From Beowulf to Milton's Satan!

800 or so years in 16 or so weeks:

Literary Survey

and Vision-Quest (or so I hope)

Join the fun at CCSF in San Francisco

Le Carre's "A Perfect Spy" is a Perfect Novel

Le Carre's A Perfect Spy is, I hazard to claim, a perfect novel.  It carries the adult thesis that the crucial shapings of character are emotional rather than rational, and it dramatizes such a range of humanity, such a range of response, in its pages.  I recently reread this novel -- while traveling in Germany, Austria, and Swizterland, very appropriately -- that I heartily endorse and recommend, and for some the trappings of espionage will be a feature, but I hope for others it will only be a mere distraction.

Le Carre's novel is both an excellent spy novel and a classic work of literature precisely because Le Carre is such a good watcher of humanity and such a good reporter of humane responses.  It's a thriller too.

Here's a passage that matters:

As for Pym, he was gazing on the glories of the kingdom he had dreamed of so long.  The German muse had no particular draw for him, then or later, for all his loud enthusiasm.  If she had been Chinese or Polish or Indian, it would have made no earthly odds.  The point was, she supplied Pym with the means, for the first time, to regard himself intellectually as a gentleman.  And for that Pym was eternally grateful to her.

As a first generation college student, I connect with this passage.  Studying English Literature at UC Berkeley enabled me to regard myself, intellectually, as a gentleman.  And that mattered.

Homework

English 46A: Setting Up Paradise Lost 9 & 10 -----– Plus, Quick Quotations

Sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.”  
--Lord Byron, from Manfred (1816)

A.  Consider Books 9 & 10 of Milton’s Paradise Lost as a tragedy, as a blank verse drama, and what happens?  How can such a conceit aid us in understanding what Milton is doing, what Adam and Eve are doing, what Satan and God are doing?


B.  Who Wrote What?  What Else Ought We To Notice?

=1. Nought is there under heav’ns wide hollownesse,
   That moves more deare compassion of mind,
   Then beautie brought t’unworthy wretchednesse
   Through envies snares or fortunes freakes unkind:
   I whether lately through her brightnesse blind,
   Or through alleageance and fast fealtie,
   Which I do owe umnto all woman kind,
   Feele my heart perst with so great agonie,
When such I see, that all for pittie I could die.

-2. What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds?  Or to be smothered
With cassia?  Or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits, and ‘tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
You may open them both ways.

-3. Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay.
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

-4. When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least . . . .

-5. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strike terror to my fainting soul.

-6. Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain . . . .

-7. “O place of bliss, renewer of my woes,
Give me accompt, where is my noble fere,
Whom in thy walls thou didst each night enclose,
To other life, but unto me most dear.”

Each stone, alas, that doth my sorrow rue,
Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint.
Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew,
In prison pine with bondage and restraint.

And with remembrance of the greater grief
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.

-8. Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array, after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small,
Therewithal sweetly did me kiss
And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

-9. They looking back, all th’ eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms:
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

Keith: Maui Memories

Maui memories from December 2008.

We met at the airport, checked out the condo we had rented, and hit the beach.

Keith exploring and Keith snoring: paradise either way.

Postcard: Longing for Paradise

Ahihi Beach, Maui, HI: December 2008.

I pulled out some old photos of my Hawaiian trips after reading "Joseph Banks in Paradise" in Richard Holmes' fairly recent The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. I haven't been to Tahiti, but the chapter on Banks' forays into botany and anthropology in Tahiti alongside Captain Cook prompted thoughts of Pacific travel and enjoyment anyway.

I need to read The Fatal Impact next. Those poor, lovely islanders, objects of fascination and exploitation, doomed to decimation or worse by venereal disease and to corruption by Western culture. And yet, what lucky islanders, inhabitants of a paradise. What would it have been like to have been a sailor in one of those first ships? Scurvy and floggings, sure, but those island dances in the moonlight . . . .

Okay, back to work. There's a report to finish by tomorrow. No wonder I'm daydreaming.