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?

C.S. Lewis's Lost Aeneid -- "as when Achilles bound him..."

"in somnis, ecce, ante oculos maestissimus Hector
uisus adesse mihi largosque effundere fletus,
raptatus bigis ut quondam, aterque cruento
puluere perque pedes traiectus lora tumentis. "

"Lo, in a dream great Hector at my bedside stood,
Never before so sorrowful; in grime and blood,
As when Achilles bound him to his car and drew
The corpse, with sinews swollen where the thong pierced through."

(Lewis Translation)

In class we struggled with the last line:

"perque pedes traeiectus lora tumentis"

for some reason the concept was unclear and we really just glossed over it. That the "lora" ("thong") was what bound him to Achilles' chariot makes so much more sense! We seemed to just throw it in to the sentence, like he had pierced feet but not that they were used to tie him to the chariot, they had no real purpose in the sentence.

summer reading

The semester is over! Hopefully I can catch up now with my shelfari goal of a book read per week. Of course, I have summer classes, but I don't think they will get in my way as much as typical summer laziness.

I've finished Crichton's Timeline and really liked it. The intermixing of quantum physics to explain time/space, trials of modernity, and necessity of history were perfect subjects for me. I watched the movie made in 2003 and it was horrible. The film ignored those three aspects of the book, it never touched on the value of history as an understanding of everything we know, a concept that Crichton made explicit throughout the book.

I've started reading C.S. Lewis Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile (edited by A.T. Reyes). Published this year, the editor gathered the remanats of Lewis' attempt to translate the Aeneid and then prefaced it with some wonderful introductions (one by himself and one by the last secretary of Lewis'). The language is so rich and earthy, unlike Dryden's too wispyish and gossamer translation or Fitzgeralds unpoetic and simply lacking prose.

Snakes with Wings and Gold Digging Ants

Herodotus: Snakes with Wings and Gold Digging Ants

This is a small selection from Herodotus histories that I picked up because it had a fun cover and I liked the title.

At times it was somewhat dry, but most of the time it was like reading an ethnogrpahic history. One of the stories I liked the best was of the persian King Cambyses who was crazy. He tries to spy on the Ethiopians and they call his bluff. Then he killed his brother because he had a dream that he would take the thrown away from him but after he has him killed a Magus with the same name as his brother rises up and takes the thrown. Then Cambyses dies when he mounts his horse and gets stabbed in his thigh by his own sword. Afterwards seven Persian leaders gather and storm the Persian citadel and kill the Magus. They then try to decide what the best government is (there is a very Greek like dialogue that follows, Herodotus even admits that the Greeks don't believe the Persians would have had such a discussion -- its too Greek) I really liked the conversation, they are trying to decide between Oligarchy, Democracy, and Monarchy and they each make very good points. Darius wins for monarchy and then they must decide who will be king. Darius wins when his horse is the first to neigh. One of the other leaders (the one who wanted a democracy) said he did not want to rule and he only requested that by pulling his name out of the ring that he and his descendents would never be subject to the king but only to Persian law. According to Herodotus the other six swore to allow this and so it has always been so.

Here are soem quotes from the book I liked:

"If you continue too long in your present course of killing your own countrymen...then beware lest the Persians rise in revolt." (pg. 92) -- Cambyses advisor to him

Cambyses ordered this same advisor killed, his servants thought he may change his mind and instead kept him alive thinking they might get a reward if Cambyses changed his mind. Cambyses did change his mind and when he heard his advisor was still alive he:

"rejoiced to hear it, but the men who saved him would not get off so lightly: he would punish them with death - which he did." (pg. 93)

"Everyone without exception believes his own native cutoms, and the religion he was brought up in, to be the best; and this being so, it is unlikely that anyone but a madman would mock at such things." (pg. 94)

"One can see by this what custom [culture] can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he caled it 'king of it all.'" (pg. 95)

"Men lie when they think to profit by deception, and tell the truth for the same reason - to get something they want, and to be the better trusted for their honesty." (pg. 104)

"What's your hand for - if you don't use it" (pg. 108)

"Take the three forms of government we are considering -democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy - and suppose each o them to be the best of its kind; I maintain that the third is greatly preferable to the other two. One ruler: it is impossible to improve upon that - provided he is the best." (pg. 111) Darius's argument for monarchy

A leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree...

Started reading this, its fun. Perfect for me, since its about medieval archaeology. It has something to do with quantum physics and I think time travel but I'm not too far in so we'll see... I'm interested to see how Crichton explains time travel. The whole "timey-wimey" thing. There are a couple quotes I really liked, especcially being a history major myself:

"The group's bustling sense of their own self-importance quickly got on Chris's nerves, and, like many successful business people, they tended to treat academics as if they were slightly retarded, unable to function in the real world, to play the real games. Or perhaps, he thought, they just found it inexplicable that anyone would choose an occupation that wouldn't make them a millionaire by age twenty-four." (pg. 70)

"One of the men frowned skeptically. 'What are you telling me? England used to own France?'

Marek sighed.

He had a term for people like this: temporal provincials - people who were ignorant of the past, and proud of it.

Temporal provincials were convinced that the present was the only time that mattered and that anything that had occured earlier could be safely ignored....

Yet the truth was that the modern world was invented in the Middle Ages. Everything from the legal system, to nation states, to reliance on technology, to the concept of romantic love had first been established in medieval times. These stockbrokers owed the very notion of a market economy to the Middle Ages. And if they didn't know that, then they didn't know the basic facts of who they were. Where they had come from.

Professor Johnson often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree." (pg.73)

catch up...

School getting in the way again of keeping this journal up, however, I have been reading still which is somewhat of an improvement. In the past couple weeks I’ve finished:

Anya Seton’s Green Darkness

Interesting – I didn’t like it as well as Seton’s Katherine but it was enjoyable. I think Katherine had more historical references… maybe they were equal but I know that I will reread Katherine I don’t think I will reread Green Darkness. However, there was a quote I liked, in the first part when the 20th century Celia is in the hospital and the East Indian guru doctor is talking to his old medical school buddy:

“If you can believe in television, Arthur, you can believe in anything, don’t you think? Invisible pictures, words, vibrations, continually surrounding us, and only made manifest by turning buttons on a properly tuned receiver.”
– Akananda (pg. 97)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

I loved this book. I don’t read a lot of American literature so I was surprised that I liked this, although, it is probably because it is set pre-revolution. Hawthorne’s vocabulary is fabulous and he can be so poetic in his prose, it made me think of the prose version if the Odyssey I read once. He was very Homeric/Virgilic when it came to simile and lyrical lines.

John Tosh’s The Pursuit of History

This was required reading for my historiography class this semester. I liked it, it was a little textbookish at times but I do like how Tosh surveys theory and primarily uses British history for examples. We actually weren’t required to finish it for the class but I thought I should finish the last 50 pages. I guess that must mean I liked it or was getting something out of it. I didn’t feel right about not finishing it, normally I don’t care if I finish a school book if it hasn’t been required (and even sometimes when it has). I’ll try to delve into some of the theory stuff later; I’m trying to figure out where I fit theoretically… I think I’m somewhere in-between some theories or maybe have a theory that hasn’t yet been named.

(Also read Ian Mortimer’s Essay on “What History Isn’t” where he asserts the idea that postmodernism is pretty much dead and a new theory [if theory is really the right word since he almost seems against the usual “line in the sand” attitude of theory])

And I just finished today:

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

Fascinating. I like Capote’s short stories but this was, dare I say? Even better than Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Maybe it is better to say they are equal yet different. What really stood out to me was his ability to describe even the most mundane detail in a captivating way; the color of a car, the layout of a common kitchen, the daily weather.

“the ‘Bible Belt,’ that gospel haunted strip of American territory in which a man must, if only for business reasons, take his religion with the straightest of faces…” --pg. 34

The Tolkien Reader - The Hoard

The Aeneid -- Book II -- "Ilium Was"

Was reading through book two in preparation for my test on Thursday and I came across this passage again:

…gemitu cum talia reddit:

'uenit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus

Dardaniae. fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens

gloria Teucrorum; ferus omnia Iuppiter Argos

transtulit; incensa Danai dominantur in urbe.

…when with a groan he replied:

‘The highest day and inescapable time has come

To the Dardanians. We have been Trojans, Ilium was, and the great

Glory of Troy; fierce Jupiter has transferred all to the

Greeks; burning Greeks hold sway in the city.

(Bk. II.323-327)

There is something about the line:

“We have been Trojans, Ilium was, and the great glory of Troy”

I’m not sure what it is that is so arresting about this line, maybe its the concept of finiteness. That so great a power, a people, can in a moment be wiped away. And yet, they never really died, at least not in thought since they are still remembered and supposedly carried their line into Rome.

The Aeneid -- Book II -- Helen and Aeneas

Have an exam in my upper level Latin class (translating Aeneid) so haven’t had as much time to read/write up blog entries. In this class though I did just go through where Aeneas finds Helen hiding in the sanctuary from both the angry Greeks and angry Trojans who blame her for the war. Its an interesting

passage:

Iamque adeo super unus eram, cum limina Vestae

seruantem et tacitam secreta in sede latentem

Tyndarida aspicio;…

illa sibi infestos euersa ob Pergama Teucros

et Danaum poenam et deserti coniugis iras

praemetuens, Troiae et patriae communis Erinys,

abdideratsese atque aris inuisa sedebat…

occiderit ferro Priamus? Troia arserit igni?

Dardanium totiens sudarit sanguine litus?

non ita.

And now indeed only I survived, when I saw Helen at the threshold of Vestae Serving and silent having hid lurking in the shrine…

She, fearing for herself beforehand the hostile Trojans, on account of destroyed Pergama

and the punishments of the Greeks, and the wrath of her deserted husband,

a common curse of Troy and her homeland,

she hid herself and sat hidden in the shrines…

Must Priam fall by the sword? Must Troy burn by fire?

Must Dardanian shores perspire in blood so many times?

Not thus.

(Aeneid II.567-568,571-574,581-583)

So, I'm thinking... should we pity Helen at this point? Or blame her for the fall of Troy? For the deaths of so many Greeks?

The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England -- a Book by It's Cover

The Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England by Ian Mortimer

Started reading The Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England because it was the chosen group read for the last quarter in one of my group books (historical non-fiction) on Shelfari. I’m trying to catch up so that I can post on the discussion board for the read before its been too long so I’m trying to get it done in a week. So far I’m on schedule at 50 pages a day but now that the school week has started I may fall of the wagon.

Anyways, onto the actual read….

I really like this. I had seen it at book stores and thought it was one of the regurgitated mass market histories that are for the casual historical fiction reader. This is fine, I have nothing against those and think there is definitely a need/market for them but that doesn’t mean I want to read it.

So I’m about a third of the way through and it is like reading an ethnography. By depicting the past in the present Mortimer has struck a very interesting balance between anthropology and history.

"It does not make the facts themselves less true to put them in the present tense rather than the past.”

The White Queen -- a question of history...

About three quarters through The White Queen now. It has gotten better, not in writing, but I do think its more historically bent then I would have at first expected. I liked how Gregory went into the battle events and does bring in the revolving relationships (the import of so many shifts in England and the affects of international relations, like the French alliances and Scotland).

I've just gotten to the part where Elizabeth sets up the fake little prince Richard to go into the tower with her other son Edward V and sends the real Richard to Flanders. As popular as this mth is, I dont think it fits with the fact that Elizabeth sets up the marriage between her daughter Elizabeth and Henry Tudor. Why would she put together a match like that if she KNEW that a male York heir was alive? Unless she didn't care if her son came to the throne, and would rather have him living in obscurity in Flanders, safe from his uncle Richard. But in that case why would she have Elizabeth marry Henry Tudor? Why would she care if there was a York on the throne?

The White Queen -- so far, so so...

I started reading Phillipa Gregory’s The White Queen today. I never really wanted to but I was told that I should start reading more historical fiction, that it could help me with my writing. Normally I stay away from historical fiction; when I read history I read non-fiction, I don’t like wondering which is fact and which fiction… of course some I have found are either engrossing enough or well written enough/obviously well researched to read and enjoy (like Alison Weir’s forays into fiction and Anya Seton’s Katherine).

However, so far The White Queen is palatable. It’s not great, I’m not even sure yet that it is good. I’m about 100 pages in and the writing isn't anything special, very easy to read, and for some reason the dialogue feels off… a little too anachronistic.

However, there are summarizing parts that do include insights into the real history. Gregory does seem to be fairly good at including these needed elements of truth, and keeping the unknowns, the parts that can only be inferred by the historian/writer, to what is obviously her own imagination.

I read somewhere that this wasn’t her best work though so I may read The Other Boleyn Girl after this, since that is her best known. I would like to know if she wrote any non-fiction. I think it said on her bio that she is a trained historian. She does seem to know the events and players of the time fairly well.

The Tolkien Reader -- Ofermod and Beorhtnoth

Since the Medieval conference I went to a couple weeks ago I have been VERY slowly working through J.R.R. Tolkien's The Tolkien Reader. It is a collection of several of his essays and various works like "On Fairy Stories," "Farmer Giles of Ham," and "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil."

The first part is on The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's son, which is a story about the Battle of Maldon in 991 A.D. between the Danes and Beorthtnoth the Duke of Essex. The original poem oddly is telling the story of a defeat, and seems to be particularly noting the fialures of the leader, the over proud, Beorhtnoth.

Tolkien delves in the use of the word "Ofermod" in his short essay that follows his translation. At the conference I went to one of the speakers mentiond this word and its connection to the idea of being "overminded" or as he put it "overproud." I think overmindedness is supposed to lead to pride...

Tolkien notes that "Ofermod" is actually more like "high-spirit" which I think is a little more in line with "overmindedness" than "overproud"

Tolkien seems to be saying that it was this overly excessive concept of a hero -- being a hero even when it was stupid and actually hurt your men -- that was what brought the downfall of so many medieval heroes, like Beorhtnoth. A true hero was one who DID NOT put his men and country at risk for their personal search for glory. A true hero was the underling, the man with no reason to fight other than love for his lord.

Aeneid/Inferno -- Virgil/Dante

Started working on a project I have in one of my Latin classes. Read and did some comparisons between the Aeneid and Dante’s Inferno.

First, I was wondering, Virgil wrote from the future of the past as if it was the future (when Aeneas goes down to the underworld and his father walks him through the future of Rome and his offspring to encourage him to go on with his journey). Dante wrote about the present/past from the present. But doesn’t that even out the tenses? Since, technically, Virgil was writing about the past/ present from the present…

Second, in Virgil, guard dog Cerberus is thrown a drugged cake to not attack Sibyll and Aeneas, but in the Inferno, Virgil throws him mud. Why the difference?

Third, I was thinking, could Dante’s Comedy be seen as a corrective mythology? I need to think about this more, flesh it out.

The Aeneid -- Book VI and VII

Virgil’s The Aeneid
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald

Finished Book VI and began Book VII (both the English translation) today. Its interesting seeing the difference between the first six books compared to the second half. Everything slows. It is instant, almost shockingly sudden. You are taken through this quick paced tour of islands, Carthage, and the underworld and then you just stop and have a nice feast on the beach. Well, you also get Juno’s and Amata’s ravings …

So, this sudden switch, of Aeneas coming up from the underworld, walking through the Ivory gate, and then taking a quick sail to their fated land. I think the author meant to make this like a rebirthing. Aeneas emerges from the underworld, a new man, a king, ready to meet his fate (he had seemed to be wavering… and then he hears from his father’s lips the future of his people, the Romans).

“There are two gates of Sleep, one said to be
Of horn, whereby the true shades pass with ease,
The other all white Ivory agleam
Without a flaw, and yet false dreams are sent
Through this one by the ghosts to the upper world.”
(VI. 1211-1215)

“A blessing on the land
The fates have held in store for me, a blessing
On our true gods of Troy! Here is our home,
Here is our Fatherland. You know, my father
Anchises once foretold this secret token-
Now I remember- of our destiny.
He told me then: ‘My son, when the time comes
That hunger on a strange coast urges you,
When food has failed, to eat your very tables,
Then you may look for home: be mindful of it,
Weary as you are, and turn your hand
To your first building there with moat and mound.’
Here we have felt that hunger, here at last
Adversity awaited us, a limit
Set to our misfortunes.”
(VII. 158-172)

Coming of Age in Samoa: The End

I finished Coming of Age in Samoa today. Like I guessed at earlier I actually did end up liking it more towards the end. Probably the last 4 chapters were the best, the last two being the most interesting, at least to me. Mead finally starts using more stories from the girls she observed (like in her deviants “Girl in Conflict” chapter) and comparative analysis between the society of the Samoans and America (as can be seen in her last two chapters).

It was really interesting to read her comparisons of the societies. Basically, Mead makes it clear that the Samoans lack deep feeling and emotions; and are guided by an idea of moderation (never loving too much – to do that is foolish). Americans on the other hand are mainly emotions and are driven to excel, compared to the Samoans who are encouraged to stay in the middle of the pack.

Mead goes further and asks why American Adolescents have so many more neuroses than Samoan adolescents and she pretty much chalks it up to the more homogenized home life, openness of life, and the lack of choices.

Mead also asks what we could do to change our society to solve these neuroses. Her biggest thing is that:

“the child of the future must have an open mind…. The children must be taught how to think, not what to think…. They must be taught tolerance…”

Coming of Age in Samoa: The Deviant Girl

Coming of Age in Samoa

Read “The Girl in Conflict” Chapter today

This was probably the most interesting chapter to me because Mead used so many examples from the various girls she studied. Plus, it was the most comparative yet of the chapters.

In this chapter Mead discusses the deviant girls in the society. Those who have both deviated “up wards” and “down wards.”

The girls who deviated “up wards” (she never uses that word for them but she does use the opposite for the other side so for the sake of argument I use it here) were those who were more ambitious, tended to be different only in that they grew up in the more western home of the Pastor. They usually wanted to move away from home and work as a nurse or become a pastor’s wife.

The other side of the deviants the “down wards” were seen by their own society as being deviants. Most of these girls were needy of affection and sought it anywhere they could, often becoming sexual deviants. They had bad attitudes, were either liars, thieves, or both. And commonly couldn’t live in a household very long before getting chased out or moving on their own from being made uncomfortable.

Queen Isabella

Queen Isabella
by Alison Weir

I’m in the middle of reading this too… for some reason I have to be juggling ten books at once. I’m not sure its good for me but I think I need the variety to keep me interested. I started this one during Christmas break and I’m going at a snails pace but I am getting through it. Anyways, I’m about a third of the way through and really like it. It’s a time period I’ve danced around for some time.

I think the most interesting bits are the interweaving of Scottish history with English since this was when Robert the Bruce was tormenting England. Only, instead of the usual Scottish view of the times it’s the British perspective.

Another bit I’ve found fascinating is how horrible Edward II was as a king and how the parliament had to take charge and at times take away a lot of his responsibility and power. Its an interesting example of British Constitutional history…

Coming of Age in Samoa : Beware the Anger of a Sister

So I was just reading a chapter in Coming of Age and there was a line I really liked. In the chapter on how Samoans approach the concept of personalities Mead mentions how when something bad hapens they look to the attitudes of a person's relatives.

"Anger in the heart of a relative, especially in that of a sister, is most potent in producing evil"

interesting... why a sister? How did that idea start that of all the women that could cause someone to fall ill it would be the sister whose anger could cause this?

addendum..

so I totally forgot to include in my "catch up" list that I read a collection of Truman Capote's short stories over Christmas break. Included in it was Breafast at Tiffanys which is the real reason I picked it up since I love the movie. Although the sotry is different I still like them both, for different reasons. Kind of like how A Clockwork Orange is when you eliminate the last chapter; the story is still good but different, although it takes on a different meaning it doesnt make it bad... Anyways, I really liked it. Holly Go lightly is just a touch crazier and slightly less endearing, or maybe more so because she is that more real. I also liked the other three stories in the collection. I really liked one about a girl from a Caribbean island who marries someone she loves thinking her life is going to be better and life doesnt go quite as she planned... I want to read his thriller now In Cold Blood but I have a long list of books to read so who knows when I'll get to it.

Coming of Age in Samoa

Coming of Age in Samoa
by Margaret Mead

I’m reading this for one of my anthropology classes. So far I’m only through the first few chapters but I guess I like it. For being one of the most beloved anthropological ethnographies it’s not as engrossing as I thought it would be. To have captured so much attention and to be considered a classic it seems rather… I don’t know if mechanical is the word… maybe dry is a better word. When she actually uses stories and anecdotes it is much more interesting. I remember reading Chagnon’s ethnography on the Yanomamo and it was much more enjoyable. He was constantly using the actions of the subjects to speak for themselves and not generally glossing over.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

I can’t believe I’ve never read these before! I loved them. I guess I thought they would be typical Victorian children literature but they were so wonderfully insane and verbally twisty turny. Like the whole episode between Alice, the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon in the first book:

“…He taught us drawling, stretching, and fainting in coils.”
“What was that like?” asked Alice.
“Well I can’t show it to you myself,” the Mock Turtle said: “I’m too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.”
“Hadn’t time,” said the Gryphon, “I went to the classical master though. He was an old crab, he was. “
“I never went to him,” the Mock Turtle said with a sigh. “He taught laughing and grief, they used to say.”

Or the beautiful homage to Anglo Saxon Poetry found in Through the Looking Glass:

Jaberwocky
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

oh yeah... I have a reading journal dont I...

So between summer trips back west and summer classes (and then fall classes) for some reason it’s been easy to forget about keeping this journal up even though I have at least been able to keep up my reading (as always, not as much as I like but at least still reading)…

So here is a quick rundown to get back up to date:

Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
Didn’t really like at all. Even with the understanding of it being a novella it just didn’t develop the characters well enough for me. I know it is supposed to be a feminist classic but I don’t know that I would ever say it was classic. I think the shock of it at the time has garnered it more respect… a classic just because it was the first? Or something like that. I also don’t think it’s a good example of feminist writing either, the main character was weak and after awakening to herself decides to die rather than live a more enlightened life?

Joy Adamson’s Born Free
I love this story. I’ve always love the old 1964 film and decided to read the book. While the movie obviously romanticized the story (when do they not?) I still enjoy both stories.

G.K. Chesterton’s The Man who was Thursday
This was so good I don’t know why I hadn’t read it already. I had been told by a friend several years ago to read this and of course I never got to it till last summer and could not put it down. It’s a marvelous mix of thriller, suspense, philosophy, allegory, political/social commentary, and comedic insanity. A must read for anyone.

John Kelly’s The Great Mortality
A non-fiction history on the 14th century bubonic plague epidemic. I think Kelly intertwined the various theatres of the plague, the long stretch of time, possible causes/theories, etc… quite well. Considering how disjointed such an attempt could have become I think it read very well and I (somewhat morbidly considering the subject matter?) enjoyed the work.

George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind
I liked, although not as much as MacDonald’s “The Princess and the Goblin,” which I love. Still it was good, short, easy read, and was fantastical. Sometimes, I admit, the overly sweet nature of the boy annoyed me, but that may just be my cynicism. I did like that the world acknowledged that his sweetness was NOT normal. I wasn’t as if MacDonald was saying this was the average Victorian child, rather he was saying this WAS a special child that should be noted for his uniqueness. I may need to read it again to really appreciate it, but on first read it was good although different…

Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange
What a huge difference from the last book! I loved this book. It was somewhat sickening at first but so good that you could overlook the more distasteful scenes. And once into the middle section of the book this reflex of disgust becomes a part of the work itself. The brilliant Droog language Burgess uses is also rather easy to follow even though it should be foreign, and it creates, like Tolkien did for middle earth, a world one can step into. It was mentioned in the preface written by Burgess that the original American published Clockwork Orange was missing its last chapter which I think after reading the book was a gross disfavor to the American public and eventually the world since that is the edition that Kubrick used when making the film. I think that last chapter fits the story much better.

Dorothy L Sayers Whose Body, Gaudy Night, and Busman’s Honeymoon
I love Sayer’s mystery works. I first read “Have his Carcass” when I was 12 and can always reread the well written mysteries with witty banter and psychological aspects.

Dorothy L Sayer’s Are Women Human?
Sayer’s two essays on women’s position in society and feminism in the modern world. I like her approach, she is a classical feminist and not rabid about it all… much more focused on equality than trying to get back pay for years of discrimination and ill treatment.

P.G. Wodehouse’s The World of Jeeves
A fabulous collection of Jeeves and Bertie stories that are so witty and clever I can’t even think of a good way of describing them. Wodehouse is a must read.