Oo-de-lally!

Robin Hood. If not the greatest Disney movie ever (and it might be), it definitely has the best soundtrack (except for that horrible romantic song sung through Robin and Marian's date). In today's Disney you couldn't imagine a line like, "While bonnie good King Richard leads the great Crusade he's on, we'll all have to slave away for that good for nothin' John...a pox on the phony king of England!" Or one of the best concatinations of words (in a different song): "Reminiscin' this'n that'n havin' such a good time, oodelally, oodelally, golly what a day..." Or when the evil sherriff comes in and takes money from the poor box? Woo, baby! It still gives me goose-bumps when Friar Tuck goes ballistic and shouts, "Get outta my Church!" The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up. The greatest thing about the particular scene above is that it interrupts a horribly cheesy moment between two foxes gazing into each other's eyes...predictably, it's the friar with the save. Near occasion of sin? Dealt with. Right on, friar.

It never gets old...

I think it's pretty amazing that Beatles stuff is still news. Here's a link about a group of photos found in some dude's attic that are now going on display. If you haven't seen the Beatles Anthology--that documentary thing they did a while back--it's totally worth the time.

Shave that 'stache!

This is a response to my sister's post about women shaving themselves in various places. Read that. Warning: ol' sis holds nothing back. Which is why we love her. Below is my response.

Many social conventions are of course non-moral. Some, though non-moral in themselves, are reflections of a broader adherence to a Belief, which may be moral or non-moral. The individual's adherence to conventions may be conscious or unconscious of the beliefs which are their founts. Rejection of a convention is usually conscious. Either way--adherence or rejection--it is a reflection upon that individual for other individuals to read, which they may only do in the context of their own time and place. One is not allowed, however good the reasons, to consider oneself the norm. Thus, to reject a convention is to allow heightened scrutiny and judgment.

Another way to approach this particular issue would be to ask: "Is a woman shaving her pits and legs morally repugnant in itself?" The answer of course is no. The reasons behind it MAY be: vanity, for example, on a vast scale; or financial exploitation, as you suggest; unreasonable expectation, etc. etc. But whatever its origins (and those are important), I think our dad is at least not wrong, if not wholly right in the most literal sense. Bodily hairiness IS generally a masculine trait. For example, if you went bald or grew a mustache or wiry chest hair, you would probably take action--"alter" yourself, as you put it. (As an aside, I would point out that men "alter" themselves as well, historically just as much as women, so you can't make that a sexist thing. 14th century dudes used to wear makeup, for example, and curl their hair. I see almost as many magazines in the rack pumping how a man should look as I do for women. I think they're both mostly ridiculous, of course. But I've got a goatee right now. I am on a diet. I'm trying to develop muscle tone. I don't wear t-shirt-and-jeans every day, like I want to. Etc. You could argue that putting on clothes is "altering" oneself.) Now, both of those traits (baldness and superfluity of body hair), though certainly far from universal, are natural in a man in a way that they aren't for a woman, though it does happen to some women. When it does, we recognize it as unnatural, or at least abnormal, like a hairlip. It's nobody's fault that they have a hairlip, and there's nothing morally wrong with it, but they have reconstructive surgery (more "alteration!") all the same. Obviously this is an extreme example. In many cases, a health issue is involved with a hairlip, I realize. But if a woman grows a mustache, we think DANG, she needs to do something about that mess. Why? Well, because it's not something that is typically female. On another level, there's an entire organization (Locks of Love) that exists to provide real-hair wigs to kids who lose it due to cancer treatment. Another extreme example (and I don't mean to offend with it), but it is a cosmetic charity which exists because we all recognize that this thing is not the norm...and there's that word again.

"But it remains a fact," you might retort, "that all women naturally grow hair on their legs and pits." Very true. I'm not saying that you (or any woman) SHOULD shave those things. I don't like shaving either, though facial hair on a man is more typical (though not all men have got the goods, if you know what I mean).

At this point I'm going to call on ol' Gilbert Keith Chesterton. I can't remember where, but there is a point in Orthodoxy when he says that we do not ornament something that we think is ugly to make it beautiful. We ornament something that we think is already beautiful. Perhaps women shaving stuff is vanity, perhaps it is male domination, or something cliche like that. (Though if I am to listen to Van Morrison, women dress up for each other.) Probably often it is this kind of thing, and I doubt many saints cared much for it. But it could just as easily be a kind of innocent extravagance, a heightening of that which is recognizably and beautifully female as distinct from male--i.e., generally less hair on the body and more on the head. It's trouble, yes, and much more trouble than I know about, which is why I wouldn't ever think worse of a woman for avoiding it. But I also cannot deny that it IS more attractive to me than a hairy leg or armpit, even if a hairy leg is not repulsive to me (it isn't). Culturally conditioned in me it may be, but I can't make myself born in another time and place, and it doesn't seem to me to be a practice grievous enough to change on a massive scale. You say women were shamed into behaving as they do, and that may very well be. My history-of-pit-shaving lore is pretty scanty. But it could just as easily be that women had minds of their own back in the day and said, "Hey! I like that!" when the option was presented to them. And they really might have.

Also...this other thing...

Is it true that you're supposed to change your sheets every week? 'Cuz...some people...don't...change 'em...much...at all...I've heard. I'm doing it now, though. I mean...somebody...who didn't change their sheets for a while...is.

Don't point at the friar, dear.

Tonight I went to Vespers/Eucharistic Adoration at my Church. The celebrant was one of those friars from the Franciscans of the Renewal chaps. Now, I happen to be very fond of St. Francis--and I mean, come on, who isn't?--I even wrote a paper on him once, well before I became Catholic. One of the very few papers I enjoyed writing. So tonight I was kind of excited to see a Franciscan, because I never had seen one before. It was a bit distracting, really. I got there quite early, and as I sat, I kept looking around for a Franciscan--"Is that? Oh, no it's just the deacon...Oh! is that? No, it's just a Knight of Malta...but that? Nope, parish priest. But hey! No! Dang it! Only a skinny guy with a bit of a beard...and of course that other skinny guy quick-stepping around like nature's calling is just the choirmaster, an air of fretty purpose billowing in and fanning from his robes (I say it with affection). Do we even have Franciscans here?" Well, they were there. Friaring around with their grey monk garb and big beards (I liked that). It wasn't a lifechanger or anything, and I don't have much to say about them, but I was glad to see them anyway. I hope God will forgive me if my focus was more than a little skewed. You like to convince yourself that you're not just some stupid slack-jawed show-goer, but sometimes, let's face it, that's exactly what you are. That's probably one reason why hermits can be so cranky when people come calling...might as well show up for a war with a picnic basket. Rubes or dilettantes by turns, all of us. But still, there was a pious thought or two rolling around this head of mine, so my faults were not completely definitive of the experience.

Elroy in the Confessional

Where I work there is a startling variety of people, considering its (small) size--rednecks, semi-reformed gangstas, semi-reformed hippies, Lutherans; ladies' men, mens' ladies, grandmothers, mamas' boys; world-weary types, old musicians, young musicians, and oh, I could go on...black, white, straight, gay. Many a priest of that modern day deity, "Diversity," has sacrificed many a church and school on his master's slab in hopes of founding such a temple, has been confounded when his god is deaf and dumb as wood and stone, and watched his older, better houses crumble to skeletons and dust. It works where I work, precisely because we do not serve this god, and it is not our temple. We're all just trying to make a living, and "diversity" as a thought (let alone an aim) is so peripheral that its lodge in the mind is usually somewhere between apathy and oblivion. Obviously I've thought about it, but I think too much. And even at that, I've exhausted the subject.

I could easily keep a blog on the daily interactions I have with these people, but there are other things. Today, however, I've been thinking about one of our regular customers, whom we jokingly call Elroy, because he looks like a fortysomething Elroy Jetson.

He even wears a baseball cap, though it doesn't have those little "I'm-Jewish-living-in-the-future" embellishments. He doesn't have footied overalls or golden upside-down dinnerplate neckwear, either, but nobody blames him, because they haven't started making those yet.

One day, our Elroy pulled up to the store. He doesn't know we call him Elroy, so we had to stop humming the Jetsons theme when he opened the door. Elroy talks a lot. Prattles, really. My friend once counted the seconds of continuous silence from Elroy when he came in the store, and I think it never got higher than three. But though he talks a lot, I can't remember a thing he's said, except one. On this day, Elroy bought a drink from our soda machine. I went away to get him something he needed, and upon returning, I discovered, much to my annoyance, that he had spilled the sticky stuff all over our floor. It's a hard floor, so the sticky lingers, and he could leave (please do!), but we had to clean it up. Well, he was smiling child-guilty and bumbling out apologies and shifting himself and shifting things, and somewhere in the midst of his ceaseless, pointless verbal activity, I marked the words, "blah blah blah...sorry, but it's okay, though, you know, because everybody makes mistakes...blah blah..." Well, I nearly fell out laughing, but I didn't. Managed to hold it together that time. It sounded like something chanted into him by dear ol' Mom, coming up now as a matter of course, like baby sick: "Ga ga g-blech!" Now wipe me and feed me again. I ain'tcher momma, son. But really! Here's the logic: mistakes are made, therefore is this my mistake okay. Of course, for some mistakes the penalty is imprisonment or death or even eternal perdition. Obviously I'm not putting his mistake on level with those kinds of mistakes...actually, if anyone was doing that, he was...in a way. I just want everyone to know that I understand that spilling a soft drink is not mortal...even if it is most grievous.

But the next day I could not stop thinking about and connecting that ridiculous statement from a truly ridiculous character with myself in Confession. See, it didn't matter to me at all that he was sorry or embarrassed, as far as the mistake was concerned. The thing was done, and I had to deal with it. To Elroy, though, it meant everything, literally everything. The man absolved himself with it. "Sorry" and "it's okay" both came from his mouth, connected flimsily by the most childish manner and the worst logic. And I thought, "Why is contrition necessary for absolution? It doesn't do God any good. Nothing does God any good, because He is Good. He doesn't need any good done to Him or for Him, and He has to deal (and has dealt) with every mistake made by Man. Even if He damned us all, that's still dealing with it. Contrition might be prerequisite, but it cannot be payment, cannot be the toll, cannot do anything to ease the labors of Him that has no need of ease, and even if He did have such need (absurd thought!), the contrition would have nothing to do with His labors anyway..." Thus I thought, really too long. Then I remembered that contrition, like the Sacrament of Confession, like absolution, like salvation, was a gift of grace. Even if it is something that feels as if it wells up from within, it is God feeds the well. We receive one gift to wrap our sin up in before it is buried, like the body of our Lord, wrapped in layers of spices. Sweet it is. But He does not need it; He has done His work; He will not decay; He has confronted the real stench. But we need only confront the horror a moment--if we lived our entire life in sorrow for our own evil, it would still be as the fleetingest moment compared with Christ's suffering, and even so, we need all the help we can get. Contrition is needful for us, and so it is given to us, just like everything else we have really needed.

So...sorry, Elroy. I fear that, to God, many times I must have sounded like you did to me. We must both do better, I think.

Look out, frogs!

Okay, I need to know if anyone in the world has heard this phrase before. This very evening I was walking through my aunt and uncle's yard. They are both great gardeners, and my uncle was giving me a very interesting tour through his work and nature's. Now, this day has been probably one of the most beautiful I've ever lived through: it started with a wonderful thunderstorm, abating and then meandering to overcast and cool-breezy, and by the time the soft light of the late afternoon sidled in, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. As we were walking along enjoying all this, my uncle alluded to the thunderstorm earlier. Except he said, "Yeah, this morning was a real frog strangler." Well, I had been in reverie, but I snapped out of it at this phrase, because the image it produced in my heretofore placid state of mind was quite shocking. I'm thinking of someone strangling a frog to death, which wouldn't be too difficult, unless one has a problem with being needlessly brutal. I knew, however, that this couldn't have been what he meant, and I couldn't connect this image with rain, unless it were some savage pagan ritual of sacrifice. So naturally I said, "What?" He said, "What?" I said, "What? Frog strangler?" He said, "Haven't you ever heard that before?" I said, "Uh, no. I'm thinking of somebody who's choked so many frogs that he's been assigned an epithet, which I can't connect with this morning...unless that's when he struck again." He laughed and said, "No. Frogs like water. This morning there was too much water. Even for a frog. Frog strangler. Sounds pretty simple to me." I guess it is simple, though it's interesting to me that the word "strangler" is used rather than "drowner" or something wet like that, or even "choker" makes more sense to me. Frog strangler. Anyone else ever heard that phrase? He insisted that it wasn't one of his own invention, that it had been around a while. I'm glad he said it. We made jokes about it for the rest of the evening.

I say Pieta, you say...MITLEID!

German. Always better in all caps and an exclamation point.

I often wake in the middle of the night, not so much with thoughts as in midthought, which has sometimes made me nervous. I wonder who's piloting this thing when the captain's away. But I'm still thinking about art comparisons, still with Mary holding Jesus, with a slightly different subject. Whenever we hear the word "pieta" we probably are thinking of Michelangelo's Pieta, which looks like this...

...and is beyond my ability to describe. He actually did another one, meaning it for his own tomb, but didn't finish it. Actually, it is said that he became frustrated with it and rushed it with a hammer, which he used on it, but was restrained by his pupils from further damage, and he then left off working on it any longer. It looks like this:

Looks more like a Deposition, but I think they do call it a Pieta. But what I really wanted to post on here was a much older and much different Pieta by an unknown German artist.

This is your gothic art. Is it any wonder that the word "Gothic" as applied to art was actually a term of abuse from Italian Renaissance types? "What's that?" "Ah! Another monstrosity from thost dreadful Goths that side of the Alps!" Well, mess on you, crazy Italian humanist! Thanks to you, Martin Luther freaked out and left the Church! Way to be the straw that broke the camel's back. I hope you're happy.

I have to work tomorrow, dang it. I guess I'd better sleep.

Art time again!

I love comparing things. Here's three different paintings of the same subject (Madonna Enthroned) by Italian artists in the 13th century. The first is by Cimabue.

This is mostly in that "Italo-Byzantine" style that we all know and love. I can't tell if the angels are meant to be supporting the throne. It doesn't make sense architecturally, since it's sitting on top of all those prophets and saints there at the bottom, but then, it's not terribly concerned with "real" space or physical necessities (as Eastern art often isn't). All those angels are stacked and linear and (except for two of them) looking at us. I rather think that they're drawn to the throne, like they need to touch it, and they're looking at us like, "I don't know, but I think you should come over here, too. Will you?" They've all got that stylized "inclined head" thing going on, which I take to be a kind of nudge..."don't want to do violence to your will or anything, but nudge-nudge, wink-wink, this really is the way, here." Those solid color backgrounds always kinda give me the creeps, I have to say, but of course lots of icons have that. Infinity is not comfortable, even if it is glorious and golden. It's the kind of thing you've got to be saint-ready for. Good thing there's Jesus and Mary there.

This one's by Duccio. Not as directly concerned with us, as the only one looking in our direction is the Blessed Virgin. All the angels are looking at Jesus, and Jesus seems to be blessing them. There is more attention to the architectural space here--Mary's sitting on a chair which rests on the "ground," and she turns with it, and there's that beautiful cloth behind her. All the angels are squeezed in there between the chair and the frame, no overlapping. Mary still has the head tilt. And is it just me, or does she a have a little bit of a scowl on her face like, "Just get over here, child, if you know what's good for ya."

Giotto now. Probably the most "believable" space. The chair totally closes in, there are steps leading up like she had to walk up there, and though the figures overlap on the side, there's a certain proportion to them that jives with me in a way that Cimabue's doesn't. (Not that Cimabue is inferior; I'm just talking about space.) Frankly I think the most amazing things in this painting are the two angels in green offering those gold containers and the two kneeling angels in white offering flowers. That's what's interesting as a contrast with the other two paintings as well. Jesus is looking off and giving a kind of general blessing, while the crowd offers actual gifts other than adoration, or rather, part of their adoration is the offering of actual gifts that they have (presumably) received. Casting their crowns and whatnot. All the colors are deeper as well, and everything in general feels more solid, which is interesting. It doesn't seem like it should feel that way, because there's more "empty" gold background in this than in the other two. Mary's head tilt is gone--to me that makes her more direct, like she's done playing games.

I like these kings of paintings for many reasons. One of them is that it feels like I'm being admonished to attend rather than just invited for a chit-chat. But most importantly, this thing is going on.

Also, as a sidenote: does anybody else hate Raphael's fat baby angels? Cuz I sure do.

Tired of Chaucer

I think it's happened. I've been reading so much of him over the past months that I've worn myself out. That's what happens with me, though. Whenever I read something, I familiarize myself with everything around it that I can get my hands on, and then I read it again--it's an immersion tactic, like going to Italy to learn Italian, or something. Right now, I think I could give a blasted lecture series on Richard II or John Hawkwood (who is totally fascinating, by the way; everyone should look him up...right now!). Thing is, I don't live in Medieval England, and I can't move there. So it's a huge leap for as manically thoroughgoing a reader as myself to go from 21st century 9-to-5 to 14th century court life every evening. So tomorrow I think I'm gonna rummage through the ol' bookcases and see if I can't find something I haven't read in a while, maybe something a little closer to my own century? Maybe the 19th, that's a fun one. Maybe I'll even go out and get something I've never read. I mean, it is the weekend. Suggestions? I know some of you have given me good ones before when I've been in this phase...Brideshead Revisited comes to mind, Janet. (I read that again fairly recently, before this Chaucer craze, and it was way better the second time.) No pressure, though. Believe me, I'll find something.

"The Lubrican s People"

Late this morning as I was driving to the post office, I saw a great big white truck, on the side of which was written: "The Lubrican s People." I assume that in the space there was meant to be a "t," but I thought it was so funny...really even if the "t" had been there, I still would have thought it was funny. The People of the Lubri Khan.

In Memphis-town did Lubri Khan
Some rough old stuff make slippery...

...slipping across the Lubricon...and so on. Lubrican is also another way to spell Leprechaun. Just so you know. I need this kind of diversion, because today's gonna be a long one at the office.

Medieval Books

It is very difficult for us in these our days of mass production to grasp what it meant to own a book in the 14th century. We have them flowing off our shelves, massed in teetering stacks, in the den, the kitchen, the bathroom, cast about on the floor around our beds...I mean...I've heard some people do. We have our first editions. I myself have the first American edition of Tolkien's Tree and Leaf--not a particularly rare volume by bibliophile standards, but one that is dear to me all the same. (Tolkien, by the way, will almost certainly be a main character in this here blog at some point, but I've held off.) I've also got a beautiful 19th century edition of Thomas Moore's poetical works (that's the English Romantic poet, not the 16th century martyr, hence the spelling). Books are, for the most part, easily attainable wherever you live, because internet is available and FedEx (a Memphian innovation) delivers "the world on time." Most of my books I've acquired in just this way, including Tree and Leaf. I find booksellers online from anywhere and have them send stuff to me at work. Those are hard days to get through, let me tell you, when a book comes in and I've got to do a bunch of stupid stuff.

I'm not saying this is bad (it's not), or that books, even just as objects, aren't dear to us (they are). Still, compared with a medieval book, the things we have are ephemeral. A book in the 14th century would be literally incarnate--written or indeed almost carved on vellum, on animal skin. I was reading Chaucer (surprise!), in his complaint to his scribe's bad copying, and he says, "So ofte a daye I mot thy werk renewe,/ It to correcte and eke to rubbe and scrape." Rub and scrape! Not, "mark a line through it and type it up again later." Every edition was a unique edition, not simply by virtue of it belonging to someone, the rather spectral value of it having been read by my dear aunt Ida, dead these many years and so on. You could see and feel the labor put into it, and, my dear, you were going to pay for it. A good book on vellum could cost as much as a burgher's house. No book bargain hunting. No shelves either, unless you were extremely wealthy (normally you'd lock them in a chest) or in a library, in which case the books would have been chained up to prevent people stealing them. Worth their weight or more in gold. Procuring books, then, would have required planning. I mean, financial planning, for it was an investment in every sense of the word. If Chaucer's Prologue to The Legend of Good Women is to be believed, he owned around 60 books, probably not on vellum and beautifully illuminated, but a huge investment all the same.

One of the most interesting things this does is obliterate the modern idea of plagiarism. Well, it didn't obliterate it, because it hadn't come along yet. We're so picky about that kind of thing! But this of course has to do with the fact that any yahoo can write any old thing any time...doesn't even require paper. Witness what you're now reading...yahoo! If you could write or translate, then, and you had the means and leisure to do so, it would be a service to "steal" ideas, or even to mock. It's quite possible that a man could have written an excellent book that was never known outside of his town, and if you came across it, you probably wouldn't be able to buy it. So, you'd remember. And write it again, in your own language (if it was different) or with your own "spin." Chaucer did this a lot.

To know--really know--a book is a huge feat. I think I'm close to knowing two. If Chaucer knew 60 and wrote nothing, though we wouldn't know it, he would still be a genius. Sometimes I think I would know better if I knew less. Think if you could, with hardship, acquire one book a year every year of your life--and that's still a lot more than most people would ever see back in the day--how well you would know them! How much you would have to give for them! Something to think about.

"Fetchez la vache!"

I was just thinking how I talked about "vache" ("cow") in one of my posts about Chaucer's poem, "Truth." And lo! Here it is, in one of the brutal French taunting scenes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There's a bit of blasphemy at the end; sorry about that. I think what I love most about this little scene is Galahad's and Arthur's polite "English" reactions to the taunting, along with their resolution to attack. Of course, like so much in this film, the former is an anachronism. It might interest you to know that the English did not develop the reputation for their manners (cool or warm) until after the 16th century.
"What a strange person." "Now look here my good man!" "Is there someone else up there we could talk to?" Great.

Medieval Maps

Woo! You know this is bound to be an exciting post, right? Well, it is.

Traveling around in medieval Europe could not have been a fun thing...even the word travel comes from the French "travail," which we still use in English to indicate a suffering in labor. Mothers, you know what I'm talking about...better than I do. The Old English word for going around is "faran," which has a friendlier ring...imagine that. We still use it in a phrase like "fare you well," and it seems I've heard people ask me "So, how'd you fare?" and so on, but "travel" replaced "faran" as the more common usage quite a long time ago. (I don't think "far" is from the same word, but I'm not sure. In OE, it's "feorr.") I've thought a few times that, for those crazed Germanic raiders, it was easier to sail the ol' Channel, spoil the island, carry some stuff back or maybe settle down--easier to do that than actually, you know, build roads and stuff. Just use the old Roman ones, if you need 'em.

Anyway, there really weren't any road maps back in, say, the 14th century, and there really wasn't any reliable way to get from here to there, unless you were going by sea. Seems strange, doesn't it? The sea is a fickle, violent thing, and it has no landmarks, because...it's...well...not land. What it does have is skymarks. Stars, you know. If you think about it, you can be more familiar with the rhythms of the sky and sail by that really anywhere, so long as your vessel holds together and you keep yourself supplied. I know some sailor'll read this and be like, "Arrr! Ye keep barkin' up barnicles, an' Ah'll have te give ye the keel haul!" Well, don't do that. I'm not saying sailing is easy; I'm saying travelling around medieval Europe was rough. So, get off my back, sailor.

At the time, maps were products of artistic ingenuity, works of intellect and book learning, because real travelling was travail: "The world is thus and so, and therefore obviously it must be shaped thus and so." Not exactly what we think of as scientific. But maps weren't really meant as road guides. For example, there was a map in the 14th century (the mappa mundi at Hereford Cathedral, pictured above) which showed Scotland as an island. Now, Scotland is not an island, nor would any Englishman (or Scot, though he might wish it) believe that Scotland was an island. The "map" represented an abstract political idea, and thus it was meant as an intellectual guide rather than a travel guide.

Completely fascinating. Admit it. Do it. Right now. Admit your fascination to the computer screen, and I'll catch the vibes.

Flight Of The Conchords - Albi The Racist Dragon (live)

For old times' sake. I woke up this morning thinking about this song. This is for all the inhabitants of the Castle in the Sea.

"Such a high-minded boy..."

That's what my grandmother says, anyway. I went over to her house on Saturday, at which time she asked me the question, "Well, what have you been doing?" "Working. Reading Chaucer." "Mmm...well, have you eaten today?" Well, it's very grandmotherly of you to ask, grandmother (I thought to myself), and I said, "No way! No time! Chaucer!" which was true; I hadn't eaten. "Oh...such a high-minded boy..." My grandmother, by the way, can be a bit snide, but it's the kind of thing that I find amusing, more often than not. But then, my default reaction is amusement, which I do not associate with high-mindedness. It's the most modern thing about me. Everything else, however, is good and old, except for my body, but that won't tarry too long. So, in honor of old stuff and high minds, let's compare some pictures of St. Matthew, shall we? His is actually my "least favorite" (what a stupid phrase, but I can think of no better) of the Gospels, and yet the symbol we have for his Gospel is the only one that isn't a beast. I must aspire. Let's see some pictures of St. Matthew being inspired.

This is from from the Gospel book of Charlemagne, around 800 AD. He's all trimmed up, and on his face is an expression that is satisfied. I imagine him thinking, "Write a Gospel? Oh yeah. Everybody knows I've got this. I'm the guy with the monster halo, after all." He's literate and considerate, reading over what he has written, resting his arm in the folds of his robe, propping up one of his feet--a scholar without choler. Everything about it is subdued, solid, manly.

And then there's this. It's in the archbishop Ebbo of Reims's Gospels, drawn a little later than the one above, but not much later. The poor man is almost frantic and tense. Look at his wrinkled robes and his buggy eyes like he's been there worrying a while. Look at his hair, so disheveled and crisp. There's an angel in the top right-hand corner reading from a scroll, which is dipping down into St. Matthew's ink horn. He's got pen-to-paper trying to keep up with God. This may sound silly, but his square face and curly blond hair makes me think of a jock in the 70s, like this is someone who isn't usually in this kind of position. No halo.

Caravaggio. Around 1600. Need I say more? No, but I am. The reason this is in black-and-white is because it was in Berlin during WWII when it got bombed to smithereens, so we only have photographs. Horrible, in so many ways. But enough of that. It was actually rejected by the people who commissioned Caravaggio to paint it. Deemed improper. Idiots. St. Matthew is barefooted, and one of his feet is jutting out at us. He is muscular, an Italian working man, hunched, tight--another who is not used to being in this position. He is illiterate, and he looks with shock at what is happening on the page, while the angel, probably unseen by him, is literally (haha) guiding his hand. All three of these are different ways of interpreting inspiration. Just look at the thing.

Caravaggio again, replacing the one above. Compare them.

Well, have fun with that.

Truth Out Loud

So. I think I've managed to embed. This is a recording I made some time ago when I was practicing Old and Middle English, and listening to it now, I think I would say a few words differently, but on the whole I think it's pretty good. The air conditioner's on in the background. Chaucer didn't have that, but then, ol' Geoff didn't live in Memphis.

Also, a sidenote: who the heck knew that our own Geoffrey Chaucer was, like, 20 hands high?

Chaucer's Truth: Some Background

I wanted the poem to have its own entry (below this post), because it deserves it. I also want people to hear it, and though I've made a recording of myself reading it in Middle English, I can't seem to figure out how to get it on here. I'll work on that this weekend...at some point. Really it does need to be heard aloud. But there are some words and references in there that aren't so obvious to us nowadays, and I can run through them, because that's what I do on Friday nights. Ahem!

I'll start at the end, first line of the last stanza. Lots of people puzzled over "Vache" for a long time--who it was, or what it meant. Literally it means "cow" in French, which Chaucer knew, but it also seems meant for someone--Chaucer could have just written "cow" after all--and some scholar in the last century puzzled out who. There was a friend of Chaucer's named Sir Philip de la Vache, a man of court like Chaucer--how it was he came from a cow, I know not. But nevermind that. When I learned this, the first thing I thought of was the Theophilus adressed by St. Luke in his Gospel and the Book of Acts. How much do we need to consider that this book was written to someone? Not much, maybe. In fact, the last stanza of Truth is extant in only one of many manuscripts, and I doubt many of us keep ol' Theophilus assiduously in mind while reading the Gospel of our Lord. But it keeps us in mind that this is not just a treatise, something to know and nod our knowing heads at. It has a truth universal, but it also has a sticking point--on this Theophilus, this lover of God, or on Sir Philip of the Cow. In the case of Chaucer, remember his milieu (note the French word) is the court, or the "prees," the press, that most mirror gazing crowd. Chaucer himself was somewhat bourgeois (French again!). His father was a fairly wealthy merchant, obviously with connections, since he had his son sent to a royal household for training, but still a merchant. Chaucer learned the movements of court well and early, but that division was always there, and he obviously felt both the need to play the game (for survival's sake) and also somewhat of a distance from it by definition of his not being of noble blood. Thus he could see the effects of court on people and the world, probably better than those most embroiled in it; perhaps he could see the effects of court on himself, and it is not really clear whether he ever stopped playing the game.

But the name Vache also has obvious connections to the rest of the poem. Chaucer talks about beasts coming out of their stalls in the third stanza. Now, it just so happens that Chaucer made a translation of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and it just so happens that I have read it. The "heye wey" is a phrase that Chaucer uses to describe (in translation) the end of Hercules's labors, which I won't recount here. I'll give you the modern(ish) English: "Go now then, you strong men, there as the high way of the great example leadeth you...for the earth, overcome, yieldeth the stars, which is to say, that when earthly lust is overcome, a man is made worthy of heaven." The beast is of the earth, and this is its home. Man also is of the earth, but has he also a "gost," a spirit, which is not of this earth, but from God in heaven--"Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al." Now, if anybody knew about fleeing the press, it was Boethius, and one can imagine why Chaucer would be drawn to him--he was a shining man of the "court" of his day, cast suddenly and unceremoniously by Fortuna into the abyss; Chaucer was a merchant's son, cast suddenly (though at an early age) into the court. Boethius was an "insider" cast out, Chaucer an outsider cast in. Either way, there was no security, no stability but that of the mind, that gotten by philosophy. Fortuna's wheel is another classical image, used famously by Boethius as well as by Chaucer in the second stanza of this poem..."hir that turneth as a bal."

Now, I haven't said too much about the poem itself, and I don't really intend to. I've just tried to provide context, and you don't necessarily need it. I don't always need it, but I find it enriching all the same. Only a few more notes on certain words and phrases that may cause pause: "sothfastnesse" is security or moral stability, while its opposite is "tykelnesse," which is insecurity or Fortune and desire. "Wele" is prosperity--earthly in this case--and "blent" means blind. "Rede" is counsel. "Spurne ayeyns an al" basically means "kick against the pricks." "Daunte" means control. "Buxumnesse." ...doesn't mean what you might think it means. It means humility or obedience. So...be buxum. "Mede" is reward. The wonderfully beautiful refrain "it is no drede" means "without a doubt," but I love the word "drede" for doubt. Can I just say also that I love the line, "Savour no more than thee bihove shal?" It just rolls out of the mouth. Try it. Pronounce the final "e" in "bihove," and the "ee" in "thee" is more like "ey" in "they," without enunciating the final "y." And now I'm just gushing.

Chaucer's Truth

Truth, or Balade de Bon Conseyl

Fle fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse,
Suffise unto thy good, though it be smal;
For hord hath hate, and clymbyng tykelnesse,
Prees hath envye, and wele blent over-al;
Savour no more than thee bihove shal;
Reule wel thyself, that other folk canst rede;
And trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede.

Tempest thee nought al croked to redresse,
In trust of hir that turneth as a bal:
Gret reste stant in litel besynesse;
Be war also to spurne ayeyns an al;
Stryve not, as doth the crokke with the wal.
Daunte thyself, that dauntest otheres dede;
And trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede.

That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse;
The wrastling for this world axeth a fal.
Here is non home, here nis but wyldernesse:
Forth, pilgrym, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal!
Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al;
Hold the heye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede;
And trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede.

Therfore, thou Vache, leve thine old wrechedenesse;
Unto the world leve now to be thral;
Crie him mercy, that of his hye godnesse
Made thee of nought, and in especial
Draw unto him, and pray in general
For thee, and eek for other, hevenlych mede;
And trouthe thee shal delivere, it is no drede.

I Hate Biblical Criticism and Lit Theory. So there.

If you want to know how to get on my bad side, just start talking about all the different "theories" or "criticisms" in biblical or secular literature as a "given" to understand anything. Odds are, you would be tuned out so completely that you might doubt your own existence, if you're philosophically sensitive to that kind of thing. But lit theories...Ah! Friends! How I hate them all! In all my academic experience, nothing was ever so tiresome or did so much to turn my joys and sorrows to undifferentiated mush as when we started forcing literature through these tight tubes, whether it be "form criticism" (in biblical studies) or "queer theory" (in literature). It's funny, because the criticisms were supposed to be "liberating" and open up "new perspectives" and so on, when really they are the unkindest taskmasters. I know they must have been exciting at one time, but the excitement I think came from some lust for destruction--destruction of the "old" ways of looking at things--but now they're just old hat, and people must begin to see that they were only a virus of thought, latching on to works with lives of their own, injecting them with itself and exploding them into a pathetic viral goo that defiled eveything it touched. I just realized that probably most don't even know what I'm talking about. Oh well. Let me vent.

I've played with the idea of writing up an extremely condensed history of biblical criticism, but I think that's a bit much for a blog post, hey? It's good to know the history, though, because it shows that certain ways of thinking are not inevitable, no matter how many "intelligent" people may adhere to them. I pretty much know I couldn't write a history of lit theory, because I'd get so agitated I'd have a heart attack. Heart attacks are always bad and often lethal. "Sad. He was only 27." "What did he die of?" "He tried to write a history of lit theory." "Ah. Such a senseless death." "I know, I know. Like I said. Sad."

Yeah, scrap that. I think I'll just write about Chaucer some more. I think next on the reading list is Troilus and Criseyde. Been a while. I love Chaucer's English, Frenchied up though it is. Until I finish that, though, I'll just post whatever stuff.

Take THAT, men!

Tonight I saw a woman sporting a shirt that read: "If it wasn't for WOMEN...men would still be sitting in caves scratching themselves," and I thought, "What?!?! You mean it's women that keep me from all my self-scratching-while-cave-sitting-in? Dang it, I knew those monks were on to something." Anyway, apparently whatever clever person it was that designed that shirt forgot that men do not self-spawn, so if it weren't for women, there wouldn't be any men at all--just the one Man, chillin' in the shade of the Tree of Life and hanging out with God in the cool of the day. Well, I guess you just have to enter the spirit of the thing, for the letter killeth.

Whaaaaaaat?!?!

Well, I'll tell you whaaaaaaat: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park is opening in June. Certain people, reading certain things I've written here on this blog (which they certainly will, and I hope will derive a certain enjoyment from them), might be like, "Whaaaaaat?" I like the Harry Potter books, though it's funny, because whenever they are criticized, I can't bring myself to defend them, unless it's against people accusing them of being satanic or something. Reactionaries. But as far as its literary quality is concerned, I get it: it's certainly not what I would call inferior, but it's got too much deus ex machina (but hey, it's a magical world, right? Magical...stuff...anything can...happen...you know?); the main villain is really not that scary (to me); the causes for which the people fight frankly leave me emotionally blank--the class wars are boring to me, as well as the "I'm fighting for elf-rights" type plot lines; even the main characters often just annoy me, and my favorites, though they are often important for the plot, are usually peripheral: Lupin is my favorite, then Dumbledore, and so on; I don't like Quidditch; and when people get excited, Rowling decides TO WRITE LIKE THIS IN ALL CAPS CUZ SEE THAT'S A CUE FOR BEING UPSEEEEEET! I could go on. I'm not going to write an apologia right now, either. I'm not sure it would be very good, and anyway it's been done (or attempted) enough times to last at least ten years. But I do want to talk about one thing; it's what I think I love most about the books, and that's the settings, especially Hogwarts. To do that, I'm going to talk about something else.

When I was very young, I was a big fan of the X-Men comic book series. It actually had many of the same themes as Harry Potter: good versus evil (of course), children discovering they had unusual powers and being sent to a school to develop and control them, an outside world that distrusted them (much more of an issue in X-Men), failure to control power, lust for more power and its usually destructive consequences, and yes, the most boring but perhaps inevitable: tolerance. The powers that these people had were much more varied and idiosyncratic than those of witches and wizards, who all draw from a common tap of "magic." No, there were telekinetics, teleporters, a person with claws and the ability to heal very quickly, one with the ability to control metal via magnetic fields, another had the ability to blast energy beams out of his eyes, and so on. But they were sought out and brought to the X-mansion, domain of Professor Charles Xavier, the most powerful telepathic mind in the world. This is what I loved. The characters and their stories and conflicts were cool, yes, but there were certain editions when the entire comic was people hanging out at the mansion and learning from the tremendously intelligent and vastly learned Professor X, and these were my favorites. The ultimate X-Men publication for me was a book (I have no idea where it is now) about the mansion itself (even down to its architecture), which had so many mysteries and so many promises of secrets left to be explored. It was my Marauder's Map. I pored over it, over and over. After that, my interest in the comics gradually dwindled, and it was a sad moment when I realized I didn't care any more: once the whole "tolerance" theme became more and more central, with its increasing ties to sexuality and politics, I dropped it altogether, without then knowing or understanding why it had become so tiresome. I've never forgotten the X-mansion, however. It may sound silly, but it was one of the joys of my "pre-teen" years.

I've been thinking about all this because, like I said, they're opening the Wizarding World of Harry Potter this summer in Florida. It's basically Hogwarts Castle and the town of Hogsmeade (with rides, of course). I've seen pictures of Dumbledore's office and Olivander's Wand Shop (which is actually in Diagon Alley, not Hogsmeade, but whatever). Looks great.

I've already talked about how much I love guides. Virgil (and Dante, too), Athenodorus. But Charles Xavier fits in there, as does Remus Lupin and of course Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. These are all good teachers, and the love we bear for them is forever linked to the love we bear for knowing anything lovely. In fact, they are those links. It's one reason we love our mothers, if they're good teachers, as mine was. My own mother read me the Narnia books over and over, and she taught me my letters as well, and I'll always associate wonder with her voice.

This has turned into a long post. I'll only say that the most involved I ever got in the battle with Voldemort (or the Minsitry of Magic) was when they threatened to damage Hogwarts, the place of wonder and learning, to shape it into a thing unlovely. This was intolerable. Frankly, Voldemort could have the Muggles as far as I was concerned. But he tried to take over Hogwarts, and for that, more than any other thing, I knew that fool had to die.

What's the point of history, you ask?

This is from the historian Derek Brewer (1923-2008):

"Nothing is more tiresome than broad condemnations of the present in comparison with the past. But the past rewards the sympathetic interest of the present with suggestions of otherwise unknown modes of being. So we may appreciate what we do not want, or at any rate cannot have."

He's actually talking about medieval clothing here. I find it helpful to have these little plates of armor to defend against such whiny questions as I sometimes hear about the "point of studying history." This isn't the only or even the best answer, but it's a good one.

Also, here's something of interest: in the 14th century there was a valet named John Russell who gave directions to other valets. At the end of the day, when the lord was readying for bed and all other arrangements made, "the valet drives out the dog and the cat, giving them a clout, and bows good night to his lord." So, give your cats and dogs a good clout tonight, and off to bed.

Two Bold Acts

King Richard II, giving those peasant rebels what for. Jolly good show, Richie! Cheeky blighters.

Nathan Bedford Forrest with the most awesome goatee in the Confederate Army

I ran across some articles this morning bashing the Confederacy, and I didn't like it, though I understand it. Occasionally there's something happening that drags forth articles of this sort, and I think today it was the fact that Governor McDonnell of Virginia is trying to proclaim (or has proclaimed? I don't know) April as "Confederate History Month." I think this is kinda stupid, myself, Confederate sympathizer though I am. It's amazing the sudden amount of ignorant vitriol that geysers up from who knows what depths of hidden malice--and this from Yanks and Rebs alike. Silly.

You might hate both of these men, particularly Forrest (if you're American). I understand. I myself have mixed feelings about both of them, as I do about almost every historical figure that isn't a saint. But they are children of their times and places, as are we all, and unless we are willing to learn much about both, I think it is best to remain silent.

Silent, that is, unless there're some killer stories available. And there are. I found myself thinking about both of these men this morning (I'm not sure why Richard II came to me), and I thought somebody might enjoy a thrilling tale or two, courtesy of Monica the Man. First, to Richard II.

Wat Tyler was a leader in what is called the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. It was a rebellion against the nobility in England, which had ridden the peasants hard with taxes and duties, citing the need for money and men in wars against France and Spain--what is more, the government had for some time failed to produce satisfactory results in these wars. The English peasants at this time loved their spoils, loved to see their leaders triumph and to benefit from these triumphs themselves, as they had under Richard's grandfather, Edward III. Another difficulty was that Richard was young, and many of the peasants believed that his reign was manipulated by his advisors. Many of those involved in the Revolt had been in military campaigns in France, and one of the remarkable features of this rebellion was its organization and relative discipline. Wat Tyler led a rebel army into London, and while many horrible deeds were committed there by the rebels--beheadings, burnings, lootings, drunkenness and so on--still the center held, and there was enough of an army to demand a meeting with and concessions from the king. So the king met with them. This was on a Friday, and concessions (soon after revoked of course) were granted the rebels. On Saturday, after having prayed in Westminster Abbey (from which earlier the rebels had a man dragged off and slaughtered), King Richard met again with Wat Tyler and his army. It is said that Tyler was exceedingly insolent and rude; the King's party, moreover, was understandably nervous, and it wasn't long before a fight broke out in the parlay. Tyler was slain by the governor of London and a squire, and the rebel army sent out a great shout of anger and threatened to rush on them all. But King Richard suddenly spurred his horse forward alone and cried out, "Sirs, will you shoot your king? I am your captain. Follow me." They did. He ordered them dispersed and forbade violence against them. Richard was fourteen years old.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was not a trained military man, but by the end of the War Between the States, he had established a reputation for practical ability and tactical genius. There was nothing complex or overly speculative in his theories of combat. He is famous for saying, "War means killing, and killing means getting there first with the most men." One of his most spectacular displays of bravery came after the Confederate loss and withdrawal from the field of combat at Shiloh, TN. He and about 350 cavalrymen were drawn up on a ridge to protect the retreating Confederate army, Union General Tecumseh Sherman in pursuit. Though the Union party of skirmishers outnumbered Forrest six-to-one, they could not see beyond the ridge upon which Forrest was perched. And he knew it. When the Federal skirmishers found themselves distracted in picking a path through a place called Fallen Timbers, Forrest sensed it was time to act and shouted, "Charge! Charge!" The Union party was completely broken up by the sudden severity of the attack, and even the cavalry supporting their flanks fled in a panic. Forrest kept on shouting "Charge!" but his men noticed that an entire brigade of Union troops was in front of them and withdrew. Forrest, however, kept charging. Alone. Before he knew it, he was completely and closely surrounded by Union Blue. That should have been it for him. They swarmed him about, trying to drag him from his horse or shoot him, all the while with him firing his pistol and slashing with his sword. One Union soldier even managed to press his gun against Forrest's hip and fire, and the blast lifted Forrest high in the saddle, the bullet lodging against his spine. Maybe Forrest took that as a cue for retreat, which he did, but not before yanking a Yankee up by the collar and using him as a shield as he rode back in the direction from which he came, clearing a path with his saber all the way. Once out of range of Union fire, he flung his man-shield to the ground and rode up to the ridge where the rest of his command was waiting in amazement. The Union pursuit ceased, for that time. From then on, General Sherman called him "that Devil Forrest."

Hate 'em if you want, but those are great stories. I hope you enjoyed them.

From The Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton: "AS Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at the top of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so noble. He was draped in a long robe of starless black, down the centre of which fell a band or broad stripe of pure white, like a single shaft of light. The whole looked like some very severe ecclesiastical vestment. There was no need for Syme to search his memory or the Bible in order to remember that the first day of creation marked the mere creation of light out of darkness. The vestment itself would alone have suggested the symbol; and Syme felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure white and black expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with his inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily make war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme was scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality of their new surroundings, this man's eyes were still stern. No smell of ale or orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a reasonable question.

If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he, too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if the Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the original and formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make the light in special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon."

Fine Picnicery

Here in M-town we have been graced with two days so charged with pleasaunce and so balanced in their loveliness that I have realized just how jealous are the senses in a man who thinks too much, as everyone has always told me I do. As I lay sprawled on a picnic blanket under an oak in our Memphis Botanic Garden, there were moments when I genuinely felt a sweet pricking of choice: ought I to stay and see what these leaves will decant from the light of the sun, or ought I rise and taste of the fruit the earth has yeilded? Or ought I to shut off sight and hear a bird's whistle, or shall I heed friendly conversation and laughter, or ought I muffle all this and feel my hands and arms over this cool blanket, or be still and feel the general temperance overall, or ought I cut off all this, too, so to more closely attend these smells I now perceive are being offered me, from what source and on what wind? To be sure, God is the Author of all things, but has He so many couriers, and I would know them all. I sometimes wonder: how are we to get to Him when these the least of his messengers shine so bright? I am not wishing for a drabber world--only lead, kindly light.

Well, I can't remember what choices I made, only that it was difficult to make a balance as long as I thought about it, and I think hard. But I know this: it was fine picnicery yesterday, and I hope my friends enjoyed it as much as I did. All this I've written puts me in mind of the end of The Man Who Was Thursday, when the poet is contrasted with the philosopher, from both of which I believe it has pleased God to make me a strange mixture. It is a favorite passage of mine, as my friends well know that know me well. Enjoy.

Well, dang it, I can't cut-and-paste, apparently, so I'll just put the quote on another post. Darn computer illiteracy!

Friends, Romans, Country...women!

They didn't go so far as to say "countrywomen."

Well, I went to see the Tennessee Shakespeare Company's production of Julius Caesar--with an all-female cast--last night with my sister. Here's what I think about what they did: I want first to say that it was not all bad, that I am not sorry I went, that there was some good acting even if it was founded upon a dual misrepresentation--I shall explain, by and by.

Perhaps I should start where the evening started. Before the show, the head artistic honcho (not head financial honcho, of course) got up and gave a little history lesson about what acting companies would do back in the days of Elizabeth (or James) when the theaters around London were shut down because of plague or monarchical whim. They would strip their performances down and play at various towns and suburbs (apparently they were still allowed to do this), often at city halls. I mean, just because everybody's dropping to the plague doesn't mean you can stop making a living, am I right? So this was interesting as well as appropriate, because the City of Germantown TN allowed this production to be played in their city hall. Pretty neat, actually.

Now for it, however. He got to the cast, saying two things which I (and my sister) thought completely ridiculous. (1) "What if women had been in the majority in Shakespeare's day, how would he have cast this play..." I think he meant something political--what if women had been in the political majority--though last I checked, in 1599 some incredibly powerful woman named Elizabeth sat on the throne. In a monarchy, you know, wherein majority is not quite as big of a deal. It's not like Shakespeare ignores women in his plays, and many late 16th century assumptions about women are ridiculed (and sometimes reinforced) as much in Shakespeare as they would be in our own day, even in Julius Caesar, that most masculine of plays. In any case, I find it difficult to believe that, even had there been some catastrophic, dude-specific plague ranging through merry England in the 16th century, that a hard-up-for-actors Billy Shakes would consider casting Caesar and Brutus as chicks (or young boys). I also find it difficult to believe that, even if women called all the shots in England at that time (or any time), that they would demand the characters be so cast. Are women so unreasonable as to demand all the great good and great villainy of all times be attributed to them? Is this the way to "enfranchise" them? Surely not.

This leads to (2): "In productions of Julius Caesar, often the aspect of love is left out or is obscured by power and violence..." Really? What productions of Julius Caesar had he seen? This supposed problem would supposedly be solved by casting women. So let me get this straight: women are "loving" while men are powerful and violent? And we're trying to challenge or at least nuance stereotypes, are we? The production was self-defeating, were this its aim. All a person would learn from this production is that women weep when they ought to be hard, shriek when a calmer word would do, and dance about with swords of murder, war and suicide when they ought to get on with the deed. For that is how the actors played it: weeping too much, shrieking too much, and dancing at all (because women are "graceful," I guess). All the things you can imagine an annoying woman doing, making her husband desire nothing after the day but oblivion in the television. I don't know, but I think that's rather insulting. I myself have known a woman or two who loved, and I do not think they loved less or had less power when their cheeks were dry and their faces set. Judge for yourselves, you women, whether I or the Tennessee Shakespeare Company do you wrong.

An example, and I'm almost done. It is no lie: one of Brutus's props was a dadgum hanky! Now, has anybody heard of a Brutus that carried around a hanky? I mean, almost throughout the play, she's wiping her nose and eyes. Stoic? I think not. It was almost comic. Not what you're going for with Brutus.

But perhaps the most distracting thing was that they changed all the pronouns and "man" to "woman." "Here was a woman," and so on. Now, that's ridiculous. If the women had played men, I think I would have enjoyed it much more, but they were all women in the play itself. Brutus and Portia were both "wives." I can't write any more about that. It's too painful.

Caska was good, though. I mean, really. It's a small part, I know, but it was played very well, alternating some comedy with resolve and viciousness. There were other good things about it, believe it or not, but I can't write about it any more. Overall I think it showed a startling lack of respect both for Shakespeare and women. Grant them their bad ideas, though, and they did a good job...but then, that's the thing. If you do a good job with a bad idea, what have you accomplished?

I will arise and go now...

...and kick some butt at Innisfree! Has anyone out there ever seen the movie The Quiet Man? It's brilliant. John Wayne plays Sean Thornton, a champion American boxer who at the beginning of the movie accidentally kills a man in the ring. He is horrified by it, and, racked with guilt and filled with a desire for healing, he moves back to the family town of Innisfree in Ireland where he was born. He says he'll never fight again. In Ireland. Right. Well, he falls in love with Mary-Kate Danaher...understandable, as she is played by the alderfairest Maureen O'Hara. Unfortunately, her wealthy brother Will despises Thornton and refuses to pay Mary-Kate's dowry when she marries him, and Thornton responds with scornful indifference. To an American man, a dowry seems completely alien, inconsequential and even immoral--all you need is love, right?--but to Mary-Kate, the dowry represents her right and property (not Thornton's) as a married woman, and she sees Thornton's indifference to it as indifference both to her right and to his own honor. He must get it, or at least fight her brother for it, who is himself something of a legendary scrapper. Well, that happens eventually, of course. Thornton relents to this way of seeing things, but even in relenting, and perhaps especially in relenting in this case, John Wayne acts the man. One of my favorite scenes in any movie is when Will Danaher throws Mary-Kate's dowry money on the ground. Sean picks it up, walks over to the furnace of a threshing machine with Mary-Kate, who opens it, and he throws it in, after which Mary-Kate tells him supper will be waiting for him when he gets home, knowing there's about to be a massive brawl between her now-unimpededly beloved husband and her brother. You can see it here:

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index.jsp?cid=74511

Mary-Kate is a scrapper as well. She's just as likely to smack Thornton on the mouth with her fist as with her lips. But he takes both in his stride, of course. I mean, it's John Wayne, pilgrum. Overall, it's Maureen O'Hara that steals the show, I think. She's completely stunning--technicolor was made for that red hair--by turns ferocious as a wolf and mild as a lamb. Great match for John Wayne, who's just...so...there. Watch it. Enjoy it.

Marlon Brando = THE MAN

I don't know how to embed YouTube videos on this here blog-o-mine, but I do know how to copy and paste. This is Marlon Brando as Mark Antony in Julius Caesar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KXhfjOkKPM

I remember the first time I saw this movie. I was in middle school, in a classroom, and from the time Brando says "butchers" to the end of his soliloquy, my skin prickled in waves all over. He's got everything goin' on in this scene--the indignation at what he perceives as a great injustice; the deception of the conspiring senators, nothing overdone; the excitement, heightened by grief and anger, that a man like Antony must feel in promise of havoc and war; his acting all control, his emotion gradually cracking through that control, then returning. And the shot at Brutus's back as he closes the doors on Antony in the distance, such a great visual of foreboding. I thought it was beautiful, still do.

I'm going to see this play tomorrow night, in the round, with a cast of...all women. That's right, boys and girls, the Tennessee Shakespeare Company is peopling Julius Caesar with a bunch of squeakers. (I love you, ladies.) Now, I think it's a bad nasty idea...especially now I've watched a man who drank ten gallons of testosterone a day cry "HAVOC!" However, I'm going to see it. I feel a little guilty, yes, like a man paying some greasy gypsy to open a tatty tent flap for a glance and a gasp and a smirk at the freak show. But I am interested to see if it can even come close to being pulled off. I'll let you know.

Words Screaming Resurrect Me

Throwing paper around at the office. That's my thing, that's what I do. But one advantage of having a brain that just won't quit is that I'm very rarely really bored--I can entertain myself with virtually nothing when there's virtually nothing to do. A disadvantage is that I'm too often at the brink of overstimulation, and when I cross that threshold it's zone out time. My friends, they have seen it, and they can testify to its truth.

Well today, in between bits of responsibility, I've been stuck on these two words I wish we still used.

(1) the prefix "alder-" or "alther-" meaning, "of all." I have seen it attached to "best," which creates a word that's superlative to the max. Now I think about it, I think it's always attached to a superlative, which makes sense. But just think if we still used this as a prefix! "How's your Latin these days?" "Are you kidding me? It's alderbest!"

(2) "sweven" meaning "dream" or even "vision" or possibly "sleep." I've already mentioned this word in a previous post, as I'm sure you all recognize. Oh, use it in a sentence, Monica Man! Okay, kids! "Some people in English departments (not psychology) still prattle on about Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, but it's as convoluted as a medieval sweven, and not half so pretty."

Get out there, people. Make it happen. Make me alderproudest.

Tying it all together.

Anybody around here ever wonder why the shades in hell or the souls in Purgatory bother to stop and chat to Virgil and Dante? I thought so. I think C. S. Lewis wondered that, too, so you're in good company. In the "hell" part of The Great Divorce the narrator has no guide, and he finds himself wandering about in a dreary city where people insist upon themselves so much that they eventually are unable to exist around any other than themselves. The city is seemingly endless, and dwellings, always drab, spring up at a thought at its edges, which by the time the narrator has come there are at almost inconceivable distances from him. People get to where they can't stand others around them, so they are steady imagining more and more of the same and same and moving on and on, and this has been going on since the fall, I reckon. I say this is "hell," but Lewis's hell and Purgatory and Heaven are not so clearly delineated as is Dante's. Typical modern, typical modern. Ooooo, I bet Lewis would hate to hear that! I don't mean it, Lewis, I don't mean it. But seriously, folks. Why do the shades speak?

One way to answer would be, "Well, Monica my good Man, because, dang it, there wouldn't be any story without some dialogue. I mean, am I right, or am I right?" Yes, you are right, you imaginary unimaginative thinker, you. But I like to work from within a story or a poem or a world which the author creates, and I go outside of it only to understand its inner workings better. T. S. Eliot says, "Hey, if one can really penetrate the life of another age, one is penetrating the life of one's own." (Okay, he didn't write "Hey," but let me have my idiom.) Eliot is talking mostly about history there, but I think the same principle can apply to literature and the "real world." If it's good, then in penetrating a work of literature, one penetrates more than just a shade. So I don't have time for your extra-literature literary rules. Stuff like, "#1: have a story." Pff. Rules. I'm Monica the Man; I don't play by the rules. I'm also not a real author. Hmmmm...

Lewis's condemned souls (again, not delineated) are sometimes keen to talk, when they're allowed to attempt justification of themselves or to go on caressing whatever pet thoughts they cherish away from God. I guess this is what people do in the Inferno as well. There's a spark of life (literally) in Dante upon which they may feed. At first Dante pities them--faints for pity in fact after he has talked to Francesca di Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, both of whom are swirling about in the storm of the Second Circle. For those who don't remember, they'd had an affair, and Francesca's husband (Paolo's brother) slew them both when he found them in...an amorous embrace. That really happened, sometime in the 1270s or 80s I think. The 70s were a crazy decade, I'm told. And what were they doing besides embracing amorously? Why, according to Dante, reading stories about Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, of course! This has put me in mind of our Chaucerian narrator and the black knight he meets in his "sweven" (that just means "dream").

The Book of the Duchess! Ha haaaa! We're back. I really could write more about it, but I think I'll stint...after this post, of course. Remember, the knight was Love's servant from his youth and prayed to him/her/it for an object of loving, which request was granted. Now hear what Francesca, that damned soul, has to say about Love: "Love, quick to kindle in a gentle heart...Love, that excuses no one loved from loving, seized me so strongly with delight in him [she means Paolo] that, as you see, he never leaves my side." You will also remember that the whole of Chaucer's poem is framed with the desire to sleep or to pass the time away, along with a sense of poisoned wonder that the poet and the knight are still alive, since they can't sleep and, in the case of the knight, his lady is dead. Now hear again Francesca: "One day we read, to pass the time away, of Lancelot, of how he fell in love..." Now, I think Chaucer was a sensitive sort of guy, but if you read much of him, it's also very obvious that he readily seized upon the ridiculous. He was urbane and courteous, Frenchified in some ways, as was more natural then if you weren't a serf, but still, he was very English, and so had sense and sensibility knit tight together. It is said that the occasion for "The Book of the Duchess" was the death of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster and wife of John of Gaunt. She died in the horrible outbreak of plague in 1369-70. Some people think John of Gaunt asked Chaucer for something like "Duchess," and some say nay. I don't know. And here I am going outside the literature itself, but it helps me to understand it. I hope, correctly. I like to think that Chaucer did write this for John of Gaunt and his lovely wife, and by all accounts Blanche was very lovely. I also like to think that, embedded in a kind of elegy for Blanche, there is a gentle poke at the black knight, a warning lest you become not only as desperate as he is, but as silly in his extreme despair, all the while without depreciating his loss, which was no doubt great. Anyway, it might have worked. John of Gaunt remarried--twice, I think--but he directed in his will that he be buried next to Blanche.

Guides

Lunch break! For those within my horde of readers that don't know this, I love guides in literature. I remember as I was reading I, Claudius I wept when I got to Claudius's description of his second tutor Athenodorus joking about his long white beard--saying that invisible seeds of fire came from his fingers as he stroked it and fed his whiskers. Strange thing to weep at, but there you are. I always wanted a real tutor...not one that beat me and stuff, though...and not an early classical Greek tutor...for other reasons. Athenodorus for me, every time!

Something else I wept at, when I saw it at the MFA in Boston: this sculpture by Baron Henri de Triqueti. It was rather awkward, actually, though fortunately nobody I knew was there to see it--me weeping, I mean. But there it is. The virtuous but still damned Virgil leading the poet Dante through Hell (or Purgatory) and telling him what's what. Look at how much trouble Dante is having with what he's seeing--he's working it out. See his forehead and brows and that frown, how concentrated. His hands curl. Unsure of his own fate, as a man living in exile from his home and his eternal home, but also as a poet. He wears the laurels already, but I think he is unaware of them. Those are for us. And look at the calm and, well, classical expression on Virgil's face. He just knows and accepts, because that's all he can do--without suffering, without hope. But it's his hands that do it--the hands are tender, almost effeminate in their direction, and it softens the sculpture as a whole. Likewise with that hollow at his throat and the delicate lines in his neck and the cloth that hangs from his laurels. And they're looking at us, so we, too, are in doubt. Could be hell, could be Purgatory. It's not exactly how I'd imagined it, but still it's a beautiful piece of art. Cast in 1862, I believe. If you ever go there, you have to see it.

Knight's Lament

I have a friend who is occasionally called "Kermit two-legs" on accout of he walks around on a couple of twigs where proper limbs ought to be. Sometimes he signs his checks as Kermit Two-Legs. This friend also sings a little song of his own invention, most of which I can't remember, but the refrain of which is something like "Every day is a new day." Many of my friends are musicians, which means I am allowed to hear interesting and amusing musical accidents, which sometimes become standard jokes...it also means I have to do a fair bit of waiting, because if I've learned anything, it is that musicians are tardy or truant. I find it helpful to think of them as symptomatic of the type rather than as personally careless. But back to the task at hand.

I wanted to talk about the black knight's lament in "The Book of the Duchess." He gives in to the narrator's request that he uncover the source of his woe. Now, the knight could have just said, "My lady is dead," which eventually he does at the very end, but he has to lead up to the point, just like Adam and Eve do in Genesis 3. ("Blah blah blah. And I did eat." Guilty. Next.) Not that loving a lady and being sorrowful at her death is a sin, of course, but even our lovesick narrator tells the knight to loosen up a little. One thing the narrator does is warn the knight against suicide, and there is a sense in which the knight is in a state of mortal peril, whether because of mortal fault or not, it is hard to say. But how did he get there?

In order to explain that, the knight goes back to his early youth and says that since he could first think a rational thought and know Love in his own mind, he has been a servant to it and had prayed for many a year that Love would set his heart on what lady should please him (Love). Well...more prayers cast up to desires and to personified virtues. This one is most akin to Venus, and if any of us knows anything about mythology, it's that if you start getting Venus involved, you're asking for trouble. Not that medieval Venus is at all the same as classical Venus, and Venus isn't even mentioned in the poem, but there are a lot of prayers to gods floating around. It reminds me of something I read in Orthodoxy: "The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone." Chesterton is talking about the "modern world," though honestly I don't think it applies only to us in our day, or to Chesterton in his own. I rather think it is a universal human tendency spanning all times to pick our goods and pray to them, to presume to "know" good and evil apart from God and to isolate them from God, and so also from each other. Original sin more than modernity per se. So I probably wouldn't have been much comfort to our black knight. I can see it now. I probably would've said something like, "Well...shouldn't've done that. Mistake number one. But go ahead, I'm interrupting, sorry."

I do think, however, that the medieval mind had more of a tendency to be responsible to its decisions, to see its past actions and thoughts in solidarity and as something to be seen through. I rather think it would've been unthinkable for our mourner to be the black knight one day and the next day sing "Every day is a new day" and sign his checks as Kermit Two-Legs. Hey nonny nonny. No, this is who he is, and it has a trajectory which he recognizes. The problem for him is, the trajectory has led him to despair, which is a mortal sin. That which he does now--whether composing sorrowful love poems or unfolding his bosom to our narrator--he only does to drive away the time, to drive away the Night, much as the narrator does at the poem's opening when he calls for his book and longs for sleep. Sleep drives away the night, but it is natural, God-given. Adam sleeps by God's granting, and wakes to Eve. Our narrator is awake for his Eve and must pray to nature for sleep. When he does, he only dreams a dramatic mirror of himself, and Eve is still far from him.

So there's some stuff. I'm not quite done, but I must sleep as well.

Who clepeth there?

So asked Morpheus, god of sleep and dreams, when Juno's messenger came to him in his sleepy cave "And blew his horn ryght in here eere, And cried 'Awaketh!' wonder hye." I hope someday I can muster the cheek to cry "Awaketh!" wonder high to bestir some sleeper. I wonder if all I'll get is a "Who clepeth there?"

It is I, Monica the Man, here to tell all of nobody who's ever seen this blog that I'm on a Chaucer binge that's going strong. These here quotes are from his early poem, now called "The Book of the Duchess." It's a medieval dream poem...a statement which I know doesn't exactly scream "Partaaaayyyy" to very many people, but if you ever have trouble sleeping...

Actually, that's how the whole ruddy thing is framed. It begins with an insomniac in some serious lovelornery who gets a servant (who probably could sleep, but nevermind couldn't because his master keeps demanding books in the middle of the night) to bring him a story that's sadder than he is. So he gets his book. Reads it in bed. Maybe gets his sleep-starved servant to fix him up his favorite medieval snacks. I mean, he's up anyway, right? The narrator feels pity for the woman in the story. Name of Queen Alcione. Loves her husband, King Seys, who dies on a sea voyage, but Alcione doesn't know it and can't sleep for sorrow and doubt, so she asks the goddess Juno to send her a vision of her husband in a dream to tell her what the deal is, which Juno does via Morpheus. Not the first thing that I would have thought of, but hey...I'm not a queen. I mean, at all. They do strange things, queens.

The narrator, on the other hand, thinks it's a great idea, and he throws out an invitation to Juno, or Morpheus, "Or some wight elles, I ne roughte who," that if he can get some sleep, he'll deliver the goods. The goods being: a nice bed in a decked out room. Sounds sketchy to me, though, that kind of prayer. Just throwing desire out there specifically for some spirit to find and fulfill for payment. Probably how paganism got started in the first place. Well, it works in this case, anyway, and the narrator falls asleep and dreams stuff.

Eventually he meets a knight, a black knight, who's making a woeful noise unto himself and composing poetry. About some lady, obviously. But instead of thinking, "What a chump," the narrator goes up and sort of waits out the moaning until the knight is aware of him. The knight, being a gentleman after all, apologizes for ignoring the narrator, citing the excuse that he simply didn't notice his presence. The narrator also apologizes for interrupting. So everybody is sorry and polite, which often is the same thing. Excuse me! No, excuse me! No need! Ditto!

Then something happens, and this something is something I love in medieval type literature. The narrator basically says, "I know it's none of my business, but just go ahead and spill your guts to me, and I'll do my utmost to heal whatever hurt you have." Long sidenote: you'll run into this if you read some knightly tales. In one episode of Le Morte d' Arthur one knight finds another knight making great dole and asks him what the dole is all about. The doleful knight says, "Like I'm gonna tell you." Then the pitying knight says, "I'll fight you for it," and the doleful knight says, "Fine, I guess." So they fight! How great is that? The pitying knight wins, so the doleful knight is obliged to tell him what the matter is. Other people's sorrow is like a quest.

Well, that's enough for now. I'm not done yet, though. Stay tuned for part 2.