1,001 Nights- Part 3

It seems clear to me that these stories were not all written by the same person.  In the final four stories in this collection two are at nearly opposite poles of quality from the others.

I should have mentioned earlier that this volume is selections from the 1,001 Nights, not the entire series of stories.  The full set usually comes in several volumes.

We start with "The City of Brass" which is another story with which I had no prior familiarity.  My verdict is that the stories worth reading in this collection are the commonly known stories and "The Humpback."  Upon reflection after completing the volume, I assume the book falling out of vogue may have a good deal to do with the racial and religious elements that harken back to a less enlightened time.  Indeed, this may be best for young readers with the maturity, intelligence, and cultural awareness to be able to properly understand books like Uncle Remus or Babar.  I would argue that these are valuable reading experiences in spite of (and occasionally because of) the unenlightened times in which they were written.  I am decidedly against the suppression of any book in any context and for any reason.

"The City of Brass" did contain another Homeric parallel (or appropriation perhaps) with the appearance of the Sirens in everything but name.  Otherwise, it is a story of a man who finds people who free Jinn ("Genies" might be the more familiar term although they bear little resemblance to pop culture's approximation of the mythical beings.  More on that later.) confined to bottles by Suleyman (That's Solomon to those of us in Judeo-Christian circles.  And there is a whole load of Solomon fan fiction concerning how he dealt with Jinn).  The man decides that he wants to gather similar bottles and is directed to The City of Brass.  There is an adventure tale of getting to the city and then pages upon pages of the man reading a cautionary inscription on the tomb of someone, then tearing his beard, rending his clothes, and crying until he is insensible.  Eventually they find the cache of Jinn bottles.

"Jullanar of the Sea" seemed to have echoes of  Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" but with a happier ending.  I don't really have much to say about it except that I fully expect to die without ever having read it again.

We end with two of the most famous stories from the series.  The first is "Ala-Ed-Din and the Wonderful Lamp."  This was, in my humble opinion, the best story in the whole series.  It differs significantly from the Western pop culture re-tellings.  There are two Moorish wizards and a Wezir as the antagonists.  The princess is named Bedr-el-Budur.  The body count is WAY higher than the Disney version.  But mainly I thought it was simply the best told story in the book.  I was riveted.

"'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" was, likewise, a ripping yarn, albeit a short one (the shortest in the collection I believe).  I was a little surprised to find that 'Ali Baba's maidservant is the true hero of the story.  In fact, one of the wonderful surprises of the whole collection was that the role of women was not nearly as unenlightened as I might have expected. 

As a quick ending note, this particular volume of the Harvard Classics I found to be stingy with the footnotes.  However, there was an interesting suggestion at the beginning of this last story that 'Ali Baba was, in fact, a retelling of a Germanic myth.  Their evidence is in the phrase "Open, Simsim" which in Arabic would be the more familiar "sesame," but in the old German would read more like "Open, Mountain!"  Which would make more contextual sense as that is precisely what they are asking when they walk up to the rock wall and ask it to open.  

And now I have another volume of myth and folklore ahead of me!

1,001 Nights- Part 2

This section contained two stories that I was entirely unfamiliar with, one which I enjoyed, the other in which I had moments of enjoyment.  I meant to stop and comment there, but continued reading through a story that I had heard of.

"The Humpback" was another story in which stories were told within stories to the point that every time they would emerge to the original narrative I would think "Oh yeah, right, the humpback thing."  It's a story about a humpback who is cruelly murdered, the body then passed off to someone else who thinks they accidentally killed him, and then passed off to another person, and so on.  The whole line of presumed murderers are hauled before the Sultan who seems delighted by the odd tale and says, "Who has ever heard a story so strange?"  One of the presumed murderers is innocent of knowledge of rhetorical questions and tells a strange tale. The Sultan does not think it more wonderful than the tale of the humpback and condemns them all to die.  Then they each take a stab at telling a more wonderful tale.  The barber in the final portion of the tale brings Sancho Panza to mind so tangibly that it suggests Cervantes was familiar with the story.  The story ends far more happily than I ever could have imagined the story ending, save for the fact that the people who initially forced food down the humpback's throat never receive their comeuppance. 

In that story, we get a taste of some of the cultural differences.  Jews, Christians, and Muslims all appear within the tale.  There is also this culture of criminal justice that seems, at once, horrible and effective.  For example, thieves who are caught get their right hands cut off.  This, essentially, dooms them to be social outcasts in the extreme (in essence, they will be universally shunned, most likely to the point of one form of death or another).  Which is good if you want a crime-free society, bad if there is ever occasion for someone to be wrongfully accused or misunderstood.  And guess what!

"Nur-Ed-Din and Enis-El-Jelis" was, for me, the weakest offering in the collection thus far.  The only point of interest for me was the secret lair which reminded me very much of the garden of Hassan-i Sabbah.  Other than that I am not sure why Dr. Eliot included this piece.

You may be familiar with "Es-Sindibad of the Sea" in other incarnations more commonly known as Sinbad the Sailor.  Like so many classics that have suffered multiple reinterpretations for popular general consumption, I found it to be both familiar and alien.  This is not a cutesy Popeye cartoon.  I like how the fantastical is presented in such a matter of fact manner in all of these stories.  I also like how the fantastical is not mere brain candy but pushes the narrative forward.  I was taken aback at the appearance of the cyclops story from The Odyssey.  It isn't exact, but it is very close to the same story, although the racial undertones may be problematic to modern Western eyes.

I audibly gasped when Sindibad is dropped into the pit with his dead wife, and specifically at how he sustains his life in the pit.  I think one of the compelling elements of 1,001 Nights is that it presents a world both whimsical and dark, often mingled in the same moments.  I am a little surprised that this book is not more widely read in our time as we seem to love being attracted and repulsed at the same time.

In the next section, I have two more stories I've never heard of and two I have.  Of the two I have heard of, if they resemble the versions I grew up knowing, the first deals with a door that requires a secret word to open, the second deals with a magic lamp.

More soon.

Paul Mathers on Plague Doctors

Chrimbus Wish List P.S.

I have two additional items to add to my wish list as I've just discovered the Oxford Classics website.  The first is the major works of St. Anselm, he who satisfactorily proved the existence of God to the point where it even stumbled Bertrand Russell for a bit, many centuries later.

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/HistoryofChristianity/Medieval/?view=usa&ci=9780199540082

The second comes from the realization that I will most likely be hitting Dante's Divine Comedy around the top of next year if my current progress in my reading project continues at this pace.  I will need a copy of The Divine Comedy and this seems to be the one to get.  The translation fits my criteria and there seem to be valuable notes involved.

http://www.amazon.com/Divine-Comedy-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199535647/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350784030&sr=1-1&keywords=Dante+Oxford+Classics

And I promised myself I would stop there so I wouldn't get grabby.  Although I will add that you could pretty much throw darts at the Oxford University Press catalog and find something I would adore.  It occurs to me that I'm like that with most book catalogs.

Chrimbus Wish List for 2012

I thought I might post a Christmas wish list as "shopping season" is around the corner and "avoiding the crowds shopping season" is upon us.

My first entry is one that I meant to purchase for myself as soon as it was released, but its release date coincided with, as coincidence would have it, a tight belt moment, so I still do not own it.  It is a book in which Tim Gunn talks about common items in one's wardrobe and illuminates the history of the garment.

http://www.amazon.com/Tim-Gunns-Fashion-Bible-Fascinating/dp/1451643853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350754180&sr=1-1&keywords=tim+gunn%27s+fashion+bible

I should very much like to read the autobiography of my favorite president.

http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Theodore-Roosevelt/dp/146105656X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350754216&sr=1-3&keywords=Theodore+Roosevelt

I would like to have this specific edition of Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh:

http://www.amazon.com/Brideshead-Revisited-Everymans-Library-Evelyn/dp/0679423001/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350754481&sr=1-1&keywords=brideshead+revisited+Everyman%27s

And, I know I've mentioned this before, but I still would very much like to own a copy of Robert Burton's treatise on the humors.  No home would be complete without it:

http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Melancholy-Review-Books-Classics/dp/0940322668/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350757190&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Anatomy+of+Melancholy+%28New+York+Review+Books+Classics%29

As for non-book items, clothing is always welcome.  I could use slacks, a few more dress shirts, always sweaters (I could stand to have a few more cardigans), and sports coats.  I run around the off-the-rack designation of Large at this point for upper body wear and pants are around a 34-36 inch waist with around a 30-31 inch leg.  Also, of course, elegant and traditional ties are always blissfully well received.  You might look here: http://www.thetiebar.com/ and on that note, for stocking stuffers, I am in desparate need of tie tacks.  I only have one and it is both falling apart and only goes with blue.  Also, speaking of stockings, socks are also always welcome, preferably in argyle.  I am also in need of mid-dress black dress shoes.  I have a pair that are a little too dressy for everyday use and my other black shoes are on the wrong side of manky after years of wear.  I wear a size 10 in US sizes (and may I say, why can't the world get along at least enough to have universal shoe sizes?  Are we really that dreadful of a species?  We will never get to Gene Roddenberry utopianism while we still have to refer to esoteric charts every time we want a European shoe!)

For food items, we could stand to have some better teaware:

http://www.teavana.com/tea-products/teapots-teapot-sets/most-popular-teapots?cm_sp=TeaProd-_-Teapots-_-PopularTeapots

Otherwise, there is always the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild, the more tasteful sections of Design Toscano, and the Ancient Sculpture Gallery (my house is still inexplicably without a bust of Socrates).

So, there you go.  A few suggestions for those inclined to shower me with their largesse. 

Paul Mathers on Dressing Like a Grown-up

Let's All Write a Cento!

The cento comes from the Latin word for "patchwork."  As you may well guess from this bit of trivia, the cento is a poetic form in which a poem is assembled entirely from lines from other poems.  You may think that sounds easy, like you don't actually have to write anything at all.  Boy oh boy, would you be wrong!

I found the cento be a painstaking process, albeit also a highly rewarding one.

Here, as an example of the form, is a humorous cento from Groucho Marx.

Groucho Marx - Poem From The Play "Animal Crackers"

Powered by mp3skull.com

The inspiration from the one I've written here came from, well, Laurie actually.  I was explaining the form to her and explaining how Mr. Padgett tells, in our text, of a cento that was written about the life of Christ but was written entirely from lines from Homer who lived 900 years before Christ.  Laurie suggested what I ended up composing below which is a poem about Christ composed entirely of lines from the Psalms.  The words are entirely David's, assembled by me with a few adjustments to punctuation (and capitalization) where I deemed appropriate for my purposes.  I used the Geneva Bible, which is the one I mainly use for my at home study (partly because I find it to be one of the more beautiful translations, but mainly because of the footnotes!  The footnotes in the Geneva Bible are some of the best I know of.)

“I am like a pelican of the wilderness.

“The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.  Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession. The Lord sware, and will not repent, thou are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.  I have made a covenant with my chosen: I have sworn to David my servant, thy seed will I stablish forever, and set up thy throne from generation to generation.

“Then said I, ‘Lo, I come: for in the roll of the book it is written of me.’

“Thou didst draw me out of the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly.

“He that hath innocent hands, and a pure heart; which hath not lifted up his mind unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully.

“I wept and my soul fasted.”

There shall none evil come unto thee, for He shall give Angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. “And if he come to see me, he speaketh lies.”

The dragon shalt thou tread under feet.

The poor shall eat and be satisfied; they that seek after the Lord, shall praise Him; your heart shall live forever.

“Cruel witnesses did rise up: they asked of me things that I knew not; They that hate me without a cause.

“The kings of the earth band themselves, and the Princes are assembled together against the Lord, against His Christ.

“Mine enemies speak evil of me, saying, ‘When shall He die, and His name perish?’  For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me.

“Yea, my familiar friend, whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up the heel against me.

“I am like water poured out.

“Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.

“They pierced mine hands and my feet.

“They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.”

“He shall cry unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God.  My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’”

“Mine eyes fail, while I wait for my God,

“For they gave me gall in my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

“I am weary of crying: my throat is dry.” He keepth all his bones: not one of them is broken.

“Pour out thine anger. This also shall please the Lord better than a young bullock that hath horns and hoofs.

“Raise me up: so shall I reward them.

“He restoreth my soul. For thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave: neither wilt thou suffer thine holy One to see corruption.

“He brought me also out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon the rock, and ordered my goings.

“The stone which the builders refused, is the head of the corner.”

He shall come down like the rain upon the mown grass, and as the showers that water the earth.

Then shall he judge thy people in righteousness, and thy poor with equity. “I make thine enemies thy footstool.”

His enemies shall lick the dust.

His name shall be forever; His name shall endure as long as the Sun: all nations shall bless Him, and be blessed in Him.

Blessed are all that trust in Him.

I have declared thy truth and thy salvation.

I will declare thy Name unto my brethren.

So be it, even, so be it. Here ends the prayers of David.

1,001 Nights- Part 1

I remember as a boy reading Frankenstein for the first time and marveling at the story within a story with, at some points, other stories told within that one.  I have witnessed the stream and now I see the lake from which it flows.  1,001 Nights contains these great labyrinthine narratives within narratives.  I almost wanted to say that I found it remarkably sophisticated for a book of its vintage, but on second thought, I'm at a loss as to why I persist in tending toward that point of view.  If anything, the ancients, in my experience, at least matched if not exceeded our sophistication.  I repent of my chronocentrism.

They are all extraordinarily well told stories.  The experience is reminding me of the joy I had as a child reading Carl Barks comic books.  They are ripping yarns and I haven't even hit any of the ones I had heard of before (save, of course, for Scheherazade herself).  It is the sort of thing I imagine reading, devouring, and loving as a young man (in spite of, or perhaps more honestly because of the more prurient bits.  The Harvard Classics translation is hilariously modest in those bits.  "...and immediately a black slave came to her, and embraced her; she doing the like.  So also did the other slaves and the women; and all of them continued revelling together until the close of the day."  Sort of the translation equivalent of being invited to your first college party and bringing cake and paper hats.  Which, if I understand the Lane translation correctly, is precisely what he had in mind.  And so we are left to have fun filling in the blanks for ourselves... or getting a better translation I suppose, although the Harvard has specific pieces represented from the much larger work.  And, frankly, I didn't feel up to finding a better translation and then recreating Dr. Eliot's selection in my own reading.  I thought about going with the Lyons translation which comes highly recommended and the slipcased edition looks fabulous!  I'm afraid I don't have that kind of disposable spondulicks).

Why is this book included in this series?  Along with the aforementioned masterful story structures, it is a book that largely painted the West's image of the Middle East for the previous three centuries, which is not to mention the extreme cultural importance of this book in its own region of origin.  Put simply, as far as books of cultural significance go, this is one of the top in world history.

In short, I am enjoying it a great deal.  There is no chore in reading this piece whatsoever.  I am also learning a great deal, partly in what it has contributed to the culture, and partly as an architect paying a visit to a great cathedral.

So far I have made it through The Merchant and the Jinni, The Fisherman, The Porter and The Ladies of Baghdad, and am in the story of the Humpback (which reads like a Tom Waits song.)  I will deal more on the matter of the tales in my next post.  For now, here is Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade:

 More soon.

Paul Mathers Can Write Your Art History Paper!

But he won't.

The Lives of Donne and Herbert

I took the photograph above when I was in London studying theater in 1999.  It is St. Paul's Cathedral.  The whole time in England I felt the hallowed weight of history at every turn, as if the land I had trod in my life until that point was somehow a newer creation.  Which, largely, I suppose it is.

On top of that, I was so often struck by the magnificence around me.  St. Paul was, as it were, the apotheosis of this feeling.  When I walked in for the first time, tears streamed unbidden from my eyes.

In the crypt below were some names that, also, impressed history upon me.  At the time I think I was more impressed to be in the presence of the remains of Arthur Sullivan, but also present were those of John Donne.

This volume of the Harvard Classics rounds out with biographical sketches of two famous Anglicans, both written by Izaak Walton.  Walton was he who wrote The Complete Angler, a fishing book which, along with The Pilgrim's Progress, is one of the most printed books ever, although I am sure the spiritual aspect of this material is a more likely connection in regards to its inclusion in this volume.  Another unlikely connection is that Ralph Vaughan Williams also set works by George Herbert to music.

Walton writes glowingly of both Donne and Herbert.  I would almost say to a fault, but I found it refreshing, in this jaded age, to read such glowing recommendations of men whom one would do well to imitate.

I had previously read some of the poetry of Donne.  I am not sure I've ever read anything penned by George Herbert.  I imagine that they will show up in the volumes of English poetry.

John Donne was, among other things, the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral (which is what lead me to dig out my old photo albums by the light of the scanner for this post).  He reluctantly took holy orders at the urging of King James.  Yeah, let that sink in for a moment.

I think what I found most inspiring was the man's perseverance in the face of grave illnesses, which seemed to compose the larger portion of his life.  More on that in a moment.  I was also struck by the fact that there is no volume of sermons in the entire Harvard Classics series.  At the end of Walton's short biography, the bar was pretty high for George Herbert.  He excelled.

Herbert's mother (a force of nature by herself!) knew John Donne.  George Herbert is described at some length as a highly intelligent man, but also as a strikingly earnest Christian.  He was indefatigable in his duties as a priest.  At one point he wrote to his wife that he did not fear death, but he feared sickness, as sickness would prevent him from performing the Lord's work.  These are my exact sentiments.  I knew at this point that George Herbert and I were going to be great friends.  And his actions backed up his sentiment as he did become quite ill with consumption.  Walton describes Herbert continuing sermons and daily prayers in the chapel by his home well into the late period of his illness, to the point where one day his second had to come up to the pulpit, as Herbert was praying while in the act of dying, and tell Herbert to go lay down, which Herbert would only do after being assured that his second would complete the prayers.

The too solid cares of this world which, to most of us, are such frightening apparitions, were seen by these two men as mere shadow plays in the light of the Real Work.  Their eyes were fixed upon their commission and upon the grace of God.  I dare pray I could have such grace.

When we look to the great cloud of witness, we look for inspiration for the race that we have left to complete.  In spite of my love of previous volumes in this series, this very well may have been the most personally profitable book in the series thus far.  It is to the supreme credit of Mr. Walton (and I fancy he would be delighted to know this) that I will now read Donne and Herbert with great savor for the rest of my days.

Let's All Write a Canzone!

The Canzone is the first form covered in Ron Padgett's book which left me with some questions as to how I would actually write one of the blasted things.  He states that it is a complex form and a musical form.  He says that they often deal with the subjects of beauty, love, philosophy, or metaphysics.  He tells us that Dante wrote La Vita Nuova, a book about his love for Beatrice, in the style (and includes an example).  He concludes by saying:

"To write a canzone these days, you must find a complicated and challenging form that you think is right for answering questions of love, beauty, and why we exist.  Then set the poem to music, and do it in a sweet new style."

None of which really illustrated to me how to write in this style.  Attempts to learn more online only muddied the waters.

So, I decided to write a love song to my wife, cobbling together bits of recurring songs in our marriage, bits of literature, and our life together...  To the tune of 'Lady of Spain!'

Dulcinea, woman of virtue,
I never will desert you.
I'll see to it nothing will hurt you.
My cara mia, mine!

We really got it together, didn't we?
I'd travel through Hell just to be with thee.
I've married my ideal to be with me.
Your kiss spins my head just like wine.

Your hand on my brow gives me fevers.
I've left all behind just to cleave to her.
I pray I may never grieve her,
My Lady from Hawthorne and Vine!



Perhaps not the most complicated form, but three rhymes are harder than two!  I promise to be more serious in the next one.

As a bonus, here's an all banjo band playing 'El Cumbanchero' and 'Lady of Spain':

Paul Mathers on Social Hierarchies

In this week's video, I drone on and on about social hierarchies for your amusement.

The Pilgrim's Progress: Part 2- The Other Part

Did you remember what happens in the second part of The Pilgrim's Progress?  I sure didn't!  I have been trying to analyze why none of Part 2 stuck in my mind from previous readings as it is certainly as good as Part 1.  I would speculate that more happens in Part 2.  But it is sort of "But what would the Pilgrim's Progress look like if you weren't a man?"  I assume this is because it was imagined that men would read the book to their families huddled around a bubbling cauldron of gruel in the bleak midwinter, affording devotional material for all present: the father toiling and laboring for their happiness, the devoted wife who tries to knit with hands acutely calloused from chopping wood, the children nervously scratching their erysipelas.

In this section, two women and some children set out on the same journey that Christian took in Part 1, being the road to the Celestial City and/or the allegory of the Christian's spiritual walk.  Along the way they pick up many other pilgrims in their entourage and meet with a hefty portion of peril.  Part 2 reminded me of C.S. Lewis.  It seemed like the sort of thing that had an influence on his writing.  I am fairly certain that it did as he wrote a modern version early in his career, but I was specifically referring to the successful journey of vulnerables through great danger.  There is a sweetness to this that appeals to my sensibilities greatly. 

I think my favorite passage in Part 2 was Great-Heart's relating of the story of the pilgrimage of Mr. Fearing.  I told Laurie, "I think I've just reached the allegory most like me.  And it is a cautionary tale."  To my great relief, Mr. Fearing makes it!  He makes it just as much as Christian does at the end of Part 1 and, in fact, his journey is quantitatively easier than Christian's.  However, at the end of his journey we are struck by the fact that he spent his entire journey in abject fear. 

One of the honest absences I found in this book (likely not one that Bunyan would have appreciated if pointed out) is God's silence.  God does not appear in the book.  Christ sort of appears as the guy who opens the gate, but that is the extent of divine appearances in the book.  I found this a realistic consideration that I truly wonder if Bunyan intended.  In the achingly archaic linear understanding of time presented in this road metaphor, pilgrims meet with distractions, demons, problematic ideas, temptations, but nowhere do they meet God within the narrative.  Such is life.  Such is faith.  Bunyan is never so crass as to attempt to explain what the man behind the curtain is doing, a useless appendage of theology that gets the bulk of the air time and sullies our understanding of our lives.  Rather, we are held responsible for what we do, how we react, the fruit that we produce.

Bunyan also manages to produce some of the most beautiful and least discouraging death scenes in all of literature.  The end of Mr. Stand-Fast I found, fittingly, transcendent.  The book ends with pages upon pages of rhymed couplets in which Bunyan makes exceedingly Puritan apologies for the book we've just read. 

This is a book that will stick with me for the rest of my life. As well it should.  There is great wisdom and truth in this book but, a increasing rarity in instances of truth, it is also one of the most encouraging books I've ever read.

Paul Mathers on Cthulhu

And here's the link to the Neil Gaiman story:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/I_Cthulhu

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan- Part 1

This is yet another work that is so magnificent in scope that it is difficult to write about in something as flip as a blog entry.  I suppose I could start with the fact that this is one of the most printed books in the history of book printing (at least in its day.  I imagine the "most printed books" list would need to be adjusted for population inflation, advanced printing technology, and so forth).

This will not surprise readers of the book.  It is a helpful and trenchant allegory of the Christian spiritual walk.  It illustrates the pitfalls and victories that await the persevering saint while it encourages and exhorts.

John Bunyan loved allegory and, I daresay, allegory loved John Bunyan.  This is the key exemplification of allegory in Western culture.  Bunyan's characters are named to reveal their character.  Ignorance is ignorant, Talkative is... you get the picture.  I wondered what I would be.  "And the two pilgrims saw a man on a bicycle named Neurotic Overintellectualizer coming around the bend."  I did keep thinking, and far be it from me to criticize Bunyan, that one of the scarier realizations in reading this book is recognizing how I, in my own walk, can shift from character to character.  One likes to identify with the protagonist in this book, but one sees bits of themselves in Mr. Worldly Wiseman or Talkative or even Timorous.  I would imagine that Bunyan would expect one to take this as a warning and a call to mend the ways in which one finds resonations with those damned characters.

It is difficult to imagine a work with this level of earnestness written in our time and I think we are the poorer for it.  I kept thinking of what a glib, silly, and frivolous time in which we live, a time in which dialogue about matters of grave importance are never heard.  It is difficult to imagine a contemporary equivalent of The Pilgrim's Progress in which the author did not feel the need to resort to humor.  This reminds me of my own previous paragraph in which I employed a jokey version of my self in an imagined "lost chapter."  Which, again, is another way in which this book fostered a fervent desire in me to turn my back on this world.

In case you've never read it (in which case your education is missing one of the cornerstones of Western Civilization), it is an account of a man named Christian who realizes that he needs to flee The City of Destruction for reasons that the name might suggest.  His family refuses to go with him, but he must go nonetheless.  He has a terrible burden on his back.  He is shown the way to the Celestial City by Evangelist.  On the way he encounters places like The Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair.  

Part 1 concludes with Christian arriving at the Celestial City.  It is a beautiful passage.  We are happy for Christian and desire to do likewise.  I imagine it's been nearly 15 years since I've read this book and I had no recollection of what happens in Part 2.  I thought it was either an account of Celestial City or it is more people journeying on the same path.  It is the latter, which illustrates the variety of experience on that same path.

As I've mentioned, the impact of this book has been immeasurable.  People have used this as devotional reading for centuries.  People huddled around reading by the light of the fire beneath the cauldron, people reading in salons and castles, people reading in smokey industrial cities, people reading it Starbucks on Kindles.  In reading it, you are brushing material with Lincoln, Melville, Dickens, and a list that will include just about every Western name you can think of from the late 1600s through the dawn of the post-Christian age.

As a side note, Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote an opera from it.  The Pilgrim's Progress starts with Bunyan in prison (which is the clip below), follows the narrative of the book, then returns to Bunyan at the end.  I especially love the austere and British instrumentation.  I would expect nothing less from Vaughan Williams who seems to me perfectly suited to adapt this work into music.

There is a cumulative effect I am finding from this project, especially in some of the more recent offerings.  I often have this sense of the weight of the work, as if I am not worthy to comment on something so timeless and important as, say, The Pilgrim's Progress or Don Quixote as I am beginning to read them.  But then I find that they speak directly to me.  Their greatness does not lie in their inaccessibility, as lower culture might lead you to believe, but because of their universal accessibility.  There is a game within the religion of anti-intellectualism (perhaps the fastest growing faith in my country right now) which seeks to spook people away from greatness by suggesting that the top shelf is too high for their grasp.  They ought to, rather, enjoy the low fruits of television offerings and smut culled from fan fiction and repackaged to give the illusion that you can read it on the bus without people judging you.

I declare war on that sort of thinking and intend to fight it wherever I see it.  I think Bunyan would agree with this exhortation: if you know something is great, pick it up and own it.  Live in it.  Don't let it out of your grasp.

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.