Centennial Celebrations!

This month marks the 100th anniversary of T.S. Eliot publishing "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"!  This poem is my absolute favorite (ok, tied with the thematically similar "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats).  I've mentioned Prufrock on the blog before and even wrote a really fun, final paper on it this Winter.  It's so bizarre and beautiful and tragic and a perfect statement on the time.  

Here, from 0:00-0:24, Tom Hiddleston recites the haunting introduction [I seriously need his recitation of the whole poem!].  And here are just a few of my other favorite lines:

Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea...

Do I dare
Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...

[I have this Obvious State print up in my kitchen]

I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

The childlike cadence used to convey the heavy, mythic philosophical themes is just marvelously profound to me!!  "Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery."  If you want to (re-)revel in some mystery, I'd suggest reading through T. S. Eliot's first poetic masterpiece. 

Set
     backs


Dear Spring,
For a season of new life, why so many set
backs?  Why the confusion and self-doubt? 
To be honest, why all the tears?

Mentally, I know these are not life-ending, but
they are life-altering--
so many decisions; so many do-I-dares1.
My composure is wearing thin,
my strength is waning, in their place
only well-worn seams struggling with the tension
of holding this self together.

Primavera.  "Springtime."
Prima vera.  "First real."
I think broken apart, like myself, 
those words offer a better answer
to my initial question.  
Why all the set
backs?  
Because of all the realities.
Ones I'm experiencing for the first time. 
Realities I thought would skip me.  Set
backs I had hoped to avoid. 

Yet a wise philosopher2 conjectures, "Pain is 
what you experience when you bump into reality."
For some aspects of life, this is the "first
real" of a Spring where to become whole,
one must be broken; to move forward, one must be set
back.


1 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot
2 Definitions by Dallas Willard

Holy Saturday

I hope you are having a mindful and grace-filled Holy Week...

I wanted to share just a few things I've been meditating on--especially during the dark in-between-ness of Christ Crucified and Christ Resurrected.

I love what Micah J. Murray has written here on Good Friday.  In this prose-poem, "God is Dead," he explores the decimating reality of when God was dead.  The women and the Beloved Disciple at the cross must have held hope till the very last that He who could heal and He who could command the seas could and would rescue himself.  But no.  "It is finished" was the crushing blow to such hopes.  Murray writes:

Of course the earth shook when the breath that had formed mankind slipped from the lungs of the very One who first spoke it all into existence. I wonder that mountains and oceans and planets and stars didn’t all plummet together into an infinite void of darkness, when the hands that had molded them fell limp and lifeless, pierced and broken. 

“God is dead...”

And on this day, we don't get to rush ahead to the happy ending.  On this day we identify with the finality of hope lost.  And in this moment, I understand the words that my soul so often pushes against when TS Eliot said:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

- East Coker  

In so doing, we empathize with those who have lost hope in their own lives.  At the beginning of Lent, I read this beautiful reflection by Josh Ross who pointed out that, this year, Holy Saturday falls on the same day as the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.  As he so wonderfully puts it:

I think—as for now—April 4th belongs on the Saturday after Good Friday and before Easter Sunday. It is the day that adequately describes where we are in race relations today throughout our world...
Saturday is where we often live. It is the day of questioning, doubt, anxiety, and confusion. There is an awkwardness about Saturday; an uncertainty of how exactly this story is going to pan out.
Race in America is not where it was. Yet, it also isn’t where it needs to be. We can’t go back to the days of utter darkness, despair, oppression, and striping certain groups of dignity, yet we also can’t pretend as if we have arrived at somewhere we have not.

Holy Saturday reminds us that far too many areas of our world have yet to experience Resurrection.

And yet, today I have been reading Lady Julian of Norwich and exploring the notion of felix culpa--literally "happy fall." St. Augustine said of this notion: "Melius enim iudicavit de malis benefacere quam mala nulla esse permittere."  Or, in English, "For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist."

Holy Saturday means Christ is in the tomb and hope seems vain, "but all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well..."

Hi!  Just a little late-night update on my final papers...

So yesterday I submitted my 2nd grad paper on the Lizzie Bennet Diaries - I still can't believe they let me do that.  I was writing about it for a film class, applying theories of form, gender, and reception.  It seemed a bit messy even when I turned it in, but it did give me some ideas I want to expand into my thesis project :)

I'm now working on a really interesting paper going in all sorts of crazy directions: Victorian standardization of time, Hesiod's socieconomic perspective in Works and Days, postcolonial theory, Hamlet, a bit of Foucault, and Odysseus's sirens... I told my brother: "Right now they're like a bunch of sheep running in different directions and I need to become Babe! #BahRamEwe" I'm about 1/3 of the way there and it is pretty fun.  The text I'm working with is also a favorite--"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

But now I should get some rest so I can scribble out some more good ideas tomorrow. Bonne nuit!

Excerpts from TS Eliot's "Four Quartets" [Part III]

"Little Gidding"

 

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic…

In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant.

You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
     We only live, only suspire
     Consumed by either fire or fire.

For last year's words belong to last year's language 
And next year's words await another voice.

[via]

 

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph.

Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

[via]

Excerpts from TS Eliot's "Four Quartets" [Part II]

"The Dry Salvages"

The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint--
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled...

Excerpts from TS Eliot's "Four Quartets" [Part I]

"Burnt Norton"

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind 
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious in not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden...
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness...

"East Coker"

...Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter...
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion...

Q&A with Tom Hiddleston

Last weekend I saw Coriolanus with some ladies, and ever since has been "Tom Hiddleston Appreciation Week."  I know I've mentioned him before, but I've realized some people don't know much about him. Well, let's just say he's a lovely old soul who has still retained a child's playfulness.  And is at the same time devilishly handsome!

Last fall, he did a Twitter Q&A and I loved some of his answers, so here are some quotes, pictures and videos of his for your enjoyment.

[My favorite poem...]

 He recites the beginning in this photo shoot & interview:

[My favorite Disney film as a child...]

He once broke into the "Bare Necessities" impromptu:

 

[Hiddleston reading to his Thor teddy bear]

 

[Hiddleston with Quvenzhane Wallis at the MTV Movie Awards 2013]

[Prince Hal to Henry V - from PBS's The Hollow Crown]

[Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald in Midnight in Paris]

And remember...

Probably more to come on that, but it's safe to say that I think Hiddleston is pretty fantastic.

One Bibliophile's Calendar

A time for every book under the sun
Or rather round the sun.
Different months call for different books;
A read for every season.
January is an amalgamation -
unfinished books from the prior year,
gifted books, bettering books.
February offers more choice:
What would you like to read?
March is best for modernism.
before marking her demise on the 28th
read some Woolf, and get into Eliot
before the "cruelest month."
April showers... mean sit in and read,
dive into that series, you have the time.
"Spring" for a re-read romance and
May-be find a way to "read out of doors."
June - despite the sun and celebrations,
your series is still making you feel "bibliosocial."
Summer is a time for sci-fi or short stories
or a good Shakespeare comedy.
If, in July, you can carve out a vacation
or just a rare quiet, sun-filled day,
binge-read a new author.
August is for finishing.  Just how much
can you finish before the re-start?
Sun to fog - September is transition
New routines, new books assigned in school
or cradled on suddenly-longer commutes.
At long last: Fall, the reader's utopia.
And Fall means fantasy.
For October - books, scarves, glasses are in vogue,
the bigger the book, the better.
Fantastical wanderings lead into November,
reifying characters and locales in our mind's eye.
Gothic is also good - Jane Eyre feels right
in a stormy or cold December night.
Then the holidays come, and with them,
re-assessed goals, another push to finish,
a search for the Word to make us real.
So we keep reading, keep becoming.

31 Days of Books: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Today's was a last minute change.  Most of the others were planned in advance, but I thought, "this deserves a day."  And as I thought more, I realized, yes, I said "books," but we need a poem in this little anthology.  So, today's 31 post...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Title:  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Author:  TS Eliot

Published:  1917

Year I read it:  2012

One sentence summary:  In this profound, Modernist poem, the young Eliot personifies the aging & intensely indecisive Prufrock musing on his life and on an "overwhelming question."

Interesting fact(s):  It's not a love song.  CS Lewis hated the intro.  It's one of Eliot's few rhyming poems.  

Three reasons to read it:

• It's much shorter, more accessible, and more delightful than The Wasteland.  I found that it was a good intro into Eliot's perspective before tackling The Wasteland.  Also, I'm not a huge poetry buff, but this one has fascinated me since the day I read it.
• This poem was written and published during the Great War, just before Modernism exploded onto the scene.  It's very insightful into some of the frustrations and questions plaguing artists at the time.
• You will find references.  You will want to reference it.  This is a very quotable poem.  It's like an erudite version of Dr. Seuss.  

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• It's far, far easier than the Wasteland, but still one of the most intertextual poems ever - so find a version with lots of explanatory notes.

Great quotes:

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherised upon a table;Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question...Oh, do not ask "What is it?"Let us go and make our visit.[Opening lines]

There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet...Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Do I dareDisturb the universe?

For I have known them all already, known them all:--Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid.

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world."

- John le Carre

I agree.  But it's my view right now.

And some days feel (to borrow John Green's phrasing) "existentially fraught."

Well, most of you know that.

I've talked with you. Texted you.

You've read my ranty blog posts.

I keep saying this, but the problem isn't my job, per se.

I enjoy most of what I get to do and the people I work with.

I'm even saddened by the realization that, at so young an age, this is probably the best boss I'll ever work for.  Ok, sounding hopeful, at least top 3.

This job is empowering and is teaching me a lot.

And provides a rather beautiful paycheck.

So when I rant... it's not because I want to switch jobs.

I am restless and wrestling right now.

I don't know who I want to be when I grow up.

I'm going to be 23 this month.

Yes, young.  I know.

Several have asked me lately,

"How old are you?

...Only 22.

Well, you've got lots of time."

Yes.  I do.

But I don't want to waste any of it.

And there has to be more than this.

More than rushing to work

(Wo)manning a desk

Relying on Starbucks

Waiting for the weekend

Checking fb, twitter, insta, blogs for something inspirational

Constantly eating on-the-go

Crossing off to-do lists

Filling out "adulthood" forms

Filling out stupid-*@$%-car-accident forms

Maybe reading a little, watching a little

Doing laundry (if I'm lucky)

And checking on virtual life once more before bed

I mean, yesterday, I seriously had instant oatmeal out of a paper cup for breakfast.

Lameness has become a frequent guest :/

And I know I seem moody because I'm all "check out my fabulous weekend..."

"Here's a morsel in this stimuli-overload, inspiration-starved world..."

"You wouldn't believe this funny story..."

But a large part of my life is spent here.  With a view from the desk.

And sometimes I think I'm going cuckoo

Scratch that... am cuckoo.

I identify so much with my good friend, Prufrock.

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute, there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...

Although it's pumps of chai, not coffee spoons, in my case.

But still... what is this modern life?

And why does everything inside me anxiously wrestle against it?

One of my selves (yes, I'm totally schizo... and so am I) tries to shush the other selves,

"Samara, you're too dramatic.

Bob's out this week so it's just quiet.

LBD is over and you're missing your fiction-fix.

You should just eat better, exercise better, sleep better.

Samara, be grateful!!"

Yes.  Yes, those are probably all true.

And yet.

I know that God is in the tedious and monday-ne (I made a word!).

I know that He is teaching me, like Jacob,  through wrestling.

Teaching me that I can rely only on Him.

For peace. For provision. For sanity.

For love.

I know those things.  I am learning those things.

But I have dared to listen to a distant call.

One that thrills as it terrifies.

One that challenges everything comfortable and calculated.

And it isn't specific.  I can't make out the call.

But I'm daring to incline my ear.

Because I don't know who or what or where I was made for.

But I know I have yet to arrive.

Litera(ril)ly April

"When fair April with his showers sweet,

Has pierced the drought of March to the root's feet

And bathed each vein in liquid of such power,

Its strength creates the newly springing flower;"

- The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, Opening lines

by Geofrey Chaucer

(transl. to Modern English)

* * * * *

"April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain."

- The Wasteland,

T.S. Eliot

* * * * *

Cuckoo, Cuckoo

What do you do?

In April, I open my bill

In May, I sing night and day

In June, I change my tune

In July, how far I fly

In August, away

Cuckoo, Cuckoo

- Cuckoo,

Benjamin Britten

* * * * *

Drip, drip, drop

Little April shower

Beating a tune

As you fall all around

Drip, drip, drop

Little April shower

What can compare

To your beautiful sound...

- Little April Shower,

Bambi

* * * * *

O, TO be in England

Now that April 's there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England—now!

- Home thoughts, from Abroad

Robert Browning

* * * * *

"April is a promise that May is bound to keep."

- Hal Borland

* * * * *

Good day, April.

Birthday month.

Diamond month.

"Cruelest" (?) month.

Creative month.

Rainy month.

Hopeful month.

mid-term musings

In between celebrating birthdays (there are 5 birthdays in my family in just 11 days--whew!), I'm supposed to be studying for mid-terms and just wanted to process some of my thoughts.


"What is poetry? What is its aim? On the distinction between the Good and the Beautiful; on the Beauty of Evil; that rhythm and rhyme answer the immortal need in man for monotony, symmetry, and surprise; on adapting style to subject; on the vanity and danger of inspiration, etc..." - Charles Baudelaire




"The poet is occupied with frontiers of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meaning still exists." - T.S. Eliot




"A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.


I say it just
Begins to live
That day."
- Emily Dickenson




"You can gorge yourself on Austen and not get fat. She’s both a comic and a romantic, a nearly impossible combination." - Margaret Kaufman

week recap

Hi! I feel I've been neglecting the blogosphere due to the craziness that was this week... so let me just share a few lovelies I've come across recently.

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." - Clive Staples
This is one of his tips for aspiring writers that I found on Letters of Note. Afraid I'm guilty of this one =/ As an enthusiast, I'm a bit too fond of hyperbole. But this was a great reminder of the value of written words.

* * * * *

This week Comp Lit was all about T. S. Eliot. Boy is he amazing. My teacher explained that he spoke at least 7 languages and was probably one of the most well-read persons of all time--yah, understatement. In this context I could appreciate his "Tradition and the Individual Talent" so much more. He's not another snobby critic complaining that writers aren't doing it right. He's a writer sharing part of his process and challenging both himself and his audiences to real greatness. "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone." Revelation right there. And that was before he got saved. He argues, "We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors... we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed... the most individual parts of his work may be those n which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Powerful--and I agree completely.
As far as his poetry, I am still mulling it over. We read The Wasteland, The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Gerontion, The Hollow Men, and Burnt Norton. Heavy duty, but so incredible. Just a few lines:

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume
- The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock


"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"? I cannot get over how genius this line is!

Ok... and one more passage. This one, a bit longer, is from the first of the The Four Quartets, Burnt Norton.

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by the voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

I have read this half a dozen times now and I'm still sorting the meaning. Eliot said, "The poet is occupied with frontiers of consciousness beyond which words fail, though meaning still exists." I love this. And I'm loving him.

* * * * *

Last thought, yesterday I had a revelation that rocked me!

Ok, a little background. The Greek conception of "glory" is kleos [κλέος]. Kleos carries with it the idea of later people telling stories of a person's fame. In it's pure form it is the idea that Sam postulates in The Two Towers when he asks, "I wonder if we'll ever be put into songs or tales." The more self-centered, Greek notion is embodied by Achilles who had been given the option between a long-life without kleos or dying young with great kleos and boldly chose to have kleos. I should also note that kleos is masculine and a woman could never be described as having kleos.
After establishing all of that, the revelation I had this week is that the New Testament does not use kleos when it defines God's glory. It uses the feminine doxa [δόξα]. Not only is the word feminine, doxa is the only ancient Greek word for "glory" that can apply to women as well as men. This is incredible!! While God most often identifies Himself as a male, we know that God is neither male nor female. If all of us were made in the image of God, then we display the full spectrum of His being and attributes in the glories of being male and female. So, I am amazed that God would use the inclusive doxa when describing His glory. So cool!