A Sweet Unrest

"Middlemarch and Me" and Me

 Inspired by Rebecca Mead’s “Middlemarch and Me” article in the New Yorker, I decided to take on George Eliot’s 785 page classic.  Mead fell in love with the novel when she was young and had all her choices before her, I of course read it at a time of life when I probably can’t do much more than launder the bed I made, to borrow a phrase from Joe Pernice.  But Mead described it as, “a primer to the limitations on accomplishment that are, for the most part, the lot of even the most ardent and aspiring among us.”  She said it was about, “the resignations that attend middle age.”  It seemed like maybe for once my timing wasn’t so far off.

I was excited to read it but found the first half oppressive.  Witnessing those two unhappy marriages take shape was almost more than I could bear.  Eliot is brilliant at using a single conversation or mundane event to show how terrible misunderstandings and worse arise between two people and some of it was pit-in-the-stomach awful to read even as I could see it was complete genius.  I also admired/hated her patient, painstakingly thorough and accurate probing of all our human ridiculousness.  The second half was easier to read not because there is any relief from these explorations but simply as plot-wise it was quite the page-turner by then.

In the ways these things go, I did listen to a lot of Pernice Brothers over the time I was reading Middlemarch.  They do defeat awfully well, though they wrap it in such perfect pop you’d be forgiven for not noticing at first.  

The Pernice Brothers - Somerville

But they aren’t an exact fit because they are much more bitter than anything in Middlemarch.  Well - with the exception of Lydgate.  I can see how a young woman reading Middlemarch would identify with passionate, high-minded Dorthea but I found her a bit much despite being genuinely good at heart, and once she was released from Casaubon I worried about her the least of all the main characters.  Instead I am haunted by the fate of Lydgate.  His comment about the basil plant struck me not only because I understood it thanks to Keats- that brief proud flash of getting something that would have been lost on me a few short years ago- but because it was the most bitter thing in the novel by far.  I made my bed I'll die in it.

Any excuse for vintage Courtney.  I was trying to say that it all ends on an uplifting note, if you can get Lydgate out of your head.  

And speaking of unhistoric acts and unvisited tombs, I’ve started dancing again.  More than the irregular stumble around the back row of class I've been doing since I had my children.  It hasn't been without challenges but it's good x.

Could I Look Into A Book...

I've enjoyed reading the answers to this meme that's been going around (here and here) so I thought I'd play too.

1. Which author do you own the most books by?

I had to count and the answer surprised me: Colette!  Mystery series and things like that I tend to borrow from the library unless I'm traveling or find them used, so I don't have any nice sets.

2. Which book do you own the most copies of?

Just one of each, though I do have three different collections of Robert Burns.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

No.

4. Which fictional character are you secretly in love with?

James Fraser.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life?  (Excluding picture books read to children.)

Completely against my will- The Great Gatsby.  We moved a lot when I was growing up and whenever I landed in a new school system they were inevitably just beginning to study it.  Then there was college...

But for pleasure- Wuthering Heights, Gaudy Night, Swann's Way (different translations and I also made an ill-fated attempt with the French), Weetzie-Bat, Practical Magic.  

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Egypt Game

7. What is the worst book you've read in the past year?

Tara Road by Maeve Binchy.  I'd never read anything by her and she's so popular so I decided to try it out.  It was god-awful and I didn't finish.

8. What is the best book you've read in the past year?

Still thinking.

9. If you could force everyone tagged to read one book, what would it be?

I'm more of a live-and-let-live kind of girl.

10. Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?

I'm American so I don't think I'm allowed an opinion.  

11. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

None, they never do them justice it seems.

12. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

As above. 

13. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book or literary character?

If we expand writer to include songwriter then I once had a lovely dream in which I danced under the stars with Francis Reader.

14. What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?

Learning To Fly by Victoria Beckham.  Also lots of nonsensey fashion books with pretty pictures (VB has also written one of these but I haven't read hers.  Yet.)

15 What is the most difficult book you've ever read?

The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvior.

16. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?

If we change this to 'the most obscure place you've seen a Shakespeare play' then I have a story to tell because I once saw Romeo and Juliet in the woods of Wisconsin.  Pure magic.

17.  Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

The French.

18. Roth or Updike?

I'm not qualified to answer.  I've read very little Updike (and haven't liked that) and no Roth.

19. David Sedaris or David Eggers?

Neither.

20. Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer?

What?

21. Austen or Eliot?

Both.

22. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

For the biggest gap, see question 20, or my entire blog.  But I'm not embarrassed about it,  I'm actually pleased I've made it as far as I have.

23. What is your favorite novel?

Wuthering Heights

24. Play?

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

25. Poem?

When I have fears that I may cease to be, A red red rose, Words wide night

26. Essay?

On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion, nearly anything by Walter Benjamin.  And Judith Thurman's fashion pieces in the New Yorker.

28. Work of nonfiction?

Heloise and Abelard by Gilson, and I think this is more creative nonfiction (which I have no patience with as a rule) but I thought Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje was beautiful.

29. Who is your favorite writer?

It's impossible to answer, I like different writers for different reasons.

30. Who is the most overrated writer today?

Who am I to say?

31. What is your desert island book?

Won't I be too busy listening to my desert island records (and drinking rum from a coconut) to do much reading?

32. And... what are you reading right now?

I can only read in two-minute increments right now so I am still meandering my way through the March issue of Vogue.

I love to travel, and I haven't been able to take a proper trip for a while.  Maybe that's why this caught my eye.  I liked these lines from James O'Reilly's introduction:

We get stale if we stay home too long: travel creates motion, a fine breeze that the reveals the contours of our insides, out errors of judgment and wishful thinking, and the possible path of our future selves.  Even a stroll around the block can do the trick, for a while anyway.

A stroll around the block is about all I can hope for in the next little while, but I think he's right.  Anyway, being tethered to home has made me even more grateful to live in such a beautiful place.

American Music Club - All The Lost Souls Welcome You To San Francisco

(available on eMusic or iTtunes, etc)

The Romantic Imagination

I picked this book up used and I like it. It's a collection of lectures given at Harvard in 1948-1949 by CM Bowra. The first and last chapters are about the English Romantics in general, and each of the middle chapters is devoted to one of the major Romantic poets. For each poet, Bowra looks at a representative poem in detail (for example, for Keats he takes Ode to a Grecian Urn) and he uses this as a departure point to discuss the poet's work, career and his place in Romantic thought.

I've found this book to be extremely helpful and a pretty good read too. I keep returning to it- it's the perfect companion to my project of reading through the Romantic poets. Here's a quote I love- Bowra is discussing how important the real, everyday world was to the Romantics:

"There are perhaps poets who live entirely in dreams and hardly notice the familiar scene, but the Romantics are not of their number. Indeed, their strength comes largely from the way in which they throw a new and magic light on the common face of nature and lure us to look for some explanation for the irresistible attraction which it exerts. In nature all the Romantic poets found their initial inspiration. It was not everything to them, but they would have been nothing without it; for through it they found those exalting moments when they passed from sight to vision and pierced, as they thought, to the secrets of the universe."

I can definitely see the truth of this in the Keats I read, and the importance of nature to Wordsworth is made very clear right from the beginning of The Prelude as well. But, say for us today, can this kind of inspiration only come from nature? Or is it possible to see whatever the 'familiar scene' is, even if it's a city scene, in a 'new and magic light'? Do you have to be in nature to pierce the secrets of the universe?

Blue Peninsula

Blue Peninsula by Madge McKeithen was, in part, the inspiration for the Life/Lines project I wrote about earlier (here and here). The book is about how McKeithen finds some solace in poetry when her son is stricken with a debilitating (both mentally and physically) illness which has no diagnosis. I was looking forward to reading it since I was so taken with the Life/Lines idea, but I ended up not liking the book itself quite as much as I expected to. I think this is mostly a matter of personal preference: I'm not usually one for memoirs, and it is much more a memoir than a poetry book. And I probably would have responded better to a simpler writing style.

But there is a lot of good in the book, first and foremost the poems themselves. McKeithen has given me several poets to explore further. She also makes some noteworthy observations about the place of grief in modern society. And I think it's nice to hear about someone finding what they need in poetry, or in any art form really. I mean, I get that.

Here's one of the poems that stood out for me from Blue Peninsula:

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

Billy Collins

Into The Parisian Underworld

I thought this might be of interest to my Francophile readers. I stumbled onto this website, Into The Parisian Underworld, which describes itself as 'A group blog dedicated to the reading and discussion of the unabridged version of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.' What a cool idea and- how great is this- there is no reading schedule. You read at your own pace and write accordingly.

I am so tempted to join but since I have only recently dedicated my life to reading poetry I feel like I shouldn't take anything else on. But I can't swear that 'no' is my final answer...

The 21 Steps

This is pretty fun. Cool interactive maps, exciting foreign cities, cloak-and-dagger thrills- what more could you want? I read about it first on Bronwyn Jones' site, Present Imperfect, which I like a lot.

Back To Keats

My reading these past two weeks has meandered over the place.  I read Lee Siegel's Against The Machine after reading Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times.  I might talk about it here later, but for now I'll just say that he has some interesting things to say about the place and the meaning of the Internet in our lives.  It's especially thought-provoking for someone who has just started to write a blog.  

Next, I read a little bit of The Meaning of Sunglasses.  The author is sharp and very witty, maybe too witty.  I just tip-toed through it and returned it to the library.

Then I read a few early poems by Hugh McDiarmid but I can tell that's going to be a whole new project so...

It was time to go back to Keats.  When I first started reading Keats, just on my own with nothing but the limited notes in the back of the book to guide me, there were 4 poems that seized me immediately.  One of them was Ode to Psyche. Again, this wasn't an experience of completely understanding what I was reading and more one of the words themselves having an effect on me deeper than what I could explain.  This week I really studied Ode to Psyche, looking both at what Bate's biography had to say about it and also reading in Keats' letters. 

I gather from Bate's remarks that the Ode to Psyche is considered by critics to be the weakest of the odes.  I will have to study the others as intensively before I can know if I agree with that.  To me, the reader unburdened by any knowledge of poetry, it stood out as the most immediately accessible.  (And I don't think it's because of Scritti Politti, though this is still one of the greatest albums of my lifetime.) 

No, it's a feeling I got from the language, the words, whatever the alchemy of poetry is.  I did completely relate to the underlying subject matter even though at the time I didn't know what that was in any concrete way.  I especially loved the lines:

        A rosy sanctuary will I dress
    With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
        With buds, and bells, and stars without a name.

       
One of the things that makes Keats such an inspirational figure to me is that he was largely self-taught.  He came from a lower-middle class background without many advantages.  Poetry and an artistic life were not handed to him.  Since discovering poetry I have so often wished that I could read the way I used to listen to music growing up- with a consuming adolescent ferocity, bedroom door shut tightly against all distractions, against a hostile world.  But I'm not young anymore.  I can't do that.  There are others beings entrusted to my care and so I am part of the world.  I have to read and study in stolen moments, in fits and starts.  But I will.  I do.  It means so much to me.

 Another of my favorite lines from the Ode to Psyche is this: "I see and sing by my own eyes inspired."  Edward Hirsch writes, "Keats offers us the very model of a self-directed artistic development as a life well lived." Yes.