T.S. Eliot's Preludes

I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimneypots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

II

The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades
That times resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed's edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV

His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o'clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Pyrates...

I just finished my three week intense course on pirates so I’ve been reading A LOT about pirates. I never thought I would care much for Latin American history but when pirates are involved… we read a couple of books for the class “Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas 1500-1750” by Kris E Lane and “The Buccaneers of America” by Alexander O. Exquemelin. Pillaging the Empire was a really enjoyable text that synthesized all the different epochs of American Piracy. Exquemelin was a contemporary of the late Buccaneers, so his narrative is very interesting with anecdotes like 70 foot long cayman and Buccaneers who ate the hearts of their victims.

A couple sections I liked:
“Now we called each other nothing but brothers – but then, when we were short of food, if we passed within half a dozen yards were in each other’s way.” (pg.224 –Dover Edition)

“She found it hard to believe he had violent intentions, as it ill became a leader who wielded real power to make such demands on one whose life was in his hands.” (pg. 202)

“Then L’Olonnais being possessed of a devil’s fury, ripped open one of the prisoners with his cutlass, tore the living heart out of his body, gnawed at it, and then hurled it in the face of one of the others, saying, ‘Show me another way, or I will do the same to you.’” (pg. 107)

Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest –
Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest –
Yp ho ho, and a bottle of rum!

The Dante Club -- a pure enjoyment of their scholarship

Just some miscellaneous quotes I like from what I read yesterday:

"... a return to a pure enjoyment of their scholarship." (pg. 185)
^ I'm a victim of this too... I forget, because of school I guess, and the forced knowledge of things like gen-ed requirements, that scholarship is something to be enjoyed.

these next two quotes are interesting perspectives on Dante and the Divina Commedia
"You are not after a Lucifer - that is not the culprit you describe. Lucifer is pure dumbness when Dante finally meets him in frozen Cocytus, sobbing and mute. You see, that is how Dante triumphs over Milton - we long for Lucifer to be astounding and clever so we may defeat him, but Dante makes it more difficult. No. You are after Dante - it is Dante who decides who should be punished and where they go, what torments they suffer. It is the poet who takes those measures, yet by making himself the journeyer, he tries to make us forget: We think he too is another innocent witness to God's work." (pg. 228)

"Dante is the first Christian poet, the first one whose whole system of thought is colored by a purely Christian theology. But the poem comes nearer to us than this. It is the real history of a brother man, of a tempted, purified, and at last triumphant human soul: it teaches the benign ministry of sorrow. His is the first keel that ever ventured into the silent sea of human consciousness to find a new world of poetry. He held heartbreak at bay for tewenty years, and would not let himself die until he had done his task." (ppg. 233)

"Believe that when I am once a man's friend I am always so - nor is it so very hard to bring me to it. And though a man may enjoy himself in being my enemy, he cannot make me his for longer than I wish." (pg. 233)
^ there was just something about this quote that stuck out to me...

The Dante Club -- literature and language on a pedestal

Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club

This is so good! I was not expecting it to be so intelligent. This time period is usually a horribly boring black hole for me but somehow Pearl has made it interesting. Maybe its the pedestal literature and language are placed upon... I want to look up how much is fiction. I'm going to wait until I'm done with the book though so I don't ruin anything for myself. Whatever the reason is though, I like it. Here are a few excerpts I marked:

"[he] had once spent an entire year condicting all his personal and business affairs in Latin.... The living languages, as they were called by the Harvard fellows, were little more than cheap imitations [of Latin], low distortions, Italians, like Spanish and German, particularly represented the loose political passions, bodily appetites, and absent morals of decadent Europe. Dr. Manning had no intention of allowing foreign posions [modern languages] to be spread under the disguise of literature." (pg. 22-23)

^ a little on the extreme but I like the passion for the classics...

"You have a larger duty to the world and to yourself than any mere spectator! I shan't hear a bit of your hesitancy! I wouldn't know what Dante is to save my soul. But a genius the likes of you, my dear friend, assumes a divine responsibility to fight for all those exiled from the world." (pg. 33)

^ a friend corrects Lowell after Lowell begins to doubt the value of his academic career over an industrial career

"The proof of poetry was... that it reduced to the essence of a single line the vague philosophy that floated in all men's minds, so as to render it portable and useful, ready to the hand." (pg. 34)

Tennyson's Ulysses

Tennyson's Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Lord of the Flies -- heart of darkness

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

I did not think I would enjoy this book as much as I did. I wonder if I would have though if I hadn’t seen so many connections between it and the television show LOST. I think I still would have… its hard to know without being able to alter time and make it so that I read the book first…

I loved the entire concept, what happens to people when the governing rules of society are removed? When no one can tell them what to do? When they have no repercussions… no punishments, no lords or masters? Although the boys began by implementing rules and order, choosing a chief, creating assemblies, they fell away from it, allowed themselves to be swayed by their inner demons. It reminded me of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Most of them reverted to an inner deadly, selfish, evil, a heart of darkness. The structure of British rule and order isn’t the natural inclination of man.

Anyways, there are a few excerpts from the book I really liked.

“Ralph turned restlessly in the leaves. Dartmoor was wild and so were the ponies. But the attraction of wildness had gone.” (pg. 164 – 2006, Perigee Edition)

Ralph was beginning to see that the initial freedom of wildness and savagery that he and the boys had found so “Wacco”, “Wizard”, and “Smashing” on the first day wasn’t as good as civilization. There is a natural evil to wildness.

“He argued unconvincingly that they would let him alone, perhaps even make an outlaw out of him. But then the fatal unreasoning knowledge came to him again. The breaking of the conch and the deaths of Piggy and Simon lay over the island like a vapor. These painted savages would go further and further. Then there was that indefinable connection between himself and Jack; who therefore would never let him alone; never.” (pg. 184 – 2006, Perigee Edition)

I’m still unsure of this passage which is why I’ve noted it. Mainly the connection between him and Jack. Is it that because they were like brothers at first and then became enemies over power that they have a connection? Is the connection that they were comrades, equals, and so their enmity is more hurtful?

Golding does some interesting things with words too… the boys become “savages” who are then referred to at times as “the others.” I think he must have meant to make an socio-anthropological connection with the mentality of western civilization.

Also, he used the word “ululate” several times in the end when the savage tribe is hunting for Ralph. This is a word I’ve actually only ever seen before in a Latin version of the Aeneid. When translating it from the second book of the Aeneid it was advised that it was a sound made by Middle Eastern women, a wailing crying sound. If used as an onomatopoeia the noise the boys make can be clearly understood. Definitely a sound more “other” than British school boy.

Rebecca -- the feelings of old people

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Just finished reading the classic Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Normally I don’t like reading a book AFTER I’ve seen the movie, this was certainly the exception. Although there wasn’t a lot different it was enjoyable reading. Although, at times the author used the word “questing” too much (the first time I loved, but then it became too common, it lost the luster of a rare word being perfectly used), visual descriptions, language, and concepts were artfully explored.

One section I really liked was when Rebecca visits Maxim’s grandmother with his sister Beatrice.

Maxim’s grandmother suffered her in patience… I knew how she must have looked when she was young, tall and handsome, going round to the stables at Manderley with sugar in her pockets…

I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim’s grandmother, sitting there in her shawl wit her poor blind eyes, what did she feel what was she thinking?…

I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with colour in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses, Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head….

…said Norah in a special voice, bright and cheerful like the Nurse. I wondered if Maxim’s grandmother realized that people spoke to her in this way. I wondered when they had done so for the first time, and if she had noticed then. Perhaps she had said to herself, “They think I’m getting old, how very ridiculous,” and then little by little she had become accustomed to it, and now it was as though they had always done so, it was part of her background. But the young woman with the chestnut hair and the narrow waist who gave sugar to the horses, where was she?