To Some Ladies

What though while the wonders of nature exploring,
    I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;
Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,
    Bless Cynthia’s face, the enthusiast’s friend:

Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,
    With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;
Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,
    Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews.

Why linger you so, the wild labyrinth strolling?
    Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?
Ah! you list to the nightingale’s tender condoling,
    Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air.

’Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping,
    I see you are treading the verge of the sea:
And now! ah, I see it—you just now are stooping
    To pick up the keep-sake intended for me.

If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending,
    Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven;
And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending,
    The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given;

It had not created a warmer emotion
    Than the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you
Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean
    Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw.

For, indeed, ’tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure,
    (And blissful is he who such happiness finds,)
To possess but a span of the hour of leisure,
    In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.

 

John Keats (1795-1821)

The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola

En Francais>Le Ventre de Paris

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/8vntr10.txt in French.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=32NomB4ADC4C&dq=the+belly+of+paris&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=fC-oP15_AU&sig=bNGfeYYBxos2WcWQ47HVhHGVi_M&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result#PPA248,M1 in English.

 

This episode in the Rougon-Macquart series is one of the better books I have read from Zola.  It centers on Les Halles, the central food market in Paris at the time.  It is highly class-conscious, though extremely engaging and enjoyable.  There is a brief review of it at the food blog Chocolate and Zucchini which can be seen with this link: http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2004/05/the_belly_of_paris.php

I would implore you to read this book, if only for your inner gourmand.

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

This little gem was written for the entertaiment of the G.I.’s in World War Deux.  It involves some bums, prostitutes, some down-and-out people, and an incarnation of Steinbeck’s friend Ed Ricketts.

Seen above^   >

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Ricketts

The inhabitants/outcasts of Cannery Row have succumbed to the tourist trade and been gentrified. Oh well, all good things must come to an end. 

The book disburses a type of realism tinged with sentimentality that is unique to Steinbeck.  For instance when Richard Frost is with Doc, Richard Frost says “I think they’re just like anyone else. They just haven’t any money.”  Doc counters with “They could get it…They could ruin their lives and get money.  Mack has the qualities of genius.  They’re very clever if they want something.  They just know the nature of things too well to be caught in that wanting.”  From the first we find the crew of bums and lag-a-bouts headed by Mack to be the “Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men” that Steinbeck makes them out to be throughout the novel.  Always meaning well, these men are almost shallow and pathetic characters that graze the earth of Monterey, California. Their salvation comes when their reputation is at its’ lowest in the Row.  After the first party Mack attempts to explain his existence to Doc: “She got out of hand,’ said Mack. ‘It don’t do no good to say I’m sorry. I been sorry all my life. This ain’t no new thing. It’s always like this…I had a wife…Same thing. Ever’thing I done turned sour. She couldn’t stand it any more. If I done a good thing it got poisoned up some way…I don’t do nothin’ but clown no more. Try to make the boys laugh.” Only when Mack proffers this attempt at a pardon, and he does speak for all the boys, does the darkness fall away and we can see a clear human, one who’s tried and tried and he and only he clearly sees how the cards lay and where he exactly fits in. It is a marvel of observation to read Chapter 21 of Cannery Row.

But as with all good things this book is over very quickly and one must re-read it in order to better appreciate it.  The eminent Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw, whom I consult through her writings on all things Steinbeck, has this to say of the book: “In 1945, however, few reviewers recognized that the book’s central metaphor, the tide pool, suggested a way to read this non-teleological novel that examined the “specimens” who lived on Monterey’s Cannery Row, the street Steinbeck knew so well.”  Here we have a great summation of the novel, Doc’s tireless collecting and the collection of characters that inhabit the Row are merely ornaments of the Day/Night terrestrial tide pool that Steinbeck so lovingly inspected.

 

Some links for further reading:

http://www.steinbeck.sjsu.edu/pdf/Brief_Biography.pdf

http://books.google.com/books?id=CQmjRCj-LNsC&dq=susan+shillinglaw&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=MUpmpEooH_&sig=BnWv3dp4wAN5s4FpsqKJteVVXp8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPR7,M1

Archaic Word of the Day!

Heydeguye-a kind of country dance.

From Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calender, in June;

But frendly Faeries, met with many Graces,

And lightfote Nymphes can chace the lingring night,

With Heydeguyes, and trimly trodden traces,

Whilst systers nyne, which dwell on Parnasse hight,

Doe make them musick, for their more delight:

 

 If you like English Country Dance Music may I suggest this publication:

http://www.elderly.com/books/items/449-1.htm

 

Or for some aural/visual stimulation check out these contradancers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnQNMi3skus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sbW0fSAX-4&feature=related

A few selections from the Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Here a few divergences from your daily routine, I hope you enjoy:

Auctioneer, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.

 

Fiddle, n. An instrument to tickle human ears by friction of a horse’s tail on the entrails of a cat.

 

Grapeshot, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.

 

Zeal, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl.

Don’t fret the entire Dictionary is free from copyright!

Here are the corresponding links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_bierce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil%27s_Dictionary

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/972

French poetry Today edited by Edward Lucie-Smith and Simon Watson Taylor

This spectacular little book encompasses French Poetry from 1950-70. The superb introduction features critic/scholar Edward Lucie-Smith expounding the History of French Poetry from Nerval and Baudelaire to 1970.  The book presents the poetry in its’ original French and with English translation.  The introduction constantly contrasts American/English Poetry and the evolution of French Poetry. While admitting that at some points in their history they have been “tangential” the clear sway of the introduction is that “English Poets had consistently chosen ‘nature’ as opposed to ‘vision’.” You see the French poet today “…is the direct heir of a tradition of visionary revolt that stretches back in an unbroken line to Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Baudelaire and Nerval. Such a tradition cannot be created ad hoc.”  So the French are steeped in Modernism and the English/Americans are always going all pastoral on us. Therefore the time that this book represents is definitely one of uncertainty, as is the moment we are living in now and basically the last 58 years.  What broad definition can we give this time, historically speaking? The parameters for inclusion seem to be what poem is translatable  and, well, the book was published too close to the time the poems were written so there isn’t really a movement identified in the introduction.

By the way Edward Lucie-Smith is fast becoming my favorite critic/scholar/anthologist.

French Poetry Today

Schocken Books

New York, New York

copyright 1971

Archaic Word of the Day!

From AskOxford.com:

varlet

/vaarlit/

  • noun 1 archaic an unprincipled rogue. 2 historical a male attendant or servant.

  — ORIGIN Old French, variant of valet (see VALET).

Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym

This is the second book of Barbara Pym’s that I am reviewing for this blog.  It is set in a small English town that the titular Jane has just moved to. Prudence lives in London.  The book is told mostly over coffee and sherry by an omniscient narrator.  The book seeks to see what promise lies ahead for these two characters. Jane, late 30’s/early 40’s is the dedicated wife of a Vicar and Prudence hovers around the age of 30.  Both were at Oxford, Jane being Prudence’s tutor.  Seventeenth-century English verse dots the pages of the novel and serve to illuminate and sometimes confound the reader.  Jane is almost content being the wife of a Vicar, if only she could find a suitable husband for her dear friend Prudence.

Midway through the novel we are given an accurate portrayal of just exactly where the field lies for these two characters: “And yet even she seemed to have missed something in life; her research, her studies of obscure seventeenth-century poets, had all come to nothing, and here she was, trying, though not very hard, to be an efficient clergyman’s wife, and with only very moderate success.  Compared with Jane’s life, Prudence’s seemed rich and full of promise.  She had her work, her independence, her life in London and her love for Arthur Grampian.  But tomorrow, if she wanted to, she could give it all up and fall in love with somebody else.  Lines of eligible and delightful men seemed to stretch before her, and with this pleasant prospect in mind she fell into a light sleep.”

One thing to note is Ms. Pym’s familiarity with the Church of England. Of the things that puzzled me were the High Altar, Evensong, Low Church/High Church, Michaelmas, the Curate and thurifer. What on earth are these things?  As a guy who went to Christian grade schools  and a Catholic High School, in the U.S. of course, I am completely foreign to these terms.

Towards the end of the novel, after the somewhat disastrous Fabian Driver affair, Prudence contemplates religion and comes up with the conclusion that she “…could have this kind of life if she wanted it; one couldn’t go on having romantic love affairs indefinitely.  One had to settle down sooner or later into the comfortable spinster or the contented or bored wife.”  On the last page of the novel Prudence is “…suddenly overwhelmed by the richness of her life.” A suitable way to end a sensible book.

Archaic word of the Day!

From Wikipedia:

Domdaniel is a fictional cavernous hall at the bottom of the ocean where evil magicians, spirits, and gnomes meet. It was first mentioned in the continued story of the Arabian Nights by Dom Chaves and Cazotte (1788-1793). It was described as being located in the sea near Tunis. In this hall, the ruler Zatanai held his court, which included the magician Maugraby and his students.

Robert Southey later used Domdaniel in his multi-volume oriental poem Thalaba: the Destroyer (1797). The hero of Southey’s story, Thalaba, is the last surviving member of a race called the Hodeirah. It had been prophesied that the spirits of the Domdaniel were destined to be destroyed by one of the Hodeirah, so they sought the end of that race.

One of the magicians named by Southey as dwelling in Domdaniel was Adbaldar. He was selected by lot to hunt down Thal’aba and slay him. But the youth Thalaba accomplishes the destruction of the magicians in the final volume of the poem despite their efforts to kill him and his surviving family.

H. P. Lovecraft used Domdaniel in his short story, He (1925), as follows: …heard as with the mind’s ear the blasphemous domdaniel of cacophony …

Nathaniel Hawthorne used Domdaniel in his romance, The House of the Seven Gables, as follows: “Hepzibah put her hand into her pocket, and presented the urchin, her earliest and staunchest customer, with silver enough to people the Domdaniel cavern of his interior with as various a procession of quadrupeds as passed into the ark.”

Domdaniel is the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition in Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel Marvel 1602 and includes large underground caverns. Domdaniel secretly served as the headquarters of Grand Inquisitor Enrique and The Brotherhood of those Who Will Inherit the Earth.

The word is derived from the Latin domus meaning “house” and Danielis meaning “of Daniel“.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

On a train trip to New York this weekend I read the above novel. This would be the first time I picked up an Agatha Christie book.  I was more than pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns and the excitment and suspense packed into the dining car and the Stamboul-Calais car on board the Orient Express.  You’ll get no plot summary here, nor any spoilers.  The thing I wanted to focus on was the self-reference that was in the novel. What I mean is the way that Christie kind of plays off of the detective fiction genre.  For instance Col. Arbuthnot says “…apologetically. “But you know what it is-early hours of the morning-everything very still. The thing had a sinister look-like a detective story. All nonsense really.” Here we have Christie poking some fun around in her work and ultimately, I think, trying to distance herself from the rest of the crowd.

Later on in the novel we see some more of this little phenom going on. When the fake letters are explained by M. Poirot we can see that they might “…have been lifted bodily out of an indifferently written American crime novel.” Not that Christie has anything against America and the making of Americans(lol) but really all her English characters have something against “foreigners”.  I have nothing against Foreigner as you can see by me placing this link here for your enjoyment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbDXvDo83Gs

Seriously now, Murder on the Orient Express is a classic example of the Detective Genre and any writer could learn a thing or two from reading this book.