . . . I guess he is. Lear is a character of such wild and extreme passions . . .

I died twice. Again. These would be the fourth and fifth times for me. And the thing about it was, both of them were completely random. They were both characters I just happened to pick up, incidentally, and then they just kind of . . . died. I'm either getting really good or really annoying at saying, "O! I am slain!" I've done it at least once in every tragedy we've acted so far. Wilson, of course, has also died once in every tragedy. And Ardith died twice in this one as well . . . both times "off-screen." I'd think that perhaps Shakespeare had a thing against killing females on-stage, thinking also of Ophelia, but . . . no. Gertrude and Juliet leap immediately to mind as counter-examples. Hmmm . . . other notable dying stuff: I sensed a bit of frustration from Scott. Edmund was having a bit of trouble giving up the ghost at the end there. He divided his attention between bleeding and talking for a number of pages and managed several reasonably lengthy soliloquys before he finally succumbed.

Act III- Such a freaking cool act . . . And sitting, as Kent, amongst the three madmen (well, okay, a madman a fake madman and a Fool . . . whatever) I'd say that I truly and deeply sympathized with my character. That's gotta suck. I have my own little questions about Edgar, though . . . He gets into that whole "madman" thing a bit too much and a bit too well . . . He has issues.

It occurs to me, noting the end of this play, and running my mind over various others, that the chief tragic device employed by Shakespeare is the one that makes you sit back and yell at the characters, "Wow, y'all have the crappiest timing ever! Geez!"

Everybody sits around jawing with Edmund while he's really busy trying to die until "somebody" (read "Kent" . . . the guy who generally thinks of these things) says, "Oh! Ummm . . . Where's the king, by the way?"

Edmund: "Oh my goodness! I forgot! I sent him off to be executed!"

Kent: "Hmmm . . . That's probably not a good thing. Shouldn't somebody go take care of that?

Albany: "Yeah, probably. Who's gonna do that?"

Edgar: "I guess I will."

Albany: "Okay. Have fun."

Edgar: "Right."

Kent: "Hurry back."

Edgar: "I will, I will . . . Oh! What if they don't know that I'm delivering the message from you, Edmund? That might be problematic. Maybe you could give me a token or something, y'know."

Edmund: *slaps forehead* "Good thinking. Here, take my sword. I'll just unbuckle it here . . . There we go. Alright. Off with you then. You should probably hurry."

Edgar: "Uh-huh, sure thing. Be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail." *leaves . . . finally*

Albany: "Well, I'm glad that's taken care of. So anyway, what were you saying, Edmund?"

Edmund: "Drat. I lost my train of thought. And my doublet is getting all bloody."

Kent: "Ummm . . . Edmund? I think it's about the time, buddy."

Edmund: "Huh? Oh. Right." *dies . . . finally*

Edgar: *comes back* "I'm glad I only stopped for one drink on the way! The king's okay! They . . . uhhh . . . kinda killed Cordelia, though. He's not very happy about that."

Kent: "Well, shoot. At least he's still alive, though, huh?"

Lear: "Alas, Cordelia! My favorite daughter! Noooooo!" *dies*

All: "Well, shoot."

Right. That notwithstanding, I think that the quality of writing in this play is . . . rather exceptional, to say the least. (Well, duh . . . it's Shakespeare. I mean exceptional even compared to his other plays, clearly.) He explores a lot of really interesting themes in this play as well, and it's just generally great.

Notable line of the week: "Let copulation thrive!" Special, that. As is the rest of that little speech by Lear . . . in fact . . . Aww, what the heck:

I pardon that man's life. What was thy cause?
Adultery?
Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery? No.
The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly
Does lecher in my sight.
Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard son
Was kinder to his father than my daughters
Got 'tween the lawful sheets.

(Act IV, Scene 6)

Robert Browning & The Insane Lover Obsession

"Porphyria's Lover"

The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me--she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!

I read a lot of romantic poetry this semester. This is somewhat logical, since we were kind of studying the Romantic Period and all, but I think it made me a bit complacent. Coming on the heels of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and especially Tennyson, Browning was a definite change of pace. What threw me off, though, was the fact that he pretended to be doing the same old thing as all the others at first.

I was feeling rather peaceful and complacent as the romantic scene was set in “Porphyria’s Lover.” I was pleasantly picturing the peaceful scene, trying to experience the poem and catch the author’s wavelength. And I was succeeding, I thought. There is a frightful storm going on outside, but inside all is calm comfort and tender affection. This seemed like an important contrast. The long, blonde hair, and head on the shoulder were a nice touch, and I was feeling altogether serene when he started playing with her hair.

I’d rather like to have a snapshot of my face when he choked her with it. I know I looked as shocked as I felt. However, since I didn’t get a picture of myself, I was forced to make up for it by recreating the effect. So I went and told a lot of people about it, and was highly amused by their reactions, which were more or less similar to mine. But the really creepy part of the poem, of course, is what happens next.

The narrator proceeds to restore Porphyria to her former position and sit there with her dead body for the rest of the night. The last line confused me, at first, so I read it through again. What does the silence of God imply about the sin he has committed? Does it serve as proof that he has done the right thing? I don't think so.

In fact, I don’t think that God is silent at all. God is omniscient; he knew what Porphyria’s lover was going to do. It seems to me that the wild storm that rages throughout the night, even before the dreadful murder happens, is clear evidence of God’s displeasure. The storm, described as it is at the beginning of the poem, seems to foreshadow the awful events that will transpire, if you are paying attention (which clearly I wasn’t, the first time through). The poem ends with the assertion that God is silent on the matter, but we know that this is not the case. Clearly God is neither silent nor pleased, as is clearly indicated by the opening lines. The meaning of it all, one way or another, seems to hinge on the storm.

The style of the poem, naturally, reminds me of the work of Poe. One of his stories that comes immediately to mind is “The Tell-Tale Heart” with its emphasis on the eyes of the victim, the extreme overconfidence which leads him to simply sit there with the body rather than attempt to hide what he has done, and especially the cold, clinical recounting of the story by which the narrator hopes to convince us of his sanity and only succeeds in doing just the opposite.

It seems to me, as I think about it, that madness in literature and in the movies is often revealed through an unnaturally strong feeling of ownership that the madman believes himself to have towards a particular woman, whether or not she is in love with him or even knows he exists. It is the sort of thing that one commonly finds when examining the psyche of a serial killer.

I don’t remember the exact period when modern criminal psychology became more prevalent and started being taken seriously, but it certainly wasn’t as early as this poem was written. So how did Browning tap into this? Did he just have incredible insight into the darker side of human nature, or is there a more sinister explanation? Obviously, there doesn’t seem to be any indication of any such behavior from him, but if I were a woman . . . Ummm . . . Hmmm . . . Y'know, hypothetical situations like that can't go anywhere good, so nevermind. But I wonder if Elizabeth Barrett (his wife) kept a wary eye on him. I know I would have.

Robert Browning, aside from being a talented poet, had a keen and disturbing sense of the grotesque and the macabre, just like Poe. Considering the fact that they were contemporaries, I can’t help but wonder if they influenced each other's writing in any way. That possibility not withstanding, they did write on some of the same themes, and they did it well. Fun stuff.

Lord Tennyson & The Looney Female Obsession

Yeah, I know I already wrote something about "The Lady of Shalott." This is different. Shut up and read it.

On the surface, “The Lady of Shalott” is a rather ridiculous poem. I’ve read three different versions of the Arthurian legend in my (short) time: I read the Howard Pyle version (which is more traditional) quite a long time ago and don’t remember it very well. More recently I read T. H. White’s The Once and Future King (which is my favorite, being more satirical in nature . . . I strongly recommend that you read the provided excerpt, if you never have), and Stephen Lawhead’s Pendragon Cycle (which attempts, sometimes successfully, to combine the fantastic elements of the story with some degree of historical accuracy and a distinctly Christian worldview).

I don’t remember the episode described in Tennyson’s poem from any of those versions, so I’m not entirely certain where it came from, and lack, perhaps, some key background information. As such, this is how the poem appears at first blush: There is a random woman stuck in a random tower on a random island near Camelot. Apparently she is the only one in the tower. I don’t know how she manages practical necessities (like food) but she is under some kind of enchantment, so perhaps that accounts for it. Her job is to sew what she sees of the world in her magic mirror into a tapestry that she is weaving. There is a window within glancing distance, but she can’t look out of it or a curse will fall on her . . . for some reason. One wonders about the wisdom of having said window at all, but I digress.

So as she sits here, who should happen along, but Sir Lancelot himself! The description is stunningly dramatic. You can just picture him (only when you do, you shield your eyes, lest you be blinded in the glare) galloping in slow motion, armor sparkling and glistening like mad in the sunlight, long, flowing hair blowing out behind him in a shimmering wave, peasant girls swooning right and left. Now, I have been told that females, like jackdaws and raccoons, are fascinated by shiny things. I cannot speak one way or the other as to the veracity of this statement, but in the case of the Lady of Shalott, Lancelot’s radiantly shining armor seems to have turned her head a bit. Unsatisfied with the fleeting glimpse she got in her mirror, she goes to the window. Now, this is obviously a big mistake, because all hell breaks loose inside her little tower and she knows her days are numbered.

I am reminded, somehow, of the story of Eve from Genesis. She, too, was forbidden to do one specific thing, she, too, gave into the temptation and did it anyway, and she, too, was cursed to die as a result (but did not die right away). The only real difference, in this case, is that there the Lady of Shalott has no man to drag down with her . . . Lancelot having wisely continued on his merry way (his doom will be along soon enough, and it will be in female form, of course). However, also like Eve, the Lady of Shalott can’t stay in her nice, protected sanctuary anymore now that she has looked out of the window and seen the real world.

I’d like to imagine that her next move is entirely her own decision and has nothing whatsoever to do with the curse. She’s going to die, that’s certain, but what she does until then is entirely up to her, I think. So, what does she do? She slaps her name on a boat, climbs in, and floats herself in the general direction of Camelot. And she dies on the way.

I think she’s sending a message to Sir Lancelot, in typical female fashion. Sure, he was just galloping along innocently, minding his own business, but (to her mind) look what he caused! She has to die now, and it’s his fault. So her final act is to lay a guilt trip on him. She’ll float her carcass down to Camelot, and he’ll see that she’s dead, and then he’ll be sorry. Logically, it wasn’t his fault, and it wasn’t his problem, but the Lady of Shalott is clearly the emotional type . . . no logic in this one, fellas, and he’ll be made to feel that it was his responsibility just the same.

But we men have the last laugh in the end. Like a typical male, Lancelot totally misses the point of the entire message and (ironically) remains blissfully ignorant of his own role in the tragedy. Sure he seems a little melancholy for a few minutes when he sees her there, but, judging by what he says at the sight of her, I’m guessing he’s just mourning the passing of a pretty face. Moral: Women are subtle and vindictive. Men are oblivious and self-centered and not terribly bright. Men win.

Maybe my assessment of this poem is a bit fanciful, and maybe not, but one way or another, I really like the poem. It has a beautiful and prolonged rhythm in each "stanza" with its four rhyming lines, “Camelot,” three rhyming lines, and “Shalott.” The descriptions are full of colors and characters and settings that are brighter and larger and clearer than real life. And it’s actually a fairly good King Arthur story with its magical enchantments, knights in shining armor, and fair damsels in lonely towers. I enjoy those elements, as long as I don’t think about them too hard, and “The Lady of Shalott” is a highly enjoyable piece of escapism for me.

John Keats & The Classical Greek Obsession

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

"On Seeing the Elgin Marbles"

My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time -with a billowy main,
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” gives us the author’s impressions of a particularly good translation of the epics of Homer. And it makes him very happy. You don't hear this kind of orgasmic eloquence very often (if you'll pardon the word in this instance . . . I really couldn't think of a better one). I am reminded, specifically, of Moore contemplating a donut which he holds in his hand, turning it every which way so that it catches the light and expounding at great length on the beauty of the thing. Keats produces two very vivid metaphors to communicate to us the fact that he has a beautiful new world opened up and spread out before him. He has been there and done that, he tells us, but he’s never experienced anything quite like this.

“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” quite the opposite of the other, seems very conflicted in its impressions. Unlike Cortez, staring out over a new discovery “with eagle eyes,” Keats is now “like a sick eagle looking at the sky”. Clearly, the sky is where he belongs, where he must be in order to witness these grand vistas, but he is sick and unable to reach the necessary height. He is pained by the marked contrast between the magnificence of the artwork, and the damage and the fading that time and weather have caused to them. The Marbles are but a shadow of their former selves, and he grieves for what is lost. Again, I am reminded of Moore . . . after he has eaten his last cookie and is gazing sadly at the crumbs left behind.

Both of these poems are expressions of an intense overflow of emotion from reading a great piece of literature or viewing a (formerly) great work of art for the first time. Keats got excited about all things Classical and Greek, it would seem, and he didn’t like to see the beauty or glory of it fade. He could probably learn a few lessons from Shelley when it comes to such matters, but that is unimportant. He apparently wasn’t very particular about detail (he said Cortez . . . he meant Balboa) but he makes up for it with his enthusiasm for the subject.

I know people who feel this way about any number of things. I've already mentioned Moore and his food twice, for instance. I get this excited myself about many things. The knee-jerk reaction with Keats’ (or anyone's) expressions of high emotion over the things he is particularly enamored of is one of ridicule. You laugh at him because he is so happy about inky squiggles on a page, or because he is saddened about some shaped lumps of rock, but the fact is, we all have something (or, more likely, somethings . . . even Moore has computers . . . and Sharon, I suppose) that we get excited about which probably seems just as silly and insignificant to someone else. I can certainly remember showing this kind of passion, even, for poems as short as these on occasion . . . not to mention much longer works . . . movies . . . songs . . . paintings . . . just to name a few of the more reasonable ones. I don’t begrudge Keats his obsessions, just as I hope no one begrudges me mine, but, just as others do with me, I still reserve the right to be amused by them.

Percy Shelley & The Ecclesiastes Obsession

"Mutability"

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! - yet soon
Night closes round; and they are lost for ever;

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.- A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. - One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! - For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

"Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

So, in “Mutability,” we're all a bunch of clouds and old musical instruments and so on and so forth . . . constantly in motion . . . constantly changing. We sleep, we wake, we go about doing our little things here and there, acting out our personal dramas and just generally . . . living. Sometimes we’re happy, sometimes we’re sad, but it all comes out in the wash, in the end. Whatever mood we find ourselves in will pass, each day bringing something completely different from the one before, right? The only thing that remains unchanged is the fact of Change (“Mutability”) itself. Lovely.

Now, in “Ozymandias” you've got some random guy wandering around the desert for no good reason, and he spots something that makes such an impression on him that he remembers it throughout the rest of his travels and bores random people with the story. In some long-forgotten place, half-ruined, broken, and buried beneath desert sands, he has seen the remains of a massive statue (I just can't get away from the end of Planet of the Apes when I think about this, much to my chagrin). It is the image of a forgotten king who ruled a forgotten kingdom. His face is proud and full of the dreadful knowledge of his own power. The inscription on the monument indicates that this king thought that he and his works would be around a lot longer than he or they actually were. There is nothing but this statue left of whatever mighty empire this man built for himself in ages long gone. These things just don’t last, and he didn't figure that out.

I find that Shelley’s poetry brings vivid pictures leaping directly into my imagination. I can’t tell for sure what his mood is in “Mutability,” but I his observations are perfectly accurate. He seems, perhaps, a bit apathetic, as if he is tired of the emotional ups and downs of life and wishes to forswear them. Yeah. Good luck with that one, Pers. Somehow, I doubt he pulled it off. “Ozymandias,” on the other hand, is particularly enjoyable because it fairly reeks of irony. And we can't forget the fact that everyone loves to see bad things happen to people. Watching the mighty laid low is a lot more likely to make us laugh than cry, somehow. There is so much cold, hard pride in the inscription on the broken statue of the king, and such certainty, engraved on the face of stone, that he and his accomplishments will never be forgotten. There is no doubt in his mind . . . But the state of the monument and the surrounding wasteland begs to differ . . . They are a quietly powerful testament to the foolish vanity of the man who thought he would be immortal.

Clearly, Shelley caught the same intellectual wave as the author of Ecclesiastes. In fact, he flat out rips Solomon off. I think it would be fairly safe to assume that he was "inspired" by another source for this poetry. I could quote nearly any verse from Ecclesiastes and it would be relevant to analyzing one of these two poems: The constant references to the ever-changing nature of things, chasing after the wind, the observations that everything passes away, nothing is forever, all that is on earth is transient.

I find that the statement, “There is nothing new under the sun,” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) is especially relevant to Shelley’s poetry. Even his own observations on transience and mutability merely echo the centuries-old observations of a much wiser man who came before . . . Ironic, that.

Ripping!

Okay, so this week's play, clearly, was Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. And, clearly, I have had a heck of a time arriving at a point where I could actually type up my weekly report. Gah! Stupid, freaking BUSINESS! Not to mention certain people who steal certain other people's keyboards.

But here goes nothing:

Ardith- Eliza Doolittle
Wilson- Henry Higgins
Myself- Colonel Pickering
Anna- Mrs. Pearce, Mrs. Higgins, Mrs. Eynsford-Hill
Moore- Freddy, General Narration
Milton- Alfred P. Doolittle, Bystander, Parlor Maid, General Narration
Sharon- Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, Parlor Maid
Scholl- Miss Eynsford-Hill, Sarcastic Bystander, General Narration
Gallagher- General Narration

Such a freaking hilarious play . . . My favorite line, clearly, is the title of this post. Clearly, one must roll one's "r"s like mad when saying it. But there are so many great lines! And they're so funny!

Ardith: "I'm a good girl, I am! Aaaaaah--ow--ooh! Garn!" Heeheehee! I've no idea where she picked up that accent, but it was hilarious.

Wilson: "Eliza, you're an idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them before you." Heeheehee! Wilson was rather chilling as Higgins, I must say. They are . . . rather similair people. Except Wilson doesn't have an Oedipus complex. I don't think.

Oh, and be sure and ask Milton about his Texan Brit . . . We said we'd make Shaw spin in his grave, and I've no doubt we did.

Scholl as young woman . . . don't go there. Ever. Gah. He was rather too good at it. Uncomfortably so. Oh, and I'd like all of you to give the new small talk a try. It's really quite ripping!

I'm curious as to how that epilogue is incorporated into the play, if at all. It seems generally odd to have such a large chunk of written material that explains what came next and yet is not really part of the play. Curious technique, that. I definitely need to look into more plays by Shaw, however. You know . . . like someday when I have time and stuff.

*laughs at self*

*Time joins in*

*we laugh together*

And yes, this post is excessively disjointed because I don't have time or brain power to expend on any other kind of post at this moment. My next few entries, coming VERY soon, will probably be related to the English journals I'm writing . . . so consider yourself warned.

Continuing . . . My Fair Lady (Pygmalion) is the same movie as Anastasia! The parallels are legion . . . and undeniable. I shall go into them with you on demand if necessary, but I don't feel like typing them all out here. Anastasia packs a bigger emotional punch, certainly, but no more than is absolutely necessary to make it a drama instead of a comedy. And they changed the ending, slightly. But it's all the same story . . . although I suppose I should be sure to attribute the plot to the proper source . . . trippy and jacked-up as the story is.

Of these three variations on the same basic theme Shaw's Higgins character is by far the most unlucky, being rather unfortunately unable to keep a handle on his Galatea, poor devil. In this he bears a closer resemblance to Dr. Frankenstein . . . or Prometheus, I suppose. But then, I imagine he really doesn't care, in the end.

It is, however, an interesting plot to develop in general, albeit an overused one. On an only slightly related note, according to imdb, if you like Anastasia, you will also like (according to a long and twisted string of recommended titles) Home Alone 3. Special.

Wheeler, "With Post"

Gah. Dr. Watson is kinda sick, now that I think about it. Him and his whole "with poem" thing . . . I don't find that I am entirely comfortable with the idea of giving birth to a blogpost. Mostly because, at best, it winds up being a twisted mutant child. But I had that presentation in English Lit II today, and consequently I am "with post."

To begin with, Dr. Watson is, like, the most absent-minded person ever when it comes to remembering stuff about presentations. He cares as little as I do about them, but has less motivation to remember when they are. I've had to supply the date of our presentation to him every time I've mentioned it thus far (and that has turned out to be often). So this morning I wander into his office to say hello, and pick up the Tennyson recording he's loaning me, and he asks me what I'm up to this morning. I told him I was just generally roaming, skipping chapel (which confused him briefly, since chapel hadn't started yet), and practicing my presentation.

"Oh? Do you have a presentation today?"

"Yeah."

"What class?"

I laughed at him. He remembered.

*fast-forwards boring details until beginning of presentation* I go sit in the corner at the front to watch the opening (I know what they're doing, but I'm not involved in this part). Yearsley gets up and launches into "The Charge of the Light Brigade" with the kind of gusto and fervor I don't often have the pleasure of hearing from anyone (except on Thurday nights, from people like Moore). At the same time, Logan comes, well, charging into the midst of us wearing cardboard armor and riding a broomstick ("We found a witch!" . . . fortunately for him, he stayed on the ground). When Yearsley came to "Cannons to the right of them! Cannons to the left of them!" Robert hauls out a double handful of Reese's pieces . . . thingies and lets fly at Logan with a loud "BOOM!" Logan continues to run amongst the desks, half trying to duck and cover from the sprays of candy blanketing the room like . . . grapeshot, I suppose. Very nonlethal grapeshot.

I was amused. Everyone was amused. Watson ate candy, and was highly amused. Then came devo. I tuned out, because I was thinking about what I was going to say. It was on Psalm 92 and it somehow tied in with chapel and with David being a great poet. That's all I know.

Then Robert gave his talk on Tennyson's life. Robert was nervous. I could tell Robert was nervous. And I was somewhat upset with Payton. *notes confused looks* Payton, in Speech last semester, officially made it impossible not to notice every single solitary time that people say "Um" when they are speaking in front of others. And it drives me insane. And Robert said "Um" a lot. Grrr . . .

At least I don't notice when I say "Um" in general. If I did, I'd be really annoyed. However, Robert's talk did give me a certain amount of confidence, because I knew I could one-up it. And then I got up to talk about Lord Tennyson and DEATH . . . (ba-ba-ba-BUM). Tennyson wrote about death, like, all the time. It's rather depressing, I couldn't help but notice, and very affecting, when you're sitting all alone very late at night, reading this stuff and trying to get inside his head.

This isn't as apparent in The Lady of Shalott and Morte d'Arthur because the tone is so elevated and he pours it on so thick, that unless you really just want to get emotional, it's not going to happen. The Lady of Shalott, in fact, is kind of ridiculous, really. It's black humor, highly ironic . . . but probably not meant so. The Lady of Shalott basically sits around in her tower all day and watches the world through her magic mirror so she can record things on a tapestry. She isn't allowed to look out of the window at all or a curse will come upon her because . . . ummm . . . because it's a poem. Shut up. Well, one day, who should happen by, happy singing a tune, but Sir friggin' Lancelot himself. The Lady spots him in the mirror, runs over and gazes upon him out of the window as he gallops off on his merry way (followed, no doubt, by a strange-looking fellow clapping ends of a coconut together).

The mirror cracks from side to side, the tapestry flies out the window, and things just generally suck. The Lady of Shalott, being (as Moore would say) exceptionally crafty, goes down and paints her name on the prow of a boat, then lays herself down in it, clad in far more white than is good for her. She then proceeds to float down the river, lying disconsolately in the bottom of the boat, singing her own funeral dirge, like a right-morbid watery old tart. And so she dies, which kind of sucks for her, I suppose. Then again, she was basically spending all of her time sitting in a tower and sewing while she watched soaps. Personally, I think she wins. So then we get to the irony. Her boat shows up at Camelot, where they are having a party. And everyone shuts up real fast and everyone is very sad. And Lancelot sits and gazes upon the fair lady, and wishes God's mercy on her . . . because she's pretty, (presumably he wouldn't be so charitable, otherwise). And that's how it ends, and Lancelot has no idea that he was the cause of all this. It's incredibly sappy, but I've been in incredibly sappy moods before, so I won't say that it totally sucks. It's rather good poetry . . . very relaxing rythm to it and so forth.

So that's Tennyson and his focus on death in Arthurian legend. Next came Tennyson writing about death in the events of his day. I didn't even bother to try explaining the Crimean War, for obvious reasons. That's gotta be the most confusing war ever. Basically it boils down to France, England, and Turkey ganging up on Russia because France and Russia both want religious rights of one sort or another in Jerusalem. And they all run over and fight each other on the Crimean Peninsula, which, it turns out, is not technically in France, England, Russia, Turkey, or anywhere near Jerusalem. It's kind of a sad little war, in any case. Three years, three major battles . . . But the second one was rather interesting, and Tennyson wrote a poem about a piece of it.

Actually, the Battle of Balaklava was loaded with heroic holdings of the line, heroic charges, heroic last stands, and so forth . . . The Charge of the Light Brigade was the most monumentally stupid of them all, and the most costly . . . which makes it the most heroic, almost by default. So Tennyson wrote about it, because he was into that whole "dead hero" thing.

If you don't know the real story, it's a pretty good one, and I had a good time telling it in class, with various pictures to assist. Balaklava is a particularly hilly region and it is being held by the . . . non-Russians. A massive Russian force sweeps in and chases the Turks away from some artillery that they have set up, and they run off to warn the British. *insert various heroic actions here* As the battle progresses, the officers down on the ground can see very little of what is going on except in certain directions, while the generals up above have a pretty good grasp of the big picture. The commanding general spots the Russians moving in to remove the guns that they have captured from the Turks and decides that he doesn't want them doing that. He sends down a message to the Light Brigade ordering them to "prevent the removal of the guns."

The Light Brigade says to itself, "Self, I wonder which guns he means. Hmmm . . . I only see those guns down there. He must mean those. Rather odd. That's a lot of guns. This seems a bit suicidal. Oh, well. Charge!!!"

Tennyson's "Jaws of Death" is a very accurate description. 673 light cavalry go barreling down the valley in two waves, directly into massive cannon fire, and caught in a deadly crossfire from both sides of them as well. The first wave reaches the guns, and the Russians who were too stupid to get out of the way get mowed down, and the first wave continues forward, plowing into a significantly larger mass of Russian cavalry that is waiting (a bit dumbstruck at this move by the British). Meanwhile, the second wave goes flying by the guns, kills more hapless Russian gunners, and plows into the first wave, which is retreating from much-too-large mass of cavalry that they had so recently attacked. So they're all kind of milling about in the spot, stuck between the Russian guns and the Russian cavalry, and before long it is decided that leaving is just generally a good idea. Unfortunately, the Russian lancers waiting in the wings have moved around in front to cut them off. However, as the British begin to run, the lancers step aside with just a few perfunctory pokes to make sure they keep going. No one is really certain why they did this. I suspect they just didn't want to risk themselves against an enemy that was obviously broken and not coming back.

Long story short, the Light Brigade is down to about 100 men with horses, the British *sort of* win the battle of Balaklava, and the Russians (who had initially thought that the British were just drunk) gain a healthy respect for the light cavalry. Which doesn't actually matter because they are pretty much broken and are unable to play a significant role for the rest of the war.

At this point in my presentation, we listened to the recording of Tennyson reading a portion of his poem. You couldn't actually understand what he was saying at all unless you were reading along. It just sounded like a rythmic, "BLA bla blabla blabla, BLA bla blabla blabla" for a little over a minute. Strangely, if you knew what he was saying, you could very clearly hear him say it.

"Creepy," says I, when it was over (because it kinda was). Then, as I'm about to continue the slide show, the CD continues on into some sort of classical music selection. Heh. "Stopping this would probably be a good idea," I conjectured as I moved the stupid cursor up to take care of it. I suppose I could have turned it down a bit and left it playing, but . . . nah.

I moved on to shaky ground . . . the poem "In Memoriam" written about Tennyson's friend Arthur Hallam when he died at the age of 22. I was more than a bit disturbed, and also most affected, by this poem. It's crazy long, and they don't even include the entire thing in Norton (which drives me up the wall). Tennyson wrote it over a seventeen year period . . . He spent 20% of his life getting over the death of this friend. The work contains 133 separate poems, and all the ones that I read were really good. The thing is loaded with famous quotes, including, "It is better to have loved and lost/than never to have loved at all." (#27)

Dr. Watson wanted clarification (having told me before class that he wasn't particularly familiar with this one): "Now, this is written about a guy?"

"Yes, yes it is."

The thing can be divided into four sections by the chief emotions expressed in each section: Despair, Doubt, Hope, and Faith. So it becomes less depressing, but no less emotional, as you move forward in it. The turning point into each section is written at Christmas time, #s 28, 78, and 104. 9-15 and 19 were all written as he accompanied the body back to England on a ship, these are especially poignant. Also, 54-56 express some very intense anger at and/or doubt in God. But ultimately the best ones are in the last section where he contemplates the afterlife quite a bit, and has dreams of meeting his friend after he dies.

This poem made Tennyson famous when it was finally published in 1950. He was able to marry the girl that he couldn't marry before because he was too poor. He was declared Poet Laureate of England. And he became by far the most popular poet of his age. A dying gift from a friend . . . but he'd rather have had the friend, I think.

I vacillate between being genuinely disturbed at the prospect of a seventeen-year period of mourning and the obsessive writing of poetry throughout all that time, and being deeply affected by the signs of a rather amazing friendship. I tend more towards the latter, because I think I kind of understand just a fraction of a minute portion of the way he felt . . . Maybe.

Finally, I talked about what Tennyson wrote of his own death. "Crossing the Bar" was written three years before he died, and he directed that it be placed at the end of every collection of his works (as far as I understand, it has been). When he died, it was put to music and sung at his funeral, and I am told that you can still find it some hymnals . . . although I have no idea what sort. At this point in the presentation, Yearsley came up and read the poem . . . which is rather a good poem (and so I shall post it).

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.

It's hard to know when to risk trying to affect your audience, and when to just keep it light (which is considerably easier), but Yearsley did a good job of reading the poem in a very quiet, moving tone. So I went for both, and ended the presentation thusly:

"So, lot's of death and sadness . . . Have a good cry." (This last being something I think Watson might say, and said with my best impression of Watson.)

I got quiet chuckles and a lot of staring off into space. Haha!!!

Wait, nevermind . . . they just weren't paying attention. Ah, well . . . we can't all aspire to the lofty post of English Major, now can we?

I don't know what all the contributing factors were, but we got a 92 (the choice of Psalm was rather prophetic, I suppose . . . Logan should have chosen Psalm 150 . . . drat). That was pretty cool, because it was only about 20 minutes long, and the syllabus calls for 30-35. w00t.

And then we finished watching Frankenstein. *sniggers* Talk about a change of pace . . .

Hmmm . . . time to get work done.

Romeo and Juliet Post, Take Two

Okay. *deep breath* In the continuing general spirit of St. Valentine's Day, I recreate (to the best of my ability) my post of last night/this morning. We begin with a cast list:

Wilson- Romeo, Prince Escalus, Paris, Chorus, Gregory, etc.
Ardith- Juliet
Moore- Capulet, Apothecary, etc.
Gallagher- Lady Capulet, Tybalt, Friar John, Servant, Musician, Watchman, etc.
Myself- Mercutio, Friar Lawrence, Paris, Sampson, Peter, Chief Watchman, etc.
Sharpton-Benvolio, Balthasar, Servant, Musician, Watchman, etc.
Scott- Montague, Servant, etc.
Rachel- Lady Montague, Nurse
Anna- Nurse
Sharon- Nurse
Scholl- Prince Escalus

Again, and as always, there was much swapping about of roles and playing of multiple roles and so forth. Ohhhh, there was much amusement to be had this week. I think the bad rap that Romeo and Juliet has amongst many people is rather unfair. It really is a great play, all in all. But who wants to see random people they don't know doing the whole starry-eyed bit? I mean, really, it's bad enough when you have to watch your friends do it. However, when simply performed, and not overdone or taken too seriously, by people you know, it's really quite entertaining. Ultimately, however, I have one word to say about the way events unfold in the play: "D'oh!!!"

Anyway, I had more fun than I should probably be allowed to have with the character of Mercutio. It's rather a nasty and unpleasant habit Shakespeare has of killing off the best characters in their prime (around Act III, I mean). Someone should have broken him of it. Of course, if Mercutio hadn't died, then it would have been a comedy . . . You wouldn't have heard any complaining from me. Come to think of it, he killed two of my characters! Of all the nerve . . . that's just downright insulting. Come to think of it, I've died twice in both of the tragedies we've done. Death speeches are sooo much fun. "Oh, I am slain!" (Who says that, really . . . I mean c'mon!)

So, can I remember what else I'd written about the play? Yeah, right. But I don't recall that it was particularly important or interesting anyway. I would like to note that there are two or three more posts festering in my brain right now, and it isn't very pleasant. But the general lack of time means that they will have to wait. I'm certainly not going to mess with them right now . . . G'bye.

The Perfect Metaphor

I'm generally annoyed that I didn't include this in my previous post, but I want to remember it for future reference, so here it is. Even if you've never read this book, this may still work for you.

The Sound and the Fury is like the cursed carousel from Something Wicked This Way Comes (note picture on cover at link). You climb on and it begins to spin like mad . . . color, flashing, blinding . . . lights, strobing, whirling, dancing . . . noise, half-music, crashing, deafening . . . and you can't get off. Around and around and around and around, and as you continue to go around, revisiting (reliving) the same little path over and over again, you get old, and then you die. And you've spent your whole life trapped in the craziness, living and reliving more times than you can count.

There. I'm glad I got that out of my system.

The Twilight Zone

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Finished at approximately 0330 hrs, February 8, 2004
Rating: 94

This book was a pretty wild ride for me. More of an adventure and an experience than any other book I've read recently. I couldn't (and didn't) just sit and read it. I felt it and lived it. Despite my complaints concerning stream-of-consciousness, I got into the characters' heads and I knew what they knew. It wasn't the same as when you see and hear what the characters see and hear, as in most books . . . I saw and heard what they saw and heard how they saw and heard it. The characters intrigued me. Some, I recognized as people I know (kinda scary). The rest, I felt as if I knew by the time I was done. Jason and Quentin particularly struck a chord, if I had to pick two.

I don't fully identify with Quentin, but I sympathize with him. He is truly a hopeless romantic. He has almost a symbiotic relationship with this ideal of women being pure and unspoiled . . . So much so, in fact, that when the ideal dies, he can't survive it by very long. The odd thing that just occured to me is: I know what happened to him, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually say he committed suicide anywhere in the book. On the flip side, he does say, over and over, that he has committed incest with his sister. But I don't think he actually did . . .

The poor guy is full of high and noble ideas about, as I say, chivalry and purity and nobility and love (but not sex by any means) that he has built his emotional foundation on, but he is completely unable to live up to them. And is if that weren't bad enough, he tries to live this out by protecting his sister from a man who possesses all of these traits. Ouch. Forced to recognize that he falls miserably short of his own ideal self, and at the same time, forced to see that his sister is just the opposite of the ideal that he needed her to be, he is doomed.

Jason, on the other hand . . . The first six words we hear out of him are: "Once a bitch always a bitch . . ." If he is harboring any illusions about women, then they are the opposite of Quentin's. Jason is the eternal victim. Everyone is out to get him, all the time. Every move made by the people around him is carefully calculated to cause the most inconvenience possible. And he loves it. He begs for more. When his boss mentions (he doesn't complain, in fact, he says "It's all right.") that Jason has been gone for the entire afternoon from the store where they work, Jason all but begs to be fired ("If it's not all right, you know what you can do about it.") He'd love that, I think.

When he leaves his house after breakfast, Luster still hasn't put the spare tire on the car because he's been watching Benjy (the retarded man).

I went on back to the garage. There was the tire, leaning against the wall, but be damned if I was going to put it on.

Later, when he has gone on a wild goose chase out of town after Quentin (the illegitmate daughter of his sister Caddy, not his brother Quentin who committed suicide) and she has managed to let all of the air out of one of his tires before escaping back to town, he revels in the situation.

Well, I just sat there. It was getting on toward sundown, and town was about five miles. They never even had guts enough to puncture it, to jab a hole in it. They just let the air out. I just stood there for awhile, thinking about that kitchen full of niggers and not one of them had time to lift a tire onto the rack and screw up a couple of bolts. It was kind of funny because even she couldn't have seen far enough ahead to take the pump out on purpose, unless she thought about it while he was letting the air out maybe. But what it probably was, was somebody took it out and gave it to Ben to play with for a squirt gun because they'd take the whole car to pieces if he wanted it.

Ohhh, he loves it . . .

It's a curious thing how no matter what's wrong with you, a man'll tell you to have your teeth examined and a woman'll tell you to get married. It always takes a man that never made much at anything to tell you how to run your business, though. Like these college professors without a whole pair of socks to their name, telling you how to make a million in ten years, and a woman that couldn't even get a husband can always tell you how to raise a family.

He has advice for everyone about everything, all the time. But they rarely hear what it is. Everyone is always doing everything wrong. They're always doing something monumentally stupid. No one has any sense. It amuses him to recognize this and say nothing. If that's the way they want to do it, let them. Of course, he's usually wrong . . . He sees the black man who works at the store making a delivery in the old wagon and notes that a wheel is about to come off. So he stays put to see if the guy'll get out of the alley before it does. The wheel doesn't come off, but that doesn't stop him from going off on an entire train of thought about his lousy perceptions of the whole race, what a poor businessman his boss is, etc.

When he gets two free tickets to the show that's in town from his boss, and Luster begs him for one, he offers to sell it for five cents. Luster hasn't got five cents, so Jason pops open the stove and burns both tickets right in front of him. The only person forced to interact with Jason Compson who I have no sympathy for is Mother. Before I move on briefly to her, I want to mention one other thing: I know Jason . . . well.

Mother is the same as Jason, really. She's just a lot louder and more whiney. She's a much more extreme sort of victim . . . She's a martyr. Out of her four children, Jason is the only good one. The other three were just a curse on her. But she deserved it. She is devoted to Jason. She does everything she can to make his life easier, even though she is sick unto death. And she makes sure he knows it, too. *checks . . . finds no actual evidence that she ever does anything* She knows she's just a burden, but she'll be gone soon, and then his life will be easier, and this comforts her. I guess it's supposed to comfort him too. In any case, she's been saying it for fifteen years. I also know Mother . . . well. *is not referring to his own mother*

The weirdest thing about this book is that the most important character . . . isn't in it. It's like a black hole . . . you only know it's there because everything else is revolving around it. Caddy is the center of everything, but she is only seen in random flashbacks. Without her at the center of things, the family is slowly shaking itself to pieces. It has shattered, it will shatter, it is shattering.

But no one is going to see this happen. There isn't an end to the story. There isn't any closure. In fact, ultimately you end up having read the same story four times. Each perspective filled in a few different gaps, but what you are left with isn't complete. The repetition gave me a sense of futility and of being trapped. I almost get the feeling that if the book went on, I would turn the page only to find myself re-reading Benjy's section. Just as the reader is stuck in the minds of the different characters, so is each character stuck in his own memories forever. I feel every bit as trapped by the crazy world of the book as everyone in it is. You can't get out. You are doomed to repeat.

. . . I think I'm haunted . . .

"An Infinite Deal of Nothing"

-Quote from The Merchant of Venice (Act I, Scene 1)

Well, I've been devoting myself prodigiously to the completion of The Sound and the Fury. After I vented in my last post . . . ummm . . . How does one say it? Let's just say that something clicked. I caught the wave. I'm jiving to the groove. Yeah. Something like that. I just lack 50 pages now, and I'm enjoying myself, all in all. More on all that once the book is actually done.

I also went to talk to Dr. Coppinger about the book on Thursday afternoon. I had often noted his sizable collection of Faulkner while sitting in his office staring hungrily at his books, and had always found it odd that The Sound and the Fury was not among the novels on display. Well, as soon as we started talking about it, guess what came out from under his desk (where he apparently keeps it within easy reach). Yeah. And it was full of colored tabs to mark his favorite passages. Very cool.

We talked about why it is so highly acclaimed, what the value of it is, etc. As I said before, more on that later. Then I asked about the rest of Faulkner's stuff. He recommended Light in August and As I Lay Dying as being more "accessible to the reader." And, if I wanted something more difficult ("There's something worse than this?!") his personal favorite is "Absalom, Absalom." Glancing to the side, I noticed that that one wasn't on the shelf either. Hmmm . . .

I was shocked to find that our library actually has every novel ever written by Faulkner. No, really! I'm not making that up! So, that's another *estimates* twenty-ish books tacked onto my ever-growing list of "Things to Read, like, Now."

In other news, this week's play was The Merchant of Venice. Yes, it was supposed to be Romeo and Juliet (for my Shakespeare class, you know), but Batts is, amazingly, even slower than I had anticipated. So we picked another one (I believe Moore suggested it) and Romeo and Juliet will wait a week.

Martinez- Duke of Venice, Prince of Morocco, Prince of Arragon, Lorenzo, Stephano, Leonardo, etc.
Myself- Antonio, Tubal, Balthasar, etc.
Moore- Bassanio
Gallagher- Salanio, Salarino, Salerio, Launcelot Gobbo, Nerissa, Jessica, etc.
Scott- Salanio, Salarino, Salerio, Old Gobbo, etc.
Sharpton- Gratiano, etc.
Scholl- Shylock, Lorenzo
Wilson- Shylock
Sharon- Portia
Anna- Nerissa, Jessica
Ardith- Portia, Nerissa, Jessica

If you were paying any attention at all, you can't help but notice that many of the parts were played by multiple people. This is because, over the course of two nights and two and a half hours, there was much coming and going by certain persons. As such, the female parts got passed around like candy, if you'll pardon the expression. At one point, I came within a few seconds of playing Jessica myself. Also, the characters of Salanio, Salarino, and Salerio were absolutely impossible to keep straight (especially since they seemed to swap roles depending on which edition you were using) and the long and short of that was, if you played one, you played them all.

I, for one, was highly amused by Sharpton's performance as Gratiano (ask him about Russian/Italian mafiosos). Wilson picked up Shylock at the point where he started really showing his true colors in the play, and the effect was chilling . . . at least to me, since he was up in my face a few times . . . with a knife. Gah. Gallagher, of course, played the clown (Launcelot) for all he was worth, very much enjoying a male role. Martinez generally had loads of fun playing a number of jilted suitors . . . I wonder about that, but no matter.

The last scene, as anyone who has read the play knows, is loads of fun to perform, almost impossible to mess up, and teaches a valuable lesson (that women are, amazingly, even more ruthless and conniving than Jews . . . who'da thunk it?). A few of our number, having read the play in high school, were surprised to find that the edition they read had censored some of the more . . . blatant innuendo and the bawdy double-entendres.

This weekend I have much work to do in continued preparation for the month I am already calling "Bloody February" (there is a plethora of good reasons to do so). And I will finish The Sound and the Fury. And I will continue everything else I'm reading. And I will continue all my normal weekend activities. See you on the other side.

The Sound of Fury

So I'm reading The Sound and the Fury, right? And the first 58 pages are absolute murder. But I was expecting that. They're done in "stream of consciousness" and the perspective is that of Benjy, a retarded boy. It's very difficult to tell what is going on. There are something like fifteen very distinct and randomly ordered time periods in this portion (each one years apart from the others, with no indication of what has passed in-between), and you have to figure out for yourself when you've moved from one to the other and back again. At no point are you ever told anything about who the characters are that you are meeting, where they are, when they are, or what relationship they have with each other. You have to figure it out for yourself. To make matters worse, there are characters who have multiple names and characters who share the same name.

It's all very confusing, but I was making a bit of sense out of it, and it was, as I said, only the first 58 pages. Tonight, I picked the book up again to continue. The next perspective is 80 pages of the book, told from the point of view of Quentin, Benjy's older brother. After over 20 pages of Quentin, I reached the following paragraphs (and yes, they're representative of everything so far):

"I asked, but he didn't know whether another one would leave before noon or not because you'd think that interurbans. So the first one was another trolley. I got on. You can feel noon. I wonder if even miners in the bowels of the earth. That's why whistles: because people that sweat, and if just far enough from sweat you wont hear whistles and in eight minutes you should be that far from sweat in Boston. Father said a man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired, but then time is your misfortune Father said. A gull on an invisible wire attached through space dragged. You carry the symbol of your frustration through eternity. Then the wings are bigger Father said only who can play a harp.

"I could hear my watch whenever the car stopped, but not often they were already eating Who would play a Eating the business of eating inside of you space too space and time confused Stomach saying noon brain saying eat oclock All right I wonder what time it is what of it. People were getting out. The trolley didn't stop so often now, emptied by eating."

What it mean. Faulkner's habit of not. Stars are pretty. Bed is cool until suspense. Crap the what the Pulitzer surprise glory flees.

*nods to Wilson for his contribution to the above paragraph*

So, Faulkner wins a Pulitzer for writing something that would get me an F from any English teacher in the country? What is that?! I don't get it. How is this any good at all? I'm open for suggestions here . . . explain.

The Wisdom of Father Brown

On lie detectors and circulation:

"I've been reading," said Flambeau, "of this new psychometric method they talk about so much, especially in America. You know what I mean; they put a pulsometer on a man's wrist and judge by how his heart goes at the pronunciation of certain words. What do you think of it?"

"I think it very interesting," replied Father Brown; "it reminds me of that interesting idea in the Dark Ages that blood would flow from a corpse if the murderer touched it."

"Do you really mean," demanded his friend, "that you think the two methods equally valuable?"

"I think them equally valueless," replied Brown. "Blood flows, fast or slow, in dead folk or living, for so many more million reasons than we can ever know. Blood will have to flow very funnily; blood will have to flow up the Matterhorn, before I will take it as a sign that I am to shed it."

"The method," remarked the other, "has been guaranteed by some of the greatest American men of science."

"What sentimentalists men of science are!" exclaimed Father Brown, "and how much more sentimental must American men of science be! Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart-throbs? Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman is in love with him if she blushes! That's a test from the circulation of the blood, discovered by the immortal Harvey; and a jolly rotten test, too."

On crime amongst the Irish:

It had happened nearly twenty years before, when he was chaplain to his co-religionists in a prison in Chicago -- where the Irish population displayed a capacity both for crime and penitence which kept him tolerably busy.

On firearms:

"Then I remembered that beyond those ploughed fields he was crossing lay Pilgrim's Pond, for which (you will remember) the convict was keeping his bullet; and I sent my walking-stick flying."

"A brilliant piece of rapid deduction," said Father Brown; "but had he got a gun?"

As Usher stopped abruptly in his walk the priest added apologetically: "I've been told a bullet is not half so useful without it."

On Man:

"You always forget," observed his companion, "that the reliable machine always has to be worked by an unreliable machine."

"Why, what do you mean?" asked the detective.

"I mean Man," said Father Brown, "the most unreliable machine I know of. I don't want to be rude; and I don't think you will consider Man to be an offensive or inaccurate description of yourself."

On Sin:

"What do you mean?" demanded the other. "Why should he be innocent of that crime?"

"Why, bless us all!" cried Father Brown in one of his rare moments of animation, "why, because he's guilty of the other crimes! I don't know what you people are made of. You seem to think that all sins are kept together in a bag. You talk as if a miser on Monday were always a spendthrift on Tuesday."

On Atheism:

"You are more of a mystery than all the others," she said desperately; "but I feel there might be a heart in your mystery."

"What we all dread most," said the priest, in a low voice, "is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare."

More on the Subject of My Supposed "Non-life"

First, I finally finished Lord of Chaos. Yeah. Finally. I've been reading it since, what, October? Yes, it is nearly 1,000 pages long, and yes, I have finished a number of books in-between, and yes, I was excessively busy during various long periods between then and now. But I should most certainly have finished it during Christmas break for certain. Bleah. Anyway, it got a 95 from me. This is almost certainly more than it deserves and without doubt this is more than most people would give it. But I'm not most people, thank goodness. The book did not once fail to lose my interest. Yeah, it was longer than it needed to be, but it had more than enough coolness to keep me reading. And whatever else you have to say about Robert Jordan, the man knows how to write a climactic ending. Wow. That alone probably boosted the book 4 points at least. Ending well is of the utmost importance, of course, to my rating system. Anyway, so now I'm "down" to six books, and hopefully dropping further very soon. I continue to read The Desperate Hours, The Wisdom of Father Brown, and Fantastical Visions II. I started The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Volume One) this week, and it is way cool. It's the kind of thing that I have to actually be awake to read, but very good nonetheless. Also, last Friday night Scott plunks four books of an SF series in my hands and tells me to read them. So I am. The first book (The Callahan Chronicals) is actually a collection of three books, and I'm halfway through the first of those three. And, finally, thanks to friggin' Batts, I have just started The Sound and the Fury. It's high time that one was behind me.

Report on Life with Father . . . It's impossible for a comedy like this not to be fun to read. The cast:

Scholl: Father
Anna: Vinnie (Mother)
Myself: Clarence (oldest son, 17)
Wilson: John (2nd son, 15)
Scott: Whitney (3rd son, 13)
Moore: Harlan (youngest son, 6)
Gallagher: Cousin Cora, Dr. Somers
Ardith: Mary (young friend of Cora), Margaret (the cook), Annie, Delia, Nora, Maggie (maids)
Martinez: The Reverend Dr. Lloyd (Rector of the family church)
Sharpton: Dr. Humphreys

Scott as whiny 13-year old = fun to listen to

Ardith playing six roles, and actually conversing with herself at one point = fun to listen to

Anna and Scholl fighting and bickering like an old married couple = . . . Hold on, we hear that all the time. Nevermind. At least you know they're good at it.

I'm trying not to typecast Gallagher, really I am, but it's hard. He's just so good at that voice. Anyway, good times . . . I thought everyone did well, considering the difficulty of ten people with four scripts during act one, and the difficulty of doing a dry run of this play in general, with all of its stage directions.

Hmmm . . . there's more to talk about, I'm sure, but it can wait. I'm off to do stuff, and then go to bed.

The Shadow Council Players, entering stage left . . .

Our title this evening comes to you courtesy of Ardith. And I say unto you:

Friends, I consider it now my most worthy and sacred duty to inform you all of a blessed spectacle, (which it has been to your utmost disadvantage, and shall be your eternal regret, to have missed) which hath transpired this very evening.

But I'm not going to keep talking like that. Because I don't want to. It all started when Wheeler spent about 4 hours in a classroom with Dr. Batts over the course of a week and a half. And Dr. Batts did speak a multitude of words without meaning, and Wheeler's cup did run over and spill out open the very stones, which did cry out in anguish, and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Oh, yeah. Said I wasn't going to talk like that. So anyway, he beats us over the head until our vision gets all blurry with the fact that Shakespeare's plays were very decidedly not written to be read, but rather to be performed. I think I've heard this from him in excess of 20 times during various class periods. Then, once we finally begin one of the plays, he assigns all of the reading to be done outside of class . . . by ourselves. My recommendation at this point is that he be summarily executed . . . But he won't be. So my immediate problem remained unsolved: How to not just be stuck re-reading plays I've already read.

Well, of course I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but wasn't sure that it would work out. I waited until Dr. Hood gave us a break in the midst of Honors Shame (thus it has been dubbed by Wilson, and by that name shall it henceforth be known) this evening. At that time I asked Wilson if he was free after class, and if he would be interested in rounding up a few people and doing the first act of Hamlet with me.

He was interested, and lo and behold, who should we meet as we stepped out of the classroom at 10:00 but Moore and Gallagher!

"Aha!" says I to myself. "Fate smiles upon me!" So we collared the both of them and I led them to the multitude of copies of Hamlet which are to be found in the library, and we pawed through them and selected three volumes that looked readable. Then we marched to the front, they checked out their books, and we headed for Longview Hall lobby and dove right in. During the course of the reading we were joined by Scott and Sharon, each of them running by the library for their own copy, and to make a long story short, we have just completed Act III at 12:45.

Devilish good fun. I took the liberty of snagging first pick of which part(s) to play, since I'm kind of doing this for class, and the other roles fell as we saw fit. Everyone, of course, picked up bit parts here and there. I played Horatio and Polonius. Gallagher played Laertes, Guildenstern, and . . . Queen Gertrude. Wilson played King Claudius, and the "First Player" . . . and Ophelia briefly, until Sharon arrived. Scott played Rosencratz. And Moore ended up as Hamlet, which was good, since Sharon showed up to play Ophelia.

The general award of the night goes to Gallagher for his performance as the Queen. If you've seen Life of Brian, he sounded like Brian's mother . . . like, exactly. It was oh, so good. I was also particularly fond of Wilson's speeches before Hamlet as the Player. I myself am particularly fond of Polonius' part, especially in Act II and I really threw myself into it and had a lot of fun with it.

And so, as I say, we seem to have hit upon rather a good thing here. My program for this season, as set forth by the syllabus, is as follows:

Hamlet

Romeo and Juliet

King Lear

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Henry IV, Part One

The Taming of the Shrew

Add to that whatever other random play(s) we wish to throw in, if we're of a mind to do so, and . . . yay. I am pleased.

Now I need to pull out all the freaking random quotes from Act I for class tomorrow. Plus do my reading for English Lit II (only six pages) and the reading for Creation. *sigh*

Reading update

Dunno if anyone reads these or cares, but they're too much fine to write, so I continue.

Oroonoko got finished, like, a few days ago, and I finally got that crazy huge book out of my backpack so it can reside in a prominent place on my shelf. And by "prominent place" I mean that empty spot I finally found after much anguished searching. Oroonoko got a 56, which I generally classify as being right there on the fine line between a book that is merely fair, and one that is simply bad. In other words, a big, boring ho-hum. At best it was a fairly sordid little tale on a fairly common theme.

Boy meets girl, grandfather steals girl from boy, boy has sex with girl anyway, grandfather sells girl into slavery, boy goes off to war and feels better, boy captures many slaves in battle and gets tricked into slavery when trying to sell them, boy winds up on same plantation as girl, boy and girl live happily ever after . . . Until boy and girl decide that junior will not grow up as a slave, attempt to escape, fail, boy kills girl and unborn child to prevent recapture, boy is recaptured and has genitals, nose, ears, and arms cut off as he stoically smokes a pipe, and is finally killed. Yeah, there was more to it than that, but not very much more.

Plus, Aphra Behn had a number of very annoying writing habits, the worst of which was never using the word "them" and only using "'em" instead. That got old fast. And then there was the overall writing style, about which I have absolutely no complaints. It was very familiar, I've read numerous novels written in just the same way, I can deal with that. Decent writing with bad habits thrown in and a really crappy story . . . 56 is just about the best I can do for you. It does claim to be a true story, by the way, and I think it may be mostly or at least partially true, even though that was a very common claim to make about one's novel. This one actually has names, dates, and places that exist . . . which was not quite so common. (There is that annoying bad habit in other works, for instance those of Poe, of blanking out part of the date, or a pertinent name or location, to maintain the illusion of truth without saying something patently false.)

So, the five book cycle continues . . . when one goes out, another one flows in. With Oroonoko out of the way, I have begun Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, my most ambitious project to date. Previously that honor went to Les Miserables with its 1400+ page count (large pages, small print and margins, thick reading). Decline and Fall consists of three volumes, each approaching 1,000 pages. Don't expect a review of the entirety by next week, is what I'm telling you here. This could very well turn into a year-long thing, if I'm lucky enough to be that quick.

My lovely Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare finally arrived today, and I'll be diving back into that as soon as I finish another book, which will be soon. Also waiting in the wings . . . in fact, it just crashed right through the wings . . . Hold on. *backs up* I was planning on picking up All Hallow's Eve by Charles Williams as my next book, but it will now be the book after my next book, due to Dr. Batts pissing me off today in Shakespeare. The class as a whole was exruciatingly painful today, so I just haven't got the heart to go into full detail here. (For one thing, he spent ten minutes+ carefully explaining the difference between a playwright, a director, and an actor . . .) However, as he was explaining the disadvantages of drama as opposed to prose fiction, we were talking about the limited ability to get inside the character's head. As an example (we must back up everything with an example, or it won't stick) he cited the first part of The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.

I haven't read it, or anything by Faulkner, although naturally I am familiar with it. I probably still wouldn't have said anything, read or not read, but that isn't the point. Our class was unfortunate enough to not have anyone who had read the thing. So we got berated for lacking in the area of "contemporary literary context" as if we should have known that one cannot study Shakespeare properly without having read Faulkner. I didn't take very kindly to this notion . . . at all. However, I decided that I'm tired of not having read anything by Faulkner anyway. I mean, he's one of the greats, and he's from the South. I should have picked him up years ago. If I really get into it, I'll drop everything else and complete it over the weekend, but that probably won't happen.

So, now we're finally actually reading Hamlet itself, although we're apparently reading it all outside of class, which upsets me to no end. That notwithstanding, we need to finish Act I by Friday (no problem, especially since he won't be there and we'll be watching a movie . . . there is a God) and Act II by Monday. Even though I have read Hamlet three times and studied it in all the usual ways, the cunning devil has still managed to create a worksheet that is going to give me fits. It has two columns at the top and the rest is totally blank. One column says: "Lines from Hamlet (write out lines and note Act, Scene, and line numbers)" and the other column says: "Speaker and Situation in which lines are spoken." And I had better be damn well certain that I pick the quotes that he would pick. I'm going to kill that man.

Shotgun Postings

Well, I'm trying to do my homework for Shakespeare (which a certain someone . . . who has requested anonymity . . . has already dubbed "Batts' guano") but when one is sitting at a library computer, with Wilson and Ardith on either side, and a host of whiny complaints in the comment section of the only post on your blog . . . Work will not get done. And so I post.

It really has been a busy week, so I find myself fully justified in not having posted yet. There was a nap that needed taking this afternoon, for instance. And I really didn't want to post on that awful black and white, because it depressed me, you see.

A brief look at my class schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays are all about History. 9:30 sees me trying to stay awake in Kubricht's Western Civ class, 12:00 sees me glorying in the only window seat in Johnson's American History class. Thursdays bring further joy with Dr. Renate Hood's Social Backgrounds to the New Testament, which I just got out of. We are off to an excellent start, spending the last hour of class watching a PBS special on the Roman empire . . . complete with selections from the poetry of Ovid against a backdrop of "Classical" porn. The truly difficult thing, in these cases, is to know just what expression to have on your face as you view this with three females sitting behind you . . . But there it is.

Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are all about Literature, with English Lit II just after chapel and Shakespeare just after lunch. Dr. Watson still rocks, and I'm fairly certain that I'll enjoy this class even more than last semester, if that is possible. We're beginning the semester with William Blake, which I also have to read and journal on tonight. *grumbles at Ardith and Wilson* Dr. Watson's brief outline of the course went something like this:

Romantic Period
Victorian Era
20th Century

("And all of this is leading up to the culminating study of one man, one author." He tells us, stepping forward again to write. I'm craning my neck, trying to see around him, when at last he steps back and I see . . .)

Douglas Adams

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our final class session this semester will be devoted entirely to Douglas Adams, beloved author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the rest of the five-book Hitchhiker Trilogy. Dr. Watson truly is The Man.

Dr. Batts, on the other hand . . . *sigh* And no, it isn't too early to tell. I already, as mentioned above, have two rather putrid assignments for his class. Both involving standard ingestion and regurgitation which must be done by hand. I haven't had a real handwritten assignment outside of math courses since high school. Grrr . . . I'll try to liven things up with a good conspiracy theory or something. Shakespeare was gay, right?

Fridays involve a Creation vs. Evolution seminar which will examine the various theories held by Christians on the subject. The teacher is an adherent of Old Earth theory, I believe, so it will be an interesting class, I'm sure.

The only other interesting thing, for me, to write about at this juncture is book news. I did complete Master and Commander at about 1:00 in the morning on Saturday night. And it was worth only four hours of sleep. I gave it a very solid 96. Such a grand balance between historical fact, sweeping naval action sequences, "philosophizing," and laugh-out-loud humor . . . The characters are wonderful, especially Dr. Maturin, of course. Jack was simply not done properly in the movie version, but I can't see Russell Crowe playing the real Jack Aubrey at all, in any case. I love the character in the movie, too, but it isn't the same character at all, really. That, however, is neither here nor there. The book was great and I can't wait to get my hands on the next installment. Except that I can. And I will. There's too much to read . . .

At the moment we have the following:

Within mere pages of finishing Oroonoko . . . still, review forthcoming soon.

Within mere chapters of finishing Lord of Chaos . . . still, see above.

Just began The Desperate Hours, a vintage 50s thriller about three escaped convicts holing up in a middle-class family's home in Suburbia while they await the "dame" with the "dough." Stereotypes abound, hilarity ensues. Well, not really hilarity, but I'm getting a kick out of it. It isn't supposed to be funny. It's actually one of my favorite suspense movies, starring Humphrey Bogart himself as the lead "bad man." Great stuff.

Continuing were I left off last semester I have picked up The Wisdom of Father Brown, yet another collection of short mysteries. I know it will be excellent.

And, finally, I am reading a privately published anthology of ten fantasy short stories: Fantastic Visions II. It contains a story by my former roommate, who placed in a writing contest on the internet. Some of them look quite good, and I'm sure his will be excellent, having previously read some of what he has to offer.

That's about it for my "pleasure reading" at the moment. It looks like I'll have a steady cycle of five books at once going all semester, and two of the current books will soon be out of the way. I'll also have a heavy load of reading for class, and much of that will be enjoyable. And now I'm going to finish that other internet assignment before the library shuts down entirely. Ha.

Paradise Lost: An Insomniac's Perspective

As mentioned elsewhere, I'm still posting here until I get back to LeTourneau . . . for reasons also mentioned elsewhere.

It is now 4:00 in the morning. I went to bed approximately five and a half hours ago, and I turned the light out about 2 hours ago. After tossing and turning for nearly an hour and a half, I decided I was getting bored of that and I came in here, surfed around, am still not tired, and have decided to forge ahead with the post I had planned for when I got up later.

As far as I know at this point, this is all gonna be about stuff I'm reading. Just so you know. I finished Paradise Lost at about 12:30, which is rather a good time to finish a book, in my opinion (perhaps a trifle early), and loved it. It got a 97 for being really good stuff. Yes, as previously suspected there is a reason people are still reading it after 325+ years. I'm rather proud to be one of those people, incidentally.

I will now begin the other yet-to-be-completed classic from Norton that was sadly neglected during the general rush of November. Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn has two shots at prestige. First, it has at least a semi-legitimate claim to the position of first English novel, having been published a mere 14 years after the definitive edition of Milton's epic. And written by a woman, no less . . . Of course, the novel "novel" field apparently was at first almost solely dominated by women, but that is neither here nor there. Second, it could almost be called England's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." At the very least, it reportedly did for blacks what "Black Beauty" did for horses, if you'll pardon the comparison.

Milton has some very . . . interesting doctrinal opinions, and I really enjoyed the passages on free will and foreknowledge vs. predestination. But more than anything, I love the fact that he wrote 200 pages covering the first two chapters of Genesis. The question I kept asking myself was, "How can there be this much left? He's almost done with the story!" I really enjoyed the meat he put onto the bare bones of the Biblical account. Right, wrong or indifferent, it's a literary masterpiece and it really made the story come alive for me in a new way.

As anyone who is at all familiar with the work knows, Satan is one of the more intriguing characters. He is tragic, he is somewhat noble, he is full of courage and valour and mighty deeds. In short, he is a classic epic hero . . . but he's the bad guy. Because it doesn't matter how courageous or noble you are in fighting for your cause if it's the wrong cause. Satan's moments of private regret and remorse after the fall fascinated me, as did the debate between Hell's mightiest denizens over the best course of action to take after their plunge from Heaven. I liked Milton's explanation of Eve's temptation. Satan possesses the serpent, of course, and then convinces Eve that, while he was formerly a dumb beast, something called him to eat from the tree, and the result was the ability to speak and reason. And of course, he isn't dead, now is he? I loved the part right before this as well, where Satan in the form of the serpent approaches Eve and is dumbstruck by her grace and beauty, unable to move for a few moments as he gazes in awe, "of enmity disarmed, of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge." In the end the only thing that gets him moving again is the bitter realization that it is precisely this Paradise that he is now shut out of forever.

As a quick side note, there was a very striking thing in the midst of the archangel Raphael's description of the Creation to Adam. Here is how he describes the creation of the animals:

"The sixth, and of creation last arose
With evening harps and [morning], when God said,
'Let th' earth bring forth soul living in her kind,
Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth,
Each in their kind.' The earth obeyed, and straight
Op'ning her fertile womb [brought forth] at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limbed and full grown: out of the ground up rose
As from his lair the wild beast where he [dwells]
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked:
The cattle in the fields and meadows green:
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy [mounds of earth] now calved, now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his [streaked] mane; the [lynx],
The [leopard], and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks; the swift stag from under ground
Bore up his branching head: scarce from his mold
[elephant] biggest born of Earth upheaved
His vastness: . . ."

Ummm . . . "The Magician's Nephew," anyone? Moving on . . .

The paradox of the thing as that, after spending 200 pages on the first two chapters of Genesis, Milton spends the final 20 summarizing the rest of the Bible and church history up to his own time and beyond to the new Heaven and new earth of Revelation. I'm glad he did, though . . . Glad he covered those things, and glad he did it in brief. At the rate he was going . . . I don't even want to think about it. The end of the thing was the best, though, hitting just the right note. Because Adam contritely accepts God's judgment of his sin as just, Michael, sent to escort him from the garden, is granted the ability to show him the entire future of mankind in a vision (Milton's excuse to summarize what I mentioned above), so that Adam will not be plunged into total despair at his sad fate. As a result, he leaves in a state of hopeful melancholy, allowing the work to avoid ending on a total downer.

"Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way."

And it's over . . . Great ending. This brings me to my final point. As I read the thing, the key parts seemed to me to be so vividly described, that I could see them playing in my mind like a movie. This epic needs to be a movie. It would be fantastic. One good way to do this would be "crazy special effects blockbuster" with good acting . . . not crazy special effects like The Matrix Revolutions, but crazy like Lord of the Rings (and I'm glad to now have that distinction available). These would be necessary to do justice to such scenes as the massive war in Heaven, complete with millions of swarming combatants locked in semi-mortal (everyone who fights feels the pain of their wounds, but they heal immediately because no one can die) duels with swords and spears and surrounded by the cannon fire from the terrible weapons of war that ingenuity of the fallen angels has created. The charge of the Son in his golden chariot, levelling every single enemy and casting them forth with a single, swift stroke. Millions of fallen angels lying facedown in the burning lake of Hell, stunned, unable to grasp their overwhelming defeat. The following reaction to a motivational speech by Satan:

"He spake: and to confirm his words, out flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze
Far round illumined Hell: highly they raged
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heav'n."

Satan bulldozing his way through the depths of Chaos and Night after bursting forth from the massive, nine-fold gates of Hell (three of which are adamantium, incidentally). All of these things and more would require some major technical wizardry. But aside from that, the quiet scenes are, obviously, the most affecting. They would require superlative actors . . . I can see it all now. Even that very final scene has a certain cinematic quality to it. Anyway, if you had the right talent behind the project, it might make a tolerably good musical as well . . .

Oh, and before you go dashing off to imdb.com, in case you haven't yet, there are, in fact, no fewer than eleven movies with the title "Paradise Lost." However, none of them . . . actually . . . are . . . Paradise Lost. Somehow. The only interesting looking one was made in 1911 by D. W. Griffith. *evil smirk* The rest appear to be either romantic dramas concerning impossible loves (read: "total crap"), or ecological documentaries detailing the destruction of the rainforest and other such things (read: "more total crap"). In short, Milton's title has been raped . . . a lot. And if anyone had the guts and the skill to undertake the task, Paradise Lost would be a hell of a movie (pun intended).

A quick paragraph for you Wheel of Time fans out there . . . I've read a lot of opinions on this series. And if you wanna stick yours in the comments, I'd love to hear them. I've heard people say all the books suck after number three, or number five, or even number nine . . . I've heard people say that 5-8 suck, or 5-9, or 6-8, etc. Anyway, I'm almost done with book six, and I'm not seeing it yet. But I'll wait until I'm done to comment more fully. I just want to say that, for my money, the scene where Mat bursts in on Egwene and co. after she has been raised Amyrlin Seat, rips off her stole of office, and starts throwing around orders and giving instructions so he can get them out of "this mess" is High Comedy. That's the funniest thing I've read this month . . .

And, finally, I was reading along peacefully in Master and Commander when I came upon a brief passage that struck me. I read it over about five times and decided that it was a very good statement of my own "political position," if you can even apply that term to what I've got. Dr. Stephen Maturin is conversing with Lt. James Dillon, both former members of an Irish organization of rather revolutionary leanings that blew up in everyones' faces. (You'll have to supply your own historical context . . . if you can't, then you probably shouldn't be reading this.)

Maturin: With the revolution in France gone to pure loss I was already chilled beyond expression. And now, with what I saw in '98, on both sides, the wicked folly and the wicked brute cruelty, I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or bring about the millenium. I speak only for myself, mind - it is my own truth alone - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have - for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.

Dillon: Patriotism will not do?

Maturin: My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.

I don't pretend to be any more consistent in this attitude than Maturin himself, you understand. Everyone knows that I'll argue nearly anything on an intellectual level, and have a heck of a lot of fun doing it, too. I can even be convinced to change my mind. But when people start getting stubborn and emotional about their petty opinions and causes, as if what they think (whether right or wrong) will actually effect anything without them attaining some high government office or something, that's when I pretty much check out. I have bigger fish to fry. Wait, no, I take that back . . . it isn't quite true. My fish are decidedly smaller, however, I do have my own fish to fry.

And to a large (frighteningly large to some, I suppose) extent, that goes for religion too. So there.

Well, it's almost 6:00 now . . . yeah, still in the morning. It's been a long post and there were a few interruptions. I went outside to investigate a strange racket the dog was making, and my mom did too, and I got berated for still being up . . . Just general stuff. I'll be napping a lot today, but I'm not going to bed now for sure. This will almost certainly be my only chance to see the brothers off to school, since they leave at the unholy hour of 6:50. I'll probably have a meeting or two, as well. I'm supposed to talk to the former math teacher (now the school accountant . . . frightening, but fitting), and possibly the current one as well. My dad is supposed to get me a copy of the Big Test so I can edit it if necessary. He has that power, and he'll give it to me. And I have the standard 3:30 to 5:00 session this afternoon as well. Plus lots of reading to do inbetween.

This day is looking really long . . . if it's as long as this post I may not live through it. Farewell.

Latest Metaphor: Dumb as the Guatemalan School System

The following post could not be submitted last night due to Blogger deciding that it had been under a few hours of routine maintenance as of November 12th. *sigh* Anyway, without further ado:

No pressure. None at all. I just wanted you all to know that. I am not currently under any pressure or stress whatsoever. I mean, it's not like I have less than a week to teach five mathematically illiterate middle schoolers everything I know about Algebra and Algebra II, right? And it's not like if they fail the test that's coming on Monday, they'll be missing the next entire year of school (effectively putting them two years farther behind than they already are), right? Wrong. That's exactly what's going on. And it sucks. Last year 50 kids failed math (not all from the orphanage, obviously) and had to take "summer school" math, whatever they call it. When the test rolled around to see if they were back on track or not, we had a 12% pass rate.

Oh, yeah . . . and the two 7th graders are both 16 years old. And two of the 8th graders are 17, one is 18. If the 18 year old fails this test, she'll be 21 by the time she gets out of the 9th grade, provided she doesn't fail anymore classes between now and then. Basically, if they fail this math class, they fail the whole grade, and they have to retake everything. The test is, as I said, on Monday, but they get two retakes. One is in February, one is in March . . . but if they have to retake in February, the schoolyear will already have marched too far along without them and they'll have to sit out the year. Of course, if they fail all three, they'll be retaking the same grade starting next January, resulting in the loss of two years that I mentioned earlier. The system sucks, but no one seems to notice. I can't do anything about it, having no time or influence, and I can't seem to get anyone else to do anything about it, either.

My dad would do something, but math isn't his strong point, and he just doesn't get what's going on. Plus he's always running in all directions starting at 5:00 in the morning, so he just can't. Besides, the things that really need to be fixed go a lot deeper than our school. This boggles my mind, but the school is one of the best in the entire city, and possibly in the country. It's all the government's fault . . .

Anyway, as to other things, I finished that Star Wars book today. Yay. It was fair. I gave it a 79. It had some good action and some decent twists, but it was a fairly weak end to the trilogy and the last 40 pages seemed unnecessarily boring as things wound down. But whatever . . .

I wanted to include this quote in my last post, but I forgot. It's from Paradise Lost, and I thought it was interesting. Eve's, and subsequently Adam's, downfall came after she had suggested that she and Adam should spend the day working in different areas of the garden, even though an angel has just warned them of Satan's presence. When Adam reminds her of this, her argument is that even if Satan does show up, their faith is worthless anyway if it can't stand up to a little temptation. After all the Fall, Adam and Eve are sitting around berating themselves and each other, and Adam says:

Let none henceforth seek needless cause to [prove]
The Faith they owe; when earnestly they seek
Such proof, conclude, they then begin to fail.

I thought that was . . . interesting. Just like the rest of the book, in fact . . .

But anyway, I just realized that I left it and Lord of Chaos in my parents' room and they're both asleep already, so . . . suck. I'll just have to read Master and Commander for the next three hours or so. Oh, well . . . at least that's the one I most urgently need to finish. Incidentally, it is quite excellent so far. I can hardly believe when it was written . . . it almost seems to have been written 150+ years earlier. I don't know of any other historical novels that have effectively pulled that off.

The Week That Rocked

Twelve days since I made a substantial post. Bleah. The longer I put it off, the more there is to write. Of course, it's not like this is some kind of chore, but it takes time. But I have no time to digress . . . ummm . . . more than I normally digress.

I finished War in Heaven . . . obviously, I kind of had to. It was really great, but not quite as good as Many Dimensions, I thought. That's purely a personal preference concerning subject matter, though. I wouldn't recommend one over the other. I was pleased to discover that the LeTourneau library has a copy of All Hallow's Eve. Seriously, I'm not making that up. I'll definitely have to look into this situation at a later date, when my reading slate is a little bit cleaner. I have moved on now to Descent into Hell, and since I'm just that slow these days (I'll elaborate in a bit) I am now truly reading three books related to Hell.

On Sunday night . . . and by Sunday night, for clarity, I mean last Sunday night (we're starting at the beginning here), I went to see Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. I and, I believe, the rest of us who were there, were quite "wowed" by the quality of this movie. It was most excellent in just about every respect. I'd go into deeper detail, but I've hashed through it so thoroughly so many times with people since that . . . I'd rather not write it all down at this point. I meant to write a complete review a week ago, but I was too busy and it didn't happen. In any case, it was good, well-acted, well-paced, generally worthwhile, etc. Go see it. It's strange. I never actually went to a movie in this town at all during my first year (barring The Two Towers in January, and that doesn't really count) and then suddenly I go to four movies in a two week span. Odd.

Monday was spent finishing War in Heaven and writing my reading summary for it. These activities were not equally proportioned at all. I finished the book approximately 50 minutes before class, and then did the summary. I finished printing out and stapling my 2nd draft at the moment when Michael walked into the computer lab to get me. I rode with him to Dr. Olson's house (we had class there, for the second time this semester). The atmosphere is mostly very conducive to the class in general. The main problem is focus and getting everyone together. We didn't start until about 45 minutes late, and ended up running 20 minutes over. Dr. Olson's dogs were . . . less than well-behaved this time around, periodically banging loudly on the door of the room they were in (which happened to be less than 10 feet away from me). Aside from this, it was a fun class. Of course, I ended up getting back to my room after 11:00. And I had genre reports to work on for Bib Lit and a speech to write for the next day.

Wilson helped me brainstorm a topic and I got to work on that. I had hoped to finish the genre reports in time to send them in to Owlet, because it's worth an extra quiz grade to do so. However, as the night wore on and the thing refused to progress with any sort of speed, it became apparent that this would not be taking place. Long story short, I stayed up all night.

The next day wasn't anywhere near as fun as my last all-nighter, not by half. Not enough caffeine, you see. I zonked in Woodring's class, and fully expected to zonk in Kubricht's. Fortunately, he was showing a video. Even more fortunately, he failed to bring the right video, realized that he'd actually thrown away the right video, and cancelled class. So I got off easy on that one. Speech, of course, was a breeze. Go in, sit through speeches, make your speech, leave. Yeah, I got picked on to do mine . . . no lucky breaks for me, yet again. Payton sure made up for that first speech where I actually got to go last. Which sucks because that was the only one where I was fully prepared to go first.

Anyway, this was a special occasion speech, and I gave a before-dinner address to the 7th Annual Gulf Coast Purity League Book Roast and Fish Fry. I, for one, was quite entertained, and I think my classmates were as well, generally. I brought along several books to "burn" and pulled them out to show everyone. I had the Harry Potter series ("I know I burned them last year, but I figured I'd just go ahead and do it again."), a couple of Dungeons and Dragons books that I bummed off someone, a Stephen King book, Dante's Inferno, Lord of Chaos (Wheel of Time, book 6 by Robert Jordan . . . the title was the main thing, and the fact that I happened to have it in my pocket), and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. That last one may sound a little odd, but while doing "research" the night before I discovered that it had met that doom at a few church book burnings in recent months, so it passed.

After that I went over to Best Buy with Scholl and Uncle Doug in my new truck, my first official use of it really, to get myself a copy of The Two Towers: Extended Edition (43 minutes of extra scenes . . . oh, yeah!). And, of course, since we were in the area we stopped by Books-a-Million to check out the scene. I was tempted to buy a few things, but I have too much to read as it is.

We returned to my room and Martinez and Wilson showed up as we watched through most of the new stuff. We broke for supper halfway through, and Moore joined us for the second half. It was all kinds of fun, and there are so many great new scenes! I won't go into it here, there's no point. If you haven't seen them yet, you get a hearty reprimand from me, and . . . you should go see them now . . . or something. By the time we finished, it was about 7:00. Everybody left, my computer screen started getting really blurry, and I decided that my bed was . . . looking . . . particularly . . . zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Yeah, I went to bed at about 7:30, so I got 13 hours of sleep. Crazy. And lucky as well, because I ended up pulling another all-nighter on Wednesday in order to finish those dang-blasted genre reports. Bleah. All kinds of bleah. I got some other stuff done in there, too.

So, Thursday wasn't any more fun that Tuesday. The only real difference was that I didn't have to give a speech, and I didn't get to skip Western Civ. I crashed at about 9:00 and slept through chapel on Friday, so I got 14 hours of sleep there . . . all in all my average for the week was better than it has been many times in the past. That's really sad.

I spent a sizable portion of Friday playing Freedom Force, a really fun computer game (the first I've played in a couple of months, too) wherein you take control of a team of up to four superheroes. The style of play is similar to Baldur's Gate . . . squad-based, real-time strategy that you can pause whenever to issue orders to your guys, with a heavy role-playing element in terms of advancing your heroes, and figuring damage, etc. It's very retro, done in 60's comics style . . . even if you've only ever watched the old Batman TV show, this game will crack you up with how dead on it is. Very well done voice acting, perfectly melodramatic and so on. The narrator is especially good. And the gameplay is just awesome . . . so many cool powers, so many cool heroes, so little time!

Friday night was the usual (Bible study), Saturday was the usual for the most part. I went to Waffle Shoppe with the crew at 1:00 in the morning, and that was fun. Randomly going out and eating pancakes with a bunch of people at all hours is the very essence of college life. And they were really good pancakes, too (at only $1.79 for 10!). Sunday afternoon was spent finishing my paper so people could hack at it. It still needs more hacks, but there was a bit of commentary forthcoming this evening. Of course the big activity was a supper of sandwiches, chips and Oreos in preparation for the full showing of The Two Towers on the big screen in Barry Auditorium. Four hours is a truly epic amount of time to spend watching a movie . . . it was loads of fun. "He was twitching because he's got mah axe buried in his nervous system!" Classic.

Jeepers! It's after 2:00! I'm not doing anything like what I did last week, no way, no how. I'm going to bed. I need to continue to catch up on sleep, I have a lot of driving to do on Wednesday. Uncle Doug and I will traveling to Lubbock to visit my family (extended, not immediate) for Thanksgiving Break. Should be fun . . . it will be interesting at the very least. Good night, y'all.

"Wheeler in Hell," or "Charles Williams is the Man!"

Wilfred Bohun: "How do you know all this? Are you a devil?"

Father Brown: "I am a man, and therefore have all devils in my heart."

That quote has nothing to do with anything. It just struck me, so it's there. In other book-related news:

I finished Many Dimensions earlier this week. What an incredible book . . . I only have to read two of the novels from The Charles Williams Reader, but I'll certainly be reading all three. As far as the premise of the book goes, amazon.com has a pretty good summary:

"Imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark set in 20th-century London, and then imagine it written by a man steeped not in Hollywood movies but in Dante and the things of the spirit, and you might begin to get a picture of Charles Williams's novel Many Dimensions. The plot turns on the discovery of the magical Stone of Solomon, through which one can move at will through space, time, and thought. Those who think they can manipulate the stone to serve their own ends, however, find to their horror that, as Jesus once ironically said, "they have their reward." While the story clearly deals with the extraordinary, through his humorous and loving depiction of his British characters Williams more deeply shows us the spiritual reality that lies inside the ordinary."

Williams requires that his readers be very well-read if they want to understand all of the layers of his work. I'm not, in all probability, well-read enough to catch everything, but the most important (and most humorous) references he makes are chiefly Biblical. The final piece of dialogue requires a familiarity with Ecclesiastes, for instance. The book was a very fun and reasonably easy read for the first 240 pages or so. I had to slow down quite a bit for the last thirty pages. This was not because of any decrease in quality, quite the opposite, rather I found it necessary to read slowly, and re-read a few passages in order to fully understand everything that was taking place.

Random quote that made me laugh: "'I'm not going to let that woman out of my sight,' Sheldrake said. 'Where she goes I go.'
'Her people shall be thy people and her gods thy gods,' Oliver murmured. 'Sudden conversion of a millionaire. The call of the old home. Way down on the Swanee River. O Dixie, my Dixie, our fearful trip is done.'
'O, go to the devil!'" *The greedy millionaire is merely pursuing his own gain, but Oliver hilariously finishes his sentence with a quote from Ruth and then launches into a hymn, twisting the meaning in an entirely different direction. The millionaire is not amused.*

Random quote that made me stop and think: "He said, in a voice shaken beyond his wont, 'Do you know what you must do?'
She looked at him with a docile content. 'I have nothing at all to do,' she said, and the Hajji cried suddenly aloud, 'Blessed for ever be the Resignation of the elect.'" *A shocking, arresting, impossible-to-ignore Calvinistic reference, which I hadn't expected at all, and coming from a Muslim fanatic, which I expected even less.*

My one word review: "Transcendent."

I have begun (and am now a good way into) the second book I am reading by Williams: War in Heaven. It's a modern-day Grail quest (or Graal, as Williams spells it). It's quite good so far. The guy wrote deep Indiana Jones stories. Only he did it first, and he did it better.

A thought occured to me last night. I am currently reading seven books. That may seem a bit ridiculous to some of you. It seems ridiculous enough to me. I didn't plan it that way, it has simply happened. I have been unable to put off the reading of certain books, and I have been unable to clear out some the old books fast enough to make room for the new. I hope to have wittled it down by at least one over the course of the weekend.

The thing that struck me, though, was the fact that of the books I am reading, three of them are for the moment (or soon will be) chiefly concerned with Hell. I am in the midst of Dante's Inferno (yes, still) crawling desperately through the Malebolges (the 8th level of Hell, reserved for the fraudulent and the malicious). At the same time I am working my way through Milton's Paradise Lost. I've just begun that one fairly recently. At the moment, Satan (the star of the show, in many ways) is rallying his troops in the depths of Hell after they have been hurled down from Heaven. And, as soon as I finish War in Heaven (which needs to be done by Monday), I'll be reading Williams's Descent into Hell. The Hell in that novel is mostly figurative, but no less real or terrifying.

So, half of the books I'm reading are set in Hell, and all of those happen to be books I'm reading in relation to schoolwork (though not for any specific class . . . I'm going beyond the requirements in each case). I wonder what I ought to do to balance out the inordinate amount of time I'm spending on the wrong side of the theological tracks. Reading Father Brown mysteries helps, certainly. And racing pell-mell through the Bible in a semester for Bib Lit should lend some extra weight to the proper side, I suppose. Besides, none of the Hell books is particularly obsessed with Hell, as I'm sure you'll recognize. We'll just have to see that I don't get obsessed with it due to the heavy dosage . . . Meanwhile, I'm having loads of fun and reading loads of good books. And on that note, I think I'll go read some more, because I have lots to do. Farewell for now.

Long Live the South!

For someone of Southern heritage and persuasion (shut up, Scholl) who has grown up steeped in something of a golden, pristine view of Southern history and culture (wait for a minute until I can quantify that statement) it is easy to view both the South and its history with a large amount of nostalgia. Yeah. Nostalgia for something I never really saw or experienced. It is something that I am vaguely aware of from time spent in Texas and from even more time immersed in things of which I will speak in a moment.

Now, as a student of history, I am fully aware (somewhere in the back of my mind) of all the wrong that has happened in this area of the country. Nobody's perfect . . . but I'm not even going to brush it off by attempting to justify it (that way, or any other way). No, what I'm talking about here is the view provided to me by literature. No other area of American literature is quite as replete with such colorful characters, such rich pageantry, or . . . words fail me at 2:00 in the morning, if you're going to get my point, you'll have already gotten it. I've lived in the culture, so I know it's real. I've read all about its lighter side, so I want to experience more of it.

Just to name a few pertinent authors: Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, Willie Morris, and John Grisham.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" is still a book that I can sit down with randomly, and read through without moving. "Tom Sawyer" is a perennial favorite which I have always loved. "Gone With the Wind" is, to my mind, the quintessential historical fiction novel . . . A daunting, but worthwhile read. Someday, I'll go back and read it two or three more times, I'm sure. Moving into the realm of lesser known and more recent work: "Taps" is all about pure, untainted memories of growing up in Mississippi in the 1950's. "A Painted House" really resonates with me because it's pretty much about my family's last few generations. Under different circumstances, I could be the main character. My dad and grandad are both featured in the book, to some degree. I had the opportunity to discuss it with them this summer after they had both read it, and that particular assessment stands.

Where am I going with all of this? I attempt merely to paint a picture of the Fantasy South I'm used to visiting in order to pave the way for what is to come. A striking example of the darker side of Southern literature and history has recently forced itself upon my attention in the form of a novel written in 1905 by the Reverend Thomas Dixon. Naturally I am fascinated by this concept and anxious to read said novel based largely on its historical and cultural value (not concerning the period which it seeks to portray, but rather of the period during which it was written), with some attention to its literary value (being a student of that discipline as well). And of course when something fascinates me it winds up on here in some form or another. The integration of a different facet into one's perspective, especially if it is an element of realism introduced into an idealized semi-Utopian vision, can only grant a more accurate and complete picture of the truth.

I'll keep my pretty fiction of an innocent South certainly, with that special, half-regretful longing usually connected with early childhood (since it was, after all, during my childhood that these visions formed in my imagination), but I would be remiss (both as a person, and as a student of history) if I peckishly pushed aside anything which might lend to the dream something of the reality simply because I feared to taint it. With this disclaimer in place (and with an apology for the extremely disjointed nature of this post):

Check it out.

Your comments are welcome, as always . . . And I love discussions about this, so if you are one of those lucky enough to have Personal Access to me, I won't shy away from a face-to-face, either.

Screwed-up Women

"So, the guy jumps down off of his camel, picks it up, and throws it at the charging enemies!" -Jared, talking about the ridiculous fantasy book he just finished.

The Halfling's Gem, third in the Icewind Dale Trilogy by R. A. Salvatore, is a book that should only be read by those willing to suspend their disbelief. And I am very glad to finally have the trilogy behind me. Now I can get that huge book out of my backpack and quit lugging it around everywhere. Thing was about to give me back problems . . .

I can also forge ahead with my 40+ other reading projects (and these are just the ones I have planned at the moment). I'll start small . . . I now have four books going, but one of them is the book for Inklings.

I also finished The Taming of the Shrew today. I thought at first that this play was basically a chauvinists dream, but as it grew more and more disturbing, I changed my mind. For perfect example of what I mean, please refer to the following (rather long) quote from the play. It's kind of funny. This is the Shrew herself speaking her closing monologue, lecturing her fellow women after seeing the error of her ways:

"Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she's froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am asham'd that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease."

Husband's reply: "Why, there's a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate. We'll to bed." (Act V, Sc. II)

Now, when you get the men doing this kind of thing in the plays, it's fairly comical, but when a woman (who was full of spirit and vivacity at the beginning of the play) is this cowed, it's just disturbing. My perceptions also might have something to do with witnessing the way she arrived in this state. Starved and deprived of sleep by her husband, jerked around by the nose (metaphorically speaking) . . . Wow. It was just an impressive display all around.

And now, the latest Rigoberta Menchu news . . .

Newsflash: Two Great Addle-Brains Put Heads Together

French President, Jacques "Chucklehead" Chirac, held a historic meeting with Rigoberta "The Face That Brought a Thousand Ships to a Screeching Halt" Menchu on Sunday. Chirac is said to have officially surrendered to the Guatemalan political activist, saying "I thought I'd never have to see her again after we met last year. I just couldn't take it anymore."

Jared "The Guatemalan" Wheeler called the French president yesterday to inform him that he and his organization were 100% behind this. "Just keep her," he said. "In fact, if you send her back, I'll invade."

Anyway, whatever . . . I could do that better, but I find myself in need of bed. Again. The link has a great picture of the two sitting together, but the article, I am sorry to say, is in Spanish. Reading over the Menchu archive on this site, (and there is at least one entry for every two weeks or so), I noticed one thing in particular. The woman is a menace. Half of the articles are about her announcing that she'll be suing someone new for war crimes or something. Someday, when I am president, she will have to be dealt with. And that is my anti-Menchu rant of the day. Hasta mañana, y'all.