Expatriates in Paris: Gertrude Stein Was Weird

All right, let me point out up front that the title of this post isn't really fair at all (however much it might have some truth in it). But I'll bet it got you interested!

Also, the title was basically the summary of my experience with  Gertrude Stein in college: my professor all but prefaced the discussion of her with this statement. Let's just say that undergraduate teachers start the Stein discussion with a deep sigh and the comment, "All right...about Gertrude Stein..."

A better way to describe Stein is that she marched to the beat of her own drum. And in a way, this is exciting. Some people do better conforming to the accepted boundaries within society; some do better pushing on these boundaries or even leaping outside them altogether. In many cases, Stein did the latter. Whether or not she was a great author or artist is debatable, but I love that she did things in a way that suited her.

As I mentioned yesterday, Stein was the source of the description "lost generation" for the young people who lived through World War I. She was born in Allegheny, PA, to a wealthy German-Jewish family. By the time she was three, her family had become fairly itinerant (her father worked for railroads): she moved to Vienna, then to Paris, then to Oakland (CA), then to Baltimore. In her early adulthood, she moved back to Paris where she lived with her brother Leo who was an art critic.

Stein became active in the artistic world of Paris: she and her brother favored the work of the more "avant-garde" painters -- Picasso, Cezanne, Daumier, Matisse -- and she also began writing. She was a prolific writer: see here for a list of her works. She also embraced a stream of consciousness style of writing that she may or may not have pulled off very well. (I once read a few pages of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and developed a migraine.) But Stein can be credited with influencing a number of writers, and she made a point in being active in things about which she was passionate. Stein's home became a gathering-place for writers and artists of the day (including people like Hemingway and Ezra Pound). Stein filled her home with the art that interested her. She wrote about the art that she loved. Politically, she was open about her conservative views, and she was also open about her sexuality. Stein wasn't a woman to fit into a tidy little box.

In the unlikely event that you decide to dive into Stein, the link provided above should get you started. Otherwise, here's a sample of her writing. (I suspect this will tell you everything you need to know about Stein's style.)

-- "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." (Apparently, one possible inspiration for the title of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.)


-- "The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable." (Yes, those two sentences go together. No, I haven't a clue.)


-- "Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle." (I had exactly the same thought yesterday.)


-- "Eating and sleeping are not like loving and breathing. Washing is not like eating and sleeping. Believing is like breathing and loving. Religion can be believing, it can be like breathing, it can be like loving, it can be like eating or sleeping, it can be like washing, it can be something to fill up a place when someone has lost out of them a piece that it was not natural for them to have in them." (I was with her through the third sentence. Then, she lost me.)


-- "A FEATHER.  A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive." (Of course.)


-- "It is a very strange feeling when one is loving a clock that is to every one of your class of living an ugly and a foolish one and one really likes such a thing and likes it very much and liking it is a serious thing, or one likes a colored handkerchief that is very gay and every one of your kind of living thinks it a very ugly or a foolish thing and thinks you like it because it is a funny thing to like it and you like it with a serious feeling, or you like eating something that is a dirty thing and no one can really like that thing or you write a book and while you write it you are ashamed for every one must think you a silly or a crazy one and yet you write it and you are ashamed, you know you will be laughed at or pitied by every one and you have a queer feeling and you are not very certain and you go on writing. Then someone says yes to it, to something you are liking, or doing or making and then never again can you have completely such a feeling of being afraid and ashamed that you had then when you were writing or liking the thing and not any one had said yes about the thing." (Well...sure...)

Whether you get her or not (with the latter category probably having far more representatives), Gertrude Stein was a force to be reckoned with and an important part of the expatriate movement.

If nothing else, she's loads of fun. And I think she would have liked that.

Back to Swans

Kind of a neat little coincidence.

Today is my dad's birthday. (Happy birthday, Dad! :) Today also happens to be the birthday of my favorite model. Yeah, I know that's not terribly important, and I also question the wisdom of admitting I have a favorite model...but there it is.

On the note of swans, she tweeted a photo: http://twitter.com/#!/NataSupernova. (Check out her b-day tweet. I have no Twitter account, so I can't link it directly.) You see, swans are symbolic and particularly to Russians. I think it's lovely. (If anyone's wondering, hers is the photo in my "About Me" section. Hey, I never said it was me. I just liked the picture.)

On a slightly unrelated note, I wish "tweet" wasn't a verb.

Expatriates in Paris: Ernest Hemingway

When I think of Gertrude Stein's "Lost Generation," I usually think of Ernest Hemingway first (whether or not this is really fair to him). Because of this, I'll start my "Expatriates in Paris" week with Hemingway. There might be some validity to my reasoning, you know. It was actually Hemingway who first used the term in publication, as part of the epigraph to The Sun Also Rises; he attributed it to a comment that Gertrude Stein made in conversation. (Digging a little deeper, I found that Stein adopted the idea from a garage owner who commented that the men who had fought in World War I were "une génération perdue.")


In any event, the idea of a lost generation came to represent that post-World War I group of young men, and even young women, who lost much of their paradigm after the war. I hesitate to bring Downton Abbey into this (as delightful as the program can be at times...), but it might offer something of an immediate comparison. Just consider how lost everyone and everything seems once the war is over. Social positions are confused, and no one quite knows how to make things go back to the way they were; many have a good idea they don't want things to go back to the way they were, but they're still not sure how things should be.


Hemingway was only briefly involved in the war as an ambulance driver in Italy. His brief involvement was enough for him to be wounded and to face the struggle of recovery. Once he was well enough to return home, he began writing, but the events of his wartime experience left him dissatisfied with the idea of returning to the way his life had been before the war. And Europe called him back, it seems. In 1921, Hemingway moved to Paris as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star. While in Paris, Hemingway began to make the writing connections that made him part of the Parisian expatriate group: the aforementioned Stein, poet Ezra Pound, and visionary writer James Joyce. By 1926, Hemingway had published The Sun Also Rises, in which he noted the "lost generation." In all fairness, though, Hemingway also noted that he wasn't so much suggesting the generation was permanently lost. After all, the other part of his epigraph is from Ecclesiastes: 

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever… The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose… The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits… All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come thither they return again.

Apparently, he was indicating that there's hope for the future. And apparently, everyone has kind of missed this. Oh, well. Literary analysts are notorious cherry-pickers.


Hemingway continued in Paris and throughout other parts of Europe (in particular, Spain) and back to the United States for periods of time. During his lifetime, he published 10 novels, as well as a number of short stories.


As for style, Hemingway's writing has a touch of the hard-boiled journalist to it, but there are occasional hints of the lyrical in it. Above all, there seems to be a constant hint of sadness, even in the happy moments. It defines modernism, I suppose. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that he's my favorite among the writers of this period.)


So are you interested yet? You might be, but you're not quite sure where to get started with Hemingway. Or maybe you read something of his in high school or college and were left wishing the war had carried him off.


If you'd like to give Hemingway another try, you have a couple of options for approaching his work. (For a full list of Hemingway's works, see here.)


1) Start with the short stories. Hemingway was a great short story writer, as he was a master of subtlety and the understated. It's often what isn't said that makes the difference. For something that represents the period when Hemingway was really coming into his own as a writer, his collection Men Without Women contains some strong stories. Or just see what your library has. (I'd recommend an internet source, but Hemingway's family keeps a pretty tight reign on his works, so you might be hard put to find much in the way of full-text stories.)

2) Start with a novel. The first Hemingway novel I read was one of his first, The Sun Also Rises. I realize now that this was over 10 years ago, but everything about the story remains vivid. In a good way, of course. The Sun Also Rises is certainly the most representative novels of the "lost generation," so you get some idea about how the world was changing during this time.

If you want a little more of a challenge, there's always For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was inspired by Hemingway's coverage of the Spanish Civil War. There's one thing to bear in mind with For Whom the Bell Tolls, and I didn't realize this until I was about halfway through: the book is written as though it's been translated from formal Spanish, and if you've ever read formal Spanish you know what I mean. There's nothing wrong with it, of course, but a direct translation can sound a bit stilted. It would be the equivalent of reading a book translated from Irish in which everyone is saying things like, "It's cold I feel today." That's literally how the phrase translates from Irish, but when a book goes into translation there are usually accommodations for English phrasing. Hemingway makes none of those, and no doubt on purpose. I admire that on the one hand, but it makes the book a tricky recommendation for a first excursion into Hemingway.

If you want something with more of a New World flair, Hemingway also wrote To Have and Have Not, on which the Bogart/Bacall film was based. And his final work published during his lifetime was The Old Man and the Sea. Go ahead with this one if it sounds interesting, but bear in mind that a writer's first novel (The Sun Also Rises) and his last (The Old Man and the Sea) are going to be fairly different in style and tone, and going backwards among his works might be harder once you read the novel that represents a different type of maturity in the writer.

Interested? Well, dive right in. Hemingway is one of those quintessentially American writers who was at times most inspired as a writer by not being in America. (Apparently, he managed to find some inspiration after he moved back.) And yet for all his love of Europe and his identification as an expatriate, his "American-ness" always came through in this work. I like this. Sometimes our identify is indeed most enhanced by not being home.

A few odd bit and pieces of trivia:

-- Ernest Hemingway had a son who was nicknamed Bumby. I have no idea why, but I love this photo of him with Gertrude Stein.
-- Hemingway decided to write a novel after reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
-- Hemingway was believed to have suffered from hemochromatosis, in which the body is unable to process iron properly. Mental problems can result. Hemingway's fourth and final wife Mary claims he committed suicide; two of his siblings also committed suicide. It is believed that their father had the condition and passed it on to them. This makes me very sad.
-- When I was fourteen, I visited the Hemingway House in Key West. All I remember is the humidity and the lizards.

Literary Theme: What to Look Forward to This Week

As I was putting together a list of possible themes this week, I found myself with several options. On the one hand, tomorrow is the start of Fashion Week in Paris. I love this idea: fashion, fashionable literature, Paris. It all sounded quite lovely. Not to mention a little obvious and entirely lacking in originality.

Then I pushed on the idea a little and thought about how to make the theme a little more interesting (well, to me, at least). This week could also be subtitled "wherein I become an expatriate," because of the impending relocation. While I'm not moving to Paris -- insert sad face here -- I am moving to a place that excites me, and I'm looking forward to the experience of being an expatriate for a few years during which I hope to learn more about another place and absorb some of the culture there. I'll also be writing while I'm there, so the move will have some effect on my work.

What does this have to do with Fashion Week and/or Paris? Well, it's going to be a somewhat indirect connection, but I think I can make it work. I've decided to focus this week on expatriate American writers who moved to Paris (or France in general) after World War I; this includes heavyweights like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, Ezra Pound. Even F. Scott Fitzgerald spent a good deal of time there. And best of all, I think I can squeeze fashion into this as well! (I mean, what's more "fashionable" than The Age of Innocence?)

So that's the theme for this week. If these writers are already familiar to you, feel free to skip over the posts, but if not it might be fun to discover a little something about the American literary psyche just after World War I. Gertrude Stein referred to this as "the lost generation": tune in to find out why.

Royal Swans: Five Days of the Cygnus

Beginning in 1917, Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva wrote about the events that were shaping Russia, primarily the abdication of the tsar and the rise of Communism. She ceased documenting events in 1920, when the White Army was defeated and hope was essentially lost for a return to the old ways. Her series of poems were entitled "The Encampment of the Swans," with the swans referring to the White Army (of which her husband was an active member).

Once again, we bring swans back to Russia. But then again, that's where we began.

An excerpt:

 All this is simple, as blood and sweat are:
          A Tsar for a people, a people for a Tsar.
          All this is clear as two's secret, shared:
          Two together--the Spirit's third.
          The Tsar's raised from heaven upon his throne.
          This is as pure as sleep and snow.
          The Tsar will climb to his throne again, yet--
          All this is holy, as blood and sweat.

(Easter Monday--and he had less than 3 months to live--M.Ts.)
1918

Trans. David McDuff (1987)

Statistical Swans: Five Days of the Cygnus

Well, my research into swans afforded me this interesting discovery today. It turns out that there is actually something called a "black swan theory," based on the 2007 book of the same name by the Lebanese-American writer Nassam Nicholas Taleb. It turns out that until the 17th century, many Europeans did not know that black swans existed as a unique species of swans. In other words, saying "a swan is white" was akin to saying "the pope is Catholic" -- as in, isn't that obvious? (No offense intended toward Catholics here.)  It took a voyage to Australia for Europeans to realize that their scientific observations about all swans being white, due to the lack of any black swans to observe, were limited to their geography: in Australia, cygnus atratus was alive and well.

With this in mind, Taleb developed his black swan theory, which is essentially a metaphor for people being surprised by something they assumed not to be the case. The theory goes on to claim that after the discovery people attempt to rationalize and explain their ignorance. They also respond with increased care to avoid future, similar, errors. (Taleb discusses the events of 9/11 in terms of the black swan theory.) This is ultimately an exploration of probability and the way that people react when the seemingly improbable becomes not only probable but also real. (The reference to the black swan in this theory dates back to the earlier "black swan problem" of philosophers, this problem being one of induction.)

So, they're you go. In the ballet Swan Lake, the Black Swan character (Odile) is presented as the "evil" one: she is the daughter of the sorcerer Von Rothbart, and she has been transformed to look like the White Swan Odette -- ultimately, she wears the black costume because the same dancer performs both roles (and how else are you to tell them apart?). The black is a metaphor for her character, of course. But in philosophy and statistics, black swans perform a much more interesting (in my opinion...) role of defining a standard of probability.

They also have those great red beaks. That has to count for something.

Bonny Swans: Five Days of the Cygnus

I've had a fairly long day, so I'll just focus on a short post. In fact, I'll let the exceptional Loreena McKennitt do most of the work, with her beautiful song "The Bonny Swans." This is a slightly creepy take on swans, but given the cultural symbolism that seems to follow swans -- which is never exactly sweet and charming -- a slightly creepy take might be appropriate. Once again, I'll point out that we have a theme of people becoming swans. Why? No clue. But there's obviously something anthropomorphic about the swan.

(I've actually posted this song before, quite a while ago, but it's good enough to post twice.)

Poetic Swans: Five Days of the Cygnus

Today will be a single representation of swans in literature, a poem by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, swans had a place in Irish folklore, so it's interesting to see how Yeats (1865-1939) played with a traditional motif in a modern era.

A couple of features to consider in here: Yeats mentions "nine-and-fifty swans." It's entirely conceivable that Yeats actually witnessed this -- and that he counted out these swans -- and it's also possible that the group of swans reflects back on the traditional folk tales that see symbolism in a large group of swans hovering over a lake as evening arrives. In the story of Swan Lake, the swans descend in a flock on a lake at twilight. (Depending on the size of the ballet company, this may be 24, 32, or even more dancers.)

Here I've added two different versions of this scene:

Royal Ballet



(I actually hate the costuming of the Royal Ballet's production, but I like the way the dancers actually appear to be flying when they arrive on stage.)

Paris Opera Ballet



Also, I should note that there is a slight connection between the Irish folk story and what is going on in Swan Lake. In the ballet, Odette and her ladies are turned into swans by a cruel magician. In Irish folklore, there is a story in "The Children of Lir" about a stepmother who turns her stepchildren into swans for 900 years. I think the suggestion within the poem is that the swans seem to be rather mystical creatures. They could, of course, just be swans that descended upon the same lake at twilight; they could also something else -- something mysterious, something magical. Something more than swans.

"The Wild Swans at Coole"
William Butler Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,   
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water   
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones   
Are nine-and-fifty swans.


The nineteenth autumn has come upon me   
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings   
Upon their clamorous wings.


I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,   
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   
Trod with a lighter tread.


Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;   
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,   
Attend upon them still.


But now they drift on the still water,   
Mysterious, beautiful;   
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day   
To find they have flown away?

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, 1989

Literary Themes: Five Days of the Cygnus

On this day, in 1877, the ballet Swan Lake premiered in Moscow. In honor of such an illustrious event :), I've decided to devote this week to swans: swans in literature, swans in poetry, swans in mythology...you get the idea.

Today's post is going to be a bit on the brief side, in part because I'm swamped with grading. But I want to offer a few thoughts on the appearance of swans in language and culture.

In linguistic terms, the word swan comes directly to modern English from the Old English swan -- a big difference, you see. This word is believed to have its origin in the Indo-European root swen, which meant "to sing." I should note that linguists don't actually know for sure if this word existed. They've simply projected its existence based on extant information about Indo-European root words.

Some may be familiar with the word cygnet, which indicates a young swan. (In the ballet Swan Lake, the dance of the "little swans" is sometimes referred to as the dance of the cygnets.) The word cygnet comes to us from the Latin cygnus (or "swan"), which in turn came from the Greek word κύκνος. What do you mean you don't read Greek? Tsk, tsk, tsk. Translated for the non-Greek reader, this simply reads kýknos. This also means "swan." I know that comes as a great shock to everyone.


Swans make an appearance in fairy tales, as well as several different mythologies. (Don't make the mistake of confusing the two genres, by the way.) Most have, at least once in their lifetime, heard or read Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling." In Greek mythology, the great beauty Helen of Troy was conceived when Zeus disguised himself as a swan to seduce the queen of Sparta, Leda. (This story is typically filed under "Who came up with this stuff?") In Irish mythology, the beautiful maiden Etain was turned into a swan to enable her to flee from the king of Ireland. In the Finnish poem Kalevala, swans are sacred, and anyone who kills a swan is sent to Tuonela, or the Underworld.


So where did the story for the ballet Swan Lake come from? You know, it's hard to say for sure. Unlike some ballets (Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, Sleeping Beauty), Swan Lake did not derive from a familiar tale or love story. Russians consider it a very "Russian" story, but then they would. In all fairness, they might be correct about it. The motifs within the story might have become so familiar that it's difficult to extract them from our own culture and identify the source of them in Slavic tales. Some historians see elements of Swan Lake in the Russian folktale "The White Duck" and suggest that the story has at least part of its origins in that. I read the summary here. There are certainly features of Swan Lake in it, particularly in the way that people are turned into swans. In case you're not familiar with the story of Swan Lake, try here. I'd try my hand at summarizing, but I'm not sure my summary would be any shorter than the one at the link. Honestly, ballet plots are seldom simple.


Since my blog is essentially subtitled "Any Day Is a Good Day to Post Ballet," I'll go ahead and post some ballet.


From the modern-day Mariinsky, Uliana Lopatkina and Danila Korsuntsev:





And from the Kirov (now the Mariinsky), circa 1989, the Dance of the Cygnets:

Quick Review: False Scent, by Ngaio Marsh

Overall, I've found that I enjoy Ngaio Marsh's books, although from story to story the plot can be a little hit or miss at times. This one, for whatever reason, was a hit with me. And I say "for whatever reason" because I haven't really decided what works (for me) in a Marsh mystery and what doesn't. It just turns out that I like some books more than others.

I liked False Scent. The premise was simple and not terribly unique: aging actress, known for being excessively dramatic and occasionally jealous, has birthday party, gets into fight with friends and family at birthday party, is murdered at birthday party. On the more unique side of things, it appears that she's been sprayed with a commercial pest killer marketed to destroy bugs on plants. And ultimately, Inspector Alleyn (since he's the "leading detective" in this story) concludes that one of her perfume bottles has been filled with the stuff, in the event that she'll spray it on herself at some point. Rather gruesome. And more than a little clever.

Marsh's strengths lie in the crafting of interesting characters. I wouldn't say these characters are the roundest I've seen, by any means, but they're fun and true to form, even if they're occasionally too stereotypical. And Marsh is a plot-formula writer, so there's always some kind of romance in the story; this might get old, but if you can spot the potential love story early enough you'll be able to eliminate at least a couple of the suspects later on. (Let's just say the young lovers are seldom guilty of anything except of being excessively sentimental.) But it's still enjoyable to watch things unfold, and it's satisfying to see the expected conclusion arrive.

I recommend False Scent for fans of Marsh, although I wouldn't call it her finest standalone mystery, nor would I advise it as a first Marsh read. It's just a good in-the-middle sort of mystery that's good for a quiet day.

Year of publication: 1960
Number of pages: 254

Poems to Love, About Love: Before We're Donne...

Holy Sonnets, XV

Wilt thou love God as he thee? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make His temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting—for he ne'er begun—
Hath deign'd to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath' endless rest.
And as a robb'd man, which by search doth find
His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again,
The Sun of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.
'Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

Poems to Love, About Love: Emily Dickinson

Poem 480

"Why do I love" You, Sir?
Because—
The Wind does not require the Grass
To answer—Wherefore when He pass
She cannot keep Her place.

Because He knows—and
Do not You—
And We know not—
Enough for Us
The Wisdom it be so—

The Lightning—never asked an Eye
Wherefore it shut—when He was by—
Because He knows it cannot speak—
And reasons not contained—
—Of Talk—
There be—preferred by Daintier Folk—

The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—
Because He's Sunrise—and I see—
Therefore—Then—
I love Thee—

Poems to Love, About Love: Pablo Neruda

"Here I Love You"

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.
Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.

Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.

Here I love you.
Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.

The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Poems to Love, About Love: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Desire"

Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.

Poems to Love, About Love: John Keats

"Modern Love" (Fragment)

And what is love? It is a doll dress'd up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, nad so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss's comb is made a perfect tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm'd the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play'd deep for hearts,
It is no reason why such agonies
Should be more common than the growth of weeds.
Fools! make me whole again that weighty pearl
The Queen of Egypt melted, and I'll say
That ye may love in spite of beaver hats.

Poems to Love, About Love: John Donne

"Air and Angels"

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
    Before I knew thy face or name;
    So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
    Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
    But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
    More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
    And therefore what thou wert, and who,
        I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
    And so more steadily to have gone,
    With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
    Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought;
    For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere;
    Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
    So thy love may be my love's sphere;
        Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

Poems to Love, About Love: Anne Bradstreet

"A Letter to Her Husband"

My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay more,
My joy, my magazine, of earthly store,
If two be one, as surely thou and I,
How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lie?
So many steps, head from the heart to sever,
If but a neck, soon should we be together.
I, like the Earth this season, mourn in black,
My Sun is gone so far in's zodiac,
Whom whilst I 'joyed, nor storms, nor frost I felt,
His warmth such fridged colds did cause to melt.
My chilled limbs now numbed lie forlorn;
Return; return, sweet Sol, from Capricorn;
In this dead time, alas, what can I more
Than view those fruits which through thy heart I bore?
Which sweet contentment yield me for a space,
True living pictures of their father's face.
O strange effect! now thou art southward gone,
I weary grow the tedious day so long;
But when thou northward to me shalt return,
I wish my Sun may never set, but burn
Within the Cancer of my glowing breast,
The welcome house of him my dearest guest.
Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence,
Till nature's sad decree shall call thee hence;
Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone,
I here, thou there, yet both but one. 


Note: Since my husband and I can't be together for Valentine's Day, this is in honor of him.

Art Study: The Kite

The Kite

Artist: Gazbia Sirry (b. 1925)
Date: 1960
Medium: Oil on canvas

Details (courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art):

Gazbia Sirry is one of the many accomplished women artists who have made a mark in the Egyptian arts throughout the twentieth century. She stood out for her dedication to the individual freedom of the Arab woman through her fighting spirit. Sirry's ardent enthusiasm for innovation and her openness to international influences made her a vital contributor to the Contemporary Art Group in Cairo. A prolific painter, she has experimented with a range of styles. Her early works resembled illustrations inspired by children's coloring books. But she soon shifted to an Expressionist style in which her use of heavy impasto, quickly applied and violently scratched, explored a thematic revolving around the artist herself or groups of individuals and couples. Her figures seem to be struggling to emerge from the whirlpool of life, or have gathered together for sheer survival in an urban environment gone astray.

Enjoy, since this painting isn't currently on display. (Rather sad, if you ask me. The colors and the overall mood really caught my eye.)

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art (also linked above)

Quick Review: Facing East, by Frederica Mathewes-Green

This will just be a quick review. A few weeks ago, I reviewed At the Corner of East and Now, which is more or less the follow-up to Facing East. I probably should have read the latter first, but I got my hands on the former before the latter. Not to be confusing or anything.

Anyhow, I finally read Facing East, and I'm glad I did. In it, Mathewes-Green shares with readers the early days of her family's journey to Orthodoxy. It's still, in many ways, very new for them in this book. They're learning about the differences, applying the changes to their lives, and making discoveries that delight them along the way. As in At the Corner of East and Now, they're also finding out what it means to be Orthodox in the real world, if such a thing exists. In other words, theology on the page is one thing; theology practiced in day-to-day life typically requires careful application and thoughtful decisions.

What I liked about Facing East is how new everything still felt for Mathewes-Green and her family. In the later book, there's a little more confidence -- never to be confused with arrogance, I'm happy to say -- about the practice of their faith. In Facing East, they're still in the process of falling in love with Orthodoxy. There's a bit less of the confidence that comes with time and a bit more of the freshness of discovery.

The layout of this book is also a little different than the layout of At the Corner of East and Now. In the later book, Mathewes-Green uses the order of a service and balances this with life experiences. In Facing East, she uses the order of the liturgical year. So each chapter, and each section of each chapter, reflects a specific day in the church calendar. As a result, the flow is significantly more chronological, and it provides a great overview of what a year in the life of a relatively new Orthodox Christian might look like.

For those interested in learning more about Orthodoxy, this is a great read. Bear in mind that it's not a book of theology, even if it contains explanations about Orthodox beliefs. It's more of a personal look at conversion and what it means for an individual within the church. As always with Orthodoxy, it's not just about the individual but about the individual's place within the larger community of Christ's body.

And that's something my intensely solitary self needs to remember.

Year of publication: 2006
Number of pages: 272

Poetry Study: Anna Akhmatova

I finished my book of Akhmatova's poems the other day, and it feels a bit inappropriate to dismantle the poetry with analysis. Suffice it to say, what I read will stay with me for a while. This is the kind of poetry I enjoy reading, without feeling the need to take it apart and pick through the possible meanings contained within it. (In fact, the version I own has brief introductory material from Akhmatova herself for one of the poems; she essentially says she isn't going to offer the reader any interpretation: "I shall neither explain nor change anything. What is written is written.")

I'll honor that and just provide the last lines to the final poem in the book, Poem without a Hero (written between 1940 and 1962). It was intended to remember those who died in the Siege of Leningrad, as well as those who later perished in the labor camps of Siberia.

I don't know about you, but I think this can stand on its own without any further analysis or explanation:

And under my eyes unravelled
That road so many had travelled,
By which they led away my son.
And that road was long -- long -- long, amidst the
Solemn and crystal 
Stillness
Of Siberia's earth.
From all that to ash is rendered,
Filled with mortal dread yet
Knowing the calendar
Of vengeance, having wrung her
Hands, her dry eyes lowered, Russia
Walked before me towards the east.


From Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems (trans. D.M. Thomas)

Year of publication: 2006
Number of pages: 147

Reading Update

I really have been reading lately. And I have several blog posts hanging out in my head.

But at the moment, my house is being torn up by movers, so the thought of sitting down and writing a blog post -- when any minute I might need to jump up and save some unsuspecting household item from being packed in the wrong box -- is just too much. (For the record, during our last move, the movers packed our car keys and house keys.)

I'll pick back up with blogging when I'm not so stressed out that I'm living on Bach's flower remedies.