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...

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,

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.

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.

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.

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!

Books that Love Books

Despite the vibes you may pick up on from this blog, I sometimes read books that aren't classics for fun. Recently I devoured two Cornelia Funke books and both were quite delicious! I also reread some Jasper Fforde books. Both have led me to conclude that I just love books that love books. What makes them so special? It's the exuberance, the excitement, the pure joy that comes from books and their willingness to share it with everyone else. (I got that feeling from giving a presentation to my class on 17th century women writers..shh. Don't tell anyone how nerdy I am.) Plus, referencing and alluding to books you know is like an inside joke between you and the author. It adds flavor to the story and T.S. Eliot would agree that it adds depth.

In Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, a story all about the power to read people out of books, books take precedence. The father is a book binder, the daughter loves books, and the crazy aunt has a library for a house. They make so many references to classic children's/YA lit that part of my childhood came rushing back. There's no way you can mention the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson, The Lord of the Rings, and Peter Pan without recalling something fond.

Jasper Fforde is a crazy man with a big library and a pen. His Thursday Next series is a playground for English Majors and book lovers. I don't know how much grammatical theory exists, but they would like this too. The series partially takes place in the "Book World" with "Jurisfiction" as the police force. Not only are major literary characters main characters in the books, but fleeting allusions appear just for the fun of it and the workings of the Book World are full of grammasites, feedback loops, and other quirky inventions. You won't understand all of the allusions, but they don't dampen your love of the books.

Really, allusions to other works are very old hat. I mean, who hasn't got hung up on some Greek work or another old work that doesn't mention the pop culture of the time. The 16th and 17th century are awful at it, really. I recently read Don Quixote, and he spends a chapter rating the Romance novels of the day (which back then were knightly adventures, not Nora Roberts). Satirists and "quick wits" in the 17th century ripped apart others in their works...not unlike rap artists today. Now that I think about it, in the late 1800s, early 1900s, Mark Twain and his generation were pretty brutal too. He was especially hard on James Fenimore Cooper. Not to bore anyone, but I've wrote a paper on The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish (17th century again) and half of her novel is a commentary on modern scientific theory...in which she makes fun of Issac Newton and Robert Hooke. Way to go Margo!

I guess this kind of digressed, but books that reference other books are usually amazing, excepting Twilight, but I suppose there must be an exception to every rule. While we're on digression, what is it called when an author mentions himself and/or the book you are reading? For example, Don Quixote does it, and Chaucer is shameless in promoting himself. Is it some kind of breaking the fourth wall? Does it have a name? Does anyone have more examples? It would be nice to know.

Catch 22

War Novel week, apparently. I read Catch-22 this summer, so it's a little fuzzy in my mind. But all I can say, is that it was absurd as all get out and I absolutely loved it. It was like reading M*A*S*H and Hogan's Heroes and a russian novel all at once. One of my bosses walked by and said that it really made war make sense, didn't it? And the odd thing is, that it does. The absurdity and the pointlessness is clear, all at once. It is a story that shows not tells. It is All Quiet on the Western Front with a wallop of humor. All Quiet has just a dry straight man humor while Catch-22 is like Comedy Central. To counter the humor, the actual war scenes are steeped with a crippling fear. The style is jocular and in soldier's language. The kind of language that accompanies whores in Rome and drunk young men escaping camp. It's coarse and apropos. All of the men are obsessed with avoiding active duty and the upper ranks are obsessed with keeping them there. In the end, among the wreckage of Rome, the main character becomes obsessed with finding Nateley's Whore's Kid sister. Not really a character, but a drive towards something...hope. Something real. A purpose. Hope dies when the most absurd and fun character, the really driving factor in the main character's life deserts and disappears, presumed dead. Hope is resurrected at the end when the protagonist finds out that the character never died, he escaped with careful planning. Seeing the true soul of the protagonist is a must in a war novel. Being able to glimpse the soul of another character changes almost everything.

I'm sorry I cannot say more. But you should read it.

Beowulf

Things Fall Apart

A Death in the Family

Pride and Prejudice

Go Tell It on the Mountain

Waiting for Godot

The Adventures of Augie March

Jane Eyre

Wuthering Heights

The Stranger

Death Comes for the Archbishop

The Canterbury Tales

The Cherry Orchard

The Awakening

Heart of Darkness

The Last of the Mohicans

The Red Badge of Courage

Inferno

Don Quixote

Robinson Crusoe

A Tale of Two Cities

Crime and Punishment

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

An American Tragedy

The Three Musketeers

The Mill on the Floss

Invisible Man

Selected Essays

As I Lay Dying

The Sound and the Fury

Tom Jones

The Great Gatsby

Madame Bovary

The Good Soldier

Faust

Lord of the Flies

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

The Scarlet Letter

Catch 22

A Farewell to Arms

The Iliad

The Odyssey

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Brave New World

A Doll's House

The Portrait of a Lady

The Turn of the Screw

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The Metamorphosis

The Woman Warrior

To Kill a Mockingbird

Babbitt

The Call of the Wild

The Magic Mountain

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Bartleby the Scrivener

Moby Dick

The Crucible

Beloved

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Long Day's Journey into Night

Animal Farm

Doctor Zhivago

The Bell Jar

Selected Tales

Swann's Way

The Crying of Lot 49

All Quiet on the Western Front

Call It Sleep

The Catcher in the Rye

Hamlet

Macbeth

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Romeo and Juliet

Pygmalion

Frankenstein

Ceremony

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Antigone

Oedipus Rex

The Grapes of Wrath

Treasure Island

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Gulliver's Travels

Vanity Fair

Walden

War and Peace

Fathers and Sons

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Candide

Slaughterhouse-Five

The Color Purple

The House of Mirth

Collected Stories(Welty)

Leaves of Grass

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Glass Menagerie

To the Lighthouse

Native Son