Dear Madeline L'Engle,
Seven pages into Circle of Quiet, I found a resounding need to write a letter back to you. Several days later, I found out that you had died about 6 years beforehand. But I still need to write you this. In your Journal was revelation after revelation for me personally. Most of the time, you affirmed what I already knew, but made me less alone for believing or knowing it. I'm disappointed that I didn't read you earlier, but also grateful that I read you when I did. I read you at the end of my first semester of senior year in which I also took classes on CS Lewis and Creative Nonfiction. In the middle of this period of transition, Lewis and Tolkien had been chatting about truth in myth and writing essays about myself and hearing other people's stories were beginning to give me insight things. And then you came along, had a good long chat with me, and connected the two ideas.
About 30 pages into Circle of Quiet, I began to connect the Madeline I was reading with the Madeline that wrote all of those wonderful books from my childhood. They were adventure and soul-inducing, and they made me realize that you could be smart or creative or different or even Christian and it would still be all right. You (and my parents) gave me permission to be myself and to seek intelligence, because knowing about Tesseracts and theories of time travel is just alright. You are the only author I have the need to thank. So thank you. Thank you for my childhood and for my burgeoning adulthood. Also, I wish you were alive because I believe that you would be rather nice person to have a talk with. However, I also believe that someday I will have the chance. Thank you very much,
Melora
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Why poetry should be loved
My best friend has me thinking about poetry: why it's there, what it's good for, why we go through 50,000 complicated ways to express ourselves, who's job it is to interpret it, and how poetry gets misrepresented in the high school setting. My best friend Moniker, as I like to call her, doesn't like poetry much. Actually, she rather likes poetry, but gets frustrated and discouraged from reading a poem. A lot of this frustration she learned in high school. In high school in literature and poetry, it's vital to expose the students to literature which might be above their level of understanding (how else will they be challenged?) and tell them what it means because you don't have all quarter to figure out what it means naturally. This crevice between "what they tell me it means" and "what I understand of it" is where my dear friend Moniker is stuck. She also doesn't write poetry because poetry forms were foisted upon her and they didn't click with her at all. So she got frustrated and stopped. The thing is, she's not the only one who has this story. This is heartbreaking to me. I know that I sometimes form weird attachments and think too hard about things, but this is heartbreaking. Education shouldn't make people frustrated or afraid of education. It should broaden horizons. I feel like everyone leaving high school, even if they didn't enjoy everything they read, should be able to enjoy novels and poetry and short story. Along with being taught poetry forms, they should be taught that forms are there to provide a richer experience. Actually, that's what most "boring stuff" in literature is. When I understand the rules of grammar, when I understand how a metaphor works, when I understand narrative structure, when I understand poetry forms, it should not only better my philosophical, historical, and literary understanding, but enrich my experience with literature overall.
For example, if I listen to Les Miserables the musical, there is a distinct possibility that I will cry. I think the story of redemption is beautifully told through song, and sometimes Eponine's whiny mezzo can break through my heart. However, if I read the abridged version of the book, I will understand the deeper connections between the characters and the full consequence of the sacrifices that the dying made and see the nobility of a striving France. Then, when I listen again to Les Mis, I will mourn all the more because the characters are closer to my heart. However, if I read the unabridged version, and see fully the connection to the cosmos and to God, and mostly read the 100 page description of the sewer system and the 100 pages on the history of France, then I will see clearly. I will see the deep, beautiful characters and the deals they have made with God and the stars. I will see the staggering love of Jean Valjean, and the beauty of France's revolts. Then, when I listen to Les Mis, I will bawl like a baby. Every layer of knowledge only deepens my understanding and experience. Yes, I am fed in an educative sort of way. Now I know about French Literature, and the history of France, and the literary devices, and the Parisian sewer system (actually kind of interesting in a macro sense), but even more importantly I understand grace, redemption, and sacrifice so much more.
This is the purpose of poetry. The forms and the devices and the words are there to make it memorable, to add layers and levels of meaning and understanding from historical to the personal. But when you strip a poem down, they are just little fragments of soul that have bared themselves to the world in a desperate attempt to be truly loved. So they clothe themselves in words to make themselves more meaningful. Because no one will like "there was this one time that I missed my gf Lenore and it haunted me and I was sad but also desperate and a little bipolar," but they will read The Raven.
See? I've set aside my soapbox. If I am wrong, then I am, well, misdirected. But I come from a good place. Though if I had taken the Poetry Theory class and maybe some education courses then I would be more accurate.
For example, if I listen to Les Miserables the musical, there is a distinct possibility that I will cry. I think the story of redemption is beautifully told through song, and sometimes Eponine's whiny mezzo can break through my heart. However, if I read the abridged version of the book, I will understand the deeper connections between the characters and the full consequence of the sacrifices that the dying made and see the nobility of a striving France. Then, when I listen again to Les Mis, I will mourn all the more because the characters are closer to my heart. However, if I read the unabridged version, and see fully the connection to the cosmos and to God, and mostly read the 100 page description of the sewer system and the 100 pages on the history of France, then I will see clearly. I will see the deep, beautiful characters and the deals they have made with God and the stars. I will see the staggering love of Jean Valjean, and the beauty of France's revolts. Then, when I listen to Les Mis, I will bawl like a baby. Every layer of knowledge only deepens my understanding and experience. Yes, I am fed in an educative sort of way. Now I know about French Literature, and the history of France, and the literary devices, and the Parisian sewer system (actually kind of interesting in a macro sense), but even more importantly I understand grace, redemption, and sacrifice so much more.
This is the purpose of poetry. The forms and the devices and the words are there to make it memorable, to add layers and levels of meaning and understanding from historical to the personal. But when you strip a poem down, they are just little fragments of soul that have bared themselves to the world in a desperate attempt to be truly loved. So they clothe themselves in words to make themselves more meaningful. Because no one will like "there was this one time that I missed my gf Lenore and it haunted me and I was sad but also desperate and a little bipolar," but they will read The Raven.
See? I've set aside my soapbox. If I am wrong, then I am, well, misdirected. But I come from a good place. Though if I had taken the Poetry Theory class and maybe some education courses then I would be more accurate.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Critical Mass
I have just noticed that my bookshelf which I bought at the beginning of the semester is beginning to show wear and tear. It's not very noticeable, but I can see the gentle bend of the top shelf as it ruggedly supports most of my Norton Anthologies and the stack of books that I like to call my Fairly Hefty Books That I Would Love To Have Time To Read stack. In the stack is Walden, a biography of Shakespeare, and travel stories from France, all travels to worlds far away from my dorm room. Though I've graduated from the cinder block, it sometimes still resembles a prison: there is always too much regulated furniture for the cramped space in the room and real life looks so good from behind the iron bars of Homework, Reading, and Papers. It's my own fault. I enthusiastically overbooked my semester with challenging classes, and even now would be pressed to give up even one. But about a month and a half ago, only a third of the way through the semester, I had to give up "fun" reading, a promise which I have mostly kept.
Still, the required reading is fun. I'm one of those nerds to the soul who covet learning and relish the thought connection from idea to idea. Happenstance has taught me many things, forcing my learning to bridge from class to class, uniting the evolution of technology with Emerson and quantum theory to creative writing. This semester I've read C.S. Lewis and Michael Crichton side by side with Edgar Allan Poe and Anne Lamott. Let no one ever say that the life of an English major is dull; we dwell in the realm of ideas and take dips in the lake of practical application. Really, this semester I've started realizing how crazy we are. We come to the field because we are in love with the beauty of words and the feel of a good books, and then we learn to do all sorts of things to it, to analyze, to inspect, to root out the beauty. We teach ourselves (willfully) to masculanize the feminine and try our hardest (as John Crowe Ransom did) to make ourselves a science out of words. But words are slippery, evasive things, and they make our science softer than down. Not that there is an evil in the scientific impulse. The best is a healthy combination.
I don't do too much with scrapbook paper. I am not the sort to take pictures and think of cute sayings to label them with. In fact, I admire those who do. But every time I walk into the paper aisle at a craft store, I want to go crazy and buy all of the colors and patters that line the shelves. They are potential, and that is the beauty in words. The fact is that I would suck at making great art of the manipulation of paper. I could do a few things, but they would be simple things strung together prosaically. And it would be good, a beautiful sentiment indeed. But someone else could come along and smash together two patterns that I would have never dreamed of together and call it better than good. The same sentiment I would try to express, portrayed majestically. This is the art and science of words.
Still, the required reading is fun. I'm one of those nerds to the soul who covet learning and relish the thought connection from idea to idea. Happenstance has taught me many things, forcing my learning to bridge from class to class, uniting the evolution of technology with Emerson and quantum theory to creative writing. This semester I've read C.S. Lewis and Michael Crichton side by side with Edgar Allan Poe and Anne Lamott. Let no one ever say that the life of an English major is dull; we dwell in the realm of ideas and take dips in the lake of practical application. Really, this semester I've started realizing how crazy we are. We come to the field because we are in love with the beauty of words and the feel of a good books, and then we learn to do all sorts of things to it, to analyze, to inspect, to root out the beauty. We teach ourselves (willfully) to masculanize the feminine and try our hardest (as John Crowe Ransom did) to make ourselves a science out of words. But words are slippery, evasive things, and they make our science softer than down. Not that there is an evil in the scientific impulse. The best is a healthy combination.
I don't do too much with scrapbook paper. I am not the sort to take pictures and think of cute sayings to label them with. In fact, I admire those who do. But every time I walk into the paper aisle at a craft store, I want to go crazy and buy all of the colors and patters that line the shelves. They are potential, and that is the beauty in words. The fact is that I would suck at making great art of the manipulation of paper. I could do a few things, but they would be simple things strung together prosaically. And it would be good, a beautiful sentiment indeed. But someone else could come along and smash together two patterns that I would have never dreamed of together and call it better than good. The same sentiment I would try to express, portrayed majestically. This is the art and science of words.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Deathly Hallow
I have in my life a secret goal. As I pass through life, accumulating experience wrapped up in words, I am entering certain things into a library, which will be ultimately used in a competition. I am searching for the poem, quote, paragraph, or magic spell to memorize and moan weakly on my deathbed. Everyone crowding around my bed (ideally in my bedroom of old, but most likely the white hospital kind) will experience an insurgence of feeling: sorrow at my passing, fulfillment from the beauty of the words, and love at my perfect selection. I aim to make them cry. A few minutes after I faintly chuckle at them all crying and pass beyond, they will remember this post, and laugh. Knowing that my last few minutes will come of a product of memorizing a poem or a paragraph in order to orchestrate the most perfect final moments in an attempt to be dramatic and create a perfect story for my descendants, they will start laughing. My final moments will have been a wonderful and caring joke. In order for these last moments to happen correctly, though, I have to find the perfect passage and memorize it now. It's kind of a wonderful journey, to keep death in mind. What will symbolize me in 5 or 85 years? What means the most? So far, I have a few candidates.
One I just rediscovered:
"I am going, you see, to the Mountain. You remember how we used to look and long? And all the stories of my gold and amber house, up there against the sky, where we thought we should never really go? The greatest King of all was going to build it for me. If only you could believe it, Sister! No, listen. Do not let grief shut up your ears and harden your heart...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from...my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels lnot like going, but like going back. All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me. Oh, look up once at least before the end and wish me joy. I am going to my lover. Do you not see now - ?"
-Istra/Psyche before the sacrifice, from C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold.
I also considered the quote about going up to the mountain from The Great Divorce, but I figured that this one was much more passionate and said close to the same thing. There's also a great poem I am considering...
One I just rediscovered:
"I am going, you see, to the Mountain. You remember how we used to look and long? And all the stories of my gold and amber house, up there against the sky, where we thought we should never really go? The greatest King of all was going to build it for me. If only you could believe it, Sister! No, listen. Do not let grief shut up your ears and harden your heart...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from...my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels lnot like going, but like going back. All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me. Oh, look up once at least before the end and wish me joy. I am going to my lover. Do you not see now - ?"
-Istra/Psyche before the sacrifice, from C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold.
I also considered the quote about going up to the mountain from The Great Divorce, but I figured that this one was much more passionate and said close to the same thing. There's also a great poem I am considering...
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, no sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.
Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And thought it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as it comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
-A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, John Donne
It would be so cruel. and it would be so delicious. But really, Donne knows what he's doing. Always. Good man, that. To be shorter and close to my roots, my last section, for the moment:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth, Shakespeare.
Ach, Shakespeare. The true love of my life. I suppose this grand scheme all depends on what I'm feeling at the moment. I suppose I might ruin it all and spout out all three at once. That would be like me. But I rest in the comfort that no matter what I say, bitter or refined, the ones standing near me will know me and understand, soaking in the words as a gesture and not as a direct message. Because really, who wouldn't want to quote Shakespeare or C.S.Lewis on their deathbed, simply to attempt a grand final gesture? It would make my...death...other things will make my life.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Thanks, Hauteville House
So, I read Les Miserables about a year and a half ago now and I know that it's a book that won't leave me easily. Well, I was restocking my bookshelf earlier today and found a 3 volume set of Les Mis that my mother picked up for me who knows where. Turns out it's an 1862 edition that, if it were not falling apart, might be worth something. Next time I have 500-1000 dollars floating about, I might get them rebound. For now I'll share the Preface, which I guess is from the editor of the Hauteville House in 1862. Or it may be from Hugo, who know?
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age - the degredation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night - are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this can not be useless.
And people wonder why I'm an english major.
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age - the degredation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night - are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this can not be useless.
And people wonder why I'm an english major.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Rereads
This past week or two has been a flurry of book ordering from amazon and bookthrift.com (highly recommended) because the new semester looms! In addition to normal classes, I will be taking a novel class, which requires about 10 novels at least. While I'm waiting for the new books to roll in, I'm rereading some classics that I didn't need to order. First I read Dracula, and now a partially read Wuthering Heights is staring me down from beside my computer.
I have a love/hate relationship with Dracula. At the same time that the lore is sending chills down my back, I start getting annoyed at all of the sexist comments. Yes, I know it's a Victorian-era book. I also can't stop myself from underlining especially rich sexist comments. Actually, their sexism and insistence on keeping Mina in the dark and shooing her to bed early so the "men" can talk led to the next catastrophic plot point. I suppose the book in part wouldn't exist without Mina's tragedy, but I can't help underlining sentences that insist on men's strength and cunning compared to women's "softness". Though Dracula rebirthed generations of vampire literature and film, I don't think the original is given enough due. The Dracula of the Victorian era could kick every vampire's butt today. Where is the mist, the wolves, and the lunatic eating spiders? At night, Dracula is invincible. And the book points out that it is harder to drive a stake through a chest than Buffy leads me to think. Dracula could control the weather and any dogs or wolves, as well as bats. Also, films like Van Helsing make the heroes of Dracula to be tough vampire hunter sorts. They weren't. I love the fact that the heroes of Dracula are "a few good men" out to protect a good woman and righteousness in general and Van Helsing is just a very clever old doctor. Plus, more victories were won by knowing the train schedules by heart than with knives. A rereading also highlighted the sexual nature of vampirism. The suppressed sexual tension in Dracula is palpable and the men stumbling on Mina's Dracula scene is almost scandalous. Overall, I love the book and can't wait to study it this semester. I'm guessing that Dracula, the Castle of Otranto, and Northanger Abbey will be part of a section on Gothic Horror. I'm excited.
I'm also reading Wuthering Heights again. I never did like this book that much. I'm more of a Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice girl myself. My sister and my mother just love Heathcliff and Catherine. I think they deserve each other, and not in a good way. Now, if only I could fourth the angst and only keep one part, I might like it a bit more. I'm to the part where Heathcliff has just returned from his 3 year hiatus, and the angst is about to get even more insistent. It always surprises me how slow things move in Victorian novels. On one page they skip ahead 3 months and then suddenly they're betrothed at 18. Then they're married at 25....oh well, guess we'll see who's crying now in a couple of chapters.
A thought to chew on: http://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2012/08/03/why-leaders-must-be-readers/
I think it's entirely correct. In other fields it's publish or perish...this is opposite but just as true for those fields. I think my favorite is in the description of the author, who is described as training "thought leaders" if I remember correctly. I like that.
I have a love/hate relationship with Dracula. At the same time that the lore is sending chills down my back, I start getting annoyed at all of the sexist comments. Yes, I know it's a Victorian-era book. I also can't stop myself from underlining especially rich sexist comments. Actually, their sexism and insistence on keeping Mina in the dark and shooing her to bed early so the "men" can talk led to the next catastrophic plot point. I suppose the book in part wouldn't exist without Mina's tragedy, but I can't help underlining sentences that insist on men's strength and cunning compared to women's "softness". Though Dracula rebirthed generations of vampire literature and film, I don't think the original is given enough due. The Dracula of the Victorian era could kick every vampire's butt today. Where is the mist, the wolves, and the lunatic eating spiders? At night, Dracula is invincible. And the book points out that it is harder to drive a stake through a chest than Buffy leads me to think. Dracula could control the weather and any dogs or wolves, as well as bats. Also, films like Van Helsing make the heroes of Dracula to be tough vampire hunter sorts. They weren't. I love the fact that the heroes of Dracula are "a few good men" out to protect a good woman and righteousness in general and Van Helsing is just a very clever old doctor. Plus, more victories were won by knowing the train schedules by heart than with knives. A rereading also highlighted the sexual nature of vampirism. The suppressed sexual tension in Dracula is palpable and the men stumbling on Mina's Dracula scene is almost scandalous. Overall, I love the book and can't wait to study it this semester. I'm guessing that Dracula, the Castle of Otranto, and Northanger Abbey will be part of a section on Gothic Horror. I'm excited.
I'm also reading Wuthering Heights again. I never did like this book that much. I'm more of a Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice girl myself. My sister and my mother just love Heathcliff and Catherine. I think they deserve each other, and not in a good way. Now, if only I could fourth the angst and only keep one part, I might like it a bit more. I'm to the part where Heathcliff has just returned from his 3 year hiatus, and the angst is about to get even more insistent. It always surprises me how slow things move in Victorian novels. On one page they skip ahead 3 months and then suddenly they're betrothed at 18. Then they're married at 25....oh well, guess we'll see who's crying now in a couple of chapters.
A thought to chew on: http://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2012/08/03/why-leaders-must-be-readers/
I think it's entirely correct. In other fields it's publish or perish...this is opposite but just as true for those fields. I think my favorite is in the description of the author, who is described as training "thought leaders" if I remember correctly. I like that.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
France!
Some of you know that I spent last semester in Paris, France. Not only did I acquire an overwhelming love of cafe and pastry and lots of cheesy souvenirs, I also had a little bit of time to read. Let's be honest, most of it was for class. But I also got the chance to see where books were written about and also some books that were written 500-700 years ago. Now, I love Victor Hugo. Don't get me started on Les Miserables or Hunchback of Notre Dame. I read the former a year and a half ago and the latter while in Paris, which was quite amazing. I promise you, Victor Hugo could find the words to describe heaven. After reading Hunchback, I went back to look at the Cathedral and just stared. The book opens so much up. Honestly it's not my favorite Cathedral and was a little disappointing...until I read the book. If anyone has seen the Disney movie, the book is about 10 times darker than even that is and the characters are much more corrupt. At one point I looked up and commented "Frollo just shanked Phoebus in the back while he was trying to rape Esmerelda!" That pretty much sums up the book. But Hugo's description of the Cathedral and Paris is just so majestic, it's hard to not look at it through new eyes.
I haven't read any D-Day lit, but going to Carentan and Normandy for a couple weekends were wonderful and moving. I thought of that line from All Quiet on the Western Front about the screaming of the horses. It is such a beautiful, peaceful countryside and it's hard to imagine such war and terror. Visiting Musee Carnavalet brought back lit memories from every "genteel society" book I have ever read. The Scarlet Pimpernel and the "Rape of the Lock" made me smile while travelling through hundred year old sitting rooms. The Revolution collection there also sparked my interest, seeing as how I love Napoleon and A Tale of Two Cities. I even saw the Rose Line (the real one, not the one in the movie) and our tour guide told us exactly how much Dan Brown was making stuff up. I have not read the book, but through coincidence I have listened to the epilogue about 50 times and know my stuff about the Parisian Meridian!
I also read Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald while over there. (Sidenote: if you're really into ex-pat lit and culture, drop everything you're doing and go watch Midnight in Paris right now.) Wow that book packs a punch. I liked it better than the Great Gatsby actually, but I was never particularly fond of the book in the first place, though the recreation NES game is quite entertaining. While reading the book, I wanted to get drunk in Paris and cheat on someone immediately.
One last facet of European culture: Holocaust accounts. If you haven't read the Diary of Anne Frank, Man's Search for Meaning, or Night, do it now. I also have been meaning to read The Hiding Place (my parents went there). Before you start thinking Germans are a bunch of Really Mean People, the country is quite a lovely friendly place, by the way. But I read Night on a German train on the way to Dachau (curse my inability to sleep on trains). It was heartrending. Not as much as the actual camp though. I think the worst, especially knowing all the history, is a toss-up among the building in the back, the empty foundations, and the ovens. The building in the back was used for solitary confinement. Horrible. The empty foundations exposes row after row after row of bunks that held who knows how many people. I saw the ovens first...and then I saw the gas chamber. It was frightening. It's an experience that you have to experience to really know. For now, read Man's Search for Meaning.
I lied about the almost done thing. Italy is phenomenal; I've seen so many illuminated manuscripts I almost cried for joy; and Bath was Austen paradise. There, now I'm done. Au Revoir!
I haven't read any D-Day lit, but going to Carentan and Normandy for a couple weekends were wonderful and moving. I thought of that line from All Quiet on the Western Front about the screaming of the horses. It is such a beautiful, peaceful countryside and it's hard to imagine such war and terror. Visiting Musee Carnavalet brought back lit memories from every "genteel society" book I have ever read. The Scarlet Pimpernel and the "Rape of the Lock" made me smile while travelling through hundred year old sitting rooms. The Revolution collection there also sparked my interest, seeing as how I love Napoleon and A Tale of Two Cities. I even saw the Rose Line (the real one, not the one in the movie) and our tour guide told us exactly how much Dan Brown was making stuff up. I have not read the book, but through coincidence I have listened to the epilogue about 50 times and know my stuff about the Parisian Meridian!
I also read Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald while over there. (Sidenote: if you're really into ex-pat lit and culture, drop everything you're doing and go watch Midnight in Paris right now.) Wow that book packs a punch. I liked it better than the Great Gatsby actually, but I was never particularly fond of the book in the first place, though the recreation NES game is quite entertaining. While reading the book, I wanted to get drunk in Paris and cheat on someone immediately.
One last facet of European culture: Holocaust accounts. If you haven't read the Diary of Anne Frank, Man's Search for Meaning, or Night, do it now. I also have been meaning to read The Hiding Place (my parents went there). Before you start thinking Germans are a bunch of Really Mean People, the country is quite a lovely friendly place, by the way. But I read Night on a German train on the way to Dachau (curse my inability to sleep on trains). It was heartrending. Not as much as the actual camp though. I think the worst, especially knowing all the history, is a toss-up among the building in the back, the empty foundations, and the ovens. The building in the back was used for solitary confinement. Horrible. The empty foundations exposes row after row after row of bunks that held who knows how many people. I saw the ovens first...and then I saw the gas chamber. It was frightening. It's an experience that you have to experience to really know. For now, read Man's Search for Meaning.
I lied about the almost done thing. Italy is phenomenal; I've seen so many illuminated manuscripts I almost cried for joy; and Bath was Austen paradise. There, now I'm done. Au Revoir!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)