Exam Prompt: Channeling Peter O'Toole

The late great actor Peter O’Toole expressed something I feel is worth remembering:

"I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony.   I do not crave security. I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity."

How can we use this quotation to help us to understand the characters, the actions, and/or the outcomes in the books we’ve been reading? Connecting the quotation to Melville's Captain Ahab seems fairly easy, but what of Queequeg or, say, Ishmael? To Shakespeare's Prospero? To Kem Nunn's Ike or Preston or Hound? Would such connections be true ones or mere poses? Or . . . ?

Go deep into one long text, or use multiple texts in your response. Use clear references to explore O’Toole’s statement and its possible application to what we’ve read.


(Thanks to Jay Trinidad for leading me to the quotation; thanks to Peter O'Toole for the words and the life lived.)

Reprise: "And If I Laugh At Any Mortal Thing"

I
Nothing so difficult as a beginning 
In poesy, unless perhaps the end; 
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning 
The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend, 
Like Lucifer when hurl'd from heaven for sinning; 
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend, 
Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far, 
Till our own weakness shows us what we are. 

II
But Time, which brings all beings to their level, 
And sharp Adversity, will teach at last 
Man, -- and, as we would hope, -- perhaps the devil, 
That neither of their intellects are vast: 
While youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel, 
We know not this -- the blood flows on too fast; 
But as the torrent widens towards the ocean, 
We ponder deeply on each past emotion. 

III
As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow, 
And wish'd that others held the same opinion; 
They took it up when my days grew more mellow, 
And other minds acknowledged my dominion: 
Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellow 
Leaf," and Imagination droops her pinion, 
And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk 
Turns what was once romantic to burlesque. 

IV
And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 
'Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep, 
'Tis that our nature cannot always bring 
Itself to apathy, for we must steep 
Our hearts first in the depths of Lethe's spring, 
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep: 
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx; 
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix. 

V
Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land, 
And trace it in this poem every line: 
I don't pretend that I quite understand 
My own meaning when I would be very fine; 
But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd, 
Unless it were to be a moment merry, 
A novel word in my vocabulary. 

VI
To the kind reader of our sober clime 
This way of writing will appear exotic; 
Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, 
Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic, 
And revell'd in the fancies of the time, 
True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic: 
But all these, save the last, being obsolete, 
I chose a modern subject as more meet. 

VII
How I have treated it, I do not know; 
Perhaps no better than they have treated me 
Who have imputed such designs as show 
Not what they saw, but what they wish'd to see: 
But if it gives them pleasure, be it so; 
This is a liberal age, and thoughts are free: 
Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear, 
And tells me to resume my story here. 

--Lord Byron,
the opening stanzas of the fourth canto of Don Juan

I've posted these lines before, but that's fine.  That's what reprise is for.

Autumn Dreams

The Sleeper: sculpture mix; nutmeg and shino glazing, layered; leather cord.  (Vintage 2005: one of the first pieces I considered wholly successful.)

Passages: "A Humbler and A Prouder Mind"

Here's a resonant passage from a historical novel, which I share for itself and as a model of the way I cherry-pick my way through what I read, finding the scenes, the moments, the words that I can appreciate or use in some way, in any way.

The context of the passage involves a formal occasion in the offing, a crisis about appropriate attire, and friendship. I pick the specific words here for the insight into character.

For his part, Tobias would have been content to go in a sack, or even (the weather being what it was) nothing at all; for he had both a humbler and a prouder mind than Jack--humbler in that he did not suppose that anyone would notice him at any time, and prouder in that he did not suppose that he could be improved in any way by gold lace and taffety. But he was very much concerned at Jack's distress . . . .

--Patrick O'Brian, The Western Shore

I believe--though I'd have to check after all these years--that The Western Shore was a precursor to the famed Aubrey and Maturin novels. We certainly get a pair of friends at the heart of this novel and of that series.