You know, I have very little to say about this read. I think I react poorly to bad translations of high realist novels. Could just be me, but I think it’s a pretty wide-spread affliction…

Anyhow, unless you’re a stubborn, pig-headed being like myself, I would suggest stearing clear and reading about 10 other novels instead - because even if they’re bad, they’ll feel more rewarding than this was.

Now, I would be lying of I said that there was nothing at all to be gleaned from the book, or that none of it was enjoyable. I would not be lying if I said that the bad/arduous desrts far outstrip the occasional oases that one comes accross while reading it.

Some readers have taken issue with the portrayal of Anna Karenina herself and feel that she’s a weak, cry-baby. Sure, if the novel was written in the last few decades, I might agree to some extent, but I think that assessement just isn’t fair: it’s not like she had many options at the time. In that respect, I feel that Tolstoy has created a believable heroine for his novel, and renders her as realistically as he can imagine, given the culture in which he is writing and which he is portraying in the book.

So, read at your own peril and if you see some good bits, point them out to me, alright?

I found the following passage particulalrly interesting:

(about one of the authors) ““She knows that she is writing bad poetry,” said Dr Sanders. “But clearly poetry - along with cake - is something to which she feels she is entitled (italics mine), something which brings pleasure and which she wants to have.”

You would never EVER expect to hear anything like this today, would you?

So, I now have a cat. Seeing as I don’t have a digital camera, you’ll all have to make due with this grainy, picture phone snapshot of Moppy. (Yes, Moppy. Her actual name, was MopCat…)

So, I’m trying to find her a new name before the end of the week, otherwise I may have a hard time getting her used to it and she may bear the unfortunate name of MopCat for life.

Was never a cat person before but having lived with cats for 3 years or so, you kind of get used to them. Anyhow, she’s a sweatheart and a heartbreaker. She’s tearing up a cardboard box as I write this…

Post any suggestions for Moppy’s new name below.

Were he still alive, today would be the 100th birthday of poet W.H. Auden.

Unfortunately, much of Auden’s oeuvre has yet to make it into the public domain, so I can’t just put up a favourite poem. Thankfully though, the executors of his estate have made some available online. (I am a big fan of In Memory of W.B. Yeats, personally.) Go read. They’re short and AWESOME!

For myself, I’ll point you directly to Auden’s Musée des Beaux-Art. You’ll want to have a good look at the painting first and, as I was just telling my art history friend (Auden, because of this poem, automatically makes me think of my friend), you’ll want to make sure you find Icarus’ leg in the lower right of the painting.

Either way, the article talks about it so I’ll save you the spiel and Auden himself kind of takes you through the painting, so it shouldn’t be hard to make sense of it.

(While the aim of each is different, this poem is also closely associated in my mind with Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn: both are poems built around existing works of art, which the poet then animates or comments on to make his point.)

So go and read some Auden today, in celebration of his birthday, you uncultured boors!

More relevant links, found through bookninja.com.

Happy birthday W.H.!

Apologies to all Anglophones. First of possibly more French posts below…

—

Ça fait déjà quelque temps que j’en parle et maintenant, enfin, je passe aux actes: j’écris en français. Je n’ai encore aucune idée du format que prendra mon blog à l’avenir, mais pour le moment, une catégorie nommé “français” suffira. J’ai des lacunes épouvantables au niveau de mon français écrit, lacunes que je cherche en quelque sorte à rectifier avec ce blog.

Je me confesse : j’ai une expérience presque inexistante en littérature de langue française. Mais études furent en français au primaire et au secondaire, mais la lecture, bien qu’encouragée, n’a jamais fait partie du programme. Dans nos cours d’anglais, nous lisions plus régulièrement. Mon amour de la littérature passa donc par Shakespeare avant Molière. D’ailleurs, je pense avoir lu qu’une seule pièce de Molière (et je me trompe peut-être) mais près de la moitié de l’oeuvre entière de Shakespeare. J’ai du retard à reprendre.

Je viens de terminer la lecture de “Cyrano de Bergerac,” d’Edmond Rostand il y a quelques jours. Ceux qui me connaissent seraient peut-être surpris d’apprendre que c’est la première fois que je la lis. Ce n’est que quelques semaines auparavant que j’ai fait connaissance de cette histoire en visionnant le film qui met en vedette Gérard Depardieu. C’est d’ailleurs sa performance qui m’a mis en quête de l’ouvrage de Rostand. J’ai été ébloui par la prestation de Depardieu et par le personnage de Cyrano et pour une première fois depuis quelque temps, le son de la langue m’enivrait, ragaillardissait mon amour naissant et maladroit de la langue française.

Je doute qu’il y ait plusieurs individus comme moi qui n’ont pas encore lu cette pièce, mais je vous suggère fortement de le faire. L’histoire est fantastique et l’écriture aussi (dans mon opinion personnelle et limitée).

J’ai toujours été amateur de tragédies et même si je pense que c’est exagéré de qualifier cette pièce ainsi, il reste que chaque personnage se voit refuser le bonheur, leur destin imaginaire. Même si Cyrano garde son “panache” jusqu’à la toute fin, il n’a pas Roxane puisqu’il est sot, compromettant, pleutre. À la toute fin de la pièce (acte V, scène VI):

“Que dites-vous?… C’est inutile?… Je le sais!

Mais on ne se bat pas dans l’espoir du succès!

Non! Non! c’est bien plus beau lorsque c’est inutile!

- Qu’est-ce que c’est que tous ceux-là? - Vous êtes mille?

Ah, je vous reconnais, tous mes vieux ennemis!

Le Mensonge? Tiens, tiens!- Ha! ha! les Compromis,

Les Préjugés, les Lâchetés!… Que je pactise?

Jamais! jamais! - Ah! te voilà, toi, la Sottise !

- Je sais bien qu’à la fin vous me mettrez à bas ;

N’importe : je me bats! je me bats ! je me bats !

Oui, vous m’arrachez tout, le laurier et la rose!”

Et il n’est pas seul. Christian aurait-il été plus heureux avec une autre que Roxane ? À la fin, l’a-t-il même eu? Raguenau aussi y va d’un compromis : il se laisse prendre par les poètes, pour un peu qu’il aurait pu viser plus haut. Malgré tous les passages de Cyrano qui sont tous les un plus fantastiques que les autres, mon passage préféré appartient à de Guiche, devenu duc au cinquième acte. Il parle de Cyrano avec Roxane, au couvent, quinze ans après la mort de Christian.

” Oui, parfois je l’envie.

- Voyez-vous, lorsqu’on a trop réussi sa vie,

On sent, - n’ayant rien fait, mon Dieu, de vraiment mal ! -

Mille petits dégoûts de soi, dont le total

Ne fait pas un remords, mais une gêne obscure ;

Et les manteaux de duc traînent dans leur fourrure,

Pendant que des grandeurs on monte les degrés,

Un bruit d’illusion sèches et de regrets,

Comme, quand vous montez lentement vers ces portes,

Votre robe de deuil traîne des feuilles mortes.”

Je pense que ça résume bien le message de la pièce : ne vous laissez pas dépasser par la vie. Prenez vous chances et faites vos gaffes : le pire des sorts serait de n’avoir jamais pris le pari et de se retrouver, dans un avenir plus proche qu’on le pense, à regretter les occasions manquées.

(I’ve been sitting on this for a while now. I’m not happy with it, but I need to let it go.)
I am well aware that the thoughts expressed herein are by no means unique or singular. At best, however, they will serve nicely to add weight to the chorus of likeminded voices.

I have always hesitated to join my voice to the media Babel which events like the Dawson College shooting invariably becomes. There is little to gain, I think, in repeating ad nauseum and unthinkingly how tragic these events have been.
Testimony piled on testimony piled on testimony leaves us with nothing gained save, at best, a sort of communal cathardic purge which may allow us to accept the real occurence of such an event and that it has just happened in our own back yard. And as the mealstrom of images and words begins to gather force and speed, having already relayed all of the facts of the case from every possible angle, it begins to editorialize and look for ready scapegoats and causes.

However, it is not enough for us to underline such events, to respect a moment of silence now and then and write this off as the actions of a gun-crazy nut. As Derrida would say, we must become responsible witnesses.
The cause of the gunmen’s actions at Columbine have been reduced to listening to Marilyn Manson. Kimveer Gill’s at Dawson College will apparently be blamed on VampireFreaks.com, Postal 2 and Super Columbine Massacre RPG. (I would like to point out that both VampireFreaks and S.C.M. RPG have issued statements with regards to the Dawson Shooting incident. In particular, I suggest theSCM RPG creator’s statement to be well worth the read, regardless of whether you agree with him or not.)
It is a halmark of our culture’s thinking to believe that one can reduce the machine into indellible component parts, parts which can be removed and reinstalled to allow the smooth functionning of our cultural apparatus. We look at the shooter in such an instance and once he has been identified, we turn to look at his prior habits and words in order, ostensibly, to seek out the root cause of such a fatal act. I think it is nothing of the sort but rather, this looks suspiciously like a culture trying to absolve itself of any responsibility in the ‘creation’ of the individual.
I should make this perfectly clear: the man who pulls the trigger is still the man who commits the act. I am not writing to absolve Gill of any blame for this crime. I just want to point out that perhaps he is not the only person or entity that deserves a portion of the blame.

The armed forces will likely tell you that it takes a lot of time and effort to turn a human being into a killing machine. Save that shooters like Gill and the kids at Columbine did become killers. If we blame, for instance, Marilyn Manson, does that not come down to pointing the finger and saying: “It wasn’t us. It’s not our fault. It was his/her/their fault. But it wasn’t ours. So we don’t need self-examination and change. We’re fine, they’re the ones who are messed up.”

How many people has Marilyn Manson killed?

Why have we not collectively risen up and started drawing the necessary conclusions with the evidence availalbe? Kids in high schools are being diagnosed with chronic depression, burn outs and and other conditions that were relatively rare even within the adult population say 50 years ago.

I’m exhausted. I don’t want to write about this anymore. it seems insulting to even discuss it and not contribute some earth-shattering insight to the discussion.
I guess I’m angry at the persitent blindness of a society that keeps piling up expections and has transformed the experience of living into a striving after unattainable perfection. As a child, I used to like the idea of the Olympics. Now, I am somewhat more apprehensive vis a vis any philosophy of “Faster” and “Stronger.” Do I think nothing of the desire to improve oneself? No. What I take issue with is the exploitation of this pursuit, its tranformation into an all-encompassing way of life that so heavily highlights our own imperfections to the extent that we become governed by them in our desire to eradicate blemishes. Even our happinesses cannot be thought worthwhile unless is is persistent, perferct, beyond reproach.

The happiness we think we seek is made unattainable by our very fact of feeling that we must go in search of it, that we do not possess it. What if we conceived of our lives are begining with a happiness that cannot be lost, but only forgotten from time to time? It is always there with us…
My culture has allowed industry and itself to flourish at the cost of our self-esteem. Everywhere marketing humanity to itself! Everywhere, images reminding us that we are not complete beings, that we are not quite as happy as we could/should be. The product creates its own need in the consumer in order to justify its own existence; the human being is not longer expected to justify it’s own existence, only his own consumption. Or rather, consumption justifies one’s existence and assigns one their value in society.

If one’s identity is formed (foundationally) in adolescence and early adulthood, what impact do we think such powerful, unrealistic expectations will have on fragile selves? Kids dieting before their teens, depressions and burn-outs. Suicide. Substance abuse. Pressure… Cracking… Most of us fizzle out of commission relatively quitely - not really spoken of, the margin of error in an arbitrary statistic. If lucky, we pull through it eventually as we attain a more stable conception of self later on in adulthood. Unfortunately, other take some people with them on the way out.
If the answer to the question is “consumer,” then what is the question? I think it is “How do we define a human being?” Most of us feel we know the answer to that question, and to a larger extent feel that it is a relatively stable and unchanging answer. It is not. It changes, has changed, and will continue to be changed. And, as has happened before, the definition is likely to change in order to suit those who are in positions of power and authority.
Jean-Paul Sartre, in the prelude of Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth” (quoted by Walcott before his “Dream on Monkey Mountain”) wrote this:

Thus in certain psychoses the hallucinated person, tired of always being insulted by his demons, one fine day starts hearing the voice of an angel who pays him compliments; but the jeers don’t stop for all that; only, from then on, they alternate with congratulations. This is defense but it is also the end of the story. The self is disassociated, and the patient heads for madness.

This is the position of the person who is at once truly and perfectly human, in all of our imperfections and faults, but also entirely removed of all humanity, reduced to a canvas on which a never-perfect paintig is being created, erased, and painted again - an imperfect canvas expected to carry the burden of the perfect work of art.
If we are to make sense of an event like the Dawson shooting, we must first accept this reality, this state of being. It is ours as much as it was Ms. deSousa’s and Kimveer Gill’s. Some of us, tired of being constantly re-scripted and reduced, wanting to strike out, begin to look for a target.

As we cannot strike out at society. We then strike out at those elements that comprise it: other individuals, strangers that make up the impersonal world of the human race. And of course, at the heart of this striking out is a self-hatred; for in despising the human race, we come face to face with our own selves within the human race hatred of the other, the stranger, is hatred of the stranger within ourselves… Our own estrangement from our selves…

Fortunate are the exceptionally strong-willed or those who remain unable to truly recognize their own imprisonment for what it is.

I end this unpoetically and with no regard to form, logic or effective conlusion, here.

While it is a good book, I’ve had to put my relationship with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina on hold for a little bit. I have quite a bit of reading to do for school and teaching ESL classes has kept me busier than anticipated with planning my course material. (Who would have thought?)

So, what did I decide to read instead? I figured a little poetry would be good, a little relatively light verse and then perhaps we could jump back in to the high realist mode of the triple decker brick.

I guess I should have expected this from the scant biographical info I have on Rossetti, but man did she ever love Death and Jesus! So many poems about wishing to be reunited in Heaven, heaven, heaven! Always with the heaven this and Heaven that… The unfortunate thing I have discovered is that I don’t like many of her poems. I don’t think she was a consistently good poet. “Goblin Market” remains, of course, a fantastic poem and it is deservedly well-read and anthologized and save for a few relative ‘gems’ here and there (I very much like “In An Artist’s Studio,” which didn’t make it in the collection I was reading… I don’t think it was a very good collection, but it was only 2$) most of it came off as sentimental trash.

I can see her (historical) significance as a poet for a variety of reasons: her (a woman) writing intelligently about the marriage economy and this idea of the fallen woman. Actually, her poems about this subject are the better ones, I think. The others, the ones about Death, Heaven and Jesus are much more trite, I feel. (Mind you, there is a significant amount of intermingling between these themes.)

All in all, I’m not even sure that the break from my novel was very refreshing at all…

My grandmother looked a lot like Greta here, playing Anna Karenina, when she was a young woman. It’s a little freaky, actually… Unlike Anna though, my grandmother never had an affair, instead living out her life for her children, suffering under the tyrrany of my toaster-tossing grandfather. I think she would have been better off with her own Vronsky.
I’m 320 pages into this book and still not quite half-way through it. Accepting the fact that it’s likely a dated and lackluster translation (this is a Wordsworth Classics edition and as my friend has said with some justification: “I generally do not like anything connected to Wordsworth.”), I find the book to be very enjoyable. I also found it to be about 4$ which was nice. Of course, the reason for that is that they take a public domain version of the text, add about a dozen footnotes and a 3 page introduction. The “original content” gives them the right to sell the editions a theirs. I am hoping one day to know enough Russian to be able to read the book in its original language, I wonder what some of the other translations look like. Maybe I’ll spot check them at some point - comparing some of the portions I like with other editions.

It’s one of those nerdy things I do.

I do admit that while I like the book, it is somewhat discouraging to feel like I’m progressing as fast as a jogger trying to get through a wall of pudding. I keep having to remind myself that these bricks were a product of the golden age of railroad travel: have you ever looked at a map of Russia? Moscow to St-Petersburg is something like 450 km or whatever. (Now if your train leaves St-Petersburg travelling at … anyway. You get the idea.) That, and people used to take it quite regularly. (And by people I mean the aristocracy and the rising middle-classes who had the cash and the time to do so.) In the book itself the characters shuttle between the two quite often. So I keep reminding myself that I’m in no hurry and that I’ll be done when I’m done. It’s just that I have all these OTHER books as well.

As I have not finished it I don’t really have much to say about it. I do find interesting the ways in which Tolstoy sets up parralells between different characters in order to show how society treats infidelity differently with regards to men and women. Also, there are some interesting philosophical passages as well as conversations between characters of different classes that I’ll likely get to at some point later.

I’m fairly tired - I was trying to wrap my head around some Emmanuel Lévinas for my Literary Criticism class and it took a monumental effort to work my way through it. It has made me lazy at this point.
Part 1, chapter XVII has a really good description of a train pulling into the station so I think I’ll leave you with that for now and get back to the novel in due time. At the very least, I thought it was a really good description and I could really picture it pulling in to station…

The approach of the train was made more and more evident by the increasing bustle and preparation on the platform and the arrival of people who had come to meet the train. Through the frosty mist one could see workmen in their sheepskin coats and felt boots crossing the curved railway lines, and hear the whistle of a locomotive and the noisy movements of a heavy mass.

…

In fact the engine was already whistling in the distance, and a few moments later the platform shook as the train puffed in, the steamspread low in the frozen air, the connecting rods slowly and rhythmically pushed and pulled, the bent figure of the engine-driver, warmly wrapped up, was seen covered with hoar-frost. The engine with the tender behind itmoved slowly into the station, gradually slowing down and making the platform tremble still more. Then came the lugge van in which a dog was whining, and at last the passenger coaches, oscillating before they stopped.

(Part 1, Chapter 17)

(I was going to just copy and paste form this document, available at Project Gutneburg. But that translation seems worse than mine. Now I’m thinking I REALLY need to learn enough Russian to read it in the original… Did I mention I have my first tutoring session tomorrow night?)

Summer’s about up and officially, so is my self-imposed sorta challenge. I may yet read one more play in the next few weeks, or maybe get through all of the sonnets from A to Z, but as I have just started Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina a week ago, and am in no particular hurry to finish it up ASAP. By the time I get back to “The Bard” it will be the Autumn of Shakespeare or maybe even the Winter of Shakespeare. I’ve had a good time reading through what I have read and while I wasn’t setting out to ACTUALLY read everything this summer, I guess I was still keeping score, after a fashion. I’ve got a nice little list of read titles so far:

• The Comedy of Errors
• King John
• Venus and Adonis (poem)
• The Rape of Leucrece (poem)
• The Phoenix and the Turtle (poem)
• The Passionate Pilgrim (poem)
• A Lover’s Compaint (poem)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• The Merchant of Venice
• Richard II
• Henry IV, part 1 (a must read)
  
• Henry IV, part 2
• Henry V
• Much Ado About Nothing
• As You Like It (a must read)
  
• Othello (a must read)
• Measure for Measure
• King Lear (a must read)
• Macbeth
• Anthony and Cleopatra
• The Winter’s Tale (a must read)
• The Tempest

Not too bad - 17 of 38 plays, as well as his long poetry. I would have thought to reach a 50% plus “read rate” but I guess not. Actually, I only read about 5 plays over the summer as well as the Narrative Poems, although to be fair to myself I was reading other things. We’ll call The Summer of Shakespeare a success and move on to other things.

I likely will not have much time to read this semester. I have only the one class (unless I can squeeze myself into another last minute), but I will be working full-time or just about, as well as teaching English as a Second Language twice a week.

I think, if I take stock at the end of this little experiement, that it was well worth the time and energy - as well as the next to noting it cost me to buy up those plays at 2$ or 3$ a pop. In the process, I also picked up a bunch of other Renaissance drama like John Webster’s The Dutchess of Malfi, which I have read and which has a werewolf in it, I think. And also The White Devil by the same. I picked up a 3-play collection of Ben Jonson plays as well including Volpone, Epicone and The Alchemist. I’ve read Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and I think, somewhere in my English Literature texbooks I have Tamburlaine. While I recognize that I can get this stuff free online, I just love books as artefacts and if at all possible (which it generally is) I like to own a copy. I’m not too picky with editions and such but here at deadwhitemales, we like paper.

Actually, I think my love affair with books started with love of books as object rather than content. Strange, isn’t it? Like the shape and composition of this item called “book” has some inate characteristic and even one with completely blank pages would have the same allure to me. Not that this is quite the case now.

Moving on, I leave you with the list above and a few suggestions if you’re looking for some great Shakespeare. (I limited myself to 5 though i could have probably added a few more selections…)