O heaven! were man
But constant, he were perfect. That one error
Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins.
-Proteus, Two Gents
I think there's an argument to be made that pride is humanity's chief entanglement, but I get Proteus' point about faithfulness. And bravo to the actor who played this tricky part in Fiasco's production. Proteus' inconstancy could be quite unlikeable, but, in this play, we saw his struggle, weakness, and redemption.
And the humility that comes after.
May 7, 2014 -
Nerding Out…
The other day I was doing some work on Shakespeare and had a big, fat geek-fit over the brilliance of the Bard. The specific passage that prompted all this was Jacques' "All the world's a stage" speech in As You Like It. Towards the middle of his description of the seven ages of man, Jacques gets to the "soldier:"
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.
It was the last two lines that got me, even though I'd heard them several times before. Maybe it's because we've been talking about imagery and figurative language with the kiddos, but I was just amazed by the concise, cutting image of reputation as a bubble sitting on a cannon's lip…with bombastic, arrogant souls leaping after it.
A bubble. What better symbol for reputation?
And the latter word, of course, reminds me of Cassio's self-pitying lament in Othello:
Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost
my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of
myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation,
Iago, my reputation!
Haha, to which Iago replies:
As I am an honest man, I thought you had received
some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than
in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false
imposition: oft goes without merit, and lost without
deserving.
Ah, Iago. Ever practical, crafty, and cunning. I love that he calls reputation an "imposition."
Um. I meant for this post to be short, but the nerdiness took hold. I will conclude with this picture of Ian McKellen as Iago, being ever so creepy with Desdemona. (He was brilliant in this filmed RSC production, BTW.)
October 13, 2013 -
This summer I began listening to books on CD in the car, a productive way to pass the time when stuck in traffic on my way out to classes at George Mason. Thusly, I have listened to Wuthering Heights (Ick! Seriously, Emily? Leave the Goth romance to your sister), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (A good refresher, since I hadn't read it since high school; the actor who did all the voices was amazing. Super awkward to be listening to racially charged language while driving through the crowded streets of DC, though), and The Color Purple (Read by the author. Heartbreaking and good. Was royally disappointed by Spielberg's Disney-ed up film version, although to no fault of Whoopi or Oprah).
Then I got Madam Bovary.
 |
| Not at all the Emma of my mind. |
All I knew is that it was supposed to be super scandalous. I picked it up because I was feeling as though I had neglected French lit (Les Mis being pretty much all I've read) and because it was one of the few "classics" in the Shirlington library audio section I hadn't read.
Flaubert is now one of my literary heroes. The book is an exquisitely crafted depiction of a life of 'fatal self-absorption.' Yes, it has adultery as a main plot point, but the language describing Emma's liaisons is positively chaste by today's standards. However, what caused me to blush while inching along Hwy 66 was the exact, unsparing description of Emma's foolish, idolatrous self-glorification and introspection. To me, the mental decay that caused her boredom, dissatisfaction, and pride was more horrifying than her actual actions, although they were, of course, tragic. I read it as a cautionary tale, much as Romeo and Juliet is a cautionary tale, so it is incomprehensible and amusing to me that Flaubert was put on trial after its publication for its supposedly improper content. He had written a warning, an expose of private fantasies that many respectable citizens no doubt recognized in themselves.
And Flaubert's voice is incredible. (Incidentally, I think it is this "voice of the author" thing that caused me to love Bovary and hate Wuthering Heights. To me, Bronte communicated that we should be as swept up in Heathcliff and Catherine's destructive, idolatrous love as they were. In Bovary, Flaubert's tone clearly communicates the lethal quality of Emma's thoughts and actions...that we the readers should see her as lamentable, pathetic. Relatable, maybe, but not romantic.) Apparently, the writing of the book was an agonizing process for him. Here's an excerpt from an article in The Guardian about the book -
"Flaubert's published letters - especially those to Louise Colet about the writing of Madame Bovary - are some of the most fascinating accounts of the writing process that exist. He tells her he is 'two distinct persons: one who is infatuated with bombast, lyricism, eagle flights, sonorities of phrase and lofty ideas; and another who digs and burrows into the truth as deeply as he can, who likes to treat a humble fact as respectfully as a big one, who would like to make you feel almost physically the things he reproduces.' And early in the writing of the novel he says 'The entire value of my book, if it has any, will consist of my having known how to walk straight ahead on a hair, balanced above the two abysses of lyricism and vulgarity (which I want to fuse in a narrative analysis.) When I think of what it can be, I am dazzled.'"
Not an easy book to read. But dazzling, yes.
September 20, 2013 -
In 1583, Sir Philip Sidney wrote an essay titled "The Defense of Poesie" and/or "An Apologie for Poetrie," in which he basically justifies the existence of art, theatre, poetry, etc., which had come under attack by those judgey Puritans.
Good old Dictionary.com defines "Poesy" as "1. The work or the art of poetic composition. 2 (Archaic) a. Poetry in general; b. verse or poetry in metrical form.
Since I like archaic meanings, I've decided to dedicate a page of my blog to poesy. Excerpts, musings, and, of course, its "defense." Someday soon I will be standing in front of a room full of teenagers challenging me to tell them why they need to read Shakespeare or Langston Hughes, and I need to be able to tell them.
But. To start...one of my favorites from the lovely Mary Oliver.
Song of the Builders
On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
It was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
It will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.
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