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.