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)