Books That Have Made Me Cry

The Aeneid- Conclusion: We Need To Talk About Virgil

Boy oh boy, that got violent!  The ancients up through modern times put Virgil at the pinnacle of great poets.  Dante considered him great enough to be the closest to redemption of the unredeemed.  Today if Virgil turned this work in to his high school creative writing class he would be suspended and sent to the school psychiatrist.  Thus falls the concept of an evolving civilization.

Let's employ an example that will also serve as a comparison between the Fagles translation and the Dryden.  First, here's a passage from Book Ten in the Fagles (I won't even try to reproduce the verse line breaks):

"Now up steps Clausus from Cures, flushed with his young strength and flings his burly spear from a distance, hitting Dryops under the chin full force to choke the Trojan's throat as he shouted, cutting off both his voice and life in the same breath, and his brow slams the ground as he vomits clots of blood."

And now the same passage in the Dryden:

"In the pride of youth the Sabine Clausus came, And from afar, at Dryops took his aim. The spear flew hissing thro' the middle space, And pierc'd his throat, directed at his face; It stopp'd at once the passage of his wind, And the free soul to slitting air resign'd: His forehead was the first that struck the ground; Lifeblood and life rush'd mingled thro' the wound."

This illustrates, for me at least, why I chose the Fagles.  The Greeks need that poetic majesty, but the Latins are so very Roman.  I may be exaggerating, but it seemed to me like the second half of the book was primarily like this passage, what with all of the gentlemen's brains dripping down the side of their faces and blood gushing from open cavities in their chests.  I really appreciated a text that drove forward so briskly.  More grey matter with less art.

All that having been said, it is clear that this is a great work of literature.  It is a rollicking good read, one that I imagine a 12 year old version of my self would have loved (and that is not meant as a backhanded compliment).  But what did I glean from the experience?

I suppose it reinforced the writing advice of "show, don't tell."  That is to say, when writing narrative, show the audience what you want them to see, don't point it out.  No long soliloquies here.  The fourth wall is firmly in place.  I kept thinking of Hemingway and, likewise, felt a little convicted over my own smarty-pants leanings towards the clever.  A well told story is simply a well told story.  There is little better in this world than a well told story.

There is also getting another cultural key in one's tool belt.  This is one of the most influential pieces of literature in human history.

Also, it is the perfect thing to be reading while you are recovering from a head cold.  It's hard to feel too bad about a stuffy nose when you're reading about self-immolation, decapitation, serpent constriction, and amateur thoracoscopy.

Fun read.

Tuesday

I've a dash of melancholy and the mean reds this evening, which I suppose is to be expected on account of the date.  Eleven years ago, I was working in a theater and Tuesdays were my days off.  I was living with my parents at the time and was woken up very early by my mother.  On television we saw the second plane crash and watched the towers fall.  This was in Orange County.  I spent the day trying to contact my New York friends.  I didn't know anyone who died in the buildings, but I knew people who did. And I knew one guy who was right there, just a block or two from the buildings.  He heard the planes, felt the heat, saw the bodies fall, ran as the buildings fell, had lung problems later from the dust and smoke.

My best friend was in New York.  His fiancée watched it from her office window.  He wrote one of the best poems I've ever heard in my life about the experience and the aftermath.  He has since died.

I watched it on the television of the house in the photo at the beginning of this post.  The photograph is of my cat Boingo on the porch of my parent's house.  I got Boingo when I was in college.  My father found him and his brother in a sealed box in the parking lot of his work, mewing loudly.  He brought them home and they let me pick which one I wanted to keep.  Boingo picked me.  He was so lively and ferocious.  He would bring birds to the door as well as one time a fighting rooster and another time a rabbit.  He died today.

In July, when I was down visiting my parent's house, the house where I grew up, I took a lot of photographs of the house, as if I were doing architectural restoration.  I did this because I am increasingly gripped by the impermanence of this world.  I knew that someday I would value having pictures of the hallways, the doors, the cabinets, and so forth of the place on which my early development hinges.  Boingo used to jump up on that door and hold on with his claws, meowing at us sitting inside.

Also, today, my sister was attacked by a dog in Huntington Beach.  The doctors told her that she might lose her leg.  That is all of the information I have at the moment.  Needless to say I am horrified.  I have not seen her in many years and she was going to drive up to visit me recently.  Circumstances hindered her visit.  Especially in violent moments I so often find myself thinking about how different circumstances might have turned out if anything slightly different had happened.  If I had decided that my tie clashed with my outfit and gone back to change it maybe I wouldn't have been hit by the car because that car would be two miles further down the road at the point whe eventually cycle through that intersection.

The other day I posted a video of me reading the story of the death of Laocoön.  I mentioned that I've had a mini-obsession with that story.  I was telling Laurie the other day:

"It is entirely possible that no such person ever really existed, but let's pretend for a moment that Laocoön was a real person.  He did not wake up that morning thinking, 'Today the Greeks are going to roll a giant horse into our city and I'm going to die from hideous god-snakes.'  He woke up that morning just like the rest of us, getting out of bed, performing his ablutions, expecting another day of life on Earth no different from any other."

When I was leaving my parent's home this past July, I took a picture of Boingo right before we got into the car.  This is the picture I took:

It reminds me a little bit of the last photograph taken with my best friend Rob who passed away over 2 years ago.

He came to visit my house and this was right before he got into his car to drive back to the airport and fly back to New York.  We were goofing around, both unaware that it would be the last time that we saw one another.

I think if I could distill one piece of advice for people in Earth based on my experiences in this world so far, it would be to try to treat one another as if this might be the last time you ever get to see that person.  Sometimes it turns out to be true and, when it does, it is rarely when you are expecting it.

 

Paul Mathers on a proper cup of tea

This week's video: How to make a proper cup of tea.

Also, here is a link to the article by George Orwell on making tea.

The Aeneid by Virgil: Part 1 (including Dryden's Dedication)

In his dedication, John Dryden makes the basic High, Middle, Low Brow argument in poetry.  There are poets for the belching groundling, poets from those who have had a taste of quality, and poets who reflect the highest aspirations of humankind.  That latter group, it should surprise no one, is the group in which he places the work he has just spent a great deal of time, money, and energy in translating.  So far in my reading I see no reason to contradict the poet. 

Dryden, in fact, struck me as being a bit charmingly giddy in his Dedication to the Most Honorable John, Lord Marquis of Normanby Earl of Mulgrave, &C and Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (portraited above).  My one critique came from just having read Frank O. Copley's introduction to his own translation in which Copley transgresses far more egregiously in comparing great works of literature to other great works of literature.  This seems to be a strong temptation.  Dryden does it, Copley does it, even Harold Bloom did it in the Don Quixote introduction.  I am sure I've done it and, much like training one's self to stop cussing, while I may slip and do it again, I shall endeavor to be more mindful in the future.

That having been said, the influence of this work upon Shakespeare's Hamlet is undeniable.  Hamlet requests the speech of Aeneas' tale to Dido about Priam's murder.  The arrival of the ghost of his father is almost interchangeable in the two pieces.  I could go on, but a resolution broken is not to be reveled in.

Dryden does offer some fine insight into the work we're about to read.  He suggests that Aeneas might be a stand-in for Caesar Augustus.  He also points out a time of different, pre-Christian morality.  Although I found this was a point where my own reaction was different, I was pleased that he illuminated this point before reading the work.  My main difference came in the story of Dido and Aeneas.  Dryden says that Aeneas retaining the status of hero after shucking Dido reflects this primitive morality.  While my spiritual perspective would like to agree with him on that point, I felt that Virgil does not elevate Aeneas in that action.  It is entirely possible that my mind is far too poisoned by the modern to grasp this sort of heroism, but when Aeneas is out at sea looking back at the shore and saying "I say!  I wonder what that large bonfire is all about!  Oh well, let's go play sports for a chapter or so!"  I felt he came off perfectly beastly.

We will return to Dryden later.  Soon we will reach what seems to be a volume of influential English plays which includes All For Love. 

I am likely predictable in one of my favorite passages thus far: the story of the death of Laocoön and his sons.  Returning readers will remember my mini-obsession with the story as it appears in art.  Virgil's telling of the story was sublime.  Here, I shall read it to you:

I feel as if I have adequately masticated the scenery.

There is something about the story of the gods sending death to someone, and to innocents even, with no warning and nothing they can do to stop it that speaks to the human condition to me.  At some point in life, we are all Laocoön.

There is a point that I made to Laurie the other day sparked from this reading which I will just throw out there for general analysis:  In the times of the giants upon whose shoulders we stand, some of the people whose thought carried the most weight frequently turned their attention to the subjects of prophecy and the afterlife.  Granted, so have a gross legion of utter fools.  Today those are not generally topics covered by the sort of people you would like to take seriously.  I wonder if that speaks to a quality of our times or a quality of our people. 

I would also call attention to the manly character of Aeneas which includes a great deal of weeping.  Every time he weeps, I feel something I have felt for some time, which is to say the increasing absurdity of treating gender traits as concrete.  

I am currently midway through the journey of this book in which our hero pays a social call to the Land of the Dead (as if I'm not going to spend enough time in the Land of the Dead.  For some reason I feel like I have to spend a vast portion of this life thinking about it).  I expect to finish the piece fairly quickly (although I hesitate to predict in these matters).  I must say that while I expect to return and read the Dryden someday, I have not regretted for one instant choosing to read the actual text in the Fagles translation.

More soon.

On Getting To Read The Aeneid

I can't remember ever having this difficult of a time starting to read a book.  And it's not, as you may imagine, because Don Quixote was so good (it was.  Did I mention that it was?  Because it was.)

Some of you may know that I used to operate an online used book business, in fact it was my primary source of income for several years back in the '00s when you could do things like that, back before the companies that hosted online used booksellers caught on that they could bleed their sellers dry with fees and long before eBooks were practical.  When I closed up shop, we culled all of the titles that we thought we might like to own.  The Aeneid was one such title, so I owned a copy that happens to be the one that I had for sale at one time.  It's the copy on top of the stack in the photograph.

They have the entire Harvard Classics Library at my local lending library, but I prefer to own copies of the books I am reading, because I like to destroy them with underlining, margin notes, and dog-ears.  So, on Saturday, I began to read the Frank O. Copley translation in the yellow book in the picture and found it... entirely unreadable.  Have you ever had the experience where you are reading something and you realize "Oh, wait a minute.  I did not comprehend a single thing that I just read.  Better go back and try that again" and you go back and have the exact same thought just slightly after where you read the previous go?  Okay, now have you ever had that in the first two pages of a book?!!?  This is new to me.  And I was really trying. 

I would have despaired at this point were it not for the knowledge that Robert Fagles has a translation of the book in print.  It was Saturday and I didn't have to work, so I walked downtown, a half an hour each way in the early September heat, to our two used bookstores, finding that:
1) neither used bookstore had a copy in stock and
2) my town has turned into something like The City of Destruction, but with the hospitality of Sodom.

So, I went to the lending library and found the Fagles immediately.  In doing so, I passed the Harvard Classics and thought "Hey, let's see which translation they have in the actual assigned text." 

It was the Dryden, which some part of my brain knew was the preferred academic text (at least in Dr. Eliot's time.)  But, more to the point, it came to my attention that there was a Dedication to his patron by John Dryden upon the publication of the translation in 1697.  The Dedication was almost as long as the poem itself and I realized that Dr. Eliot wanted me to read that Dedication. 

There in the library, I sighed and made my decision.  I would check out both of the volumes that were in my hands.  I would read Mr. Dryden's Dedication like a good boy, then begin to read Mr. Dryden's translation.  If I didn't like it, I would then switch over to the Fagles for the actual text, returning to the Harvard Classics for the afterword. 

So, I am enjoying the Fagles tremendously.

So work the honey-bees

Over Labor Day weekend, we were invited by our friends Troy and Molly to help harvest honey from their beehives.  Actually, to be more accurate, Troy removed the honeycombs and we aided in the process of getting the honey out of the combs and into bottles.

Here's Troy with his bee mask and a device which contains a flammable material (similar to styrofoam) which, when lit, produces an abundance of smoke.  There is a bellows on the side of the device to expel the smoke into the beehive.  This pacifies the bees during the harvesting process, ideally minimizing defensive behavior.

As you can see, I kept my distance anyway.

Here is what one honeycomb looked like.  A few of them were much fuller than this one.

In the foreground, in the cart, you can see the honeycombs.  The silver device is a honey-extractor in which the honeycombs are placed and centrifugal forces extract the honey.

But first the honeycomb must be scraped.  The scraper is similar to a comb, but with sharp edges.  One runs it down the honeycomb to break the wax seal, allowing the honey to flow freely.

Like so.

And this is how it looks inside.

Of course, as you well know, honey flows better when warm, so sometimes a little encouragement is called for.

We are almost ready to pour!

A filter is placed on top of the bucket.  A good deal of wax and other bee stuff needs to be filtered out, but we are close to honey... We just have to sit and watch it slowly pass through the filter.

This part takes a while.

Soon we will star jarring.

Success!  The harvest was a couple dozen of these and Laurie and I were able to take some home!  It was a wonderful and fascinating day, one which I shall remember for the rest of my life. 

Paul Mathers on (shudder) politics

This week's video, my political views (with puppet show).

Don Quixote Part 2: Conclusion

"Don Quixote begins as a province, turns into Spain, and ends as a universe." -V.S. Pritchett

The sensation is a bit like being drunk, a bit like mourning, and a dash of divine revelation all at the same time.  A few times in one's life, one finishes a book with the realization that they have just finished one of the greatest books that they shall have the pleasure of reading in their lifetime.  While one might read that book again, one will never read it again for the first time. 

I had that last night as I finished Don Quixote and, in spite of the fact that the series I am working through comprises, by all accounts, some of the greatest books ever written, it has been a long time since I've felt this, for lack of a better term, close to the holy as I finished a book.  The last time I can remember is Djuna Barnes' Nightwood.  I sort of stare off blankly for the rest of the evening, as if my brain says, "Well, there you go!  You're not getting anything else out of me today."

In this book is the wealth and sorrows of the human experience.  All of the anguish and pathos of being an individual in this world is not only contained in this book, but readily experienced in the process of reading it.  The horrors are tempered, as they are in real life, by beauty, companionship, virtue, and the lighter side of the absurdity of existence.  It is beautiful in every way, one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.  It is also, another rarity, one of the few books which found me laughing out loud in public while reading.

Another major theme, I think, would be how people ruin things for one another.  There is the obvious one, masterfully woven into the plot by Cervantes, of the second rate knock-off non-canon sequel written by someone else after Cervantes original Part 1 and before (catalyzing even) Part 2.  There is a long section of a particularly sadistic wealthy couple who essentially torture Don Quixote and Sancho Panza for their own amusement.  That section contained one of my favorite passages of literature.  They send poor Sancho off to be a governor for their own mocking and scoffing.  He turns out to be as wise as Solomon.  It is the apotheosis of the triumph of the common man. 

Indeed, if you don't fall in love with the two main characters, check your pulse.  Cervantes makes an open and shut case as to the near blasphemy of the "false Quixote" book simply by introducing us to the wonderful two main characters.  I say that anyone who would dare besmirch the character of Sancho Panza deserves all of the treatment that Quixote would threaten to one who would impugn the beauty of Dulcinea.  There is a part of me that is happy to see that, with a little digging, the "false Quixote" is still available in print as it is an important historical document, an important footnote to this piece.  There is another part of me that is also happy to see that it seems like no one ever reads it.

I am going to a take a moment to say that the same diabolical duke and duchess who send Sancho to govern the insula are also the ones who introduce the talking head to the story.  About 100 pages before the end of Part 2, there is a bust in a room which, when asked a question, will speak and answer the questions.  The motif of prophecy is strong in Part 2.  We saw the prophesying monkey last time and this latter section also features a parade of enchanters, including Merlin, who prophesy as well.  It would seem that Cervantes has a skeptical view of prophecy, however possibly a poetic one as well.  The prophets are charlatans, but the prophecies come true!  Or rather, the lead characters do things because of the prophecies.  They sort of willingly become the foot-soldiers of fate.  I suspect there may be a cautionary lesson in there.

Laurie asked me how the book compares to Man of La Mancha (which we do need to address when talking about this piece now just as much as we need to make mention of the "false Quixote."  I felt that Wasserman's Quixote is more valid than Avellaneda's, possibly because the subject matter is handled with such respect, nearly with kid gloves, in the musical.)  We both loved that play and still do.  I think that an entirely valid, separate work of art can be created out of inspiration from a first work of art.  Laurie asked if Dulcinea is a character in the book.  I said, "Well, kind of, but not in the specific, tangible way that she is in the musical.  She is more of a presence or force than an actual character."  She asked about parts of the play that come from the book.  There is also the barber's pan.  And the ending.  Sort of.  The ending presents a few problems.

It is not necessarily a spoiler to reveal that Don Quixote dies, as Cervantes tells you that he is going to die in the introduction.  I think, for me, what was most remarkable was the staggering elevation Cervantes achieves.  Quixote is a bit of a saint/Christ figure throughout, but in his ending he dies to, essentially, save us from more bad knock-off versions.  Although that makes it sound so trite.  Rather I might say that he dies on the altar of greatness. 

One of the only times I've appeared in the local paper was when I was asked one of those "People on the street" questions outside of our post office.  I was asked what, given my druthers, I would prefer to have written on my tombstone (assuming no one goes through with my wishes of donating my body to the crime school that leaves donated bodies out in a presumably secured wild area to observe the effects of long term exposure on corpses for the educational amelioration of future criminologists).  I stammered out some nonsense on the spot, but I think in actuality I should like to borrow an abridgment of Quixote's own:

"It was his great good fortune to live a madman, and die sane."

Reader, you need to read this book.  You need to get a copy of the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote and read it while the sun still shines on you.  For your own sake.  You will be a better person for it.

 

Paul Mathers on American Embarrassments

This week's video: What is your most embarrassing confession as an American?

 

Don Quixote Part 2: Part 1

Christopher was right.  At the end of Part 1, I had a moment where I wondered if I should read Part 2 right away or put it on the back burner while I went back to the Harvard Classics list proper.  Christopher said, "No!  Read Part 2 immediately!  It is even better than Part 1!"

And I'll be hanged if he wasn't right.  This, and I am not just saying this out of being caught up in the emotion of the moment, is one of the best reading experiences of my life.  I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but my gratitude towards Dr. Eliot for leading me to finally read this book is matched only by my utter astonishment that he only included Part 1 in his curriculum.  Part 2 reveals a more evolved author who has adapted intrepidly from the lessons that the publication of Part 1 and the subsequent public reaction occasioned.  He has scuttled the stories within the story to focus, instead, purely on the adventures of the ingenious gentleman.  The meta-fiction aspect balloons in this section, starting with a scholar telling Sancho and Quixote about Part 1, its publication, contents, and reception.  Their reaction is as hilarious as one might imagine.  In his further adventures, Part 1 is something often considered and he encounters a number of people who read it.  Part 2 also, it is promised and I will soon get to it, unquestionably ends the story.  On reading the introduction, I mused why some wag hadn't thought of penning a Don Quixote's Adventures in the Afterlife.  Something that might make both Cervantes and Dante plunk out their respective mustaches in rage.

Depending on how one looks at it I suppose, it is either a series of fantastic and absurd events that the premise (madman wandering around thinking he's a knight errant) suggest punctuated by some of the best dialogue in all of literature between Sancho and Quixote or vice versa.  I am inclined towards the latter.  I could read conversations between Quixote and Sancho for the rest of my life and never fall out of sheer delight.  I suspect the same was true for Cervantes.  It is not difficult to imagine it was rip-roaring fun for him to write this.  It seems like the sort of thing that, when one gets one's teeth into writing something like this, the rest of life sort of becomes a hindrance to writing.  It's my experience, as a writer and having read many other writers on the subject, that such blessings are exceedingly rare in writing.  It is almost always a slog to get anything written at all.  In this, I envy Cervantes.

This is not to say that the action isn't equally thrilling.  The scene in the etching above is when Don Quixote is watching a puppet show.  He becomes so enthralled by the action that he enters into it.  I was reminded of a true story that the head of Shakespeare Orange County (my former boss) told me once about a production of Henry VIII in which he was playing the title role.  There was a scene between Henry and Cranmer which was so intense, acted with such tension, that one night a member of the audience climbed on stage and told them to cut it out.

It was also one of my favorite scenes in the book.  I searched for hours, but apparently Doré never drew the prophesying monkey.

At present I am with Quixote and Sancho in the court of a Duke and Duchess who have the main characters from one of their favorite books drop by quite unexpectedly one day to pay them a visit.  Childhood daydreams: resurrected!

Belief systems seem to be one of the themes addressed in the story.  I have chuckled more than once at Quixote's capacity to explain away inconvenient truths by attributing them to invisible enchanters who cloud the eyes of their enemies with illusion.  Even better, at one point Sancho tries to exploit this tendency, having observed Quixote, in the garden of his mind as it were, turn inns into castles, windmills into giants, lions into things that should be attacked, Sancho tries to convince Quixote that a poor, crass peasant girl is his beloved Dulcinea.  Quixote doesn't see it, which he, again, attributes to enchanters.  Maybe he is enchanted, maybe Sancho is enchanted, finally settling on Dulcinea being enchanted and he needing to save her from said enchantment.  This plan backfires on Sancho in a nearly literal way a few hundred pages later.  While Quixote's reality is not our consensus reality, it is nonetheless as hermetically sealed as our reality, as any functioning reality must be.

I should also like to say a few words about the footnotes.  Again, this entire reading experience has been infinitely enriched by the excellent and tastefully appropriate footnotes by Ms. Grossman.  While I say, again, that everyone should read this book, I will also say that every native of the Queen's English should read this specific translation of this book.  I am already bracing myself for the inevitable whiplash of my next book, the footnoteless and likely inferior translation of The Aeneid which sits at my right elbow while an angels sits on my left shoulder whispering "Go out and buy the Fagles translation tomorrow.  You'll be much happier if you do."  A suspiciously Mephistophelean voice from my other shoulder is whispering about thrift and our recent electric and medical bills.  

There is one particular footnote that burrowed its way deep into my brain like a thorn these past two days.  In it, Grossman points out a phrase, spoken by Sancho, which was suppressed by the Inquisition.  I shivered.  There is something about the grimmest of realities popping in to remind us that they exist while we are in the middle of a didactic tale on the virtues of creating one's own reality that almost demands a renewed commitment on the part of the reader, similar to a conversion in the face of persecution.  Quixote is a saint or even messianic figure for crazy wisdom and holy madness.  I see one of the lessons of the story to be along the lines of:

"Don't like this reality?  Make up a better one and live in that one instead!"

And I think there is some hope in that some of the characters are permitting the co-existence of Quixote's reality if not actively joining in on occasion.  For those examining from the heartbreaking perspective of without, the demands of our reality does not allow us to see the invisible enchanters as the true antagonists, but rather the true antagonists in this story are disbelief and the unwillingness to permit the reality of Quixote's devising.  

For my part, it is my intention to withdraw as much of this weekend as I can to spend on the remainder of this book.  One of the strange compulsions of reading a great book is the desire to spend so much time in it which only serves to make the end come that much more quickly.  Such is life.

Paul Mathers on Machismo

Let's All Write A Canto!

Or "Let's All Write Cantos."  This is one of the problem forms in this project.  It presents a difficulty in my intention to write one of each of the forms.

The problem is that a canto is similar to a chapter.  You will find it in longer, possibly epic works of poetry, as a way of breaking up the ideas into bite sized pieces.  The most obvious example would be Dante, which works rather neatly if you are describing rings of a realm.  Simply make a canto for each ring.  Ezra Pound also wrote cantos in his magnum opus The Cantos, one of those books in life that I think I will be on stab #3 of trying to read it next time I attempt to do so.  That is about all that our text has to tell us about Cantos and how to write them.

Here is an example of a canto.  It is the final canto from Dante's Inferno in which they observe the lowest level of Hell where resides Lucifer, Judas Iscariot, Brutus, Cassius, and my English teacher from my Freshman year in High School.  As I said, in Dante's case, the canto structure worked neatly in describing realms with levels.  But, as you can also see, they are chapters of a story and are not meant to be taken from the context. 

And so I was faced with the problem of what to do here.  I can't just skip a form, but I also don't have the time or artistic resources to crank out an entire epic poem split into cantos simply for the sake of this form (I have no idea what I'm going to do when I actually do reach the "epic" section of this book.  Stay tuned for that.  We can be surprised together).

So I decided to write a canto of a missing piece.  I floated a few ideas past Laurie.  One was to write a canto about how Sancho Panza's donkey was stolen.  Another was to write a canto from the life of Mozart, specifically why he never completed his Great Mass in C minor which he promised to God to write in return for Constanze's fever breaking.  He had ample time left in his life to complete it, but he never did (and he wasn't exactly a slouch when it came to his work).  I nearly wrote that one, but finally, when I came to write the thing, I decided to write a Canto from the life of Paul Mathers, an epic autobiographical poem which will, most likely, never be written outside of what you shall see here.  The story is a true one.  The verse is the net-less tennis of free verse.  


Et Incarnatus Est
by Paul Mathers

On each week's last labor's day
I arose hours before Phoebus
to wind produce from all four corners
deep into the craggy heart of yon neighboring mount
like a goblin.

Places like The Wooden Trout, The Grubstake Saloon, Toki's Soda Fountain,
a little red schoolhouse down a one lane road, 
keenly aware that my bobtail truck would have to back down if I ever met a car coming down as I went up.
I never did.
Although once I backed down in the middle of winter to avoid a snowdrift.

My soul bloated over a billion signs of wild.
Bears in the road, deer in the road,
golden day's first dip into a valley of pine,
driving drunk on love of creation.
Converted, I proselytized,
encouraging wife and parents to drive up on my day off with me,
capture the sights on film,
quaff deep the delights of the mountain towns,
bestride the terra like Titans,
each breath of thin air deposited towards a future of health.

Result: they carsick from the winding ride,
seeing it through the eyes of the city, small in town, inconvenient in nature,
the small diner gave miserable service,
our coats were not warm enough,
the whole covered by a glass darkly.

But rather than raw disappointment, a rare moment of clarity in the converse,
Awakening to the divinity infusing the places down the mountain,
in the darkest hour, in the shabbiest corner, in the cheapest excuse,

I resolved to keep the mountain in my heart.

Also,

Perhaps not best to share every thought God whispers in your ear.

3 Art Pieces That Impacted Me At Divers Times

And, as a bonus track, here is me telling a joke about Philip Glass.

And here is the piece by Philip Glass that I gush over in my initial video.

Don Quixote Part 1: Part 2

I finished reading Part 1 and was torn.  Should I proceed immediately to Part 2 or should I return to the curriculum of the Harvard Classics series and move back to The Aeneid.  I sought the advice of my friend Christopher who strongly urged me to read Part 2 immediately.  He said it was even better than Part 1, which sold me as Part 1 was, as I've said, one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've had in recent memory.

I still wonder why Dr. Eliot only included Part 1 in his series.  I mentioned this to Laurie with a few of my own guesses: the meta-content of Part 2 might be more in line with contemporary thought than Dr. Eliot (making Cervantes ahead of not only his own, but also of Dr. Eliot's time), maybe something as simple as space constraints, or at the end of Part 1 just sort of shrugging his shoulders and saying "Eh, I think you get the point."  Laurie suggested, and I think she may have it, that perhaps Part 1 was more historically influential as it was written quite some time before Part 2.  So much, in fact, that someone else came along and wrote a "false" Part 2 before Cervantes finished his authentic conclusion.  By the time the authentic Part 2 came to be, Cervantes was already a world renowned figure, with a reported offer to teach Castilian in China with Quixote 1 as the textbook, and even likely having a play penned by William Shakespeare based upon Cardenio's story (one of Shakespeare's "lost" plays, which hasn't stopped a few theater companies from mounting productions of what might be Shakespeare's Cardenio.)  The world in which Cervantes lived when he wrote Part 2 was a world that knew Cervantes.

So much of the action of Don Quixote does not involve Don Quixote.  So much of the delight in the parts of the action which do involve Don Quixote are not so much delightful for the action, but for the conversation and ideas.  In spite of the fact that this book is a rip-roaring good narrative after chivalry, I felt that one of the key delights of this book is that it is a book of ideas.  One of the other other key delights of this book is the scope of its humanity.  Of course, the major delight of the book is simply the sheer quality of the writing and story-telling.  It is amazing to have a book where you are involved in the story of two character that you love interrupted by another new character or circumstance bringing several chapters of a completely unrelated story, and you are in no way annoyed by this.  Perhaps I should speak for myself, but I am.  I was simply enchanted the whole way through.

Again, it is too huge to survey all that I loved: the story of the Moorish prisoner, Don Quixote's penitent madness in the wilderness, the canon's speech about a minister of culture, Don Quixote's response to the priest's disparaging remarks about books of chivalry (in which he expresses the Fruit of the Spirit he has exhibited since becoming a knight errant, which would be true if it weren't for the fact that he is barking mad and all of his assumptions are based upon premises which lay outside of consensus reality, leading him to, say, attack a group of penitents in order to free the effigy of the Virgin Mary that they are carrying), Anselmo and Lotario, Don Francisco, the battle against the wineskins, the return of the whipped child, and so on and so forth.  What I have read thus far dances in my head and I was sorry to see it end (and end so abruptly.)  I am grateful for the permission slip to make haste into Part 2.

In my previous post, I imagined I would break this reading into 3 responses, but I think 4 will be more likely at this point.  More soon.
 

Paul Mathers on Laughter and Tears

P.S. here's the scene from Lawrence of Arabia that I mention. See if you can spot the differences between the actual film and the way my brain remembered it:

The Legend of the Tootsie Pop Wrapper

I sent a Tootsie Pop wrapper to the Tootsie Pop company for reasons explained in the video.  What they sent me was more wonderful than I ever would have imagined!

Don Quixote Part 1: Part 1

Having already thrown the strictest version of Dr. Eliot's prescription to the wind, I am reading all of Don Quixote.  Dr. Eliot actually only demands Don Quixote Part 1.  Of course, this being my first time through the work, I have no idea why.  I do know that Part 2 was written and published many years later after someone else wrote a Further Adventures of Don Quixote.  This bastard version was to Cervantes what 50 Shades of Grey is to Twilight, what Mormonism is to Christianity, and what American Democracy is to the ancient Greek ideal of Democracy.  You can imagine Cervantes chagrin, to the extreme of writing a whole additional book.

I have decided to read the entire thing because, simply put, this is without a doubt one of the top five most enjoyable reading experiences of my life so far.  Other titles in the Harvard Classics series I have found enjoyable and profitable; I might have recommended them to certain parties.  The Grossman translation of Don Quixote, on the other hand, is something I would recommend to everyone.  It reads as easily as anything contemporary, and the footnotes are excellent.  In fact, there are several moments which would suffer enormously to the contemporary English speaking reader without the footnotes (specifically, the chapter where the priest culls Don Quixote's library would have been terribly dull without the footnotes.  With the footnotes, the reader grasps the brilliant satire).  There are also a few narrative gaps explained by the footnotes, gaps which likely inspired the Los Angeles Times critic to write the quote on the back cover which calls it "Cervantes's imperfect masterpiece."  Which seems to me like a nervy thing to say.  Your novel had better be pretty stunning if you're going to go around calling Don Quixote imperfect, book review-boy.

He was probably referring to Sancho Panza's magically disappearing and reappearing mule.

I have decided to post about each third of this book.

I found Cervantes to be charming and sublimely clever.  It is rare that I laugh out loud while reading, even rarer in 400 year old texts, but in this instance I have already several times and in public.  I have even chuckled a few times away from the book when thinking about the scene when Sancho leans over Quixote to see which teeth he lost in battle.

We start with a long series of sonnets at a friend of the author's suggestion and Latin phrases become a running gag.  Quixote is driven mad by reading novels, yes, very much like the one we are reading.  Early on we are treated to a chapter where, as I mentioned, a priest culls a library for books that should be burned.  The meta-commentary of that scene early on informs us that this is far more cunning and modern than one might expect from a work from the 1600s.  I cannot adequately express what a delight it is to read this book.

The windmills happen right out of the gate.  So much of the joy of the book is in the relationship between Quixote and Sancho Panza.  There is a sort of unspoken idea behind the text, bringing to mind Tristram Shandy, that we are in no hurry and shall take our time enjoying what is before us.  If Cervantes feels like taking three chapters to describe a novel that some of the characters found at an inn, well, he will do so without apology and we shall enjoy it (I am currently in one such section). 

But it goes beyond all of that.  It is also tender, brutal, and excruciatingly human.  It is also an excellent piece of literature.  Definitely on my short list for when I am inevitably exiled to a desert island.  To be completely honest, I am far more intimidated to write about this book than I am to read it.

More soon.

Paul Mathers on Comedy and Misery

Let's All Write a Calligram

The Calligram, as Ron Padgett explains in our text The Teacher and Writer's Handbook of Poetic Forms (for newcomers, I am attempting to write one poem in every form covered in the book), is a form named after the Greek terms for "beautiful writing."  The form is to make a poem in which the words form a picture.  By way of example, Guillaume Apollinaire was, perhaps, one of the most famous poets to employ this form.  Here is an example of one of his poems:

 The poem is shaped like the Eiffel Tower, you see.

And so, approaching this form, I thought about images that I could form into, especially images which I might be interested in composing a poem on.  My first thought was to make a poem in the shape of my dog Schubert, but when I latched onto that idea I found that I kept putting off writing the thing.  Upon examination I found that I feared that such a poem would be too folksy, too close to cowboy poetry (a form which is mercifully absent from this text and which I would likely scrap this project if compelled to attempt to ever write one).

Then I had a panic attack earlier today.  Or something like that.  Anyway, my mind was running in circles of fear and I was on the phone with Laurie at lunch trying to talk my way out of it.  That seems to help me sometimes.  After I got off the phone, I remembered that wonderful quote by author Neil Gaiman:

“Remember, whatever discipline you’re in, whether you’re a musician or a photographer, a fine artist or a cartoonist, a writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer — whatever you do, you have one thing that’s unique: You have the ability to make art. And for me, and for so many of the people I’ve known, that’s been a lifesaver, the ultimate lifesaver. It gets you through good times, and it gets you through … the other ones. Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong — in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and that doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: Make good art. Make it on the bad days, make it on the good days, too.”

And so I went more abstract and made my calligram of my panic attack.  I call it  A) Lopressor, B) Metformin, or C) Ativan?  You will probably need to click on the image in order to make it large enough for you to read it.

 

Paul Mathers on Childhood Dreams

My video this week is about childhood dreams.

Introducing Quixote

"You're reading them out of order now?!!? Outrageous! 10 points from Ravenclaw!"

I decided to leapfrog over Virgil's Aeneid to read Don Quixote.  I fully understand that this overlap in material covered in Plutarch's Lives and I am sure that the Harvard Classics were put in that order for good reasons.  My reasoning is simple.  I really want to read Don Quixote.  I will simply read the Aeneid next. 

As a little glimpse inside my brain, I can tell you that I struggled for some time over feeling guilty about this.

I decided to go with the recent Edith Grossman translation.  Quixote is one of those books that, as I have often heard from trusted sources, has suffered much in translation.  One of the key concerns seems to be preservation of tone and, specifically, humor.  I had heard good things about the Raffel translation as well, but my tipping point was in the footnotes and in the recommendation of the Grossman by my friend Christopher.  I am well into the text and feel that this was the best possible choice.  It really is, as the endorsement by Library Journal claims on the cover, "the translation to beat."

The translators preface further serves to back up what I assume was Ms. Grossman's intentions/philosophy in her translation.  Simply put, she intends to preserve the experience that readers of the work in Spanish would have for readers of the work in English.  She writes, "...all human efforts to communicate- even in the same language- are equally utopian, equally luminous with value, and equally worth the doing."

I skipped most of Harold Bloom's introduction.  Look, I have enjoyed Professor Bloom's work in the past and I am sure I will again in the future.  I did not enjoy his introduction at this particular time.  He spends a great deal of the introduction comparing Cervantes to Shakespeare (who, granted, were contemporaries to the point where they actually died on the same day.)  I commented to Laurie that it struck me as being a bit like what Quentin Crisp said about television interviews:

A television interview, you see, is like a geography examination. You can’t study the whole world. Therefore, on the night before your exam, you take your atlas down from its shelf and open it at random. The map that you happen to expose is of China. You regard this as a sign from You-Know-Who and study China. The next day the main question in your paper is about France. You-Know-Who has sold you a pup. Don’t panic. Your answer begins, "France is not like China, which is . . . "

I haven't graphed it, but I suspect he spent more of his introduction talking about Shakespeare than Cervantes.

But that is not why I skipped it.  I skipped it because twice in the few pages I read, Professor Bloom committed the unforgivable sin of revealing major plot points of the work that I was about to read.  I am cursed with the sort of brain that remembers everything.  I don't care how famous you believe the work to be, if you are called upon to speak before a piece, it is part of your duty to preserve the wonderful experience before all of the audience, especially those who have never had the pleasure before.  If you are unable to do this, you should not be speaking in that context.  In fact, I would suggest to the publisher that what they have from Professor Bloom is not an Introduction that should ever be used for this piece.  What they have from Professor Bloom is probably an excellent Afterword.  I shall treat it as such and I shall return to comment on it once I've finished the book.

And then there is Cervantes' own Prologue.  I was instantly enchanted.  I literally smiled while I was reading it.  I am finding Cervantes to be delightful clever, but that is an terrible understatement.  I am finding Cervantes to be one of the cleverest authors I have ever had the pleasure to read.  In his prologue he establishes that we are to read a work of satire and that the target of the satire will largely be chivalry (although there seems to be a winking understanding that the scope of the work shall be far far larger.)  He also establishes the startling modernity of the work.  Having read Milton and Shakespeare in recent memory, I found it astoundingly modern to be reading not only a novel, but one in which the author periodically appears in the narrative. 

In short, I have no regrets over my decision.

Plutarch's Lives- Part 4: Ceasar and Antony

Julius Caesar bestrode this narrow world like a colossus.  He stomped on the Terra.  We of the Judeo-Christian worldview like to think that we have the market cornered on events from 2000ish years ago which still impact every living human today, but, with all due respect, there was a secular moment of at least equal secular importance when a group of men walked into the Roman senate and stabbed the reigning dictator for life to death.

The sheer force of nature that was Julius Caesar is abundantly clear in the unfolding of his story.  Even saying any of this reminds me of how odd I've found the endorsement blurbs on the copy of Don Quixote that I'm about to read.  And, no, they are not just endorsing the translation.

"Yes, even some people of our own time love the best thing ever." -Paul Mathers

Even down to the New York Times Bestseller label on the cover.  I wonder if there is an edition of the Bible that boasts New York Times Bestseller.

What's so great about Julius Caesar?  Well, the first answer is that Plutarch clearly feels that Julius Caesar was the zenith of nobility towards which one ought to aspire.  The dizzying heights of his elevation certainly must have a dash of the hyperbolic about it, although I feel so horribly tainted by the modern anti-civilization mindset when I say that.

Certainly the conquest of Gaul is one of his inspiring achievements and students of Latin will more likely than not be called upon to read Caesar's own account of the campaign at some point in their studies.  There is also the weighty Roman Civil War circling around the power shift between Pompey and Julius.  Ascending to power, he took on the mantle of Dictator for Life.  Several of those close to him conspired to make that a much shorter honorific than it might initially sound.

Aside from these achievements, the man is portrayed as a model of virtue.  He overcomes extreme odds (just think of it: a warrior with epilepsy) by the force of a gargantuan will which would come to be envied by the likes of Nietzsche and Wagner.  Indeed, I felt there was something almost American in the individual will to power of Julius Caesar.  You can take that statement any way you like.  In a lot of ways, his is a snowball that is still rolling and gaining mass, for better or worse.

Having intimated that last point twice already in this post, my internal professor is rabid to write in the margins in red ink "Give Examples!"
1. Caesars were not Caesars until Julius Caesar.  He, in fact, changed government forever.
2. As I mentioned, his writings are standard for Latin students, making him one of the key figures in one of the major roots from which the English language grows.  And I think we can all agree that language has a direct effect upon reality; if not one of its major shapers, certainly, as Wittgenstein said, the fence at the limit of reality.
3. His story is woven into the fabric of our reality as well.  He came, he saw, he conquered.  "The die is cast" (I can't tell you how often I think that in the course of my daily life.)  The Ides of March and "Et tu, Brute?"  He is in Dante's Limbo and the subject of one of the greatest plays in the English language (two if you count Shaw.  And I do.)

Again, even listing these things makes me feel like I am giving an endorsement to something far greater than I.

Plutarch doesn't bother to include a summation comparing Caesar to Antony, at least not in this edition, and I have to assume that the truths were suspected, rightly I should think, to be self-evident.

Antony is described as dissolute.  He gambles; he drinks; he sleeps around; he is a member of some weird cult that goes around whacking women with whips on Lupercalia.  On that note, I felt there was a bit of a microcosm of the whole dynamic of the two men in the famous story where Antony approaches Caesar on Lupercalia with a crown, which Caesar declines in a gentlemanly manner to the great joy and support of the crowd.  I found Antony to be, in stark contrast to Caesar, one who was being chewed up in the teeth of time, rather than the chewer.  Another microcosm might be in each man's story of their relationship with their lover in common, that is to say Cleopatra.  Caesar restores her to her throne, effectively increasing both of their power (if not adding a bit more straw to the camel's back of those who were plotting his death.)  Antony follows her around like a puppy, which eventually leads him to the end of his own sword.

One difference in these two sections from any of the others is that they both contained stories of other major figures.  Cleopatra probably receives the most coverage.  She ascends to power, much like Caesar by willpower and manipulating circumstances to her advantage.  In fact, her suicide is one of those rare suicides that seems like an act born from a place of power.  She escapes her prison by the only means available to her.  She also has the ingenuity of gruesome foresight.  The painting at the beginning of this post is of Cleopatra testing poisons on condemned prisoners to see which one she might like best when the time comes to commit self-slaughter.

Timon of Athens is introduced as one of the most famous misanthropes of antiquity.  But for me the portion with the most emotional impact was the section about Caesar's murderers.  I was mainly struck by how much that section read like a prose retelling of the plot of Shakespeare's tragedy on the subject (not being an idiot, I know full well that the opposite is, in fact, the case.)  I was most stunned by the moments after his murder.  Of course, there were no police to be called.  The murderers walked out of there expecting change, solidarity, a new order.  Instead, people are stunned and then, after Antony's stirring speech, outraged.

I think the key lesson I gleaned from this section was to wield the power one has been granted for good and to build.  The negative example is one against allowing one's self to be blown about by circumstance or to allow one's self to commit wicked acts for the promise of better circumstances.

Paul Mathers Makes Pacifists Fight

I can't believe I did this.  You won't believe it either! This week's topic was a dash on the jocular side.

Plutarch's Lives- Part 3: Demosthenes and Cicero

Cicero and Demosthenes were both orators of great acclaim in their respective places. Demosthenes had to work for his oration skill and in that sense reminded me a bit of Milton.  He expended a great deal of time and energy on honing his skill, then reaped the benefit (sort of... for a time anyway.)  He was occasionally mocked for his practiced orations, but it seems no one took such criticisms seriously in light of the man's oratory skill.  He, perhaps ill advisedly, entered politics, which ultimately lead to drinking poison to avoid falling into the hands of his enemies.

I have noticed Plutarch seeming to show marked favoritism towards the Roman figures.  I may be reading too much into this (or it may simply be a result of the choices in this abridgment) and it may have more to do with Plutarch's familiarity and the availability of information to him, but it really does seem to me that the Roman pieces are far more compelling and perhaps a bit more on the noble side.

The story of Cicero was a bit more engaging, especially since it is building to the end of the reading in Plutarch.  The book ends with Caesar and Antony.  There is overlap with Cicero's story in each of those. 

Cicero's death was absolutely grizzly.  Something about cutting off someone's hands and head and then traveling with them to a place where they are to be put on spikes doesn't sit well with me.  I know that Julius Caesar is said to have remarked, ominously, that the best sort of death is a sudden one.  I'm not sure I agree with that.  Dying at the violent hands of others seems terrible to me.  I imagine my final thought would be something like "I never made it through Infinite Jest!"  What a horrible way to go!  I increasingly find myself feeling that a good death is a lingering one, like Mozart who laid on his deathbed composing his Requiem (apocryphally it seems, but it makes a nice story, what?)

It would be difficult for me to not love Cicero.  He was a bit of a rascal and his wit was enviably keen.  The accounts seem to suggest a decent and lovable man, but he had this knack for boasting and self-promoting that put me in mind of a modern day rapper.

Rather than rehashing the details of their lives, I should, as Plutarch intended in writing these lives in the first place, focus on what lessons I gleaned from reading about these two men.  I think that Plutarch would agree that looking at the lives of the great people of history can and should inspire the reader and instruct them in good living, be it in the positive or negative example (with the added level of whether or not the reader agrees with the author's point of view.)  I would add, and I also think Plutarch and Dr. Eliot would back me up on this, that this is precisely why a work like this ought to be requisite to the education of young people.  Perhaps this might serve as a drop of antidote in the ocean of arrested adolescence which comprises the culture in which they bob rudderless (there I go mixing metaphors again.  Oh well.  I've buttered my bread and now I must lay in it.)  Aside from the historic material from, what one could certainly argue if one were so inclined, two of the most important civilizations of all time, one gets the distinct impression that the true function of the book is examples of great men towards which one can aspire.  I found the lives of these two men to be an inspiration to strive towards excellence.

There was also, I felt, a theme emerging which I know will be a through-line in the remainder of my reading: beware of the shifting sands of politics.  Both men are essentially destroyed by the capricious nature of the divine right of kings, which seems to have been especially capricious in times of capricious divinity.  That may sound like a dig against antiquity, but I will reveal my opinion that I feel much the same way about the prevailing directions of religious devotion in my own time and country.

Both men shared the experience of aligning themselves with a political position that eventually led to their respective deaths.  I suppose this could be taken in a number of ways.  I could see this suggesting the path of political forbearance.  I could also see this suggesting the nobility of staying true to one's cause even unto death.  Not knowing any political leaders personally and having zero interest in politics, my interest in this thought experiment seemed theoretical on the surface.  But I think that these lessons transfer on a micro-scale.  Politics touch all of our interpersonal interactions, be it in our workplace, our churches, or even our homes.  I am not talking exclusively about political ideology, but also about the teetering balances of power found anywhere power is available.  I think one of the major lessons from the lives of the noble ancients is to let truth and virtue be your leader and even if you find yourself on the business end of a vial of poison, you will be exactly where you are supposed to be.