This quatrain seems to be the first in a series of three linked quatrains: XXI, XXII, and XXIII. They, to me anyway, make more sense if read together than if read separately.
First Edition: Quatrain XXI
Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to Rest.
Second Edition: Quatrain XXII
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his Vintage rolling Time has prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
Fifth Edition: Quatrain XXII
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his Vintage rolling Time has prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
What changes were made were limited to the first two lines and the last word in the second edition. The fifth edition is identical to the second. In the first edition, the quatrain begins with the exclamation "Lo" whereas in the second and fifth editions, FitzGerald substitutes the more prosaic "For" for "Lo." In the second edition, "Fate" no longer plays a role with "Time" in producing "the loveliest and the best." The last change is using a lower case "r" in the second and subsequent editions, in place of the upper case "R" found in the first edition.
The first change seems to follow the pattern FitzGerald established earlier of changing the poetic expressions and terms to more prosaic formulations.
Why did he drop the reference to "Fate" after the first edition? One possibility may be that "Fate" might have negative connotations. Would readers see "Fate" as suggesting something good or would the implication be something bad or unpleasant? On the other hand, "Fate" could also bring in ideas of determinism or a fixed future which he may have felt inappropriate here, even though there's a clear reference to this in a later quatrain. The use of "rolling" now imparts movement to Time. It is not just Time but "rolling Time," which indirectly brings in a reference to Fate. "Rolling" can suggest wheels, possibly the Wheel of Fate.
The last change also is an example of another pattern of changes: FitzGerald had changed the first letter of many nouns from the upper case in the first edition to the lower in subsequent editions. The change in meaning is subtle, from a static place or condition "to Rest" to the more active verb, "to rest." Of course, it could simply have been a typographical error in the first edition which he was simply correcting for the later editions.
I like the first line of the first edition better than the second through the fifth editions. "Lo" gets my attention better and suggests more strongly that a point is being made. "For" is weaker and moreover suggests that an explanation is to follow--but what is being explained?
However, this quatrain is a observation, one that has been made before. All must die eventually, even those of a superior vintage. Again, we see the theme of wine and wine-making brought up. The "loveliest and the best" are a vintage of time and fate, although only time is given the credit in the later editions. And this vintage, superior though they may be, now have "crept silently to rest"--the Fate of all.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Greg Benford: Furious Gulf--Galactic Center Book 5
Furious Gulf is the fifth book in Greg Benford's Galactic Center series. In this novel, Killeen Bishop and Bishop family reach the center of our galaxy, at which is the black hole they call the Eater. (Current theory supports the existence of a black hole at the center of our galaxy and at the center of many other galaxies also.) In the first two volumes, In The Ocean of Night and Across the Sea of Stars, we followed the exploits of Nigel Walmsley, a Brit who somehow wrangled his way to becoming an astronaut for NASA. Those two novels covered the period from the 1990s to around 2060 or so and depicted humanity's first tenuous contacts with the hostile mech culture.
Book three in the series, Great Sky River, takes us some 30,000 years into the future and far from Earth. During that period humans have spread throughout the galaxy but had seemingly reached their peak and dwindled down into isolated remnants scattered throughout the galaxy. The planet Snowglade contained some of these remnants, a few bands of tech-nomads desperately trying to survive the mechs. Discovering a ancient human built spacecraft, which they name the Argo, and with the aid of a renegade mech (perhaps) known as the Mantis, the humans escape the planet.
In Tides of Light, Killeen Bishop, who has become the leader of the Bishop family and remnants of other families, leads his people to another planet which they had hoped to settle, free once again from the mechs. Instead, they find more bands of humans who are engaged in a struggle for survival, first against the mechs and then against the mulitpedia, who are an organic intelligent species far in advance of the humans and who are also apparently on the way to becoming an organic/mech hybrid. After a struggle, Killeen once again leads his people off-planet and heads for the Galactic Center, this time accompanied by Quath, one of the multipedia who comes along as a representative of and a contact with the multipedia, .
Furious Gulf opens with the Argo nearing the Eater, the massive black hole at the Galactic center. Killeen faces a mutiny aboard ship for his crew has been on reduced rations for some time, and he has ignored their requests to stop and replenish supplies. Killeen, at this point, resembles Melville's Captain Ahab much more than Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame. Killeen is obsessed with reaching the Center, for legends, myths, and his instincts tell him that the secret of survival in the war with the mechs lies at the Center, and he seems willing to sacrifice his ship and crew in pursuit of that secret.
Warning: I am going to discuss significant plot elements and the ending of the novel.
With the aid of the mysterious electromagnetic entity who has appeared previously, the Argo is able to avoid the mechs and find a temporary haven at a space station? on the edge of the black hole. At this point, the disagreement between Killeen and his son Toby emerges, and this appears to be the result of one of the strangest Oedipal conflicts I have ever read.
The humans who run the station are not doing this out of any warm feelings for humanity but out of a profit motive. The Bishops and the Argo can stay, but there are various fees, one of which is access to the so far untranslatable tiles found on the ship.
Benford has allowed us to listen in while the mechminds debate their course of action with regards to the humans, and we have discovered that they also are intrigued by these same tiles. They just might be a threat to the mech civilization. The mechs are also concerned because they know that mysterious intelligences superior to them exist. Are these intelligences more highly evolved mechminds or could they impossibly be organic?
In the first two novels, the POV character was Nigel Walmsley, whose struggles with his superiors in NASA was a significant part of the work. The third and fourth novels featured Killeen Bishop and his struggles, not surprisingly, with various authority figures and to some extent with his crew, which could replace him if they became too disenchanted with him. In this novel, the POV now shifts a third time, to Killeen's son Toby. We experience events from Toby's perspective, including his view of his father, who is struggling to keep the crew under control.
Toby, about two-thirds of the way into the novel, finally breaks with his father and escapes into the strangest environment yet presented. To a considerable extent the landscape consists partially of more or less "solid" time. No, I'm not going to attempt to explain this.
While Toby is on the run, the mechs make a concerted attack on the human stronghold. They, like Killeen, believe there is a threat to mech survival, and it seems to have something to do with getting three generations of a family together. Somehow, Abraham (interesting name for a patriarch), Killeen's father, has managed to escape the final attack on the Bishop stronghold on Snowglade and get to the Galactic Center. The mechs want capture them, if possible, and discover just what the nature of the threat might be, or at least eliminate them to remove the threat.
Toby eventually manages to reach a sanctuary and is greeted by Nigel Walmsley, who has managed to survive for 30,000 years through judicious use of cold sleep and the time-dilation effects of existence on the edge of a black hole (these effects are a generally accepted and respectable part of the theory regarding black holes). Time is the strangest thing, especially around black holes. We are now ready for the climactic struggle between the mechs and humanity.
Thus ends Furious Gulf.
The star of the show is the Eater, the black hole at the center of our galaxy. I've read other accounts and have even seen at least one film of the environment of a black hole, but Benford is the first to really focus on and bring out its strangeness, and that includes several life forms. That he is able to do this is, no doubt, the result of his education and training as an astrophysicist. In the "Afterward" to Furious Gulf, Benford writes--
"It has been an unusual experience to conjure up imaginary events about a place that I was also doing hard calculations about. Freed of the bonds of The Astrophysical Journal, I have felt at liberty to speculate on what processes might have transpired, over the galaxy's ten billion years of furious cooking, to create forms of life and intelligence beyond our ken."
Overall Rating: again a superb effort on Benford's part.
Now, on to Book 6, the final book in the series, Sailing Bright Eternity.
Book three in the series, Great Sky River, takes us some 30,000 years into the future and far from Earth. During that period humans have spread throughout the galaxy but had seemingly reached their peak and dwindled down into isolated remnants scattered throughout the galaxy. The planet Snowglade contained some of these remnants, a few bands of tech-nomads desperately trying to survive the mechs. Discovering a ancient human built spacecraft, which they name the Argo, and with the aid of a renegade mech (perhaps) known as the Mantis, the humans escape the planet.
In Tides of Light, Killeen Bishop, who has become the leader of the Bishop family and remnants of other families, leads his people to another planet which they had hoped to settle, free once again from the mechs. Instead, they find more bands of humans who are engaged in a struggle for survival, first against the mechs and then against the mulitpedia, who are an organic intelligent species far in advance of the humans and who are also apparently on the way to becoming an organic/mech hybrid. After a struggle, Killeen once again leads his people off-planet and heads for the Galactic Center, this time accompanied by Quath, one of the multipedia who comes along as a representative of and a contact with the multipedia, .
Furious Gulf opens with the Argo nearing the Eater, the massive black hole at the Galactic center. Killeen faces a mutiny aboard ship for his crew has been on reduced rations for some time, and he has ignored their requests to stop and replenish supplies. Killeen, at this point, resembles Melville's Captain Ahab much more than Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame. Killeen is obsessed with reaching the Center, for legends, myths, and his instincts tell him that the secret of survival in the war with the mechs lies at the Center, and he seems willing to sacrifice his ship and crew in pursuit of that secret.
Warning: I am going to discuss significant plot elements and the ending of the novel.
With the aid of the mysterious electromagnetic entity who has appeared previously, the Argo is able to avoid the mechs and find a temporary haven at a space station? on the edge of the black hole. At this point, the disagreement between Killeen and his son Toby emerges, and this appears to be the result of one of the strangest Oedipal conflicts I have ever read.
The humans who run the station are not doing this out of any warm feelings for humanity but out of a profit motive. The Bishops and the Argo can stay, but there are various fees, one of which is access to the so far untranslatable tiles found on the ship.
Benford has allowed us to listen in while the mechminds debate their course of action with regards to the humans, and we have discovered that they also are intrigued by these same tiles. They just might be a threat to the mech civilization. The mechs are also concerned because they know that mysterious intelligences superior to them exist. Are these intelligences more highly evolved mechminds or could they impossibly be organic?
In the first two novels, the POV character was Nigel Walmsley, whose struggles with his superiors in NASA was a significant part of the work. The third and fourth novels featured Killeen Bishop and his struggles, not surprisingly, with various authority figures and to some extent with his crew, which could replace him if they became too disenchanted with him. In this novel, the POV now shifts a third time, to Killeen's son Toby. We experience events from Toby's perspective, including his view of his father, who is struggling to keep the crew under control.
Toby, about two-thirds of the way into the novel, finally breaks with his father and escapes into the strangest environment yet presented. To a considerable extent the landscape consists partially of more or less "solid" time. No, I'm not going to attempt to explain this.
While Toby is on the run, the mechs make a concerted attack on the human stronghold. They, like Killeen, believe there is a threat to mech survival, and it seems to have something to do with getting three generations of a family together. Somehow, Abraham (interesting name for a patriarch), Killeen's father, has managed to escape the final attack on the Bishop stronghold on Snowglade and get to the Galactic Center. The mechs want capture them, if possible, and discover just what the nature of the threat might be, or at least eliminate them to remove the threat.
Toby eventually manages to reach a sanctuary and is greeted by Nigel Walmsley, who has managed to survive for 30,000 years through judicious use of cold sleep and the time-dilation effects of existence on the edge of a black hole (these effects are a generally accepted and respectable part of the theory regarding black holes). Time is the strangest thing, especially around black holes. We are now ready for the climactic struggle between the mechs and humanity.
Thus ends Furious Gulf.
The star of the show is the Eater, the black hole at the center of our galaxy. I've read other accounts and have even seen at least one film of the environment of a black hole, but Benford is the first to really focus on and bring out its strangeness, and that includes several life forms. That he is able to do this is, no doubt, the result of his education and training as an astrophysicist. In the "Afterward" to Furious Gulf, Benford writes--
"It has been an unusual experience to conjure up imaginary events about a place that I was also doing hard calculations about. Freed of the bonds of The Astrophysical Journal, I have felt at liberty to speculate on what processes might have transpired, over the galaxy's ten billion years of furious cooking, to create forms of life and intelligence beyond our ken."
Overall Rating: again a superb effort on Benford's part.
Now, on to Book 6, the final book in the series, Sailing Bright Eternity.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Something to think about
Eric Hoffer
Reflections on the Human Condition
The following is a brief quote from Eric Hoffer's Reflections on the Human Condition.
"The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience; a readiness to attempt the impossible; a bias for simple solutions--to cut the knot rather than unravel it; the viewing of compromise as surrender; the tendency to manipulate people and 'experiment with blood.' Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanisation. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."
Reflections on the Human Condition was first published in 1973, over 35 years ago. This quote suggests that it could have been published last week.
What do you think? Is he overstating his case?
Eric Hoffer is the author of The True Believer, a work which should be read by anyone who wants to gain some understanding of the true believer, one who is ready to die for a belief and, unfortunately, equally ready to kill others in the name of that same belief. The true believer is one who knows the only way to paradise and is determined to lead you there, even if it kills you. This person exists on both sides of the political fence.
Reflections on the Human Condition
The following is a brief quote from Eric Hoffer's Reflections on the Human Condition.
"The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.
There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience; a readiness to attempt the impossible; a bias for simple solutions--to cut the knot rather than unravel it; the viewing of compromise as surrender; the tendency to manipulate people and 'experiment with blood.' Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanisation. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."
Reflections on the Human Condition was first published in 1973, over 35 years ago. This quote suggests that it could have been published last week.
What do you think? Is he overstating his case?
Eric Hoffer is the author of The True Believer, a work which should be read by anyone who wants to gain some understanding of the true believer, one who is ready to die for a belief and, unfortunately, equally ready to kill others in the name of that same belief. The true believer is one who knows the only way to paradise and is determined to lead you there, even if it kills you. This person exists on both sides of the political fence.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
THREE BY THEODORE STURGEON
Those who don't read SF and Fantasy probably have never had the chance to become acquainted with two of the finest short story writers in the English language: Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon. Their tales range from the outright fantastic to horror to everyday life. I've discussed some of Bradbury's tales already, mostly in conjunction with film versions, and there are many others which I want to bring up. Today, though, I want to discuss briefly three of Sturgeon's stories that are favorites of mine. One, not only is a favorite, but it forced me to think about some of my attitudes and eventually changed my way of thinking.
Warning: I will bring up significant plot elements and even the endings for some of the stories.
"Bianca's Hands"
This is a horror story, I think. It might even be a love story. Perhaps it's both. I'm not sure what to call it for it's one of the strangest stories I've ever read, and it has stayed with me ever since I first read it decades ago. See for yourself. I will quote the opening paragraphs and let it speak for itself.
"Bianca's mother was leading her when Ran saw her first. Bianca was squat and small, with dank hair and rotten teeth. Her mouth was crooked and it drooled. Either she was blind or she just didn't care about bumping into things. It didn't really matter because Bianca was an imbecile. Her hands . . ."
This is a strange way to begin a love story, the story of an overwhelming passion that eventually leads to a tragedy. At least, I think it's a tragedy. But it gets stranger when one reads the last words of the paragraph which leads into the second paragraph--"Her hands . . ."
"They were lovely hands, graceful hands, hands as soft and smooth and white as snowflakes, hands whose color was lightly tinged with pink like the glow of Mars on Snow. They lay on the counter side by side, looking at Ran. They lay there half closed and crouching, each pulsing with a movement like the the panting of a field creature, and they looked. Not watched. Later, they watched him. Now they looked. They did, because Ran felt their united gaze , and his heart beat strongly."
Ran rents a room and moves in with Bianca's mother and Bianca, or rather, to be realistic, Bianca's hands. He then begins to court, not Bianca, but her hands. Or, perhaps it was the reverse: they began to court? seduce? him.
"Bianca was alone in the room, and Ran went to her and sat beside her. She did not move, nor did her hands. They rested on a small table before her, preening themselves. This, then, was when they really began watching him. He felt it, right down to the depths of his enchanted heart. The hands kept stroking each other, and yet they knew he was there, they knew of his desire. They stretched themselves before him, archly, languorously, and his blood pounded hot. Before he could stay himself he reached and tried to grasp them. He was strong, and his move was sudden and clumsy. One of the hands seemed to disappear, so swiftly did it drop into Bianca's lap. But the other--"
As I read the story, I gradually realized that this tale could not, would not have a "happy ending"--or, at least an ending that I would call "happy." Ran couldn't see that something here was wrong. The horror increases as Ran becomes more and more infatuated with her hands. Finally, he seals his fate when he asks Bianca's mother for permission to marry Bianca (no, I will not give in and say he asks for her hand.)
Is there a moral here? Perhaps. It does point out the danger of focusing on only one aspect of the beloved and not the whole person.
What makes this story so memorable is Sturgeon's language. He manages to make those hands the real focus of the story. They are alive and independent; Bianca's body is simply the means of transporting those hands. He imbues them with a consciousness that is both real and grotesque at the same time.
Overall Rating: a quiet little horror tale that deserves far more attention than it gets.
---------------------------------------------
"The Silken-Swift"
I guess one could call this one a fantasy, mostly anyway. The title refers to a unicorn, a mythical beast, except that in this story it isn't mythical. This story looks at an obsession, sexual naturally, but one that seems more natural than in the previous tale. It's also the story of the eternal triangle: two women and one man. One woman uses him and abuses him, while the second woman is abused by him. It takes a unicorn to resolve the confusion. However, I'm not too sure about the ending. I have some problems with it, and it would be interesting to hear what others think about it.
Briefly, Rita is the daughter of the richest man in the village. She is beautiful and selfish and skilled in the use of potions that manipulate people's feelings. In this way, she has made fools of many men without ever giving them what they think she promises.
One night, she torments a new man, Del, in this way, and left him temporarily blinded by one of her drugs. Barbara, another woman from the village, one who has been quietly in love with him, finds him and attempts to help him. Del, still blind, thinks it's Rita and takes his revenge on her now that he has her within reach. Barbara never tells him of his mistake.
Rita, learning of the presence of the unicorn, has a golden bridle made and gets Barbara to lead them to the pond where the unicorn--the Silken-Swift-- comes to drink. Rita will prove that she is still a virgin for only virgins are able to catch a unicorn.
The pond, even though in the midst of a swamp, was special: "It was a place without hardness or hate, where the aspens trembled only for wonder, and where all contentment was rewarded. Every single rabbit there was the champion nose-twinkler, and every waterbird could stand on one leg the longest, and proud of it. Shelf-fungi hung to the willow-trunks, making that certain, single purple of which the sunset is incapable , and a tanager and a cardinal gravely granted one another his definition of 'red.'"
However, the unicorn ignores the myth and rejects Rita in front of a large crowd of villagers and comes to Barbara. But, there is a price to be paid as the unicorn flips Rita's golden bridle into the pond.
"And the instant it touched the water, the pond was a bog and the birds rose mourning from the trees.
. . .
Barbara said, 'For us, he lost his pool, his beautiful pool.'
And Del said 'He will get another. He must.' With difficulty he added, 'He couldn't be . . . punished . . . for being so gloriously Fair.'"
Strange ending: Rita wrongly is believed to not be a virgin. Del gets the girl whom he raped and the Unicorn loses its beautiful pond. Should Del be rewarded? Why did the Silken-Swift lose its pond? Was it really "for being so gloriously Fair."?
Overall Rating: well-written, as is typical of a Sturgeon tale, but it leaves some disquieting questions unanswered, for Sturgeon has taken a few liberties with the myth.
-------------------------------------------
"Thunder and Roses"
This is the story that caused me to reconsider some of my beliefs many years ago. It didn't change them immediately, but it stayed with me and influenced me so that I no longer think the way I did then. The story was published in 1947, at the beginning of the Cold War, when many people feared that a nuclear war was imminent. The two most strident reactions were generally all one heard: "Better Red than Dead" shouted one side, while the other side screamed "Better Dead than Red." Sturgeon's story suggested there were other options and other, better ways to think. One way was to see all of us as part of humanity.
In "Thunder and Roses," the horror has happened. A surprise nuclear attack has virtually destroyed the US, wiping out the government and military so quickly that no retaliation could be made. The story is set on a small obscure military post that escaped being wiped out. However, those there know their time is short, days for some, a week or two or maybe even a month for most. The North American continent is uninhabitable.
However, the enemy will not escape either, for the amount of radiation released by the attack is so great that within a year or two, it will blanket the northern hemisphere, and as one of he characters says, "They have killed us, and they have ruined themselves."
One of the survivors discovers that the post has a secret backup control system for launching a retaliatory strike, if the first line system has been knocked out. His immediate reaction is that he now has a chance to destroy those who have destroyed the US.
The issue is not that simple. In the story, there is a level of radiation that would eventually destroy all of humanity and almost all of the other species we share this planet with. It's the scenario set up in Nevil Shute's On the Beach. So far, that limit hasn't been reached, yet. It will be, though, if the US retaliates. This is the conflict: revenge vs a concern for all life.
Sturgeon has one of his characters tell us:
"A disease made other humans our enemies for a time, but as the generations march past, enemies become friends and friends enemies. The enmity of those who have killed us is such a tiny, temporary thing in the long sweep of history!'
. . .
'And even if this is the end of humankind, we dare not take away the chances some other life-form might have to succeed where we failed. If we retaliate, there will not be a dog, a deer, an ape, a bird or fish or lizard to carry the evolutionary torch. In the name of justice, if we must condemn and destroy ourselves, let us not condemn all other life along with us. Mankind is heavy enough with sins. If we must destroy, let us stop with destroying ourselves!'"
This was a philosophy that I hadn't heard before. It argues that we look beyond our family, our clan, our city, our nation, even beyond our own species. Of course, today, while this is not accepted by even a sizable minority, it is prevalent, even if only to be derided by the "wise" and the practical. In 1947, at least in my immediate universe, it was a radical thought, and one I had to struggle with. What's unfortunate is that I can't tell Theodore Sturgeon that he succeeded in convincing me and, possibly, many others also.
Who knows? Maybe in a century or two, someone will read this story and wonder why it was necessary to argue such an obvious way of thinking about our place here.
Any thoughts?
Warning: I will bring up significant plot elements and even the endings for some of the stories.
"Bianca's Hands"
This is a horror story, I think. It might even be a love story. Perhaps it's both. I'm not sure what to call it for it's one of the strangest stories I've ever read, and it has stayed with me ever since I first read it decades ago. See for yourself. I will quote the opening paragraphs and let it speak for itself.
"Bianca's mother was leading her when Ran saw her first. Bianca was squat and small, with dank hair and rotten teeth. Her mouth was crooked and it drooled. Either she was blind or she just didn't care about bumping into things. It didn't really matter because Bianca was an imbecile. Her hands . . ."
This is a strange way to begin a love story, the story of an overwhelming passion that eventually leads to a tragedy. At least, I think it's a tragedy. But it gets stranger when one reads the last words of the paragraph which leads into the second paragraph--"Her hands . . ."
"They were lovely hands, graceful hands, hands as soft and smooth and white as snowflakes, hands whose color was lightly tinged with pink like the glow of Mars on Snow. They lay on the counter side by side, looking at Ran. They lay there half closed and crouching, each pulsing with a movement like the the panting of a field creature, and they looked. Not watched. Later, they watched him. Now they looked. They did, because Ran felt their united gaze , and his heart beat strongly."
Ran rents a room and moves in with Bianca's mother and Bianca, or rather, to be realistic, Bianca's hands. He then begins to court, not Bianca, but her hands. Or, perhaps it was the reverse: they began to court? seduce? him.
"Bianca was alone in the room, and Ran went to her and sat beside her. She did not move, nor did her hands. They rested on a small table before her, preening themselves. This, then, was when they really began watching him. He felt it, right down to the depths of his enchanted heart. The hands kept stroking each other, and yet they knew he was there, they knew of his desire. They stretched themselves before him, archly, languorously, and his blood pounded hot. Before he could stay himself he reached and tried to grasp them. He was strong, and his move was sudden and clumsy. One of the hands seemed to disappear, so swiftly did it drop into Bianca's lap. But the other--"
As I read the story, I gradually realized that this tale could not, would not have a "happy ending"--or, at least an ending that I would call "happy." Ran couldn't see that something here was wrong. The horror increases as Ran becomes more and more infatuated with her hands. Finally, he seals his fate when he asks Bianca's mother for permission to marry Bianca (no, I will not give in and say he asks for her hand.)
Is there a moral here? Perhaps. It does point out the danger of focusing on only one aspect of the beloved and not the whole person.
What makes this story so memorable is Sturgeon's language. He manages to make those hands the real focus of the story. They are alive and independent; Bianca's body is simply the means of transporting those hands. He imbues them with a consciousness that is both real and grotesque at the same time.
Overall Rating: a quiet little horror tale that deserves far more attention than it gets.
---------------------------------------------
"The Silken-Swift"
I guess one could call this one a fantasy, mostly anyway. The title refers to a unicorn, a mythical beast, except that in this story it isn't mythical. This story looks at an obsession, sexual naturally, but one that seems more natural than in the previous tale. It's also the story of the eternal triangle: two women and one man. One woman uses him and abuses him, while the second woman is abused by him. It takes a unicorn to resolve the confusion. However, I'm not too sure about the ending. I have some problems with it, and it would be interesting to hear what others think about it.
Briefly, Rita is the daughter of the richest man in the village. She is beautiful and selfish and skilled in the use of potions that manipulate people's feelings. In this way, she has made fools of many men without ever giving them what they think she promises.
One night, she torments a new man, Del, in this way, and left him temporarily blinded by one of her drugs. Barbara, another woman from the village, one who has been quietly in love with him, finds him and attempts to help him. Del, still blind, thinks it's Rita and takes his revenge on her now that he has her within reach. Barbara never tells him of his mistake.
Rita, learning of the presence of the unicorn, has a golden bridle made and gets Barbara to lead them to the pond where the unicorn--the Silken-Swift-- comes to drink. Rita will prove that she is still a virgin for only virgins are able to catch a unicorn.
The pond, even though in the midst of a swamp, was special: "It was a place without hardness or hate, where the aspens trembled only for wonder, and where all contentment was rewarded. Every single rabbit there was the champion nose-twinkler, and every waterbird could stand on one leg the longest, and proud of it. Shelf-fungi hung to the willow-trunks, making that certain, single purple of which the sunset is incapable , and a tanager and a cardinal gravely granted one another his definition of 'red.'"
However, the unicorn ignores the myth and rejects Rita in front of a large crowd of villagers and comes to Barbara. But, there is a price to be paid as the unicorn flips Rita's golden bridle into the pond.
"And the instant it touched the water, the pond was a bog and the birds rose mourning from the trees.
. . .
Barbara said, 'For us, he lost his pool, his beautiful pool.'
And Del said 'He will get another. He must.' With difficulty he added, 'He couldn't be . . . punished . . . for being so gloriously Fair.'"
Strange ending: Rita wrongly is believed to not be a virgin. Del gets the girl whom he raped and the Unicorn loses its beautiful pond. Should Del be rewarded? Why did the Silken-Swift lose its pond? Was it really "for being so gloriously Fair."?
Overall Rating: well-written, as is typical of a Sturgeon tale, but it leaves some disquieting questions unanswered, for Sturgeon has taken a few liberties with the myth.
-------------------------------------------
"Thunder and Roses"
This is the story that caused me to reconsider some of my beliefs many years ago. It didn't change them immediately, but it stayed with me and influenced me so that I no longer think the way I did then. The story was published in 1947, at the beginning of the Cold War, when many people feared that a nuclear war was imminent. The two most strident reactions were generally all one heard: "Better Red than Dead" shouted one side, while the other side screamed "Better Dead than Red." Sturgeon's story suggested there were other options and other, better ways to think. One way was to see all of us as part of humanity.
In "Thunder and Roses," the horror has happened. A surprise nuclear attack has virtually destroyed the US, wiping out the government and military so quickly that no retaliation could be made. The story is set on a small obscure military post that escaped being wiped out. However, those there know their time is short, days for some, a week or two or maybe even a month for most. The North American continent is uninhabitable.
However, the enemy will not escape either, for the amount of radiation released by the attack is so great that within a year or two, it will blanket the northern hemisphere, and as one of he characters says, "They have killed us, and they have ruined themselves."
One of the survivors discovers that the post has a secret backup control system for launching a retaliatory strike, if the first line system has been knocked out. His immediate reaction is that he now has a chance to destroy those who have destroyed the US.
The issue is not that simple. In the story, there is a level of radiation that would eventually destroy all of humanity and almost all of the other species we share this planet with. It's the scenario set up in Nevil Shute's On the Beach. So far, that limit hasn't been reached, yet. It will be, though, if the US retaliates. This is the conflict: revenge vs a concern for all life.
Sturgeon has one of his characters tell us:
"A disease made other humans our enemies for a time, but as the generations march past, enemies become friends and friends enemies. The enmity of those who have killed us is such a tiny, temporary thing in the long sweep of history!'
. . .
'And even if this is the end of humankind, we dare not take away the chances some other life-form might have to succeed where we failed. If we retaliate, there will not be a dog, a deer, an ape, a bird or fish or lizard to carry the evolutionary torch. In the name of justice, if we must condemn and destroy ourselves, let us not condemn all other life along with us. Mankind is heavy enough with sins. If we must destroy, let us stop with destroying ourselves!'"
This was a philosophy that I hadn't heard before. It argues that we look beyond our family, our clan, our city, our nation, even beyond our own species. Of course, today, while this is not accepted by even a sizable minority, it is prevalent, even if only to be derided by the "wise" and the practical. In 1947, at least in my immediate universe, it was a radical thought, and one I had to struggle with. What's unfortunate is that I can't tell Theodore Sturgeon that he succeeded in convincing me and, possibly, many others also.
Who knows? Maybe in a century or two, someone will read this story and wonder why it was necessary to argue such an obvious way of thinking about our place here.
Any thoughts?
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Carl Sandburg: January 6, 1878--July 22, 1967
I'm prejudiced here. I was born and raised (mostly) in Chicago, so Sandburg naturally was one I looked into when I first began reading poetry. He didn't get all of Chicago into his poetry, but he got more than anybody else I've read.
One of my favorite poems by Carl Sandburg.
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
I have a cat and it's mostly grey. It frequently reminds me of Sandburg's poem.
I haven't read anything by Sandburg in many years now. Perhaps it's time to renew an old acquaintance.
Do you want to mention a favorite poem by Sandburg?
One of my favorite poems by Carl Sandburg.
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
I have a cat and it's mostly grey. It frequently reminds me of Sandburg's poem.
I haven't read anything by Sandburg in many years now. Perhaps it's time to renew an old acquaintance.
Do you want to mention a favorite poem by Sandburg?
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Francois Villon: Jan. 5, 1463?
I have found Francois Villon to be a fascinating character, and even more fascinating, or perhaps mysterious would be a better word, his fate. No one knows what happened to him. (For the full article which I've quoted from, see the link at the end of the post). He was sentenced to be hanged in late 1462, but this was commuted to banishment on January 5, 1463. He was never heard of again.
"Francois Villon (1431-after 1463) was a French poet, thief, and general vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison. He is one of the most influential secular poets of fifteenth-century European literature. Villon freely integrated his experiences from his life of crime into his poetry, and the result was some of the first poetry to present, in unflinching terms, the lives of the peasant classes. He became something of a "patron saint" for those who would use their art to criticize power. Whether his roguish life was an extension of his critique, or the other way around, Villon's attitude is the embodiment of an anti-social perspective that would become popular with artists in the modern and post-modern era.
In 1461, at the age of only thirty years old, Villon wrote the Grand testament, the work which has immortalized him. Despite having composed a literary masterpiece, Villon couldn't keep himself away from a life of crime. In the autumn of 1462 he had fled to the cloisters of Saint-Benoit to escape the authorities, and in November he was in prison once again for theft. The old charge of stealing from the College of Navarre was revived, and even a royal pardon did not bar the demand for restitution. Bail was accepted, however, Villon fell promptly into a street quarrel, was arrested, tortured and condemned to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to banishment. What happened to Villon after this event is unknown—from this point on there exists no further record of Villon's biography. "
This is my favorite poem of his, and it contains what is probably one of the most famous lines in poetry: "But where are the snows of yester-year?" This poem could easily be placed in an themed anthology with Edward Fitzgerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It has that same feel of past glories that are gone forever.
The Ballad of Dead Ladies
Tell me now in what hidden way is
Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
Neither of them the fairer woman?
Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
Only heard on river and mere,—
She whose beauty was more than human? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?
Where's Héloise, the learned nun,
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
(From Love he won such dule and teen!)
And where, I pray you, is the Queen
Who willed that Buridan should steer
Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?
White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
With a voice like any mermaiden,—
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
And that good Joan whom Englishmen
At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
Mother of God, where are they then? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?
Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
Except with this for an overword,—
But where are the snows of yester-year?
(trans. by Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
http://tinyurl.com/ya745uy
"Francois Villon (1431-after 1463) was a French poet, thief, and general vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison. He is one of the most influential secular poets of fifteenth-century European literature. Villon freely integrated his experiences from his life of crime into his poetry, and the result was some of the first poetry to present, in unflinching terms, the lives of the peasant classes. He became something of a "patron saint" for those who would use their art to criticize power. Whether his roguish life was an extension of his critique, or the other way around, Villon's attitude is the embodiment of an anti-social perspective that would become popular with artists in the modern and post-modern era.
In 1461, at the age of only thirty years old, Villon wrote the Grand testament, the work which has immortalized him. Despite having composed a literary masterpiece, Villon couldn't keep himself away from a life of crime. In the autumn of 1462 he had fled to the cloisters of Saint-Benoit to escape the authorities, and in November he was in prison once again for theft. The old charge of stealing from the College of Navarre was revived, and even a royal pardon did not bar the demand for restitution. Bail was accepted, however, Villon fell promptly into a street quarrel, was arrested, tortured and condemned to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to banishment. What happened to Villon after this event is unknown—from this point on there exists no further record of Villon's biography. "
This is my favorite poem of his, and it contains what is probably one of the most famous lines in poetry: "But where are the snows of yester-year?" This poem could easily be placed in an themed anthology with Edward Fitzgerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It has that same feel of past glories that are gone forever.
The Ballad of Dead Ladies
Tell me now in what hidden way is
Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
Neither of them the fairer woman?
Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
Only heard on river and mere,—
She whose beauty was more than human? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?
Where's Héloise, the learned nun,
For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
(From Love he won such dule and teen!)
And where, I pray you, is the Queen
Who willed that Buridan should steer
Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?
White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
With a voice like any mermaiden,—
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
And that good Joan whom Englishmen
At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
Mother of God, where are they then? . . .
But where are the snows of yester-year?
Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
Except with this for an overword,—
But where are the snows of yester-year?
(trans. by Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
http://tinyurl.com/ya745uy
Sunday, January 3, 2010
J. R. R. Tolkien: Jan. 3, 1892--Sept. 2, 1973
I have heard many readers express disappointment with Tolkien's The Silmarillion (TS). It isn't as good as The Lord of the Rings (LotR) or so many have said. Some claim it's boring. I think this reaction has two different causes. The first is that Tolkien died before he finished the work. His son Christopher Tolkien took on the task of completing it. Unfortunately Christopher Tolkien is not the writer his father was. However, I do not find the work to be poorly written; it may plod sometimes but the content is well worth the effort.
The second problem and the more serious one is that many readers misunderstand Tolkien's view of The Silmarillion. It was not, as far as I can see, to be a grand epic of a quest as was The Lord of the Rings, or even to a lesser extent, as was The Hobbit (TH). I think Tolkien had history in mind when he wrote The Silmarillion. It was to be a history of Middle Earth, prior to the events of the two novels. Tolkien was creating a universe. Consequently we don't have the same focus that we find in LotR or TH.
The one work I find that most closely approaches Tolkien's intentions is The Old Testament, the first book of which is Genesis, and it begins--
1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said: Let there be light: and there was light.
This is, of course, the Creation story, as recounted in the King James Version. It is the creation of the world--the very beginning of time, of history, of the relationship between God and its creatures.
Now, the first book of The Silmarillion is "Ainulindale: The Music of the Ainur," and it begins as follows:
"There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Iluvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Iluvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony."
This clearly is a Creation story, the very beginning of the world of Middle Earth. However, in Tolkien's universe, God works with his first creation, the Ainur, to create the universe. And, instead of light, Eru, in a sense, says "Let there be music." He gives the Ainur "a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed."
He then gives them their task: "ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme..."
"Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights . . . and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void."
And later--
"But when they were come into the Void, Iluvatar said to them: 'Behold your music!' And he showed to them a vision, giving to them sight where before was only hearing; and they saw a new World made visible before them, and it was globed amid the Void, and it was sustained therein, but was not of it."
And . . .
"And they saw with amazement the coming of the Children of Iluvatar, and the habitation that was prepared for them; and they perceived that they themselves in the labour of their music had been busy with preparation of this dwelling, and yet knew not that it had any purpose beyond its own beauty. For the Children of Iluvatar are conceived by him alone. . . Now the Children of Iluvatar are Elves and Men, the Firstborn and the Followers."
While "Genesis" and "Ainulindale" differ, they do parallel each other in many respects, and I think that we should not force The Silmarillion into being something that it is not meant to be. It is a unique work, separate in design and intent from The Lord of the Rings, and it should be read with this in mind.
Overall Rating: highly recommended for those interested in Tolkien's universe.
The second problem and the more serious one is that many readers misunderstand Tolkien's view of The Silmarillion. It was not, as far as I can see, to be a grand epic of a quest as was The Lord of the Rings, or even to a lesser extent, as was The Hobbit (TH). I think Tolkien had history in mind when he wrote The Silmarillion. It was to be a history of Middle Earth, prior to the events of the two novels. Tolkien was creating a universe. Consequently we don't have the same focus that we find in LotR or TH.
The one work I find that most closely approaches Tolkien's intentions is The Old Testament, the first book of which is Genesis, and it begins--
1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said: Let there be light: and there was light.
This is, of course, the Creation story, as recounted in the King James Version. It is the creation of the world--the very beginning of time, of history, of the relationship between God and its creatures.
Now, the first book of The Silmarillion is "Ainulindale: The Music of the Ainur," and it begins as follows:
"There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Iluvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Iluvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony."
This clearly is a Creation story, the very beginning of the world of Middle Earth. However, in Tolkien's universe, God works with his first creation, the Ainur, to create the universe. And, instead of light, Eru, in a sense, says "Let there be music." He gives the Ainur "a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed."
He then gives them their task: "ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme..."
"Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights . . . and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void."
And later--
"But when they were come into the Void, Iluvatar said to them: 'Behold your music!' And he showed to them a vision, giving to them sight where before was only hearing; and they saw a new World made visible before them, and it was globed amid the Void, and it was sustained therein, but was not of it."
And . . .
"And they saw with amazement the coming of the Children of Iluvatar, and the habitation that was prepared for them; and they perceived that they themselves in the labour of their music had been busy with preparation of this dwelling, and yet knew not that it had any purpose beyond its own beauty. For the Children of Iluvatar are conceived by him alone. . . Now the Children of Iluvatar are Elves and Men, the Firstborn and the Followers."
While "Genesis" and "Ainulindale" differ, they do parallel each other in many respects, and I think that we should not force The Silmarillion into being something that it is not meant to be. It is a unique work, separate in design and intent from The Lord of the Rings, and it should be read with this in mind.
Overall Rating: highly recommended for those interested in Tolkien's universe.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Isaac Asimov: January 2, 1920--April 6, 1992
Isaac Asimov's short story "Nightfall" is one of the best in SF. It's also been his curse for he has said on a number of occasions that it is discouraging to find that one's best was written shortly after one began writing and never was able to match it or surpass it in 5 decades. Asimov published his first short story "Marooned off Vesta" in 1939 and "Nightfall" in 1941. In 1964, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) voted it the "best short science fiction story of all time."
While I had known vaguely that the germ of the short story had come from an essay by Emerson, it still was a surprise, if not a shock, to encounter it as I did, as a course reading assignment. Emerson's essay "Nature," which was published in 1836, opens with this paragraph that follows Emerson' s "Introduction."
"To go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of 'God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."
Asimov, of course, turns it around. Instead of inspiring people to "believe and adore; and preserve for many generations," the sight of the stars and darkness for the first time in a thousand years creates panic and mass destruction, which brings down civilization and reduces the people for savagery. By the time, some semblance of order is destroyed, all records have been lost, and all future generations know is that something catastrophic happened, several times, if the sketchy reports and legends are to be believed.
It's not Emerson's "envoys of beauty," that the people of Lagash see for the first time in a thousand years, and "Not Earth's feeble thirty-six hundred Stars visible to the eye-- [for] Lagash was in the center of a giant cluster. Thirty thousand mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world."
It may be that Asimov had in mind a quote from Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, philosopher, and essayist, when he wrote "Nightfall." Pascal in Pensees had written that "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces [in the universe] terrifies me." This seems to be much closer to the story's tone than Emerson's "envoys of beauty."
While one could argue about the SFWA's recognition of "Nightfall" as the best short SF story of all time, it still is one of the best. Novels, of course, get the most recognition, but to ignore the science fiction and fantasy short stories and novellas is to lose out on many short but brilliant gems.
Overall rating: highly recommended.
While I had known vaguely that the germ of the short story had come from an essay by Emerson, it still was a surprise, if not a shock, to encounter it as I did, as a course reading assignment. Emerson's essay "Nature," which was published in 1836, opens with this paragraph that follows Emerson' s "Introduction."
"To go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of 'God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."
Asimov, of course, turns it around. Instead of inspiring people to "believe and adore; and preserve for many generations," the sight of the stars and darkness for the first time in a thousand years creates panic and mass destruction, which brings down civilization and reduces the people for savagery. By the time, some semblance of order is destroyed, all records have been lost, and all future generations know is that something catastrophic happened, several times, if the sketchy reports and legends are to be believed.
It's not Emerson's "envoys of beauty," that the people of Lagash see for the first time in a thousand years, and "Not Earth's feeble thirty-six hundred Stars visible to the eye-- [for] Lagash was in the center of a giant cluster. Thirty thousand mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world."
It may be that Asimov had in mind a quote from Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, philosopher, and essayist, when he wrote "Nightfall." Pascal in Pensees had written that "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces [in the universe] terrifies me." This seems to be much closer to the story's tone than Emerson's "envoys of beauty."
While one could argue about the SFWA's recognition of "Nightfall" as the best short SF story of all time, it still is one of the best. Novels, of course, get the most recognition, but to ignore the science fiction and fantasy short stories and novellas is to lose out on many short but brilliant gems.
Overall rating: highly recommended.
The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XX
Quatrain XX seems rather apt for this time of the year--the beginning of the New Year.
First Edition: Quatrain XX
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and future Fears--
To-morrow?--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
Second Edition: Quatrain XXI
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regret and Future Fears:
To-morrow?--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
Fifth Edition: Quatrain XXI
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of Past Regrets and Future Fears:
To-morrow?--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
As you can see, FitzGerald made very few changes to this quatrain, and none that I would consider significant. In the Second Edition, he drops the "s" from "Regrets," changes the dash at the end of the line to a colon, and capitalizes the "F" in "future." I wonder if the lost "s" is really an error that happened with the setting of the type for the Second Edition. The colon could suggest that the third and fourth lines explain the second line--that there's no need for regrets and fears for tomorrow he may be dead himself, and therefore beyond regret and fear.
The only differences I can see between the Second and Fifth Editions are the restoration of the "s" after "Regret" so that it is now the same as the First version and the capitalization of the "p" in Past. In the first version, it was "past Regrets and future Fears." This became "past Regret and Future Fears" in the second and, finally, "Past Regrets and Future Fears" in the fifth. This may be more for the appearance of the phrase than for any significant change in meaning.
The quatrain seems to be a celebration of wine, that which gladdens the heart by helping us to forget the past and to become indifferent about the future. In fact, when asked about the future, he exclaims that he himself might be dead tomorrow, another variation on the theme of enjoying oneself today for tomorrow we may die and, therefore, become part of the past.
First Edition: Quatrain XX
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regrets and future Fears--
To-morrow?--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
Second Edition: Quatrain XXI
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of past Regret and Future Fears:
To-morrow?--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
Fifth Edition: Quatrain XXI
Ah, my Beloved, fill the Cup that clears
To-day of Past Regrets and Future Fears:
To-morrow?--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
As you can see, FitzGerald made very few changes to this quatrain, and none that I would consider significant. In the Second Edition, he drops the "s" from "Regrets," changes the dash at the end of the line to a colon, and capitalizes the "F" in "future." I wonder if the lost "s" is really an error that happened with the setting of the type for the Second Edition. The colon could suggest that the third and fourth lines explain the second line--that there's no need for regrets and fears for tomorrow he may be dead himself, and therefore beyond regret and fear.
The only differences I can see between the Second and Fifth Editions are the restoration of the "s" after "Regret" so that it is now the same as the First version and the capitalization of the "p" in Past. In the first version, it was "past Regrets and future Fears." This became "past Regret and Future Fears" in the second and, finally, "Past Regrets and Future Fears" in the fifth. This may be more for the appearance of the phrase than for any significant change in meaning.
The quatrain seems to be a celebration of wine, that which gladdens the heart by helping us to forget the past and to become indifferent about the future. In fact, when asked about the future, he exclaims that he himself might be dead tomorrow, another variation on the theme of enjoying oneself today for tomorrow we may die and, therefore, become part of the past.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Combination Plate 11
Pamela Dean
The Dubious Hills
A fantasy novel
This is a fantasy novel, one that really is based on fantasy and one that has an original idea, something that doesn't happen too often. It is not just another medieval romance with men in tin suits hewing away at each other in the name of the Emperor, King, Duke, Prince, Baron, or whatever, defending the realm against the invading armies of another Emperor, King, Duke, or whatever. Nor is it another Tolkien ripoff with various simple folk setting off on yet another quest for the magic sword, chalice, shield, or cummerbund in order to forestall the Necromancer or Dark Lord's attempt to rule or destroy the universe.
In fact, the country where this story takes place has been at peace for many centuries. Long ago, wizards, tiring of the constant warfare, cast a spell on the country which effectively makes the inhabitants completely dependent upon each other for survival. The people cannot learn from mundane experience the way we do. However, each has one type of inborn knowledge that few, if any others, possess. For example, one person was given the ability to know whether something is beautiful or ugly. Those who wish to know whether an object is beautiful or ugly, must bring it to this person. Another possesses geographical knowledge. Those who wish to know where someplace is located must visit this person. One unsettling aspect of conversation among these people is their practice of attributing statements that do not fit in with their particular knowledge to the one whom they heard it from.
All skills which we take for granted are parcelled out among the people. One person knows how to fix things, including people who have something wrong with them. However, his abilities are natural, not magical. He fixes a broken bone with a splint or a rude cast, along with, perhaps, some healing herbs. Only a few people know how to grow food, and they are limited as what they can grow. For example, to prepare a meal, one must go to the person who grows vegetables, to another who bakes bread, to a sheepherder for meat, to a dairy farmer for milk, or to a brewer or vintner for beer or wine.
One of the most unusual skills belongs to Arry, who is a Physici. She alone can sense pain, not only in herself but in others also. No one else in the village can feel pain. If they cut themselves, they will notice that they are bleeding, but they feel nothing. They will come to Arry to ask if this is a problem. Arry then will send for the fixer, to take care of the wound. Curiously, Arry has problems at times with distinguishing between physical pain and psychological pain in others. They seem to same to her.
In this way, each is dependent upon the others for survival. If one doesn't share one's own expertise, then others are unlike to share theirs, which would include food, various forms of knowledge, and even a diagnosis and cure for physical ailments. They have paid a price for peace, and this price is the focus of the novel.
Halver is the teacher and in some sense the villain of the work. On a trip outside the country he was bitten by a werewolf, which of course means that he too is a werewolf. What is more important is that the spell cast many centuries ago no longer affects him now. He can learn from daily experience and other sources just as we do. He has decided that the spell was an obstacle to becoming a complete human being and is determined to spread his new-found abilities to others, whether they wish it or not.
This, then, is the conflict. Do people have the right to force others to follow their ways--even if in good faith--for their own good? Is what Halver is doing, or attempting to do, any different from what the wizards did centuries ago? Both Halver and the wizards are acting for the people's "own good." Does that justify their actions?
Arry and her brother and sister take it upon themselves to fight Halver. In their battle, they learn the same lesson that Tolkien brought out in his tales: in every battle against evil, something is lost, regardless of who wins the battle. Even those completely innocent are changed in some way by this conflict. Part of the cost of evil is the loss of innocence. And, one can't go back.
Overall rating: very good. Recommended for those looking for something different in fantasy.
==========================================
Ivy Compton-Burnett
A House and Its Head
A novel
I had heard her name mentioned occasionally in grad school, but she was never on the reading lists of any of the courses I had taken. Consequently, I didn't get around to reading anything by her until this past year. So far, I've read two of her novels: Pastors and Masters and A House and Its Head. They are unlike any other novel I've ever read, and what little I've read about her suggests that all her novels are very similar in style. There are nineteen of them, beginning in 1925 with Pastors and Masters.
Some comments from an entry about her on Wikipedia:
"Of Pastors and Masters, the New Statesman wrote: "It is astonishing, amazing. It is like nothing else in the world. It is a work of genius."
In her essay collection L'Ère du soupçon (1956), an early manifesto for the French nouveau roman, Nathalie Sarraute hails Compton-Burnett as an "one of the greatest novelists England has ever had".
And today, as far as I can tell, she has been largely forgotten, at least among those I'm familiar with.
Two characteristics of her works are probably responsible for her early acceptance, and perhaps the later disregard of her works. First, her novels are at least 95% dialogue, with minimal description of either the characters or the setting. Second, the tone of the dialogue is invariably acerbic, biting, sarcastic, and nasty, and always with an air of supercilious politeness.
She uses dialogue to allow the characters to reveal themselves. Here is a sample of a relatively benign (for her anyway) conversation that begins A House and Its Head. The dialogue is between Duncan and Ellen Edgeworth, the head of the house and his wife. It is Christmas morning.
"So the children are not down yet?' said Ellen Edgeworth.
Her husband gave her a glance, and turned his eyes towards the window.
'So the children are not down yet?' she said on a note of question.
Mr Edgeworth put his finger down his collar, and settled his neck.
'So you are down first, Duncan?' said his wife, as though putting her observation in a more acceptable form.
Duncan returned his hand to his collar with a frown."
(what follows is a brief description--two short paragraphs--of Duncan and Ellen and the setting.)
'So you are down first of all, Duncan,' said Ellen, employing a note of propitiation, as if it would serve its purpose.
Her husband implied by lifting his shoulders that he could hardly deny it.
'The children are late, are they not?' said Ellen, to whom speech clearly ranked above silence.
Duncan indicated by the same movement that his attitude was the same.
'I think there are more presents than usual. Oh, I wish they would all come down.'
'Why do you wish it?'
'Well, it is not a day when we want them to be late, is it?'
'Do we want them to be late on any day? Oh, of course, it is Christmas Day. I saw the things on the table."
Conversation in Compton-Burnett's works is actually open warfare, with characters attempting to dominate others, to retaliate for real or imagined insults, or to establish their freedom from a verbal tyrant. Many of her novels begin as this one does--at the breakfast table where the struggle for survival begins at the earliest possible moment. It is quite appropriate that Duncan, still at breakfast, takes a book from his nephew and throws it in the fire. It is "a scientific work, inimical to the faith of the day." While the title is never revealed, it could be Darwin's Origin of Species, which ironically would be most useful in describing the behavior of the characters in Compton-Burnett's novels.
In the sample conversation above, Duncan barely acknowledges his wife's existence at first. She is forced to revise her question several times and is almost reduced to begging for a response before he condescends to answer. He clearly dominates her, barely deigning to notice her until he is ready. Duncan doesn't have it completely his way though, for when Nance and Sibyl, his daughters, and Grant, his nephew and heir apparent, finally appear, we see several differing ways of dealing with Duncan--submission, defiance, and a subtle challenge to his dominance.
A House and Its Head is not just filled with talk though, for embedded within its pages are adultery, abuse, extortion, and murder. As the English novelist Angus Wilson remarks: "No writer did more to illuminate the springs of human cruelty, suffering, and bravery."
I will read more by her, but I must admit I will wait until later in 2010. It's strong stuff.
Overall rating: Read at least one of her novels. It's a experience.
========================================
Jo Nesbo
The Devil's Star
Mystery: police procedural
A Detective Harry Hole mystery
Oslo, Norway
This is the second novel I've read in Nesbo's series featuring Detective Harry Hole of the Oslo Police Department. My first encounter was his highly acclaimed Redbreast (see August 2007, Combination Plate 7). This novel also follows the pattern I noticed in Redbreast: Nesbo uses the first part of the novel to leisurely provide background for the second part, which then becomes a tension-filled and taut race to identify and capture the killer before there are more deaths.
In Redbreast, Nesbo spends considerable time depicting the Norwegian soldiers who fought with Germany against the Russians, and this provides the backdrop for the deaths which occurred decades later.
In The Devil's Star, the focus of the first part is on Detective Harry Hole himself. He is on a downward spiral, headed for termination from the police department because of alcoholism, absenteeism, and general insubordination. All this takes place during a series of murders which suggests a serial killer is loose in Oslo. Moreover, he is assigned to work with his old enemy, Tom Waaler, whom he considers responsible for the murder of his partner (see Redbreast) but has been unable so far to prove it.
Hole's superior is on vacation but will return in three weeks, at which time he will, no doubt, sign Hole's termination notice, which is now sitting on his desk. At this point, Hole decides to go out in a blaze of glory and solve the case. He sobers up and goes to work. Once the alcoholic fumes diminish, he takes another look at the series of killings. They follow the classic serial killer pattern: murders in which the victims are presumably unrelated to each other, similar MO in all cases, lack of usual motivating factors of revenge, hate, greed, sex. However, something is wrong, and Hole alone senses it, but he's unable to figure it out, yet. This, then, is the story of the second half of the novel.
Overall Rating: recommended--Nesbo can write action-oriented stuff with the best of them, once he gets the backdrop out of the way.
========================================
Yrsa Sigurdardottir
Last Rituals
Mystery: talented amateur
A Thora Gudmundsdottir mystery
Reykjavik, Iceland
This is the first in a series of novels featuring Thora Gudmundsdottir, an attorney in private practice. A young German student at the university has been murdered, his body mutilated, and strange symbols carved on his chest. The police quickly make an arrest, but the victim's family isn't satisfied that the police have the right man. They hire Thora to investigate and also include a partner for her, Matthew Reich, who is in charge of security for the family-owned bank. Thora's not happy with the situation, but she, a single mother of two, does need the work.
The symbols soon are identified as being associated with witchcraft, and the victim's intense interest in Iceland's own history of witchcraft, torture, execution, and witch hunts provides the setting for this tale. Also adding to the fun are ancient books, missing? or stolen? letters, and perhaps a revival of Satanic worship.
Overall Rating: recommended. This is the first mystery I've read that is set in Iceland. Yrsa is a skilled writer: she is the award-winning author of a number of children's novels. She is on my list of authors for further reading.
========================================
Plan 9 from Outer Space
An SF film
To refer to Plan 9 from Outer Space simply as an SF film really doesn't do justice to this work. Perhaps I should add that this is one of the most famous SF films ever produced. Some consider it the No. 1 cult film of all time. Others have called it the worst film ever made, regardless of genre. One critic said that it is so bad that it is sublime. It is the "two-time winner of the Golden Turkey Award for Worst Film and Worst Director of all time." Surely, these are accolades not to be despised.
I hadn't seen it in a number of years, but I did remember its laughable dialogue ("Idiot Earthmen. . .Stupid, stupid, stupid. . .") , its unbelievably incomprehensible plot, and its disjointed continuity for there were scenes that just seemed to be dropped in from nowhere with characters wandering around aimlessly.
This version, however, is restored and remastered and provides some surprises. First, the continuity is much tighter and consistent than I remember, leading me to wonder if the problems were really caused by poor and incomplete copies of the film. Unfortunately, the remastering did not improve the dialogue and the acting skills of a considerable part of the cast.
The director is Ed Wood, whose directing career is so unique that a film was made of his life. The most famous member of the cast is Bela Lugosi. Others are Vampira, sometimes hostess of late night horror shows or creature features, and Tor Johnson, frequently cast as a monster, a torturer, a brutal guard, and any number of unpleasant characters. And, of course, one can't forget the inexplicably wobbly flying saucers.
The Special Features section corrects several myths that have grown up around the film. In one case the truth is stranger than the myth. One myth is that Bela Lugosi died during the making of the film. This is not true. One day Ed Wood and Bela Lugosi went out with a camera. Wood then had Lugosi act out several scenes. Wood had nothing in mind at that time. Shortly afterwards, Lugosi died. Wood then decided to make a film which would incorporate those scenes, thus Plan 9 from Outer Space. In the film, the scenes that supposedly show Lugosi with his face covered by his cloak were shot after Lugosi's death, and his part is played by Wood's chiropractor, not Wood's dentist as is frequently claimed.
Another myth is that Ed Wood was a cross-dresser and directed his films in women's garb. This is not true and probably stems from another of Wood's films--Glen or Glenda? Wood was a cross-dresser and played that role in that film. Therefore, there were times when Wood was dressed as a woman while directing a scene. This apparently was the only time Wood directed in women's clothing and it was required by the situation, not Wood's preference.
The plot? Oh yes, I forgot. Well, aliens in flying saucers have been unsuccessfully trying to contact governments on Earth. They fear humans will develop the ultimate weapon and destroy the entire universe. The aliens then decide to resurrect the dead in countries all over the world and march them to the various capitols in order to get the governments' attention. This is Plan 9 we are told. Unfortunately we never find out what the first eight plans were.
Overall Rating: highly recommended for those who enjoy watching extremely bad films and best viewed in the company of other like-minded individuals.
Monday, December 21, 2009
The Winter Solstice: December 21, 2009
While this poem was dated by Hardy, on December 31, 1900, I think it serves equally well for a poem set on the Winter's Solstice, the shortest day of the year, when Night has achieved its greatest victory over Day and it seems as though the days of the sun and warmth shall never return.
Yet, as the Taoists tell us, when any particular condition (day/night, wet/dry, cold/hot) has gained its greatest extent, its eventual defeat is embedded within that victory. For while December 21, 2009, may be the shortest day of the year, December 22 shows us that all is not lost, for we are now moving towards the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
…..When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
…..The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
…..Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
…..Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
…..The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
…..The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
…..Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
…..Seemed fervorless as I.
At once a voice arose among
…..The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
…..Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small
…..In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
…..Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
…..Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
…..Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
…..His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
…..And I was unaware.
-- Thomas Hardy --
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Ford Madox Ford: December 17, 1873--June 26, 1939
As I've mentioned before, Ford's The Good Soldier is one of my top ten favorite novels. I find it absorbing each time I read it, for something new always emerges. It's been awhile since I last read it, and I believe I'm due for another read. I wonder what I'll discover this time.
I really enjoy the way Ford slowly introduces information throughout the novel, very quietly and so unobtrusively that I keep missing it. This is one work that must be read slowly and alertly. Something is always going on.
One example from my last reread is the first sentence of the novel: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard."
This is the fourth? fifth? time that I have read this novel, and up to now I have always focused on the words "the saddest story" as being the most important. Now, I'm not so sure. The last word in the sentence, "heard," seems also to be very significant, if not even more so.
"Heard" suggests to me that this is not something that Dowell has been a part of, but a story that someone told him and now he is going to tell us what he heard. Yet, immediately afterwards, he tells us that it is the story of him, his wife Florence, and their English friends, the Ashburnhams. In fact he tells us that they had known these people with "extreme intimacy." This would seem to contradict the implication of his opening statement--that this is something he heard rather than personally experienced. Why does he say "heard" rather than "lived through" or "experienced"?
I think this poses the basic question of the novel: What kind of relationship did Dowell really have with the Ashburnhams?
Dowell is probably one of the most unique narrators I've ever encountered. He is at the same time both a reliable and an unreliable, or really a naive narrator, and this is what creates the tension in the story. The novel is a flashback in which Dowell tells us not only what he thought his life was like, but also what it really was. In doing this he poses the problem: Is what was once thought true, now no longer true?
Looking back on the past ten years, he cries out: "No, by God it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison--a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.
And yet, I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. It was true sunshine; the true music; the true plash of the fountains from the mouths of stone dolphins. For, if for me we were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires, acting--or no not acting--sitting here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? If for nine years I possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?"
Can one change the past?
It's definitely time to dust off The Good Soldier and move it into my queue.
I really enjoy the way Ford slowly introduces information throughout the novel, very quietly and so unobtrusively that I keep missing it. This is one work that must be read slowly and alertly. Something is always going on.
One example from my last reread is the first sentence of the novel: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard."
This is the fourth? fifth? time that I have read this novel, and up to now I have always focused on the words "the saddest story" as being the most important. Now, I'm not so sure. The last word in the sentence, "heard," seems also to be very significant, if not even more so.
"Heard" suggests to me that this is not something that Dowell has been a part of, but a story that someone told him and now he is going to tell us what he heard. Yet, immediately afterwards, he tells us that it is the story of him, his wife Florence, and their English friends, the Ashburnhams. In fact he tells us that they had known these people with "extreme intimacy." This would seem to contradict the implication of his opening statement--that this is something he heard rather than personally experienced. Why does he say "heard" rather than "lived through" or "experienced"?
I think this poses the basic question of the novel: What kind of relationship did Dowell really have with the Ashburnhams?
Dowell is probably one of the most unique narrators I've ever encountered. He is at the same time both a reliable and an unreliable, or really a naive narrator, and this is what creates the tension in the story. The novel is a flashback in which Dowell tells us not only what he thought his life was like, but also what it really was. In doing this he poses the problem: Is what was once thought true, now no longer true?
Looking back on the past ten years, he cries out: "No, by God it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison--a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.
And yet, I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. It was true sunshine; the true music; the true plash of the fountains from the mouths of stone dolphins. For, if for me we were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires, acting--or no not acting--sitting here and there unanimously, isn't that the truth? If for nine years I possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?"
Can one change the past?
It's definitely time to dust off The Good Soldier and move it into my queue.
Monday, December 14, 2009
IKIRU: a film by Kurosawa (1952)
Ikiru (to live) may not be the first foreign film I ever saw, but it's certainly the first one I remember seeing. I watched it over 40 years ago in a small movie theatre on the far north side of Chicago and now have viewed it twice since retiring several years ago. It was also several decades later that I discovered that it was directed by Kurosawa. Ikiru is just one of those films that I rent again and again. I'm now thinking about getting my own copy for my very small DVD collection. Christmas is coming....hmmm. Perhaps a subtle or not so subtle hint?
Watanabe learns that he has stomach cancer and might have six months to live. The shock of his impending death forces him to take a long clear look at himself. His son and daughter-in-law, who live with him, see him as someone to be used. They have decided to get their own apartment and have no qualms about asking Watanabe to deplete his retirement annuity to finance it. At work, his greatest accomplishment is having worked for almost 30 years without a taking single day of sick leave. That doesn't say much about his presence in an organization for three decades if the best one can say is that he was there every day.
Watanabe looks back and decides he hasn't lived and is going to make up for it now. He samples the night life of Tokyo and discovers this is not for him. He then tries to recapture his youth by associating with a young woman who had worked in his section, for he sees that she has youth and life. Perhaps she may influence him. This doesn't work either.
His third idea is to do something that would make a difference, one that would say he really had existed. It was then that he decided that he could make a difference--not by trying to become what he wasn't but by becoming what he was to the fullest extent possible. He was a public servant, but he had never really served the public. He had been a time-server, one who spent his days, like so many of his colleagues, doing his best to avoid doing anything but the minimum required to keep his position.
He remembered a problem brought to his section by a neighborhood group. There was an empty lot that was being used as a trash dump. It was unhealthy and dangerous for the children who played there for they had nowhere else to go. All that the people wanted was to have the place cleaned up and kept safe for the children. They had been getting the usual runaround--it was a problem for the parks dept--see engineering--see the health dept--see their local city council representative. Watanabe now decides to do something about it.
Warning: I will bring up important plot elements and the endings for both the film and Tolstoy's novella.
The second part of the film takes us forward to shortly after Watanabe's death. It takes place at the memorial for Watanabe, at which we see the deputy mayor, various members of the city government, the employees in Watanabe's section, and his son and daughter-in-law. We learn that, in spite of all opposition and with no help from any others, Watanabe not only succeeded in getting the empty lot cleaned up but also in having it turned into a park with playground equipment for the children.
The park has been so successful and popular with the people that everybody is now busy scurrying about, claiming credit for it, and dismissing Watanabe's own role. At the opening ceremony for the park, Watanabe had sat in the back row of the section for city employees and wasn't even mentioned by any of the speakers. All, including the deputy mayor, have forgotten their own initial rejection of Watanabe's plans and now insist that only the parks dept., the engineering dept., the health dept., or the deputy mayor's office could have been responsible for the park.
Kurosawa, in a stroke of genius, then brings in the people of the neighborhood, and their honest grief and respect for Watanabe provides the great possible contrast between them and the hypocrisy of the self-serving city officials and politicians. When I first watched the film, I focused, of course, on Watanabe and his struggles and accomplishments. It was only while watching it several days ago that I realized that Kurosawa had also strongly and effectively indicted the wastefulness and the indifference of the city government employees and officials.
Kurosawa had commented in an interview that Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilych" was the inspiration for the film. "Inspiration" is probably the best term for it certainly is not an attempt to transfer Tolstoy's novella to film. There are similarities: both Ivan Ilych and Watanabe Kanji are government employees--Ilych in the Russian judicial system and Watanabe in city government in Japan. Both learn that they have a short time to live, even though both are lied to by their physicians. Moreover, both are perceived by their respective families as obstacles to their families' happiness. And, both are forced to face the truth about themselves: they have wasted their lives in trivialities and the deadening routine of work.
However, there is a most significant difference between the two, one that may reflect differences between the East and the West.
Ilych's struggles after he realizes that he is dying are singular and solitary. He must accept that his life has not been a good life. His salvation comes at the end when he finally admits to himself that his life has essentially been a failure. Once he accepts this, he is able to die at peace with himself. His insight is singular, known only to himself, and affects no one else. On the other hand, Watanabe's salvation comes through helping others, by standing up for the people and getting the park built. His salvation benefits not only him but also the neighborhood residents and their children.
Does this difference suggest the more individualistic aspect of Western society and the group oriented Eastern society?
I'm not certain about this, for I sometimes wonder if Kurosawa had been "inspired" by two of Tolstoy's works--"The Death of Ivan Ilych" and Resurrection.
If one puts together the two stories, one then gets a much closer approximation of Ikiru. In Resurrection, Nekhlyudov, a nobleman, decides to help a woman whom he had, years ago, seduced and abandoned. She is in prison awaiting transportation to Siberia. He visits her, and, while there, is asked for help by another prisoner. He agrees and visits various government agencies where he is shocked to learn of the cruelty and indifference of the officials. On each subsequent visit to the prison, another prisoner asks for help, and much of the novel is spent following Nekhlyudov as he visits various government officials and discovers the extent of corruption and cruelty and indifference that exists. This is similar to the way Kurosawa portrays Watanabe as he goes from office to office and encounters, and therefore exposes, the same attitudes among various city officials.
I wonder if Kurosawa combined the death sentence and struggle for salvation found in Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and the attempt to right a wrong which results in exposing the indifference and corruption of high officials in various governmental agencies in Tolstoy's novel, Resurrection.
One last comment about the film: the most striking scene in the film is Watanabe, sitting on a swing in the park, with the snow falling about him, quietly singing his favorite song. While one character said that it was terrible that he should die there alone like that, freezing in the snow, it seems obvious that Watanabe himself chose this death, with his monument about him.
Overall Rating: One of the best.
Watanabe learns that he has stomach cancer and might have six months to live. The shock of his impending death forces him to take a long clear look at himself. His son and daughter-in-law, who live with him, see him as someone to be used. They have decided to get their own apartment and have no qualms about asking Watanabe to deplete his retirement annuity to finance it. At work, his greatest accomplishment is having worked for almost 30 years without a taking single day of sick leave. That doesn't say much about his presence in an organization for three decades if the best one can say is that he was there every day.
Watanabe looks back and decides he hasn't lived and is going to make up for it now. He samples the night life of Tokyo and discovers this is not for him. He then tries to recapture his youth by associating with a young woman who had worked in his section, for he sees that she has youth and life. Perhaps she may influence him. This doesn't work either.
His third idea is to do something that would make a difference, one that would say he really had existed. It was then that he decided that he could make a difference--not by trying to become what he wasn't but by becoming what he was to the fullest extent possible. He was a public servant, but he had never really served the public. He had been a time-server, one who spent his days, like so many of his colleagues, doing his best to avoid doing anything but the minimum required to keep his position.
He remembered a problem brought to his section by a neighborhood group. There was an empty lot that was being used as a trash dump. It was unhealthy and dangerous for the children who played there for they had nowhere else to go. All that the people wanted was to have the place cleaned up and kept safe for the children. They had been getting the usual runaround--it was a problem for the parks dept--see engineering--see the health dept--see their local city council representative. Watanabe now decides to do something about it.
Warning: I will bring up important plot elements and the endings for both the film and Tolstoy's novella.
The second part of the film takes us forward to shortly after Watanabe's death. It takes place at the memorial for Watanabe, at which we see the deputy mayor, various members of the city government, the employees in Watanabe's section, and his son and daughter-in-law. We learn that, in spite of all opposition and with no help from any others, Watanabe not only succeeded in getting the empty lot cleaned up but also in having it turned into a park with playground equipment for the children.
The park has been so successful and popular with the people that everybody is now busy scurrying about, claiming credit for it, and dismissing Watanabe's own role. At the opening ceremony for the park, Watanabe had sat in the back row of the section for city employees and wasn't even mentioned by any of the speakers. All, including the deputy mayor, have forgotten their own initial rejection of Watanabe's plans and now insist that only the parks dept., the engineering dept., the health dept., or the deputy mayor's office could have been responsible for the park.
Kurosawa, in a stroke of genius, then brings in the people of the neighborhood, and their honest grief and respect for Watanabe provides the great possible contrast between them and the hypocrisy of the self-serving city officials and politicians. When I first watched the film, I focused, of course, on Watanabe and his struggles and accomplishments. It was only while watching it several days ago that I realized that Kurosawa had also strongly and effectively indicted the wastefulness and the indifference of the city government employees and officials.
Kurosawa had commented in an interview that Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilych" was the inspiration for the film. "Inspiration" is probably the best term for it certainly is not an attempt to transfer Tolstoy's novella to film. There are similarities: both Ivan Ilych and Watanabe Kanji are government employees--Ilych in the Russian judicial system and Watanabe in city government in Japan. Both learn that they have a short time to live, even though both are lied to by their physicians. Moreover, both are perceived by their respective families as obstacles to their families' happiness. And, both are forced to face the truth about themselves: they have wasted their lives in trivialities and the deadening routine of work.
However, there is a most significant difference between the two, one that may reflect differences between the East and the West.
Ilych's struggles after he realizes that he is dying are singular and solitary. He must accept that his life has not been a good life. His salvation comes at the end when he finally admits to himself that his life has essentially been a failure. Once he accepts this, he is able to die at peace with himself. His insight is singular, known only to himself, and affects no one else. On the other hand, Watanabe's salvation comes through helping others, by standing up for the people and getting the park built. His salvation benefits not only him but also the neighborhood residents and their children.
Does this difference suggest the more individualistic aspect of Western society and the group oriented Eastern society?
I'm not certain about this, for I sometimes wonder if Kurosawa had been "inspired" by two of Tolstoy's works--"The Death of Ivan Ilych" and Resurrection.
If one puts together the two stories, one then gets a much closer approximation of Ikiru. In Resurrection, Nekhlyudov, a nobleman, decides to help a woman whom he had, years ago, seduced and abandoned. She is in prison awaiting transportation to Siberia. He visits her, and, while there, is asked for help by another prisoner. He agrees and visits various government agencies where he is shocked to learn of the cruelty and indifference of the officials. On each subsequent visit to the prison, another prisoner asks for help, and much of the novel is spent following Nekhlyudov as he visits various government officials and discovers the extent of corruption and cruelty and indifference that exists. This is similar to the way Kurosawa portrays Watanabe as he goes from office to office and encounters, and therefore exposes, the same attitudes among various city officials.
I wonder if Kurosawa combined the death sentence and struggle for salvation found in Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and the attempt to right a wrong which results in exposing the indifference and corruption of high officials in various governmental agencies in Tolstoy's novel, Resurrection.
One last comment about the film: the most striking scene in the film is Watanabe, sitting on a swing in the park, with the snow falling about him, quietly singing his favorite song. While one character said that it was terrible that he should die there alone like that, freezing in the snow, it seems obvious that Watanabe himself chose this death, with his monument about him.
Overall Rating: One of the best.
Monday, December 7, 2009
The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XIX
From the roses and hyacinths of the last quatrain, we move to another and more prosaic plant, or so it would seem, in Quatrain XIX--grass.
First Edition: Quatrain XIX
And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
Second Edition: Quatrain XXV
And this delightful Herb whose living Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
Fifth Edition: Quatrain XX
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
The changes, though minimal in number, all occur in the first two lines of the quatrain.
"Delightful" in the first two editions now becomes "reviving" in the final edition. The change from "delightful" to "reviving" makes grass more important in that it no longer is merely "delightful," or something pleasant to the senses, but it now has a healing role: grass is a "reviving" herb, an herb that could restore energy or even bring something back to life.
The second modification is the substitution of "living" for "tender" as a modifier of "Green" in the second edition. However, FitzGerald reverts back to "tender" by the fifth edition. "Living," to me, suggests a colder, more factual perspective whereas "tender" conveys a more positive and sensual response to this "Herb."
The third and last change is that from "River's Lip" in the first two editions to "River-Lip" by the last edition. The difference is very subtle, so subtle that I can sense something but am unable to spell it out precisely. One difference that I do note is that "River-Lip" is shorter and more abrupt than "River's Lip." Perhaps you may be able to comment on the subtle nuances of "River's Lip" and "River-Lip."
According to my dictionary, "fledges" means "to cover with or as if with feathers." This definition supports "tender" far more than "living," I should think.
The quatrain flows from the previous one which suggested flowers above the bodies of those who went before us. The first two lines bring in the idea, if I'm not mistaken, of the Islamic concept of Heaven, which is frequently portrayed as a Garden laid out along a flowing river with abundant grass and flowers, a Great Oasis in fact. The last two lines carry on the theme of a covering for those who are buried beneath.
After the flowers of the last quatrain, I was surprised to find something as common or prosaic as grass. However, after thinking about it, I realized that this wasn't the only reference to grass as a burial shroud.
Grass appears in an haiku by Basho with exactly the same connotation:
Here, where a thousand
Captains swore grand conquest...tall
Grass their monument.
This also suggests the glory and dreams of past heroes, much as did earlier quatrains (see VI, VIII, IX, and XIV example). And what remains? In the haiku, grass is the only monument to their grand ambitions.
Carl Sandburg gives us the same imagery, perhaps more brutally expressed than the others--grass that covers all.
GRASS
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg.
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor;
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Perhaps to end this post a bit more gently, I will quote a short stanza from Walt Whitman's most aptly named work--Leaves of Grass. It is from "Song of Myself," Stanza 6, which begins:
"A child said What is the Grass? fetching it to me with full hands,
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.
. . .
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breast of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers' laps.
And here you are the mothers' laps.
. . .
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end
to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses"
I guess I've wandered a bit from where I began, but I think that is an attribute of great poetry or great fiction or great prose--to begin at one point and end somewhere else, someplace unexpected, if one is lucky.
First Edition: Quatrain XIX
And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
Second Edition: Quatrain XXV
And this delightful Herb whose living Green
Fledges the River's Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
Fifth Edition: Quatrain XX
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
The changes, though minimal in number, all occur in the first two lines of the quatrain.
"Delightful" in the first two editions now becomes "reviving" in the final edition. The change from "delightful" to "reviving" makes grass more important in that it no longer is merely "delightful," or something pleasant to the senses, but it now has a healing role: grass is a "reviving" herb, an herb that could restore energy or even bring something back to life.
The second modification is the substitution of "living" for "tender" as a modifier of "Green" in the second edition. However, FitzGerald reverts back to "tender" by the fifth edition. "Living," to me, suggests a colder, more factual perspective whereas "tender" conveys a more positive and sensual response to this "Herb."
The third and last change is that from "River's Lip" in the first two editions to "River-Lip" by the last edition. The difference is very subtle, so subtle that I can sense something but am unable to spell it out precisely. One difference that I do note is that "River-Lip" is shorter and more abrupt than "River's Lip." Perhaps you may be able to comment on the subtle nuances of "River's Lip" and "River-Lip."
According to my dictionary, "fledges" means "to cover with or as if with feathers." This definition supports "tender" far more than "living," I should think.
The quatrain flows from the previous one which suggested flowers above the bodies of those who went before us. The first two lines bring in the idea, if I'm not mistaken, of the Islamic concept of Heaven, which is frequently portrayed as a Garden laid out along a flowing river with abundant grass and flowers, a Great Oasis in fact. The last two lines carry on the theme of a covering for those who are buried beneath.
After the flowers of the last quatrain, I was surprised to find something as common or prosaic as grass. However, after thinking about it, I realized that this wasn't the only reference to grass as a burial shroud.
Grass appears in an haiku by Basho with exactly the same connotation:
Here, where a thousand
Captains swore grand conquest...tall
Grass their monument.
This also suggests the glory and dreams of past heroes, much as did earlier quatrains (see VI, VIII, IX, and XIV example). And what remains? In the haiku, grass is the only monument to their grand ambitions.
Carl Sandburg gives us the same imagery, perhaps more brutally expressed than the others--grass that covers all.
GRASS
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg.
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor;
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Perhaps to end this post a bit more gently, I will quote a short stanza from Walt Whitman's most aptly named work--Leaves of Grass. It is from "Song of Myself," Stanza 6, which begins:
"A child said What is the Grass? fetching it to me with full hands,
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.
. . .
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breast of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers' laps.
And here you are the mothers' laps.
. . .
What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end
to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses"
I guess I've wandered a bit from where I began, but I think that is an attribute of great poetry or great fiction or great prose--to begin at one point and end somewhere else, someplace unexpected, if one is lucky.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar
John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (1968) is his wild book. I have this theory that writers have one wild book inside them, one in which they let go and break all the rules. Frequently they aren't received well by critics and scholars, and the general reading public doesn't appreciate them to any great degree either. Melville wrote one called Mardi which only critics and scholars are aware of and generally ignore. On the other hand, Brunner's wild one seems to have been accepted to a much greater degree by critics and the reading public. While I haven't read everything by Brunner, I don't remember any of his other works resembling this one to any extent at all. If someone knows of another by him that resembles this book, please let me know. I will definitely go look for it.
To begin with, its structure is unlike anything I've seen in Brunner so far. It is closest to John Dos Passos' USA trilogy (1930-36) and Fred Pohl's Gateway (1977). Brunner, like Dos Passos and Pohl, avoids providing the setting in long narrative prose sections. Instead they use headlines, advertisements, and brief short news items to convey the significant cultural and social issues prevalent in the USA at that time. While this doesn't provide the in-depth coverage that some writers and readers feel is necessary, it does give the flavor of those times and perhaps does it in a more interesting way for those readers impatient to get on with the plot and care little if anything for the background. It's not immediately evident, but Brunner first introduces and then provides significant information about his characters, especially the secondary characters, in the inter-narrative portions of the novel.
While Pohl, in Gateway, restricts his narrative to one major character, Dos Passos has at least 3 or 4 major character lines, and Brunner has two, with several important secondary characters.
Dos Passos' structure is more traditional in that, by the end of the first novel, The 42nd Parallel, his major plot lines have converged.
Brunner attempts something different. His two major characters, Norman Niblock House and Donald Hogan, are roommates at the beginning of the novel and events conspire to force them along separate paths to very different destinies. But, in order to keep readers happy, Brunner has several significant secondary characters--Chad Mulligan and Elihu Masters--whose separate paths eventually converge. Mulligan is a best-selling, rogue sociologist who has dropped out, while Masters had been a highly respected member of the US diplomatic corps who requested a post in the small impoverished African country of Beninia. He is thought to have ended a potentially brilliant career in the State Department by his action.
In addition, Brunner also provides several sub-sub plots that involve two families who are victimized by the major problem of the day--overpopulation; another minor plot focuses on a gang of young toughs on their way down into the underworld, and yet another on a young man who has just been drafted into the US military, and even one that gives a picture of the lives of the rich and powerful, and those striving to reach that level.
Norman House is an Afram who works for General Technics (GT), one of the largest, if not the largest, corporations in the world. It is large enough and rich enough to buy up small countries if it so desires. That's the major plot line which House becomes unwittingly enmeshed in. The problem is the small African country of Beninia, which has been ruled for decades by Zadkiel F. Obomi, its only president, since it emerged from its colonial status. Obomi knew he hadn't long to live and feared what would happen when he died.
Beninia, although one of the poorest countries in Africa, has a magnificent natural harbor which his neighbors coveted. He could hear the official statements that would emerge after his death. Each of his neighbors was not invading Beninia for conquest but to "protect" it from those other greedy neighbors.
Obomi and Masters work up a scheme in which General Technics would invest heavily in Beninia to realize certain commercial objectives. The Beninian government would rely on various advisers provided by GT. The US State Department would monitor the situation to ensure that GT lived up to its promises of building the educational, medical, governmental, and transportation infrastructure that would vastly improve the lives of the citizenry of Beninia. The only real problem is Shalmaneser, the super computer that comes close to running GT and, therefore, a powerful influence in the US.
Shalmaneser can't accept that such a country as Beninia exists and rejects the plan. Beninia hasn't had a murder in over 15 years and doesn't even have a word in its vocabulary for "angry." "Insane" is the closest word it has to "angry." Beninia has barely a million inhabitants, yet it was able t0 absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees several decades ago without any conflict between the refugees and the inhabitants. Without Shalmaneser's estimate of the possibilities of success, GT will not act.
In the other plot, Donald Hogan appears to be unemployed and apparently possesses a small independent income that allows him to survive without having to work. However, he actually is an employee of an agency for the US Government. His task is to spend his time reading and absorbing information and presenting reports on what he's learned. Those familiar with van Vogt's readings might consider him a sort of a Nexialist, a generalist rather than a specialist.
Much to his dismay he gets activated and has to report for field duty. He is trained in the art of combat--martial arts and various weaponry. He is to travel to Yatakang, a country made up of numerous Pacific islands. Indonesia? Donald's two specialties are the Yatakanga language and genetics. He's called up because the Yatakanganese government has announced incredible breakthroughs in genetic engineering, both in the ability to correct genetic defects and to create "improved" humans--a superman, if you will. Hogan's task is to find out whether this is at all possible, since it is far in advance of anything anybody else on the planet can achieve.
Since my copy of the novel has approximately 650 pages, it must be obvious that I've only briefly and inadequately covered a few of the major elements and almost none of those secondary elements that create the background.
In spite of its diversity and richness and complexity and Brunner's skill in telling a story, I do not include it in my top ten SF novels. The problem is the ending. If you are the reader who wants a neat and tidy ending that wraps up the major conflict and perhaps eventually turns Earth into a peaceful paradise some time in the future, then you will love this novel. If not, then you might be disappointed, as I was. A great novel. such as this is for 99% of its length, deserves a better ending, one that fits, even if it is an ambiguous or inconclusive ending.
Overall Rating: a great novel, but one with what I consider a serious flaw. Highly recommended.
To begin with, its structure is unlike anything I've seen in Brunner so far. It is closest to John Dos Passos' USA trilogy (1930-36) and Fred Pohl's Gateway (1977). Brunner, like Dos Passos and Pohl, avoids providing the setting in long narrative prose sections. Instead they use headlines, advertisements, and brief short news items to convey the significant cultural and social issues prevalent in the USA at that time. While this doesn't provide the in-depth coverage that some writers and readers feel is necessary, it does give the flavor of those times and perhaps does it in a more interesting way for those readers impatient to get on with the plot and care little if anything for the background. It's not immediately evident, but Brunner first introduces and then provides significant information about his characters, especially the secondary characters, in the inter-narrative portions of the novel.
While Pohl, in Gateway, restricts his narrative to one major character, Dos Passos has at least 3 or 4 major character lines, and Brunner has two, with several important secondary characters.
Dos Passos' structure is more traditional in that, by the end of the first novel, The 42nd Parallel, his major plot lines have converged.
Brunner attempts something different. His two major characters, Norman Niblock House and Donald Hogan, are roommates at the beginning of the novel and events conspire to force them along separate paths to very different destinies. But, in order to keep readers happy, Brunner has several significant secondary characters--Chad Mulligan and Elihu Masters--whose separate paths eventually converge. Mulligan is a best-selling, rogue sociologist who has dropped out, while Masters had been a highly respected member of the US diplomatic corps who requested a post in the small impoverished African country of Beninia. He is thought to have ended a potentially brilliant career in the State Department by his action.
In addition, Brunner also provides several sub-sub plots that involve two families who are victimized by the major problem of the day--overpopulation; another minor plot focuses on a gang of young toughs on their way down into the underworld, and yet another on a young man who has just been drafted into the US military, and even one that gives a picture of the lives of the rich and powerful, and those striving to reach that level.
Norman House is an Afram who works for General Technics (GT), one of the largest, if not the largest, corporations in the world. It is large enough and rich enough to buy up small countries if it so desires. That's the major plot line which House becomes unwittingly enmeshed in. The problem is the small African country of Beninia, which has been ruled for decades by Zadkiel F. Obomi, its only president, since it emerged from its colonial status. Obomi knew he hadn't long to live and feared what would happen when he died.
Beninia, although one of the poorest countries in Africa, has a magnificent natural harbor which his neighbors coveted. He could hear the official statements that would emerge after his death. Each of his neighbors was not invading Beninia for conquest but to "protect" it from those other greedy neighbors.
Obomi and Masters work up a scheme in which General Technics would invest heavily in Beninia to realize certain commercial objectives. The Beninian government would rely on various advisers provided by GT. The US State Department would monitor the situation to ensure that GT lived up to its promises of building the educational, medical, governmental, and transportation infrastructure that would vastly improve the lives of the citizenry of Beninia. The only real problem is Shalmaneser, the super computer that comes close to running GT and, therefore, a powerful influence in the US.
Shalmaneser can't accept that such a country as Beninia exists and rejects the plan. Beninia hasn't had a murder in over 15 years and doesn't even have a word in its vocabulary for "angry." "Insane" is the closest word it has to "angry." Beninia has barely a million inhabitants, yet it was able t0 absorb hundreds of thousands of refugees several decades ago without any conflict between the refugees and the inhabitants. Without Shalmaneser's estimate of the possibilities of success, GT will not act.
In the other plot, Donald Hogan appears to be unemployed and apparently possesses a small independent income that allows him to survive without having to work. However, he actually is an employee of an agency for the US Government. His task is to spend his time reading and absorbing information and presenting reports on what he's learned. Those familiar with van Vogt's readings might consider him a sort of a Nexialist, a generalist rather than a specialist.
Much to his dismay he gets activated and has to report for field duty. He is trained in the art of combat--martial arts and various weaponry. He is to travel to Yatakang, a country made up of numerous Pacific islands. Indonesia? Donald's two specialties are the Yatakanga language and genetics. He's called up because the Yatakanganese government has announced incredible breakthroughs in genetic engineering, both in the ability to correct genetic defects and to create "improved" humans--a superman, if you will. Hogan's task is to find out whether this is at all possible, since it is far in advance of anything anybody else on the planet can achieve.
Since my copy of the novel has approximately 650 pages, it must be obvious that I've only briefly and inadequately covered a few of the major elements and almost none of those secondary elements that create the background.
In spite of its diversity and richness and complexity and Brunner's skill in telling a story, I do not include it in my top ten SF novels. The problem is the ending. If you are the reader who wants a neat and tidy ending that wraps up the major conflict and perhaps eventually turns Earth into a peaceful paradise some time in the future, then you will love this novel. If not, then you might be disappointed, as I was. A great novel. such as this is for 99% of its length, deserves a better ending, one that fits, even if it is an ambiguous or inconclusive ending.
Overall Rating: a great novel, but one with what I consider a serious flaw. Highly recommended.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Joseph Wood Krutch: November 25, 1893--May 22, 1970
Joseph Wood Krutch, along with Loren Eiseley and Konrad Lorenz, had a profound effect on my way of thinking. Through them, I learned to appreciate the benefits of reading essays. Up to that time, I had focused primarily on fiction, but they taught me the value of reading directly the thoughts of others. I guess credit should also go to the old and now sadly defunct Time Reading Program, for it was through it that I first encountered Eiseley, Krutch, and Lorenz.
Moreover, they taught me that humans were not alone here and were not the sole owners of Earth. There were and are others here, many of whom also have a claim upon this planet and their own right to be able to live out their lives .
I moved out to Tucson in 1968 and found that Krutch had written several of works about the southwestern desert country. In one of them, I discovered that Krutch had left the east coast and was now living in Tucson. I grabbed a telephone book and found a listing for him. I drove by the house which was set far back off the road in one of the few undeveloped areas near the Tucson Medical Center. It was a huge plot, acres maybe, and except for a dirt road, still much as it had been before "civilization" arrived. I wondered if he owned it all and had kept it undeveloped.
I decided to write him and let him know how much I had enjoyed reading his books. Unfortunately, before I had a chance to write, I read a newspaper account of his death. I felt that I had missed an opportunity, but not exactly sure for what.
The undeveloped area surrounding his house is now built up, and to be honest, I no longer am exactly sure of its exact location any more. It now looks just like any other urbanized area on that street.
Joseph Wood Krutch's works are numerous and range from scholarly works on Samuel Richardson, Miguel de Cervantes, and Boccaccio to Proust. He also has a number of essays on a variety of subjects: Darwinism, behavioral psychology, determinism, Freudian psychology, contemporary views of humanity, any topic in fact which impinges upon what he sees as the human condition today. He has a number of works about the desert southwest and his various experiences there, some laughable, some serious, but all interesting. A good place to start would be a fine collection titled The Best Nature Writing of Joseph Wood Krutch, which includes a selection of essays from his other works.
Some excerpts from the above mentioned collection:
On Autumn
Krutch, prior to moving to Tucson, lived on the East Coast, and some of his finest writings about nature relate to that period. The excerpt below is from that period.
"One day the first prematurely senile leaf will quietly detach itself in a faint breeze and flutter silently to the ground. All through the summer an occasional unnoticed, unregretted leaf has fallen from time to time. But not as this one falls. There is something quietly ominous about the way in which it gives up the ghost, without a struggle, almost with an air of relief. Others will follow, faster, and faster. Soon the ground will be covered, though many of the stubborner trees are still clothed. Then one night a wind, a little harder than usual, and carrying perhaps the drops of a cold rain, will come. We shall awake in the morning to see that the show is over. The trees are naked; bare, ruined choirs, stark against the sky."
What follows is an expression of Krutch's attitude towards those who admire autumn. I must admit I'm one of those whom Krutch considers a bit perverse in my thinking.
"To me there always seems to be something perverse about those country dwellers who like the autumn best. Their hearts, I feel, are not in the right place. They must be among those who see Nature merely as a spectacle or a picture, not among those who share her own own moods. Spring is the time for exuberance, autumn for melancholy and regret. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness? Yes, of course, it is that too. But promise, not fulfillment, is what lifts the heart. Autumn is no less fulfillment than it is also the beginning of the inevitable end.
No doubt the colors of autumn are as gorgeous in their own way as any of spring. Looked at merely as color, looked with the eye of that kind of painter to whom only color and design are important, I suppose they are beautiful and nothing more. But looked at as outward and visible signs, as an expression of what is going on in the world of living things, they produce another effect.
'No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, as I have seen in one autumnal face'--so wrote John Donne in compliment to an old lady. But Donne was enamored of death. Send not to know for whom the leaf falls, it falls for thee."
Along with the above cited work, I recommend the following.
The Twelve Seasons: A Perpetual Calendar for the Country--twelve essays which begin with Spring, of course.
The Desert Year--essays on the yearly cycle of living in the desert.
The Grand Canyon--essays
If You Don't Mind My Saying So--a quote from The Saturday Review-- these essays "add up to an irreverent commentary on muddied thinking in our time." It is a book "not to please mankind, but to vex it."
And to tell the truth, Krutch has vexed me at various times.
Overall Rating: sitting down and opening up one of Joseph Wood Krutch's works is an adventure. Try it some time.
Moreover, they taught me that humans were not alone here and were not the sole owners of Earth. There were and are others here, many of whom also have a claim upon this planet and their own right to be able to live out their lives .
I moved out to Tucson in 1968 and found that Krutch had written several of works about the southwestern desert country. In one of them, I discovered that Krutch had left the east coast and was now living in Tucson. I grabbed a telephone book and found a listing for him. I drove by the house which was set far back off the road in one of the few undeveloped areas near the Tucson Medical Center. It was a huge plot, acres maybe, and except for a dirt road, still much as it had been before "civilization" arrived. I wondered if he owned it all and had kept it undeveloped.
I decided to write him and let him know how much I had enjoyed reading his books. Unfortunately, before I had a chance to write, I read a newspaper account of his death. I felt that I had missed an opportunity, but not exactly sure for what.
The undeveloped area surrounding his house is now built up, and to be honest, I no longer am exactly sure of its exact location any more. It now looks just like any other urbanized area on that street.
Joseph Wood Krutch's works are numerous and range from scholarly works on Samuel Richardson, Miguel de Cervantes, and Boccaccio to Proust. He also has a number of essays on a variety of subjects: Darwinism, behavioral psychology, determinism, Freudian psychology, contemporary views of humanity, any topic in fact which impinges upon what he sees as the human condition today. He has a number of works about the desert southwest and his various experiences there, some laughable, some serious, but all interesting. A good place to start would be a fine collection titled The Best Nature Writing of Joseph Wood Krutch, which includes a selection of essays from his other works.
Some excerpts from the above mentioned collection:
On Autumn
Krutch, prior to moving to Tucson, lived on the East Coast, and some of his finest writings about nature relate to that period. The excerpt below is from that period.
"One day the first prematurely senile leaf will quietly detach itself in a faint breeze and flutter silently to the ground. All through the summer an occasional unnoticed, unregretted leaf has fallen from time to time. But not as this one falls. There is something quietly ominous about the way in which it gives up the ghost, without a struggle, almost with an air of relief. Others will follow, faster, and faster. Soon the ground will be covered, though many of the stubborner trees are still clothed. Then one night a wind, a little harder than usual, and carrying perhaps the drops of a cold rain, will come. We shall awake in the morning to see that the show is over. The trees are naked; bare, ruined choirs, stark against the sky."
What follows is an expression of Krutch's attitude towards those who admire autumn. I must admit I'm one of those whom Krutch considers a bit perverse in my thinking.
"To me there always seems to be something perverse about those country dwellers who like the autumn best. Their hearts, I feel, are not in the right place. They must be among those who see Nature merely as a spectacle or a picture, not among those who share her own own moods. Spring is the time for exuberance, autumn for melancholy and regret. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness? Yes, of course, it is that too. But promise, not fulfillment, is what lifts the heart. Autumn is no less fulfillment than it is also the beginning of the inevitable end.
No doubt the colors of autumn are as gorgeous in their own way as any of spring. Looked at merely as color, looked with the eye of that kind of painter to whom only color and design are important, I suppose they are beautiful and nothing more. But looked at as outward and visible signs, as an expression of what is going on in the world of living things, they produce another effect.
'No spring, nor summer beauty hath such grace, as I have seen in one autumnal face'--so wrote John Donne in compliment to an old lady. But Donne was enamored of death. Send not to know for whom the leaf falls, it falls for thee."
Along with the above cited work, I recommend the following.
The Twelve Seasons: A Perpetual Calendar for the Country--twelve essays which begin with Spring, of course.
The Desert Year--essays on the yearly cycle of living in the desert.
The Grand Canyon--essays
If You Don't Mind My Saying So--a quote from The Saturday Review-- these essays "add up to an irreverent commentary on muddied thinking in our time." It is a book "not to please mankind, but to vex it."
And to tell the truth, Krutch has vexed me at various times.
Overall Rating: sitting down and opening up one of Joseph Wood Krutch's works is an adventure. Try it some time.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XVIII
This quatrain continues the theme of the departed glories of the past, but also incorporates a belief about the effects that some special buried human bodies have on their environment.
First Edition, Quatrain XVIII
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.
Second Edition, Quatrain XXIV
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
Fifth Edition, Quatrain XIX
same as Second Edition
FitzGerald made only one change. In the first edition, the Hyacinth "dropt in its Lap" whereas in the second through the fifth, we read that the Hyacinth "dropt in her Lap," thus changing the garden from a neuter to a feminine place.
The significant image in this quatrain is death, for both the Rose and the Hyacinth have been influenced by their proximity to a human body, one buried beneath them. Both also hint at a violent death, which may account for their ability to exert an influence even after death--almost a ghost here.
The Rose is never so red except above where some "buried Caesar bled," which I see as a reference to his assassination by his enemies, one of whom was supposedly a friend of his. I wonder if the effect of the blood is stronger because Caesar was murdered.
The hyacinth is a flower which is native to Iran (Persia), and it is sometimes associated with rebirth. However, there is a another story, a Greek legend, which tells the origin of the hyacinth, which also involves a murder.
A handsome young prince of Sparta named Hyakinthos was loved by two Greek gods. One was Apollo, the sun god, and the other was Zephyr, the god of the west wind. One day, when Hyacinth was being taught the art of discus-throwing by Apollo, Zephyr became jealous and caused the west wind to blow the discus back and strike Hyakinthos on the head, killing him. A flower grew where the blood dropped on the ground, and Apollo named the flower after him--the hyacinth. The last line of the stanza clearly seems to refer to this legend when it states it "Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head." Both the Rose and the Hyacinth, therefore, suggest the blood of a murdered man.
Was jealousy the cause of both deaths? Hyakinthos died because of Zephyr's jealousy. Was Caesar killed by those who were jealous of his power?
First Edition, Quatrain XVIII
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.
Second Edition, Quatrain XXIV
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
Fifth Edition, Quatrain XIX
same as Second Edition
FitzGerald made only one change. In the first edition, the Hyacinth "dropt in its Lap" whereas in the second through the fifth, we read that the Hyacinth "dropt in her Lap," thus changing the garden from a neuter to a feminine place.
The significant image in this quatrain is death, for both the Rose and the Hyacinth have been influenced by their proximity to a human body, one buried beneath them. Both also hint at a violent death, which may account for their ability to exert an influence even after death--almost a ghost here.
The Rose is never so red except above where some "buried Caesar bled," which I see as a reference to his assassination by his enemies, one of whom was supposedly a friend of his. I wonder if the effect of the blood is stronger because Caesar was murdered.
The hyacinth is a flower which is native to Iran (Persia), and it is sometimes associated with rebirth. However, there is a another story, a Greek legend, which tells the origin of the hyacinth, which also involves a murder.
A handsome young prince of Sparta named Hyakinthos was loved by two Greek gods. One was Apollo, the sun god, and the other was Zephyr, the god of the west wind. One day, when Hyacinth was being taught the art of discus-throwing by Apollo, Zephyr became jealous and caused the west wind to blow the discus back and strike Hyakinthos on the head, killing him. A flower grew where the blood dropped on the ground, and Apollo named the flower after him--the hyacinth. The last line of the stanza clearly seems to refer to this legend when it states it "Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head." Both the Rose and the Hyacinth, therefore, suggest the blood of a murdered man.
Was jealousy the cause of both deaths? Hyakinthos died because of Zephyr's jealousy. Was Caesar killed by those who were jealous of his power?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Friedrich Durrenmatt: The Pledge, novel and film
Friedrich Durrenmatt
The Pledge
Mystery, police procedural?
The description for the film, The Pledge, sounded interesting, so I rented it. It is a mystery story, but the focus is more on the detective than on the killer. A detective, played by Jack Nicholson, takes on the case of the murder of a child the day before he had intended to retire. The cast is also one of the inducements for viewing it: Jack Nicholson, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, Sam Shepard, Aaron Eckhart, and Robin Wright Penn.
While researching the film on imdb.com, I learned that the film is based on a novel by the same name by Friedrich Durrenmatt, whom I had never heard of. Some of the comments about Durrenmatt included statements that he was one of the most significant European writers and dramatists of the second half of the 20th century. It was then that I discovered that I had encountered Durrenmatt once before, some 45+ years ago in fact. I had seen his play, The Visit, on stage with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontane.
I have never forgotten the play. A small town is dying. The company that was responsible for its economic life had closed down. A visitor comes to town. She had left this town many years ago, driven out, in fact, in disgrace when her lover denied being the father of her child. She has returned, one of the richest women in the country, and offers financial inducements in return for revenge. Her offer is refused, at first...
The Pledge is a subtly constructed novel about a promise made by Matthai, the police officer. Even though he supposed to leave the next day to take a job as police chief in Jordan, Matthai promises the mother of the murdered girl that he will catch the killer. The story is of that pledge and its effects upon the officer who has no life outside of his police work.
Suspicion falls upon an individual seen in the vicinity of the body. This individual, unfortunately for him, has a past record and is taken into custody. However, Matthai does not believe this man is the killer, so he starts his own investigation. Apparently two other young girls, both resembling the recent victim, have been killed within the past several years. While each was from a different small town in the mountains, there is an intersection in which the roads to each of the small towns meet and, moreover, one must come to this same intersection if one comes from outside the area. At this intersection is a gas station with a few rooms for travelers. Matthai buys the station and waits.
While this does seem to be an example of an excessive commitment on his part, especially since the police and citizenry are satisfied that the killer has been caught, I didn't think it actually had reached the stage of being an obsession. It wasn't until later in the film that I began to feel uneasy about his behavior, for everything he did made sense. His behavior made sense, but at a certain point he crossed the line beyond which no rational person would go.
There are some significant differences between the novel and the film but none that affect the overall theme of the novel. The differences are more about timing, about the presentation of information, and the focus of the theme--just how far should one go, even in attempting to prevent more murders in this case--remains the same.
Warning: What follows is information about significant events.
In The Pledge, like his play which I mentioned earlier, Durrenmatt gives us a situation in which an individual is placed at risk in order to benefit the group. One of the significant differences between the novel and the film is the way the officer sets up his trap for the killer.
In the novel, Matthai, now on inactive duty, goes to an orphanage and attempts to adopt a young girl, but he is refused. He then hires a local woman to clean the place and help him with customers. She has a young child, a girl about the same age and description, even to having blond hair, as did the previous victims. This might be a coincidence, except that now he has the girl always with him out in front, by the side of the road where drivers can't miss seeing her.
In the film, this is handled somewhat differently. One night, a young woman whom Nicholson had befriended in the past, comes to the station, seeking protection from an abusive ex-spouse. Nicholson lets her stay the night and then offers to let her stay if she will help out with the place.
Her appearance here with her young daughter then is a matter of chance. In the film then, there is always the possibility that her unexpected and unplanned appearance gave him the idea, whereas in the novel, he clearly plans to use the young girl as bait.
In the film version, Nicholson buys her a swing and puts it up in front of the station, in full view of drivers. When asked, he explains that it's safer out front where he can see her, whereas if he installs it in back, where there are no windows, anybody could come up out of the woods and he wouldn't be able to see him.
I don't want to reveal the rest of the story, so I'll stop here. That there is a killer who preys upon young children is horrifying enough, but that the detective is willing to use a young girl as bait to lure the killer into a trap is just as horrifying. What is most chilling is that when confronted with what he was doing, the officer is confused, for he doesn't see the problem. The killer is a threat and must be stopped. Nothing could happen to the young girl for she was well protected.
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive here, but I don't think there's any justification that could justify putting a young child at risk. An adult could weigh the risks and decide whether to allow this to happen, but not a young child.
I wonder--am I being overly sensitive here?
Overall Rating: Nicholson and a great cast give us an excellent film version of a very chilling novel.
The Pledge
Mystery, police procedural?
The description for the film, The Pledge, sounded interesting, so I rented it. It is a mystery story, but the focus is more on the detective than on the killer. A detective, played by Jack Nicholson, takes on the case of the murder of a child the day before he had intended to retire. The cast is also one of the inducements for viewing it: Jack Nicholson, Helen Mirren, Vanessa Redgrave, Sam Shepard, Aaron Eckhart, and Robin Wright Penn.
While researching the film on imdb.com, I learned that the film is based on a novel by the same name by Friedrich Durrenmatt, whom I had never heard of. Some of the comments about Durrenmatt included statements that he was one of the most significant European writers and dramatists of the second half of the 20th century. It was then that I discovered that I had encountered Durrenmatt once before, some 45+ years ago in fact. I had seen his play, The Visit, on stage with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontane.
I have never forgotten the play. A small town is dying. The company that was responsible for its economic life had closed down. A visitor comes to town. She had left this town many years ago, driven out, in fact, in disgrace when her lover denied being the father of her child. She has returned, one of the richest women in the country, and offers financial inducements in return for revenge. Her offer is refused, at first...
The Pledge is a subtly constructed novel about a promise made by Matthai, the police officer. Even though he supposed to leave the next day to take a job as police chief in Jordan, Matthai promises the mother of the murdered girl that he will catch the killer. The story is of that pledge and its effects upon the officer who has no life outside of his police work.
Suspicion falls upon an individual seen in the vicinity of the body. This individual, unfortunately for him, has a past record and is taken into custody. However, Matthai does not believe this man is the killer, so he starts his own investigation. Apparently two other young girls, both resembling the recent victim, have been killed within the past several years. While each was from a different small town in the mountains, there is an intersection in which the roads to each of the small towns meet and, moreover, one must come to this same intersection if one comes from outside the area. At this intersection is a gas station with a few rooms for travelers. Matthai buys the station and waits.
While this does seem to be an example of an excessive commitment on his part, especially since the police and citizenry are satisfied that the killer has been caught, I didn't think it actually had reached the stage of being an obsession. It wasn't until later in the film that I began to feel uneasy about his behavior, for everything he did made sense. His behavior made sense, but at a certain point he crossed the line beyond which no rational person would go.
There are some significant differences between the novel and the film but none that affect the overall theme of the novel. The differences are more about timing, about the presentation of information, and the focus of the theme--just how far should one go, even in attempting to prevent more murders in this case--remains the same.
Warning: What follows is information about significant events.
In The Pledge, like his play which I mentioned earlier, Durrenmatt gives us a situation in which an individual is placed at risk in order to benefit the group. One of the significant differences between the novel and the film is the way the officer sets up his trap for the killer.
In the novel, Matthai, now on inactive duty, goes to an orphanage and attempts to adopt a young girl, but he is refused. He then hires a local woman to clean the place and help him with customers. She has a young child, a girl about the same age and description, even to having blond hair, as did the previous victims. This might be a coincidence, except that now he has the girl always with him out in front, by the side of the road where drivers can't miss seeing her.
In the film, this is handled somewhat differently. One night, a young woman whom Nicholson had befriended in the past, comes to the station, seeking protection from an abusive ex-spouse. Nicholson lets her stay the night and then offers to let her stay if she will help out with the place.
Her appearance here with her young daughter then is a matter of chance. In the film then, there is always the possibility that her unexpected and unplanned appearance gave him the idea, whereas in the novel, he clearly plans to use the young girl as bait.
In the film version, Nicholson buys her a swing and puts it up in front of the station, in full view of drivers. When asked, he explains that it's safer out front where he can see her, whereas if he installs it in back, where there are no windows, anybody could come up out of the woods and he wouldn't be able to see him.
I don't want to reveal the rest of the story, so I'll stop here. That there is a killer who preys upon young children is horrifying enough, but that the detective is willing to use a young girl as bait to lure the killer into a trap is just as horrifying. What is most chilling is that when confronted with what he was doing, the officer is confused, for he doesn't see the problem. The killer is a threat and must be stopped. Nothing could happen to the young girl for she was well protected.
Perhaps I'm being overly sensitive here, but I don't think there's any justification that could justify putting a young child at risk. An adult could weigh the risks and decide whether to allow this to happen, but not a young child.
I wonder--am I being overly sensitive here?
Overall Rating: Nicholson and a great cast give us an excellent film version of a very chilling novel.
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