Normally, I don’t read introductions or commentaries on books or poetry that I plan to read, until after I’ve finished the work. I prefer to experience the art from a point of innocence (or perhaps, ignorance is a better word!), forming my own opinions without influence, even if I struggle with my first read through. However, this time I threw all my ideals to the winds and called for help.
In April I’m reading The Faerie Queene with O, Cirtnecce, Jean, Ruth, and Consoled Reader, and considering the length and complexity of this poem, I confess that it was wiser to admit my complete ineptitude and look for someone who was very familiar with this type of poem and era to give me a little boost. Since C.S. Lewis’ expertise was in Medieval and Renaissance literature, I suspected that he would be a good place to start. His book, Spenser’s Images of Life is a compilation of lectures notes, put together by Alastair Fowler, to give students a deeper insight into The Faerie Queene.
“It is difficult to make a dull garden, but old Mr. Wither had succeeded.”
Stella Gibbons writes rather odd books. Cold Comfort Farm, her best known and highly acclaimed novel, follows an orphaned, pert young woman to a mucky, rural farm and observes while she neatens and tidies all the morose, lurking, and deranged occupants into their proper places, finding love in the process. Gibbons has a knack for depicting rather unusual and sometimes bizarre characters, and this flair for the unique has continued in her writing of Nightingale Wood. The introduction to the story labels it as a “fairy tale” and it is, although not along the usual lines one would expect from such a tale. Gibbons’ evil creatures often have angelic faces, and her happily-ever-afters can leave the reader uncertain of reality. In playing with her characters, Gibbons appears to play with society and even the reader himself. Her writing is not easily defined.
This “essay” is set up in point-form with the sub-title, Twenty-seven Propositions About Global Thinking and the Sustainability of Cities. It’s going to be difficult to review, not only because of the structure, but also because Berry is such an original thinker and has so much of value to say. It is almost a shame to leave anything out.
Staged during the Peloponnesian War and a mere two years after the disastrous defeat of Athens during the Sicilian Expedition, Aristophanes wrote Lysistrata ( Λυσιστραταη), meaning “disbander of the army”, as a protest against the waste of both resources and lives caused by the acts of war.
The play begins in the year 411 B.C., the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian War between the city states of Athens and Sparta, and the women of the participating factions are becoming disaffected by the incessant fighting. Lysistrata, a woman of Athens, gathers neighbouring women from the areas of Sparta, Bœotia, Corinth, Peloponnese, etc. in protest of this gratuitous war.
That man to man, the warld o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that.
The more I read of Robert Burns, the more I like his poetry. There must be something about my Scottish heritage that feels an affinity with it. In any case, in spite of its popularity, this was my first introduction to A Man’s A Man For A’ That, and I wasn’t disappointed. Burns challenges the popular premise that a man’s worth lies in his birth or employment or station, instead emphasizing that the measure of a man lies in his character. From the beginning of the poem, the poor man is first presented in a lowly, yet honest manner, but as the poem progresses, Burns gradually elevates him until he has pride of worth and is looking down on the respected gentleman.In fact, Burns actually inverts the class structure and hierarchies of rank, calling the poor honest man a “king”, and the rich “fools” and “knaves”. The qualities of honesty and unrewarded toils of the poor man make him inherently a man of greater character and therefore, worth, compared to the entitlements and indiscretions of the gentry. Burns egalitarian principles shine through with his claim,“that man to man, the warld o’er, / Shall brithers be for a’ that”echoing his radical politics and his sympathy for the French Revolution that was still in progress during the time of his song’s publication in the Glasgow Magazine in 1795. In fact, Burns must have been wary as to how this song would be perceived by his detractors, as he originally chose not to have his name attached to it. Here’s a wonderful reading by David Rintoul (of Doctor Finlay fame) of A Man’s A Man For A’ That:
“You citizens of Cadmus, he must speak home that in the ship’s prow, watches the event and guides the rudder, his eyes not drooped in sleep.”
Produced in 467 B.C. and winning first prize in the City Dionysia drama competition, The Seven Against Thebes is assumed to be the last of a trilogy of plays which dealt with the Oedipus cycle, the other two being called Laius, and Oedipus, both lost, as was the concluding satyr play, The Sphinx. Driven mostly by dialogue, this play requires some background history to add some further insight.
“The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us.”
I read this book for the Classics Club Spin #11. Was it my spin book? No, it was Mockingbirds, Looking Glasses, and Prejudices spin book but I decided to read along with her. Why? Well, her book was much shorter than my Spin book, and I couldn’t imagine getting through God in the Dock in the allotted time frame. Yes, I’m breaking the rules, but it’s on my Classics Club list, AND at least I read something!
The unidentified Time Traveller has built a machine that he believes will transport him through time. After he explains to his dinner guests the concept of his invention, he puts it into practice, returning the next week to regal them with the fantastic details of his adventure.
Having sent himself to 802,701 A.D., he encounters a race called the Eloi, a diminutive race that behaves in the manner of small, wide-eyed children, even though they are of adult growth. They live an uncomplicated life of leisure, simply eating and resting, and having no initiative or curiosity to speak of. Expecting some sort of greatly evolved being living in the future, the Time Traveller experiences disappointment and puzzlement at their almost backward evolution, wondering how their lackadaisical way of life is supported. But the Traveller’s perplexity turns to dread as his machine mysteriously disappears. Pursing the theft using reason and action, he eventually discovers another race, living in the depths of the earth; the Morlocks, hideous, pale, savage, troglodyte-like creatures who are in possession of his time machine. Unlike the Eloi land dwellers, these cavernous people exhibit an industry and an ability to reason, but in a primitive way that is only based on their survival. The Traveller discovers that they are providing the means for the Eloi’s rather vacuous paradisical existence using underground tools and machinery, yet they are also the predators of their parasitical neighbours, catching them for food during the night. Eventually, he concocts a plan to retrieve his machine, his only link with human society, his only means of returning to a civilized world.
Trained as a biologist, Wells developed an interest in Darwinism, and the significance of evolution is apparent in this work. The Eloi and the Morlocks, descendents of the human race, are presented as two species that have evolved on completely different tracks, separated by social oppression and elitism. The Traveller observes:
“Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people —- due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor —- is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land …….. And this same widening gulf — which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich —- will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along line of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour ….”
The Traveller had expected unprecedented progress, but instead found a degeneration on each side, of intelligence, empathy, mercy, discipline, respect, etc., in fact most qualities which make us human.
Wells, a commited socialist, was extrapolating some of the problems faced in his own time, such as the widening gulf between the rich and the poor, and hatred or disdain along the same class lines. But instead of the poor simply being oppressed by the rich, Wells takes it a step further; the rich, in their mindless indulgence, become the prey. Wells intended to communicate not only these innate problems in society but the lack of success of the solutions that communism and utopian socialism offered for the betterment of society. It’s a very bleak picture of the future.
C.S. Lewis loved Wells’ fiction as a boy, but as he matured and his tastes became more discerning, he began to see cracks in their veneer. While he praised Wells for his original thought, and his desire to tackle the bigger questions, he found the works “thin” and “lacking the roughness and density of life.” I’m by no means a Wells expert, but so far I’d agree with that assessment. The book’s plot is entertaining but rather simple, lacking any subtleties or true character development. His characters often work on an elementary level, to illustrate the questions, but without being imbued with a life of their own. The questions themselves, while compelling, are treated quite swiftly, with the narrator often chronicling the issues instead of the reader becoming intimate with the characters and absorbing dilemma through their actions. While the pace might be useful for a movie, it doesn’t really give the reader time to process, so the ideas thump around in our heads a little but there is no true contemplating of them that leads to a greater understanding, or development that leads to possible solutions.
Ruth from A Great Book Study was also reading The Time Machine at the same time as Cirtnecce and I, so I’m including both of their insightful reviews below.
“Beyond all doubt it is best to have made one’s first acquaintance with Spenser in a very large — and, preferably, illustrated — edition of The Faerie Queene, on a wet day, between the ages of twelve and sixteen; and if, even at that age, certain of the names aroused unidentified memories of some still earlier, some almost prehistoric, commerce with a selection of ‘Stories from Spenser’, heard before we could read, so much the better.”
A number of us are going to be reading The Fairie Queene beginning sometime in April and, considering the difficulty of the poem, I decided to do some pre-reading investigation.
Although C.S. Lewis is known for his books on theology, his actual expertise was in Medieval and Renaissance literature. He has a number of essays relating to The Fairie Queene, and when I stumbled on this one, I thought it a perfect beginning.
Lewis writes that the optimal experience with The Faire Queene is created if one reads it between the ages of 10 and 16, with a large illustrated edition and then grow with the work, starting with mere wonder at the story and advancing to a critical appreciation of it, cultivating a relationship with the work that will remain and flourish throughout life. But while advocating this process, Lewis realizes many may come to The Faerie Queene later in life, and he is writing to give guidance to the mature reader with his first experience of this great work.
Una and the Lion (c. 1860) William Bell Scott source Wikimedia Commons
Lewis instructions begin very simply; as the child does, one must begin with The Faerie Queene. Next, even if one does not have a large illustrated edition, one should imagine the book they do have to be a heavy volume that should be read at a table, “a massy, antique story with a blackletter flavour about it — a book for devout, prolonged, and leisurely perusal.” The illustrations would be not only fantastic and beautiful, but also wicked and ugly. While the book is new, it is also old, ancient yet original.
“All this new growth sprouts out of an old, gnarled wood, and, as in very early spring, mists it over in places without concealing it …………. And it is best to begin with a taste for homespun, accepting the cloth of gold when it comes, but by no means depending on it for your pleasure, or you will be disappointed ….”
Lewis reveals that Spenser’s friends wanted him to conform to the Puritan perspective of the time, being only a “servile classicist”, yet his poetry appeared to naturally break out of this mould. After being cautioned by a his friend on touching too closely on papist and medieval themes by his references to “Ladies of the Lake” and “friendly fairies” in his poetry, Spenser remained true to the natural appreciation he harboured for the Middle Ages, and taking “all his renaissance accomplishments with him”, produced The Faerie Queene. In blending the two ages, Spenser in effect “became something between the last of the medieval poets and the first of the romantic medievalists.”
As a child one may have a uncomfortable feeling that one has met many of The Faerie Queene’s characters before, but as a mature reader one has the apprehension to discover the moral allegory within the work. While critics aren’t in agreement as to how much emphasis should be placed on it, it is not necessary to analyze the poet’s exact meaning. Instead we should simply have an impression of regions within the poem that are not always what they seem.
Lewis ends with William Butler Yeat’s quote on Spenser’s House of Busirane, saying that Spenser’s characters are “so visionary, so full of ghostly midnight animation, that one is persuaded tht they had some strange purpose and did truly appear in just that way.”
And so I can now step into Spenser’s world with a little more imagination and expectation. I’ve already been exposed to the world of King Arthur and so I’m looking forward to some more fantastical adventures. And honestly, a few fairies would be very welcome.
This “fickle maid” relates her story, a story of love unrequited, but as she describes her inner conflict, we receive a vision of the maid, no longer young:
“Whereupon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcass of a beauty spent and done;
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven’s fell rage,
Some beauty peept through lattice of sear’d age.”
Crying despondently and wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, the maid tells a respectable man, who is grazing his cattle nearby, of her troubles.
“Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power;
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied
Love to myself, and to no love beside.”
She fell in love with a young man with a silken tongue and enchanting brown curls, who stole her heart in spite of other more questionable qualities.
“His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm
As oft twixt May and April to see,
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.
His rudeness so with his authorized youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.”
She “gave him all my flower,” without being demanding of him like others. She claimed that “mine honour shielded” but she became an “amorous spoil.” Even though she knew of his other women, of his “foul beguiling” and of his illegitimate children, still she is taken in by his false charm. Yet, in spite of this sorrow that is a burden to her heart, she claims that she would be captivated by him all over again.
O, that infected moisture of his eyes,
O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow’d,
O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly,
O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow’d,
O, all that borrow’d motion seeming ow’d,
Would yet again betray the fore-betray’d,
And new pervert a reconciled maid.
Young Woman in a Straw Hat (1901)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
source Wikiart
Popular in medieval and renaissance times, this “complaint poem” is written in rhyme royal (ababbcc), with seven lines per stanza in iambic pentameter, which I just encountered while recently reading The Brubury Tales (in The Feet’s Prologue), a take on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Because this style was unusual for Shakespeare, some critics question his authorship, yet there are parts of the poem that certainly echo of Shakespeare, and coincidentially the first stanza is very close to the first stanza of The Rape of Lucrece.
As for figures of speech, the following are included in the poem: alliteration, anaphora, hyperbole, metaphor, paradox, personification and simile. Could I identify them all on the first read? No, but that means that I’ll have to read The Lover’s Complaint again!
“Zeus Protector, protect us with care, From the subtle sand of the Nile delta Our ship set sail …….”
Originally thought to be the earliest extant Greek tragedy, having been produced in 490 B.C., more recent evidence places it with a trilogy produced in 470 B.C., making it one of Aeschylus’ later plays. More primitive in style than The Persians, and using the archaic practice of having the protagonist as the chorus, it’s possible that Aeschylus kept it unseen for 20 years, but his motivation for this concealment would certainly be inexplicable.
The play begins with the chorus of the fifty daughters of Danaus, having recently landed in Argos after fleeing Egypt, pleading with Zeus for his favour. In Homer’s, The Odyssey (Book IX), Zeus is referred to as the protector of suppliants, and in the maidens’ case, their Egyptian cousins have proposed marriage and, rather than submit, they chose to escape to the land of their ancestors.
“I sing suffering, shrieking, Shrill and sad am weeping, My life is dirges And rich in lamentations, Mine honour weeping …..”
As the maidens hold white olive branches over an altar, their father, Danaus, gives them instructions as to which gods to invoke for help for their protection. He muses that unwilling wives could not possibly be considered pure, and instructs his daughters to allow their behaviour to be guided by modesty.
Pelasgus, King of Argos, arrives with a contingent, and questions the strangers, remarking on their barbaric appearance. Seeing the altar, his puzzlement is apparent as to their knowledge of Argive ways. The maidens reveal that they are of Argive ancestry, descendents of Io who had been seduced by Zeus, transformed into a cow to hide her from his wife Hera who sent a gadfly to torment her, and so she wandered into Egypt. (see Ovid’s Metamorphosis Book I) In spite of the importance of kinship, Pelasgus hesitates, finally deciding to take this crucial question to the people (ah, a democracy!) in spite of the maidens’ pleas for his decision as king.
“You are not suppliants at my own hearth. If the city stains the commonweal, In common let the people work a cure. But I would make no promises until I share with all the citizens.”
However, the question of the fate of these maidens is not so simple. While they have no legal recourse to claim protection from the Argives, as suppliants they are invoking the protection of Zeus, and Pelasgus sympathizes with their plight. But if he grants them shelter, Egypt is likely to declare war and can he justify the blood of his people shed for strangers? His anxiety flows from his speeches.
“Alas! everywhere I’m gripped in strangle holds, And like a swollen river evils flood; Embarked on a sea of doom, uncrossed, abysmal, Nowhere is anchorage. If I leave This debt unpaid, you’ve warned of pollution That shall strike unerringly, but if I stand before these walls, and bring the battle To the very end against Egyptus’ Sons, wouldn’t that become a bitter waste —- “
Pelasgus returns to the city with Danaus to discover the people’s will, but soon Danaus returns with happy tidings: the city has voted to protect the maidens with their lives, if necessary. The suppliants offer prayers in favour of their honoured protectors until ships are spotted in the sea, and an herald of Egypt arrives on shore to bring them home. If they resist, they risk their own blood and decapitation. Thus begins an exchange between the herald and maidens that is a sparring of might and justice. The maidens are not only struggling physically with their captors, but intellectually as well.
King Pelasgus finally arrives to offer support to the women in their resistance, accusing the stranger of insolence and irreverence, yet making it very clear that it is the maidens’ choice and if they don’t wish to go with their Egyptus cousins, he will protect them with all his resources. The play ends with the exit of the Herald, and Pelasgus inviting the maidens into the city, but a threat of war still hangs like a shroud over the Argives. However, the women are satisfied:
“Lord Zeus may he deprive us Of an ill marriage And a bad husband, As Io was released from ill, Protected by a healing hand, Kind might did cure her. — And strength may he assign us. I am content if ill, Is one-third my lot, And justly, with my prayers, Beside the saving arts of god, To follow justice.”
To the maidens, prayers and justice are paramount when considering their freedom.
The Danaides (1903) John William Waterhouse source Wikipedia
While this play certainly appears more archaic than The Persians, on the other hand, it is more intricate due to the moral and political questions that are brought to the surface and wrestled with quite effectively by King Pelasgus. It reminded me a little of Sophocles’ play, Antigone (which I haven’t reviewed yet, but will eventually) where there is a question of mortal or divine right over political or societal right. Does Pelasgus risk war in his kingdom and possibly watch his own people die, all for fifty foreigners with a tenuous connection to the land? Or is there a bigger question: is freedom and human dignity more important than life itself? Are preserving the importance of these ideas something that go beyond our human existence? It’s a powerful question and Aeschylus deals with it quite compellingly.
I quite like the presentation of King Pelagus, not as a powerful, dictatorial king, but as a leader who is truly concerned with what is best for his people. His mental struggle is defined by his desire to make a just decision, not simply a lawful one. Yet he doesn’t freely throw law out the window, and his impassioned agony of choice is very compelling as he resolves to defer to the will of the people. Yet when the Egyptians land, he is strong in his stand for what has been legally decreed, and zealously defends the maidens’ personal decision. His behaviour is parallel with King Theseus in Oedipus at Colonus where he is faced with a problem, struggles with it, yet despite possible negative ramifications, is determined to act in a just manner.
This play was somewhat difficult because of the translation, which in this case is not the translator’s fault, as it is simply in a form that does not translate well into English. Whatever its perceived problems, this play held my rapt attention and has become one of my favourites in my growing list of Greek drama.
