Sir Philip Sidney--Astrophil and Stella #49 (1581-3)

Back now to subjects that really matter, and whose relevance will never fade; of course I am referring to Elizabethan poetry.

I wrote about Sir Philip Sidney's spectacular career in an earlier which I can't find at the moment. You may have noticed that I have slowly been going back and assigning labels to some of the old posts--eventually there will be a Sir Philip Sidney category. Sidney died at age 31 of an infection after being shot in the thigh fighting against the Spanish in Holland; in contrast to Laurence Sterne (whom I wrote about last week) however, his biography is packed with action and brilliant accomplishment. Obviously it helped that he was very well born, but plenty of people are well born and disturbingly never progress beyond mediocrity in any field. He entered Oxford at 13 and was graduated by 18. A portion of his recorded travels include Paris, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Vienna, Venice, Padua, Genoa, Florence, Poland, Brno, Prague, Dresden, Antwerp, and all over Ireland and England as well. At 22 he was named Cup-bearer to the queen, about the significance of which post I can't find much satisfactory hard information right at hand, but it appears to have been considered desirable. At 23 he was sent to Prague as ambassador. Member of parliament at 27. Appointed governor of Flushing in the Netherlands, which involved leading English troops in battle. Wrote hundreds of poems ("The Major Works") is 329 pages long, about 215 of which are poetry. Astrophil and Stella, a sequence of love poems, consists of 108 sonnets and 11 songs. As he did not publish his poems during his lifetime, it is considered by scholars unclear why or for whom he wrote them.

Since I have known about him, I have always regarded Sir Philip Sidney as a person whose development, preparation, experience and activity in his adolescence and twenties were pretty close to the ideal. It is one thing, and an admirable thing, to learn to cut fat out of your schedule, not waste time, be purposeful, and all that. I know many people who have succeeded in doing this however, without attaining the ideal level of development that one feels with regard to Sidney. Sidney seems to have been able either to cut the fat from his thinking or perhaps, living in the age he did, to prevent it from ever insinuating itself there in the first place. These things seem likely to be ever-increasingly harder to do in our age, though they are the most vital quality the imaginative writer of poetry especially can possess. I read the entire Astrophil and Stella sequence back in April of 2004; as with Tristram Shandy, I was astonished by how long it had already been, for it seemed to me something I had read recently. The books I read before I had children I can place very neatly in memory with other things that were going on simultaneously in my life, seasons, outings, trips, the jobs or variety of idleness I had at the time, what rooms I lived in, bars and restaurants I went to, whether I read part of the book in the library or and what chair I sat in. Since the children were born and I have lived in the same house and had the same job everything runs together in a kind of eternal sameness. Evidently I was depressed or something at the time I read this book. My notes largely consist of sighs and 'too distracted to write about today' types of entries. Still I definitely had the impression that Sidney was a great poet, like many of the Elizabethans perhaps too great; their writing expressed their meaning and the process of thought by which they attained that meaning in such precise and perfect English that there seemed nothing really to say about them. As with Spenser, any sign of real struggle or conflict where impression, or truth, is concerned is difficult to detect. Language and perceptions are not with them, as they are to most people, further obstacles to truth, but its servants. This is what makes one find them so beautiful I think but also difficult to write about.

The book I use for my reading list had a question on some lines from the 49th sonnet, so that is why I am going to write my commentary today on that one rather than on any other one.

I on my horse, and love on me, doth try

Our horsemanships, while by strange work I prove

A horseman to my horse, a horse to love;

And now man's wrongs in me, poor beast, descry.

First off, the conceit is a good one, having not merely the usual duality of images, but with a common component between them which occupies the opposite position in the second that it does in the first. The fourth line is a little tricky, but as it is emphasized again later on that he is simultaneously riding and being ridden I believe he is encouraging his horse to expatiate on the various cruelties and other indignities he is inflicting on it, as he is about to do with regard to his own hard master.

The reins wherewith my rider doth me tie

Are humbled thoughts, which bit of reverence move,

Curbed in with fear, but with gilt boss* above

Of hope, which makes it seem fair to the eye.

boss-metal knob on the bit.

The humbled thoughts are the part I have the most trouble getting the sense of here. Humbled probably has a slightly different connotation than it does in our modern usage, though I am not sure what it would be. The original root from Latin via Old French, humilis, would translate as low, or lowly, from humus, ground. Certainly there is a hint of baseness, the whole image bespeaks a total degradation and loss of proper manhood on the lover's part. Also we are told directly that the bit of reverence only seems fair. Delusion and denial of one's proper state abound.

The wand is will; thou, fancy, saddle art,

Girt fast by memory; and while I spur

My horse, he spurs with sharp desire my heart;

He sits me fast, however I do stir;

I am not quite clear on the wand image. I assume it refers to the switch which one lashes the horse with. But then what is meant by will? The rider's will? Or the beast's, to be driven and overmastered by his rider.

And now hath made me to his hand so right

That in the manage myself takes delight.

I guess this clarifies a little my question about the wand.

The GRE questions on this poem were:

1. The poet's portrayal of "Love" (l.1) is an example of:

A. personification B. metonymy C. synecdoche D. apostrophe E. dead metaphor.

Uh...I'm going to go with A. Gut instinct and all that.

2. Horsemanships (l.2) is plural because:

A. love rides the speaker while the speaker rides his horse. B. the speaker has committed more than one wrong. C. love exercises many forms of control over the speaker. D. love controls him better than he controls love. E. love appears in many forms.

Dare I suppose that the answer is 'A' again?

These were too easy. I got both right.

What I'm getting out of the Elizabethans is not much in the way of philosophy or ethics for the most part, but their imaginative approach to language and understanding the world was developed to a far greater degree than in any other period of English literature, the use of language to elevate and expand the possibilities of what are, in many instances, fairly common thoughts and impressions. This is the secret of all great literature and art I guess, and every age is to an extent seeking the means to figure out how to do this freshly and as the times require. If we don't remind ourselves of this out loud from time to time however we won't even remember what it is we are looking for.

Samuel Daniel--Part IV

(V. ii, 1428-1432) NUNTIUS (a messenger, exhorting the chorus to procure some asps for Cleopatra):

"And looke so long as Cleopatra shall
In after ages live in memory,
So long shall thy cleere fame endure withall,
And therefore though must not my sute denie
Nor contradict my will..."

The loyalty of servants onto death is a common theme in this play.

Hey! Some university in Australia has put out a selection of Samuel Daniel's poems.

(V. ii 1520-5) NUNTIUS (on the asp):

"Well did our Priests discerne something divine
Shadow'd in thee, and therefore first they did
Offrings and worships due to thee assigne,
In whom they found such mysteries were hid,
Comparing thy swift motion to the Sunne,
That mov'st without the instruments that move..."

I think this is quite good poetry. So unburdened and unstrained in its effect! The idea of the world it depicts is at such a great remove from the ordinary scenes and conceptions of my life that I must be scarcely receptive to it most of the time. However modest its power, there is a becalming, organic wholeness in the order it creates from its language that I have never been able to form out of the materials which have informed my own existence.

Another obvious point about this play not being intended to be performed is that there is not actually any, or at least not very much, action in it. The characters mostly just recite long speeches in verse.

Acting is another of those skills/experiences that as I get older I regret not having tried at some point in my development. I never thought much of it as, unless you move in (and are accepted as one of) a circle of fairly serious artistic people, it is not seen as having much value for young people as a pursuit, indeed if anything it is seen as frivolous. This tradition of course goes back a long way--in Mansfield Park for example the young people attempt to amuse themselves by staging a play only to have the master of the house come home unexpectedly and forbid the thing in horror. Now I am kind of fascinated by its possibilities and think it must have beneficial effects on one's social interactions and personality if nothing else. I look at some of the clips, especially of these old stage actors like Olivier on Youtube, here he is Hamlet, here Henry V, now Richard III, now he puts on the blackface and he is Othello, now he is Archie Rice--there must be a kind of refreshment in continually becoming someone else, someone usually greater than oneself but whose embodied greatness also depends in the instant upon your skill in infusing it with corporeal vigor.

Memorial to Samuel Daniel in the church at Beckington, Somersetshire. He is buried in the churchyard. I have not been to this place, though it is the kind of place I would go. I stole the picture off the internet.

The play closes with the chorus chanting a long bit about the Nile and death and the sun and the moon and the desert and the natural and eternal elements of the universe. I like this naturalism. It is highly satisfying to us to put and see put our language to such good use. It may not be why we invented it, but it is a craving that its existence has elicited in some of us. Here is some of the bit about the Nile, whose source was famously unknown throughout most of literary history (V. ii, 1702-11):

"And turn thy courses so,
That sandy Desarts dead,
(The world of dust that craves
to swallow thee up all)
May drinke so much as shall
Revive from vastie graves
A living greene which spred
Far florishing, may gro
On that wide face of Death,
Where nothing now drawes breath."

Eventually I am going to have to admit that my writing and insights are not as good as other people's are because they are just better and more intelligent than I am, but I am as yet still clinging to the hope that the circumstances of my life at the moment are handicapping me in such a way that someday when I am freed from them will bring me back to some parity with other people. My daily time for reading or writing or watching movies or whatever comes in extremely small increments, often late at night when I am really too tired to concentrate you know. Going to the bathroom is a opportunity to maybe read 7 pages or so of something (a goal nonethelessly frequently interrupted before it is accomplished. Here is another time where I can possibly watch 43 minutes of a movie. Oh, bother, there are no excuses. There are no excuses. There are no excuses. We are exactly what we are and if we really were what we want people to think of us as we would be those things too.

If you do a search for Cecil Seronsy, who wrote a book about Daniel that I checked out of the library and referred to in an earlier post, this blog is the #8 item--perhaps it will be higher after this post. Here is the #1 item; the contents of five boxes containing the academic and personal effects of the man's life. I like the photograph. This country was once full of people who were carrying that same basic style, for better or for worse. They're all pretty much gone now. The Daniel book was the only one Seronsy finished, at age 59. The flap on the back of it states that the professor is at present engaged in preparing a book on Shakespeare, but evidently this was never completed. He wrote his PhD thesis on Daniel also. Maybe scholars do look over this guy's class notes from 1962 or his masters-degree course papers from the 1930s. It isn't really sad in itself any more than life is sad. I think it is nice that all this stuff was preserved. I bet they threw him a swell party in '73 when he retired, with lots of drinking and smoking and literary references, who knows, maybe a few pretty English major girls in bell bottoms were there too. Who could ask for anything more?

Samuel Daniel's Cleopatra--Part III

I noted that the incident with Cleopatra's hoarding of the jewels and Seleucus's revelation of this to Caesar was imitated in Shakespeare, but the scholarly materials note that the episode was taken straight out of Plutarch, which I had not remembered.

(III. ii, 781-7) Some good lines by the chorus:

"But is it Justice that all wee
The innocent poore multitude,
For great men's faults should punisht be,
And to destruction thus pursude?
O why should th'heavens us include,
Within the compasse of their fall,
Who of themselves procured all?"

The murder of Caesarion, Cleopatra's teenage son by Julius Caesar, by his nominal cousin Augustus, or his men, is often left out of these Cleopatra dramatizations, but it is included here, where it is claimed that the servants betrayed him.
I note again here that Daniel's (or 'this guy's, as I was still calling him) lines are pretty darn good. Self-contained, easy familiarity with and mastery over the language and so on. He was a real natural.

The speech of Caesarion related by Rodon (his tudor) in Act IV attempting to console Cleopatra, as well, doubtless, as himself, on the loss of their kingdom with a reasoned argument about the insignificance of human troubles and the indifference of both Gods and fates to all anxieties, I actually found affecting(. ll.1040-1):

The justice of the heavens revenging thus,
Doth onely satisfie it selfe, not us..."

Though the dialogue in this play consists primarily of characters alternating long speeches, it is still much shorter than anything Shakespeare has. I am listing this as a virtue, but apparently it interested me at the time.

(IV 1142-5) Though she is nearing her own end, Cleopatra has not softened her position regarding base men:

"Words are for them that can complaine and live,
Whose melting hearts composd of baser frame,
Can to their sorrowes, time and leasure give,
But Cleopatra may not do the same..."

This same soliloquoy I think is a bit overlong however. Wishing for death. Lamenting over the means to do it. We've all read it before. The point was made.

Not to dwell on negativity however, I like the chorus. It reminded me of my old school at the time, in a haunting sort of way that I guess I liked being reminded of, though the vision I have in my mind now is of night there, which is sometimes beautiful and reassuring but is just as frequently eery and even atonal. I thought it would be interesting if they would do this play outdoors on the quad, which they sometimes act plays there, either under the reassuring or the eery sky.

(V, i, 1350-4) DOLABELLA:

"And O, if now she could but bring a view

Of that fresh beauty she in youth possest,

(The argument wherewith she overthrew

The wit of Julius Caesar, and the rest,)

Then happily Augustus might relent..."

This isn't much of a post, but I am going to pull out the exhaustion excuse for the 3rd time this week. I am just jittery and I lack concentration. The computers and the whole modern system, I think, have finally broken down my mind completely. We're getting very close to Berlin in '45 territory now. My wits have been pretty much bombed flat, the walls of my cranium are about to be caved in by tanks and all that remains is for me to just submit the whole accumulated mess to the care of the invading armies and remake my entire being in their image.

Daniel's Cleopatra Part II

My first note is unintelligible now so I hope it wasn't good.

The structure of this work, which it seems was never intended to be performed as a drama, is that the different characters alternate long soliloquies, often alone, with the commentary of a chorus wrapping up each act. One interesting choice in light of the many interpretations of the story that followed is that the action begins when Antony is already dead and Cleopatra's cause already lost. This means there is a great emphasis in the play on her acknowledging and confessing the faults that led to her downfall.

Some sample lines (Act I, 105-112):

"Luxuriousnesse in me should raise the rate
Of loose and ill-dispensed libertie.
If it be so, then what neede these delaies?
Since I was made the meanes of miserie:
Why should I strive but to make death my praise,
That had my life but for my infamie?
And let me write in letters of my bloud
A fit memoriall for the times to come..."

As we can see, early in the play Cleopatra is still aiming low. The poetry is certainly more than passable, it strikes me. Besides the technical proficiency of the meter and word choices there is a very nice expression of character embedded in these eight lines, as the speaker starts on the subject of her own extravagance, in the middle seems to seek to adopt a more moderate plan of action, and then swings back to extravagance at the end.

(I, 163-4) Cleopatra's lust played up:

"My vagabond desires no limites found,
For lust is endlesse, pleasure hath no bound."

The implication in this play is that Cleopatra did not really *love* Antony, certainly not in the ideal sort of way in which love is defined in pastorals and other "romances". Much is made of the heroine's age as well, as if she were one of the "cougars" so infamous in our own time, preying on a hapless victim, though in reality he was around 14 years older than she was and she was around 28 when they first became involved with each other. (II, 262-8) (Octavius) CAESAR:

"Free is the heart, the temple of the minde,
The Sanctuarie sacred from above,
Where nature keeps the keies that loose and bind.
No mortall hand force open can that doore,
So close shut up, and lockt to all mankind:
I see mens bodies onely ours, no more,
The rest, anothers right, that rules the minde."

I thought the temple image was well-expressed, and shed some clarity to me as well on the psychological importance of sacred places to men.

(II, 331-4) PROCULEIUS (a messenger quoting Cleopatra to Caesar, regarding the latter's all-conquering instrusiveness):

"What, must he stretch foorth his ambitious hand
Into the right of Death, and force us heere?
Hath Miserie no covert where to stand
Free from the storme of Pride, is't safe no where?"

Caesar credits her refusal to surrender her person to him, a point of emphasis in all the older versions of the story, to the influence of her noble blood, and after admonishing his lackey not to try to fathom the hearts of princes, explains (II, 390-4):

"Princes (like Lions) never will be tam'd.
A private man may yeelde and care not how,
But greater hearts will breake before they bow.
And sure I thinke sh'will never condiscend,
To live to grace our spoiles with her disgrace..."

Act III features a dialogue between two philosophers, Philostratus and Arius, remarking on the various human frailties that have brought the situation depicted in the play to such a dire pass. Philostratus finds the failure to face the reality of death and the overvaluing of life and its illusionary pleasures to be at the heart of the matter, and he is certainly not alone among commentators on the life of Cleopatra. He does get off one of my favorite Britishisms though in line 485, "And yet what blasts of words hath Learning found/To blowe against the fear of death and dying." I love that expression, "blasts of words". He goes on to add, in lines 499-500, perhaps obviously but disapprovingly nonetheless, "Who doth not toile and labour to adjourne/The day of death, by any meanes he can?"

(III 514, 519-20) Arius takes over:

"What feeble footing pride and greatnesse hath...
How nothing with our eie but horror meetes,
Our state, our wealth, our pride and all confounded."

The syntax here is very reminiscent of Shakespeare.

(III 545-6; 49-54) Some lines on one of my favorite topics, the rise and fall of nations:

"That no state can in height of happinesse,
In th'exaltation of their glory stand...
Thus doth the ever-changing course of things
Runne a perpetuall circle, ever turning:
And that same day that hiest glory brings,
Brings us unto the poynt of back-returning
For sencelesse sensualitie, doth ever
Accompany felicitie and greatnesse."

There is a second scene in the third act where Augustus Caesar and Cleopatra have a face to face confrontation, at which time Caesar refers to Cleopatra's people--whether he means the Greeks or the Egyptians is not made clear--as having long harbored enmity towards the Romans, which they are reaping the reward of now. Well, here is the quote (III. ii 629-30):

"Love? alas no, it was th'innated hatred
That thou and thine hast ever borne our people..."

I had never much considered that such a degree of enmity--and innate enmity at that--existed between these particular peoples; at least in the literature I have read one doesn't get the same feel for it as that between, say, the Romans and the Carthaginians, or the Celts, or the Veians, or between the Sicilian Greeks and the Carthaginians/Phoenicians, everybody and the Persians, etc. I wonder if this emotion is something Daniel gleaned from his deeper studies in these matters, or if he was trying to embellish the always elusive character of Augustus Caesar.

Cleopatra--Samuel Daniel (1594)
This is a closet drama in verse. Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) was considered an important poet in his time, which was not a weak one for poetry. He was right in the thick of the literary scene/cultural dialogue, what have you, that included Spenser, Sidney, Ralegh, Marlowe and Shakespeare, and he had the patronage of the queen. There is even a "tradition" that he was named Laureate, which in those days was a sinecure hotly contested among good poets for the income that came with it, upon the death of Spenser in 1599, though his monographer Cecil Seronsy (professor at Bloomsburg [Pa] State College [now University] 1967) says this is "extremely doubtful"; the position went to Ben Jonson instead. His biography makes for a somewhat interesting comparison point with that of Shakespeare, who was his exact contemporary. Of his boyhood, "nothing is known". There was a rumor that his father was a music master, though "no evidence has been found to support" this claim. Once he turns up at Oxford he begins to leave more of the paper trail that Shakespeare did not, mainly through publications of his poetry. It also appears that, like Spenser and other poets, he was received by and moved comfortably among people of rank and wealth, though he does not appear to have had much cash of his own. There is a letter to him from an unknown correspondent from 1582 that makes note of his retiring personality, which is the sort of thing we so desperately want to find about Shakespeare or his puppeteer. It is known that he went to France and Italy for five years and delivered dispatches from the ambassador to Paris at Windsor Castle. Skimming ahead there is an impressive amount of contemporary information available about the progession of his literary career, though his family circumstances and background are never made clear. As noted earlier, he appeared to spend much time as a guest at various wealthy people's estates, which sounds like nice work if you can get it, especially as he does not appear to have been particularly socially entertaining. Daniel had quite a bit of early success before the Shakespeare juggernaut got really rolling so that although he is only two years older than Will he often seems to be categorized as a predecessor to him as much as a contemporary, particularly as his Cleopatra is mostly thought of now as one of the source materials that influenced the later Antony and Cleopatra. Interestingly Daniel made a revision of his play in 1607 after Shakespeare's had appeared which Professor Seronsy speculates was "possibly under the influence" of the later and superior version.

This Cleopatra, a verse tragedy in which the characters make alternating long expository speeches, is pretty good read as a long poem. We think--or maybe it is just I who tend to think this--that the quantity of really good-quality English verse produced over the last 700 years is shockingly small, but a lot of these old forgotten poets who wrote thousands of lines and told all manner of accounts through the poetic medium are not bad, though obviously they lack the power and consistent metaphorical brilliance of Shakespeare and other major poets. I doubt that many people outside of graduate school can have read this, given the effort I had to go to to obtain a single copy of it. As I will be one of the few people on the internet to have written anything about it at some length, I want to do it as much justice as I can, as it is a worthy piece of literature. Scholars seem to like him. Professor Seronsy's book has a six page bibliography, though the most recent edition of Daniel's actual collected works (5 vols.) is listed as 1896, and the text is "frequently untrustworthy". The University of Louvain published an edition of Cleopatra alone in 1911, which apparently was unobjectionable. In any case I couldn't find any of these editions, or any other ones, available either for sale or in a library that I had access to. Thanks to the wonders of the Google book project however I discovered that this play was printed in full in Volume V of the 1964 King's College of London compendium of the Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Though I could have then read the play on the computer if all else failed, I haven't taught myself to like doing that yet, and I found someone who was actually selling a copy of this book, which is most handsome and impressive in that very self-important 1950s and 1960s university press way, as you can see below:

This series has seven volumes in all, "in which the major sources and analogues of Shakespeare's plays will be reprinted, with discussions on the way he used them." And you thought my blog was a labor out of all proportion to any readership on which it might ever produce a significant effect. Volume V is dedicated to the Roman Plays. Among the materials included are 6 of Plutarch's lives (in the North translation), Pescetti's Il Cesare, Cinthio's Cleopatra, the anonymous Caesar's Revenge, and the Countess of Pembroke's Antonie, along with Daniel and many smaller excerpts from Roman, medieval and Renaissance authors.

Having gone on so long with my introductions, I think I will hold off on my notes on the actual play until the next post(s).

Some might be curious about the St John's College paperweight shown in this photo. It was a graduation gift from a family member who obviously did not foresee the coming digital revolution and obsolescence of books and paper any more than I did. I actually got two St John's College paperweights as gifts, the other one was a glass star with the seal of the college cut into it. I don't know where that one is now.

"The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"--(Sir) Walter Ralegh

It's been a while since I first and most intently thought on this so I am going to refer to the notes I scratched in my crumbling Norton Anthology of English Literature, the 1962 edition, which I believe was the first, which I bought for $7.50 on a very hot afternoon in the summer of 1993 at the old Rock Creek Book Store in Washington, D.C. for $7.50, which store was one of those that you had to go up a flight of stairs to get in, and the literature section I think was even one or two more stories up. It was all air-conditioned, though. I have had the book with me a lot since that time. I had it in a little room I rented when I only had about ten or so other books in my possession, and I took it with me to Prague too. Now it is falling apart. I could get it rebound, I suppose, but I am fond of the endpapers, "A Literary Map of England" and "London: With Points of Literary and Historical Interest From Chaucer to the Victorians", which in the days when I was comparatively print-deprived were a source of much minor entertainment and delight to me, so I shouldn't like to lose them.

"It is like an exercise of poetry," I wrote of the Ralegh, "with its basic versification, ruminations on time, romance, nature imagery. All of the elements are in place. It is wistful, natural, humane above all." This doesn't tell us much. I am starting to worry that these mellifluous Elizabethans don't say anything to me. The words I circled in the poem as striking me with the most significance, whether with regard to position or suggestive meaning, were "If", "young", "truth", "might", "Time", "wanton", "reckoning", "honey", "fancy's", "wither", "forgotten", and "might" again, the 2 mights being verbs, in the first and last stanzas, and leading into the nearly identical sequences "might (me) move/To live with thee and be thy love". Much of the history of lyric poetry consists of a continual tension between the pastoral tradition, or impulse, which is clearly very dear, as well as instinctive, to a wide strain of the human sensibility, and the more clear-headed species of attitude that perceives death and decay and the comparative weakness and fleetingness of individual will and emotion to be the primary truths, the real driving forces in human existence. Most of the history of poetry, like most of the history of anything, is rather boring in itself to anyone who is not borderline fanatical in his interest. It has been a frequent theme of mine in this diary that any interest one has in esoteric subjects are of little account unless he is well-respected and has acquitted himself admirably in some field, and preferably several, of more widely accepted importance, so I won't go into it too much here. But in short, a person's interest in anything is only interesting so far as he is interesting, and plays a part in the life of the world that is interesting. I understand that it thus must appear contradictory for me to continue maintaining a blog, or to write at all or try to make sense of the history of poetry, but I am not a well man, I am delusional, I am in every sense the last person who should be writing and the first, or one of the first, to put pen to paper as it were.

The Elizabethans were the high tide of English poetry, I do not see that there can be much doubt of it. It is clear to me that well-educated people, and people of that temperament, thought in poetic form, that they were always taking their impressions and imagined conversations and rebut and condensing and cropping them to fit lines of pentameter, the unit of thought. The choices of words and the presentation of images even in minor poets are rarely overlabored or strike the reader--or the listener--as unnatural. That they are minor poets is due more to the lesser power of their images and ideas, not the poetic sensibility on display. That Ralegh of course was a man whose poetic gift was usually noted in his lifetime as his fourth or fifth most distinguishing attribute I have commented on elsewhere. It is illustrative of the attitude that existed at the time that being a writer of verses was a part of being a properly developed man, that it would be part of such a person's nature.

But all that said, what is special about this poem? For special it is in some respect, as it is in nearly every comprehensive anthology of English poetry, and the one I have before me calls it the "best" of the replies to Marlowe. I suppose it rather cleverly refutes one by one all of the promises and wild declarations that Marlowe's shepherd makes, and Ralegh demonstrates some admirable skill in alliteration, balancing his lines, and the choice of words such as make the images of the poem move rapidly and at the same time in a circle. It is hard to explain because it seems very simple--I think it actually is that simple, or something like it, and that therefore I don't have the language, or the relation to language, to really understand such a conception of the world as such use of language entails. That is 60 or 70% of getting at the crux of what all great poems are about, is that sort of becoming comfortable with the language and where it is coming from, and I find that very difficult to do with the Elizabethans, and I don't really know why.

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"--Marlowe

I have been away, thus the lag between postings--it is even more hopeless for me to try to get on a computer on vacation than it is at home. I hope the break has had some kind of refreshing effect on my brain. Feeling that one has written something decent every now and then may be the cheapest of all thrills, but it is one I have not been having much of lately, and I find my being strangely empty to have to do constantly without it.

I lay out in the sun for two days, albeit with my shirt on, but for the first time in my life I have what might plausibly be called a tan, as well as a few blond highlights in my hair. The tan would look a lot better if I had remembered to take my sunglasses off--the coloring of my face currently resembles that of a raccoon--but being, in private anyway, the utter narcissist that I am, I am taken with the effect of it. It at least looks different, something of which sort I realize I have been craving for at least ten or eleven years but could not quite think or determine on what exactly to do, and how to bring it about.

This Marlowe poem is one of a set of three, the other two, Ralegh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd", and Donne's "The Bait", being direct responses to the first. I was going to kill them all in a single posting, but as I don't have anything really to say about them--wonderful little concoctions of words and thought though they all are--each one will get a separate, and hopefully short, post, primarily about something else. I do care about the poems though, and all that they stand for. It gives me great satisfaction to think about them, not 'in themselves', but as little monuments of history that I have came upon, as upon an engraved stone in some windswept field or other, and must record the encounter with a snapshot of myself in some undefined proximity to the stone. This is primarily what literature is to me, but this approach still can dominate your life in myriad ways, which are not fully appreciated by the crowd that actually understands what all the books and pictures and historical developments actually are about

When I was in Florida I went one afternoon by myself to the Ringling Art Museum in Sarasota. I had been there once before but I had had my children with me and had only made it about halfway through the collection before it closed. I had not seen any such old art in person for several years, since one of my sons climbed up onto an Empire bed with a satiny-looking green and gold coverlet at the MFA in Boston, which you are not supposed to do. While I felt in pretty good spirits in the early rooms, among the Rubenses and the medieval triptychs and the Renaissance both early and late and the Dutch masters and the Poussins, seeing one of which--there were two on display this time--had so excited me on my previous visit there, I was not really at ease, and felt somewhat estranged both from the pictures and the scene in my current state of mind. It was much more crowded than it had been the other time I was there, with almost everyone in the place being over 60, and giving off much more of a vacationing/wintering/sightseeing vibe than an "art vibe", whether pretentious or earnest or edgy. The exception was a high school group of very conservative-looking but gentle-seemed, well-groomed Christians (they were earnest). I had the thought that perhaps I could not really look at art and enjoy it anymore, as I often think I should stop reading too and focus more on my lawn or something for a few years, that a person has to have attained some degree of coherence within himself and in his relation to the world to be able to encounter books and artworks and people and get--or give--anything out of it. When I was the age of a student I was credible enough as one to get away with reading poems and thinking about artworks to some extent, that it seemed natural enough to think them, as well as my own relationship to them, to be matters of real importance, to be meaningful. I still believe that they are meaningful, in their most developed senses--I was not sure, however, whether they were any longer meaningful to me.

As I moved along however the crowd thinned somewhat and I came on some rooms dedicated to nations and time periods that were more in line with my own current feelings and desires. First there was a picture by a Dutch artist, Nydacker I believe was his name, one of those 18th-century evocations of the sublime featuring a wooded and vaguely wild-looking mountain in Italy, which sentiment appealed to me. Then there was the Spanish room, which had a portrait of Philip IV by Velasquez, who never fails to rouse my excitement with regard to human possibility, and two crucifixions by El Greco, which also hit me right where I was standing--why I cannot seem to forumalte--so to speak. After this was a room devoted to 18th century French painting, which I have to think must be one of my favorite schools, though I never have put much thought into the matter, based on the placid mood in which paintings from this time ever put me. Unfortunately Vigee LeBrun's portrait of Marie Antoinette in her salon holding a partially closed little book after the French manner of little books was covered with a plastic sheet; but you could still sort of see it. This was a very good painting. After this was a room with 5 floor to ceiling wallpaper-like panels featuring Arcadian scenes, also from the 18th century, which is also the sort of thing I love, and finally there was a room devoted to the era of the Grand Tour--Venetian cityscapes, outrageous interpretations of scenes from Homer and classical antiquity set amongst modern architecture and landscaping, evocations of civilized and learned adventure. All of these 18th-century attitudes served to prop up my sense of being connected to some nobler experience and conception of humanity for a few hours, which is what I had come for, and always "come for" to speak more broadly, though certainly different attitudes and periods and types of paintings have this effect on me at different times. 18th century art is quite fantastical even when it was not necessarily trying to be. The portraits and landscapes of the age are wonderful, but they are not convincing as resembling any man or place that ever really existed. This is the need that evidently requires feeding in me right now. My feeling about the poem sticks upon the simplicity--the at the same time highly artful simplicity--of the expression of the desires that are what it is about. Simplicity and clarity of expression of generally complicated conceptions as much as is possible, are I believe--at least to some portion of one's audience--the ultimate aims of all serious artistic efforts. What is most notable to me in this poem is the number and organization of images evoking earthly romantic bliss that are introduced and contribute to the overall sense of the poem in a limited space. That is the brilliance, the art, the purpose of the exercise. There doesn't need to be anything more to it than that.

Here is a soothing little video which features a recitation of the poem at the end.

The Faerie Queene--Part 11

This is going to be the last post on the Faerie Queene (I promise).

Although I find myself of late disliking almost all of the real writers, artists, intellectuals, etc, that I see or read about, I do still believe that regular human beings have naturally a much larger capacity for artistic development and engagement with life than most seem to attain. I also increasingly think that our culture and way of life stifles this and makes artistic, as well as intellectual, behavior, when it does occur, much more artificial and outside the common stream of life than it properly ought to be. An incident that occurred when I was in the Czech Republic made a strong impression on me in this regard. In that nation it was not unusual, at a party or even at a tavern, for people to sing communally, accompanied by a guitar or other instrument if one happened to be at hand, and though nearly everyone had a reasonable level of competence in these areas, enough at least to contribute to a genuinely lively atmosphere, there was no distinction between performers and non-performers, indeed the performers were participating rather than performing, and anyone desiring to join in would have found no barrier to his doing so. On one of these occasions another American, besides myself, happened to make one of the group and he asked if he might play something on the guitar. Having been given the instrument he demonstrated no awareness of the spirit of the gathering and immediately began to play some piece requiring technical virtuosity, no doubt seeking the admiration of the crowd, or the most important part of it, that being in his mind at some deep level what one ultimately played music for. As it was not an especially beautiful song, nor was it one in which anyone else could really join it had the effect of rather quickly draining all the life from the room. This display seemed to illustrate to me much of the attitude of our entire culture towards learning and art and the place of these in actual life, in which it is my opinion most of us (not the best people, of course) have badly lost our way.

VII. vi. 42 (7-9) From one of the two cantos of Mutabilitie, a fragment of some further unfinished book, on Faunus's lust for Diana:
"Foolish God Faunus, though full many a day
He saw her clad, yet longed foolishly
To see her naked mongst her Nymphes in privity."
Why was this desire foolish? I asked myself. Well, it was foolish because upon seeing the beautous sight the faun could not contain himself in silence in the bower from which he peeped, and he suffered painful and humiliating punishment for his trangression.

VII. vii. 11 Description of a hill. This is what is meant by seeing with an artistic eye. It is not merely a display of cleverness, but conveys to the beholder what this hill, at least, actually is:
"And Mole himselfe, to honour her the more,
Did decke himself in freshest faire attire,
And his high head, that seemeth alwayes hore
With hardned frosts of former winters ire,
He with an Oaken girlond now did tire,
As if the love of some new Nymph late seene,
Had in him kindled youthfull fresh desire,
And made him change his gray attire to greene;
Ah gentle Mole! such joyaunce hath thee well beseene."

I think I touched on this before but I cannot begin to fathom how many symbols I must have missed in the course of this book. In my edition the dedicatory letters and verses are put at the end of the poem, and in the author's letter to Ralegh he makes mention of an incident in Booke I where "the Lady told him that unlesse that armour which she brought would serve him (that is the armour of a Christian man specified by Saint Paul v. Ephes.) that he could not succeed in that enterprise..." This whole language of symbols is just not part of my mental repertoire, and doubtless most people would say, so what? Well, first of all as far as I can tell nearly all of the really great, super high art and literature in the world (I cannot say about music), most of which has its basis in sophisticated religion, is very symbolically sophisticated at some level of its meaning. Indeed, it seems almost necessary that it has to be. I do not believe but that we must in some fundamental way be impoverished, however blissfully unconsciously we may be of it, if we are cut off so nearly entirely from this source of insight. Secondly the symbols form a reference of ideas that, as they are in some way independent of man's existence and its immediate concerns, in nature say, or in the idea of immortal beings and spirits, lend themselves more easily to the sensation of universality that I believe men crave and that I also believe is desperately missing from even the private moments of contemporary life. I am probably wrong in thinking this is why any of this matters to me, I probably really just want to be able to prove somehow that I am smarter than other people so can I have a sinecure where the occasional nineteen year old girl will think I am a superior person and want me to talk to her all about life. But competition for desirable status aside, I do maintain that even dreadfully mediocre people in terms of intelligence, beauty and other abilities prized by science and economics, still have the potential to lead more intelligent and artistic, more humanistic lives than most do. If they do not, then human life has no inherent meaning whatsoever but is just a vulgar competition among beasts in which we ought not to take any pride, however enjoyable it is for the winners.
The rather Spanish-looking gentleman in this picture is supposedly our poet. It is a great picture, but it does not look anything like any other likeness of Spenser that I have seen.The commendatory verses and dedications in these old books are always great fun, being so over the top in their flatteries and other hyperbole. Ralegh wrote two "visions", in the first of which the graces who had been watching over the tomb of Laura, Petrarch's poetic inspiration, abandon it to attend to the Faerie Queene, leaving only Oblivion behind; in the second, perhaps as a result of some bad tobacco he had been smoking, he advises Spenser:
"If Chastitie want ought, or Temperaunce her dew,
Behold her Princely mind aright, and write thy Queene anew."
There is only, I think, so much Queene even Spenser could have been expected to write.

In one of the Commendatory Verses, "To the Learned Shepheard", addressed to the poet, we have a little patriotic nod:
"Elyzas blessed field, that Albion hight.
That shieldes her friends, and warres her mighty foes.
Yet still with people, peace, and plentie flowes."

The dedication to Lord Buckhurst has some of the most absurd sucking up I have ever seen in a poem, especially by a great poet:
"In vain I thinke right honourable Lord,
By this rude rime to memorize thy name;
Whose learned muse hath writ her owne record,
In golden verse, worthy immortal fame:"
His Lordship apparently was a versifier as well. Spenser goes on to suggest that while Buckhurst is too busy carrying out his duties on her majesty's privy council to record that monarch's virtues "In loftie numbers and heroicke stile" he may still perchance be able to correct the "grosse defaults" of Spenser's own efforts.

The picture below recreates a scene from one of my favorite sections of the poem, Sir Calepine's rescue of Serena from the cannibals, which we quoted from at some length in parts 9 & 10 of this series. "To all the gratious and beautifull Ladies in the Court":
"If all the world to seeke I overwent,
A fairer crew yet no where could I see,
Then that brave court doth to mine eie present,
That the worlds pride seemes gathered there to bee.
Of each a part I stole by cunning thefte:
Forgive it me faire Dames, sith lesse ye have not lefte."
This is a bit of silliness, obviously, but it is still elegantly done. One of the results--in my opinion a somewhat unfortunate one--of the ever increasing separation between "art" and "life" is that all legitimate art now is supposed to be edgy and threatening, especially to anyone outside of the art world, to whom the artist(s) seem to be as often antagonistic as sympathetic. While this type of thing is undoubtedly necessary on occasion, I don't think the artist should conceive himself as presenting a challenge to the audience so much as grappling, from more or less the same psychological starting point as they are, with an issue both have in common--and on all matters of the greatest import the artist and the audience should start out from, and even end at, a fairly similar position in terms of the overall magnitude of the question. This is where the use of slight but skillful little dainties such as this find their purpose.

Spenser's birthplace is unknown, other than that is supposed he was born in London, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Indeed, he is said to have set in motion the custom of interring poets in the area that is now named after them, as he requested to be buried next to Chaucer, who had been laid there because he had been an employee of the Abbey at the time of his death.

Faerie Queene 10

This is the point, now that I am nearing the end, when I begin to feel I will miss this subject once it is over and buried in the archives. Every topic one takes up is an opportunity to make, in some way, the experience, the perception of all life better, even if only momentarily; but most of the time the opportunity ends up eluding one, and one feels the loss. This is where I am at the moment.

VI. viii. 41, 42 & 43 (1-3) This is a lot, but I think it is finely done. With this poet it is extremely hard for me to lay hands on the details that make this work. It is something along the lines of: by maintaining his pristine, finely molded verses even when describing savage characters and their vile lust for a beautiful naked woman, he imparts something of the refinement of his writing into our image of the woman, and even our own lust, and elevates them perhaps to something resembling a civilized man. Perhaps:
"But all bootes not: they hands upon her lay;
And first they spoil her of her jewels deare,
And afterwards of all her rich array;
The which amongst them they in peeces teare,
And of the pray each one a part doth beare.
Now being naked, to their sordid eyes
The goodly threasures of nature appeare:
Which as they view with lustfull fantasyes,
Each wisheth to him selfe, and to the rest envyes.

"Her yvorie necke, her alabaster brest,
Her paps, which like white silken pillowes were,
For love in soft delight thereon to rest;
Her tender sides, her bellie white and clere,
Which like an Altar did it selfe uprere,
To offer sacrifice divine thereon;
Her goodly thighes, whose glorie did appeare
Like a triumphall Arch, and thereupon
The spoiles of Princes hang'd, which were in battel won.

"Those daintie parts, the dearlings of delight,
Which mote not be prophaned of common eyes,
Those villeins vew'd with loose lascivious sight..."

The observation of my man James Swan (the previous owner of my book) blows me away. At VI. viii. 47 (9) he notes when Sir Calepine catches up "his armes streight to the noise forth past" that he had been stripped of his arms 35 pages earlier and had not had occasion to acquire new ones. That is like finding an inconsistency between two panels at opposite ends of a frieze that is twenty feet above one's head. I can't believe he noticed that on his own. He didn't seem to have that kind of keenness.

Spenser is one of the very few English language authors, it is worth remembering, whose chance it was to be free from the immense shadow of Shakespeare, and comparisons with the same, while active, which is a state of mind scarcely imaginable for almost any other English poet. The ancients would have loomed as giants and exerted a considerable influence on him of course, but one still had the luxury of working in a language, at least, as well as in many significant ways a distinct culture on which these precursors had no claim. We cannot as yet meaningfully rewrite Shakespeare and the other icons of post-medieval culture as Shakespeare, Racine, etc, even onto Joyce, were able to do with the ancients. But Spenser is almost, I think, as if obliterated by his nearness to Shakespeare; and if he were truly great, it seems we ought to be able to rewrite him, if we cannot read him as he was originally written.

VI. x. 35 Fine contrast between the heroic and the ordinary cowardly man, delightful rhymes. I am not, in the future, going to reproduce so many quotations. This happens to be a very unique book full of many wondrous feats that I am certain I would forget otherwise:
"Which Coridon first hearing ran in hast
To rescue her, but when he saw the feend,
Through cowherd feare he fled away as fast,
Ne durst abide the daunger of the end;
His life he steemed dearer than his frend.
But Calidore soone comming to her ayde,
When he the beast saw ready now to rend
His loves deare spoile, in which his heart was prayde,
He ran at him enraged in stead of being frayde."

VI. x. 37 (3-4) Followed by the judgement of Coridon:
"But Coridon for cowherdize reject,
Fit to keepe sheepe, unfit for loves content:"
It is easy to forget, and unfortunately it is not clearly articulated by the zealots of firearms and other weaponry who view the bearing and willingness to use arms as a moral question, that in primitive times and economies, indeed even as it is today in druglord and mafiosi culture, where all one's possessions, including one's women, are at great risk of being physically taken from one at any time, it is genuinely necessary that one is able to personally muster some force to defend them, a necessity that does not really exist on an immediate level in today's world, such that many get by quite nicely without even confronting the question. VI. xi. 1 This is a tremendous poem, lost in this vast work, that if any minor poet of the 19th or 20th century had published singly in a magazine would have had the triumph of his career:
"The joyes of love, if they should ever last,
Without affliction or disquietnesse,
That worldly chaunces do amongst them cast,
Would be on earth too great a blessednesse,
Liker to heaven, than mortall wretchednesse.
Therefore the winged God, to let men weet,
That here on earth is no sure happinesse,
A thousand sowres hath tempred with one sweet,
To make it seem more deare and dainty, as is meet."

The sudden descent into captivity/slavery/murder (not sensational, criminal murder such as makes the newspapers, but murder as a force afoot in the world rendering its victims into oblivion) is a recurring and doubtless symbolic theme throughout this book, as well as many other works of similar antiquity. It is again a state of existence of which we in modern society are not so much exactly ignorant, but unwary, faithful that our wealth or inoffensiveness will somehow protect us.

We have a sighting of the old one-guy-armed-with-a-spear-single-handedly-kills-a-hundred-other-men motif. Being a democratic man, I tend to identify too much with the hapless slayees to fully embrace the greatness of the champion. It is one of my goals to overcome this weakness however.

XI. xii. 23 (1-3) In this stanza it is revealed that the hero Calidore has just completed a tour through the estates of man, leaving many massacres behind, and is now at last come to the Clergy. I completely missed this detail.

XI. xii. 30 (6-9). The demon Calidore is fighting in this booke breaks into a monastery in the climactic scene and runs amok, smashing the altars, chasing the monks, etc, until the hero puts him down in what I suppose could be seen as an expression of the triumph of civilisation over barbarism:
"His shield he on him threw, and fast downe held,
Like as a bullocke, that in bloudy stall
Of butchers balefull hand to grounde is feld,
Is forcibly kept downe, till he be thoroughly queld."

The Faerie Queene--Part IX

I have to leave off politics for a few days. It is always a tiring and humbling subject for me to try to write about. Literature is generally not much better but at least I have a sense of something that I want to get across regarding it, even if I almost never succeed in doing so. I have by comparison no principled political ideology, other than a collection of vague dislikes--of police, of lawyers, of masses of degraded people--the influence or presence of which in society I would like to see diminished. I am going to try to make to make the literary reports livelier, and do away with all pretensions to seeking profound understanding, if I have had any. If this last must always be elusive to one I still do not think it necessarily means that he has to live wholly cut off from any noble influence that is bestowed by such things as contain it; this hope being more or less the overarching theme of this entire blog.

I had hoped to make this the last post about the Faerie Queene, but there is just too much material remaining which I don't want to give up, though I am giving up some. VI. ii. 17 (1-3) For example, I can't leave out the lines about the bad lusty knight:
"Whom when my knight did see so lovely faire,
He inly gan her lover to envy,
And wish, that he part of his spoyle might share..."
He later attacks the other knight when the latter is unarmed. In most classic, and nearly all ancient, art and literature, characters invariably either have to master their impulses or act upon them. There is very little of the type of neurotic who dominates the modern Western intellectual classes, and by extension its polite literature, which sort of person generally never masters his desires, and only acts upon such as are conveniently attained, and pose no threat to public order, prosperity, health, and so on. Successful artistic endeavors however usually require either a demonstration of strength of character, by which is largely meant superior abilities combined with self-mastery, or the conflict brought upon by the active pursuit of a superior person's basest impulses.

Having said this, I do not want to immediately present myself as a wimp, but the idea of having my teeth bashed in by a rock, a fate which occurs on numerous occasions in this and other poems and romances of medieval warfare, disturbs me greatly. I have lived a pretty much sinfully pain-free life to this point--and I am well into it--and there are moments when I cannot believe that I am going to be permitted to get all the way through without having to suffer some horribly painful violence or torture at some juncture. I certainly cannot claim to have done anything that might argue me to be particularly deserving of exemption from such a fate as opposed to anyone else.

VI. iv. 35 (4-9) About 700 pages in, we have the first suggestion, which is heartening after so many grim thoughts, that philosophy is an equal option with war for a worthy young man to dedicate himself to:
"This litle babe, of sweete and lovely face,
And spotlesse spirit, in which ye may enchace
Whatever formes ye list thereto apply,
Being now soft and fit them to embrace;
Whether ye list him train in chevalry,
Or noursle up in lore of learn'd Philosophy."

VI. v. It also took us a long time to get to a hermit, but we got one! I may well have been a hermit had I lived in the middle ages, particularly since there was so little comfort, information, entertainment and fine dining experiences for common people to forgo anyway, which one would think are the major temptations discouraging people from adopting this mode of living in our time, and all records of hermits that have come down to us indicate that this class of men were uniformly far past any point of life where they might have had a thought of being and acting as sexual creatures. I have the temperament for this calling, and I would certainly have had no doubts or misgivings about God or anything in the whole Christian doctrine had I lived at any period probably up to about the 1870s or 80s, and perhaps much later. What evidence in the visible world would have suggested to me that all was not as the ecclesiastical and political authorities said they were? I would not have suspected anything, and that is one reason why I could never be a scholar even of literature. I always assume that every important matter surrounding anything which has a long existing tradition is settled, and neglect even to wonder whether it is really so or not.

I do wonder though if modern poets should not start more often from the base of a broader, more conventional story, just to experiment and get them selves going a little, give them somewhere to move. The great problem, as far as I can tell, with much modern poetry, academic and otherwise, is that it fixes itself on too small or precise a detail or idea and has no room, or no capacity, to expand. Of course miniaturism can be exquisite when it is done well, but most of the origins of poetry, and English poetry especially, were not on this small scale, and I suspect were not so for good reasons. VI. vii. 8 (7-9) Books of this type frequently remind that death can come in an instant. One moment you are riding your horse in the woods, you are recruited by a villain, two minutes later your corpse is stretched out on the earth. Obviously one can get this reminder by reading a newspaper account of a soldier killed in the war zone, or a woman struck by a car crossing the street, or, even more vividly of course, by witnessing such a thing oneself, as many people have. In this instance however the poetic image made a particular impression on me, at least at the moment. I think I like the "cold steele" and the "to the ground him bore" especially, as if these satisfy my idea of what being slain by a sword really consists (of? I have backed myself into a grammatical corner with this sentence):
"That the cold steele through piercing, did devowre
His vitall breath, and to the ground him bore,
Where still he bathed lay in his owne bloody gore."

VI. vii 26 (3-5) & 27 (1-2). The story of all civilization. Domination of one man over another. In this instance the morally better man has triumphed, so it is actually occasion for rejoicing. However, the weak must always remain conscious that they live wholly at the mercy and benevolence of the strong, which thought does not seem to be a comfort to many in our age:
"But as he lay upon the humbled gras,
His foot he set on his vile necke, in signe
Of servile yoke, that nobler harts repine...
"And after all, for greater infamie,
He by the heeles him hung upon a tree..."

I wish I loved this poem better because it is not a book that a lot of annoying people are territorial about, and would doggedly deny others their enjoyment of, such as is the case with Flaubert, or Tristram Shandy. Of course no one can do this literally, but one can feel very lonely seeing a book one admired for its good humor, interesting characters, and dispassionate but very adroit observations about human nature constantly trumpeted and understood in a spirit that to me is really rather trivial compared to these other qualities. I don't think anyone has much of a grasp on the essential spirit of the F.Q. anymore; even its professional scholars strike me as approaching from too great a psychological distance to be wholly trusted about what it really is.

VI. viii. 3 (8-9)
"For aye the more, that she did them entreat,
The more they him misust, and cruelly did beat."
It is just very funny to come across verses like this when in the middle of a mostly serious 38,000 line poem. But it shouldn't be.

VI. viii. 37 (6-9) & 38 (6-9) The deliberations of the cannibals on coming upon the beautiful sleeping maiden offer more hilarity (and there was even more than this that I left out), cannibals being as irresistible a plot introduction to the Elizabethan artistic mind as nerds desperate to get laid are with us:
"Then gan they to devize what course to take:
Whether to slay her there upon the place,
Or suffer her out of sleepe to wake,
And then her eat attonce; or many meales to make.
"Unto their God they would her sacrifize,
Whose share her guiltlesse blood they would present,
But of her dainty flesh they did devize
To make a common feast, and feed with gurmandize."
There are actually some more incredible verses from this adventure, which I will continue with in another post.

F.Q.--Part 8
It occurred to me the day after finishing my last entry that I had made--and have been making throughout the history of this blog-- a giant blunder when I indicated that my idea of the purpose of a thorough and organized understanding of various areas of learning would be so that life would be more fun. While certainly a degree of fun is allowable from time to time if one's mind is developed interestingly enough to have earned the right--the Greeks themselves had the festival of Dionysius, after all--on the whole any highly serious person, whether he be a philosopher, a Christian, a scientist, a great artist, etc, is not greatly concerned with having "fun" as the term is ordinarily understood--ease, pleasure, sensualism, projecting a desirable appearance--so much as in realizing his human potential to the fullest possible extent, which usually requires hard work, discipline, and confronting the sort of hard and unpleasant truths that, we are told, people who prefer comfort don't even dare to look in the face. I have known this for a long time, too, but have always been unable to keep it consistently before me. At the time that this idea recurred to me I rapidly made a list of deadly serious people--Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Adorno, Dante Aligheri, Ezra Pound, Mohammed, and such like--and rhetorically asked an imaginary banquet table of fellow idlers on holiday--we were in Venice--"Did they have fun? Was that the object of their exertions?" I then imagined the responses: "But those people were all insane fascists!--What do I care about some dick who lived a hundred years ago?--I get more action than all of those guys put together, except Mohammed--Stop worshipping the idea of famous people. Are they friends of yours? Then they don't matter. Decide what it is you want, and either do it or shut the fuck up--Everybody's life is irrelevant. Especially Nietzsche's. Get over it--Kick back and have another glass of wine--Hey, that girl over there has a tattoo in Hebrew on the small of her back. Somebody tell me what it says--" In short, since they could afford them, they were comparatively well-satisfied that their wisdom and abilities and accomplishments were good enough, and justified their indulging in and enjoyment of pleasures. This is a state to which I have not fully attained, though of course I do not forgo any opportunity to wallow in sensualism that presents itself, however unearned and gross of a spectacle I must present in so doing.

I had thought about stopping all of the book referencing, but as 1) I view the blog as in some sense an organ for seeking wisdom as well as a record of what I was doing on such and such a day, and the consideration of literature ought to stimulate some activity of that nature, and 2) I have read in several places that it is a common, and generally considered a good, practice, for writers to copy out passages that they admire or that strike their fancy, I think I will keep at it a little longer, though I will try to mix in other observations more frequently so it does not become a codex of ancient quotations.

So, onto V. vii. 29 (5-9) Ladies fighting, at least in the guise of allegories. Also pervasive in Cuchulain stories; not however in Ossian, the Morte d'Arthur, Beowulf, Sir Gawain, etc.
"...ne spared not
Their dainty parts, which nature had created
So faire and tender, without staine or spot,
For other uses, then they them translated;
Which now they hackt and hewed, as if such use they hated."

V. vii. 31 (5-9) Good image, especially ll. 8-9:
"So long they fought, that all the grassie flore
Was fild with bloud, which from their sides did flow,
And gushed through their armes, that all in gore
They trode, and on the ground their lives did strow,
Like fruitles seed, of which untimely death should grow."

V. viii. 28 (6-9) The horses of the Souldan (he's a bad guy, blatant infidel, etc):
"And drawne of cruell steedes, which he had fed
With flesh of men, whom through fell tyranny
He slaughtred had, and ere they were halfe ded,
Their bodies to his beasts for provender did spred."
The possibility of a fate like this no doubt was an especial encouragement to men to take both care to and hope in the state of their souls.

V. viii. 31 (1-4) You probably saw this coming, but the strategy employed above does not always pay off:
"Like to the Thracian tyrant, who they say
Unto his horses gave his guests for meat,
Till he himselfe was made their greedie pray,
And torn in peeces by Alcides great..."

V. ix. 6 (2-5) Another great rhyme:
"And eke the rock, in which he wonts to dwell,
Is wondrous strong, and hewen farre under ground
A dreadfull depth, how deepe no man can tell;
But some doe say, it goeth downe to hell." V. x. 23 (2-5) And another:
"Are not all places full of forraine powres?
My pallaces possessed of my foe,
My cities sackt, and their sky-threating towres
Raced, and made smooth fields now full of flowres?"
One can see the fields, too, in all their beauty. Somehow this same effect does not occur when blocks of ruins in American cities such as Philadelphia or Detroit or Newark revert back to a more natural state.

V. x. 36 (6-9) An infidel is slain from behind after trying to flee. I always find this manner of death, which is endemic is books where sword-battles are the dominant mode of warfare, to be particularly unsettling:
"The hindmost in the gate he overhent,
And as he pressed in, him there did slay:
His carkasse tumbling on the threshold, sent
His groning soule unto her place of punishment."

VI. Intro. 5 (8-9) The theme of the sixth Booke is Courtesie. This is some Rhyme Time and philosophy rolled into one:
"But vertues seat is deep within the mynd,
And not in outward shows, but inward thoughts defyned."

By Booke VI, the fights with monsters begin to take on a repetitive pattern. The seemingly overmatched hero dodges a blow, usually involving the sacrifice or debilitation of his shield in some manner, yet he is always able to hold out/wait long enough to find himself for a split second in the only positional advantage available to him, at which point he seizes the opportunity and destroys the monster.

VI. i. 26 (9) More philosophy:
"No greater shame to man than inhumanitie."

The Faerie Queene--Part 7
IV. xi. 19 (7-9) Sorry. At this site we celebrate all allusions to sensual vigor in aging men in real literature:
".....So wise is Nereus old,
And so well skild; nathlesse he takes great joy
Oft-times amongst the wanton Nymphs to sport and toy."

I like much the catalogue of English rivers in IV/xi. Such a treatment is an honor to a place and the people associated with it, a minor one perhaps, but in the scrum of day-to-day life that most people live it is not that insubstantial if you can develop some capacity for feeling its force. For a sample I chose 36, 1-5, which calls on the river's role in human history to give it such a character as might stir a spirited breast:
"Next these came Tyne, along whose stony bancke
That Romaine Monarch built a brasen wall,
Which mote the feebled Britons strongly flancke
Against the Picts, that swarmed over all,
Which yet thereof Gualsever they doe call:"

IV. xii. 6 This could be the new epigraph for the blog:
"Though vaine I see my sorrowes to unfold,
And count my cares, when none is nigh to heare,
Yet hoping griefe may lessen being told,
I will them tell though unto no man neare:
For heaven that unto all lends equall eare,
Is farre from hearing of my heavy plight;
And lowest hell, to which I lie most neare,
Cares not what evils hap to wretched wight;
And greedy seas doe in the spoile of life delight."

The idea expressed in line 3 is widely discredited among the serious people of our own day, the doing classes; we can allow Spenser to have had it because it can be assumed he believed both in a human soul that was susceptible to healing, as well as Christian doctrine to by our standards a fairly advanced degree.

I don't know what this painting is. Someone had stuck it on a page where the Faerie Queene was being discussed but there was no identification on it. I am pretty sure we are talking Italian, mid-15th century, possibly second half; I am not advanced enough to identify an artist or a city, though I am 85% certain it is either from the Tuscan or Venetian school. Is it Titian perhaps? Are the characters Minerva, Cupid & Venus? What is the tomb, and why is Cupid rummaging through it? Is there a party game which involves puzzling out allegories?

IV. xii. 13 Speaking of Cupid, here is a good image of the means by which he conquers Man:
"Thus whilst his stony heart with tender ruth
Was toucht, and mighty courage mollifide,
Dame Venus sonne that tameth stubborne youth
With iron bit, and maketh him abide,
Till like a victor on his back he ride,
Into his mouth his maystring bridle threw,
That made him stoupe, till he did him best ride:
Then gan he make him tread his steps anew,
And learne to love, by learning lovers paines to rew."

There is an excellent fight scene in a river between the knight Artegall, representing Justice, and a pagan that takes up much of Canto ii in Booke V. Some favorite selections are 16 (8-9):
"So ought each Knight, that use of perill has,
In swimming be expert through waters force to pas."

and 18 (3-8), on the brutality of death:
"That as his head he gan a litle reare
Above the brincke, to tread upon the land,
He smote it off, that tumbling on the strand
It bit the earth for very fell despight,
And gnashed with his teeth, as if he band (cursed)
High God, whose goodnesse he despaired quight..."

At this point I noted, more hopefully than anything else, that this was a book that at least would help me to read other books in the future and...what? Hasn't it been demonstrated that literature is utterly useless and has no measurable positive effect on at least 97% of the people who still insist on indulging in it in today's world? Yes, well, the thing is, it all still seems like it would be such fun to really get it, really be a master of all that history and philology and myth, to have it all functioning and rolling about smoothly in the brain like the Sirocco (sorry, I forget the names of the other winds; I know this is the hot one) rippling through a grove of olive trees on an Aegean hillside.

V. ii. 41 (3-6) My sentiments exactly:
"The hils doe not the lowly dales disdaine;
The dales doe not the lofty hils envy.
He maketh Kings to sit in souverainty;
He maketh subjects to their power obey..."

V. iv. 31 (3-9) Subjection of men by an enchantress:
"First she doth them of warlike armes despoile,
And cloth in womens weedes: And then with threat

Doth them compell to worke, to earn their meat,
To spin, to card, to sew, to wash, to wring;
Ne doth she give them other thing to eat,
But bread and water, or like feeble thing,
Them to disable from revenge adventuring."

I don't think Jim Swan liked this passage either. He made much use of his pink underliner in it.

V. v. 50 (7-9) Like the rhyme:
"And lay upon him, for his greater dread,
Cold yron chaines, with which let him be tide;
And let, what ever he desires, be him denide."

V. vi. 25 This is an excellent verse. It is actually rather Shakespearean now that I look at it again:
"Ye guilty eyes (sayd she) the which with guyle
My heart at first betrayd, will ye betray
My life now to, for which a little whyle
Ye will not watch? false watches, wellaway,
I wote when ye did watch both night and day
Unto your losse: and now needes will ye sleepe?
Now ye have made my heart to wake alway,
Now will ye sleepe? ah wake, and rather weepe,
To thinke of your nights want, that should yee waking keepe."

FQ-6
In this posting I am going to attempt to grapple somewhat with ideas and actual poetry, as I am under the influence of a mood which tells me that as I will likely never return to this subject again once I have come to the end of this series, there is no point in rushing through it, especially given that I am scarcely paying it any attention as it is.

The picture below is taken from a 1913 children's book called Stories From Spenser. I wonder how many children read this book, or what influence it might have had on them, but I have not found any record of it. The scene depicts action from the 11th Canto of the 1st Booke generally, though to put some caption to it, I think I. xi. 5 is most fitting:

"Then bad the knight his lady yede aloofe,
And to an hill her selfe with draw aside,
From whence she might behold that batailles proofe
And eke be safe from daunger far descryde:
She him obayd, and turnd a little wyde."
IV. ii. 46 (3-5) Verse 45 describes the rape of a fairy nymph by a knight who came upon her combing her golden locks, presumably while in a state of undress, by a crystal flood, which got "three lovely babes, that proved three champions bold" on her. The young lads were raised in seclusion in the forest (their father having ridden off immediately after the gratification of his lust), but their genes would manifest themselves:

"Then shewing forth signes of their fathers blood,
They loved armes, and knighthood did ensew,
Seeking adventures, where they anie knew."

This getting of children by rape in this manner is, in most classical literature and art both ancient and modern (pre-1700), always set either in fairyland or some remote age, though the act is otherwise presented as the natural and obvious consequence of a lusty young man without the benefit of up to date education and civilizing coming across a luscious and lonely lass in the woods.

IV. iii. 27 (6-9) This is a striking and well-executed image:
"But when the floud is spent, then backe againe
His borrowed waters forst to redisbourse,
He sends the sea his owne with double gaine,
And tribute eke withall, as to his Soveraine."

IV. iv. 28 (6-9) This is a typical scenario in fight scenes involving knights on horseback; some variation of this is repeated about thirty or forty times in this poem alone. Indeed, for a significant portion of the lifespan of Western literary history--around 500 years-- the dominant narrative was of guys in armor swordfighting. This was one of the great lessons impressed upon me in 2007:
"A mightie spear eftsoones at him he bent;
Who seeing him come on so furiously,
Met him mid-way with equall hardiment,
That forcibly to ground they both together went."

IV. v. 35 (4-5) Regarding a blacksmith. Humorous:
"And fingers filthie, with long nayles unpared,
Right fit to rend the food, on which he fared."

IV. viii. 27 (5-8) On the hardiness of men of former ages:
"And eke that age despysed nicenesse vaine,
Enur'd to hardnesse and to homely fare,
Which them to warlike discipline did trayne,
And manly limbs endur'd with litle care..."

This picture has the words "Faerie Queene" in its title, though this refers it seems to a particular and curious self-image held by the artist and evoked by the terms rather than to anything connected with the poem.

IV. ix. 18 (5-9), 19 (1-4) The perils of being in the power and debt of a mighty man for a desirable woman, and the security against these which the virtues of true chivalry ensure:

"But now in feare of shame she more did stond/Seeing herselfe all soly succourlesse/Left in the victors powre, like vassall bond/Whose will her weaknesse could no way represse/In case his burning lust should breake into excesse."

"But cause of feare sure had she none at all/Of him, who goodly learned had of yore/The course of loose affection to forstall/And lawlesse lust to rule with reasons lore."

IV. x. 14 (8-9) "And time to steal, the threasure of man's day/Whose smallest minute lost, no riches render may." The book I used in this reading this poem was a 1935 Oxford University Press volume of 'Spenser's Poetical Works', which I found in Brattleboro, of all places. It had a glossary but not much in the way of explanatory notes. The previous owner, or one of them, of the book was a fellow whose name, though it is hard to decipher his handwriting, appears to have been Jim Swan; he lived at 40 Monroe Street in New York City. As this is in lower Manhattan near the Manhattan bridge, my suspicion is that the building Jim Swan, and my book, once inhabited have been razed and replaced with some more modern construction, though I am probably wrong. Swan appears to have read the Faerie Queene all the way through--at least he has marked it, frequently in pink pencil, all the way through. Perhaps he was one of the 12 men Bliss Perry designated as the book's living readership, though I doubt it. He left posterity a brief note beside the two lines above stating simply "Poor Richard!". Only a mid-20th century American, especially a Manhattannite, could have written this with such unaffected enthusiasm.

IV. x. 24 Beautiful nature images. Evokes the old world:

"Fresh shadowes, fit to shroud from sunny ray;

Faire lawnds, to take the sunne in season dew;

Sweet springs, in which a thousand Nymphes did play;

Soft rombling brookes, that gentle slomber drew;

High reared mounts, the lands about to vew;

Low looking dales, disloigned from common gaze;

Delightful bowres, to solace lovers trew;

False Labyrinthes, fond runners eyes to daze;

All which by nature made did nature selfe amaze."

I can offer little comment where the poetry speaks so clearly for itself.

IV. x. 53 (3-7) Much of this canto continues the emphasis on courage always carrying the day with the ladies:

"For sacrilege me seem'd the Church to rob, (the robbery would be of a recluse virgin from the temple of Venus)

And folly seem'd to leave the thing undonne,

Which with so strong attempt I had begonne.

Tho shaking off all doubt and shamefast feare,

Which Ladies love I heard had never wonne..."

IV. xi. 16 (1-4) I just like the rhyme. (Humorous):

"For Albion the sonne of Neptune was,

Who for the proofe of his great puissance,

Out of his Albion did on dry-foot pas

Into old Gall, that now is cleeped France..."

FQ-5

I did not know many women when I was young, but among those in whose presences I chanced on occasion to find myself, quite a few claimed that their favorite movie was "Harold and Maude". When I finally saw the movie, which is watchable more for the fascination of the enormous 1971-era cars and dreary landscape (leaves, and vegetation in general, as well as bright sunlight, seem to have been in short supply around the years 1969-71, judging from the films of the period) and the Cat Stevens soundtrack, which sounds great in the actual movie, than the excruciating plot, which centers around a geek who has a love affair with a octogenarian, my reaction was "How the hell can this be anybody's favorite movie, especially a young girl's?" Meanwhile other men were regularly meeting attractive and volatile women who told them their favorite movies were "Betty Blue" or "Henry and June", and behaved accordingly (these films, as far as I could tell, were about women who required, and got, constant stimulation and high-intensity sex). Always slow to catch on to the most blatant codes (perhaps this is what is meant by being unable to recognize an allegory even when it is swallowing you alive), it just occurred to me a few days ago that the alleged favorite films were nothing but a means of informing you in what regard you were held, certainly as far as your sexual prospects went, by reference to the fate of the leading male characters in the films named. Subconsciously one always knew this; when my future wife claimed to be partial to uplifting and wholesome American films from the 1940s (to me; who knows what she would have said had a pulsating superman been present at the conversation, which thankfully, one was not), I knew that I had some hope, though being me I did not make out what form that hope must inevitably take, and therefore made no preparations for it. The point in all of this relating to the Faerie Queene is that it is possible I may be struck by more penetrating insights about what it really means in 10 or 15 years, and I will be able to add those too late epiphanies to the compendium of worldy wisdom I hope to accumulate for my sons to give them a little more advantage when they embark upon the great contest of life than I blundered into battle with.

The advantage to someone like me, who is a rather plodding scholar, of a longer work over a shorter one is that the longer one becomes a very distinct part of your life for the period in which you are reading it. Impressions have a greater chance of penetrating even the dull mind. One senses a degree of companionship with the author has been attained by the mere virtue of having been confined in the same carriage or boarding house with him for so many weeks. A lot of readers apparently don't care for this, and consider it presumptuous, especially in a multimedia age, for any person to demand twenty, or more, hours of another person's life to read his book, but I have always found that illusion of intimacy--the author cannot really escape my company either without my willing it--to be the primary reward of the habit.

III. viii. 42 (1-5) The theme of the third booke by the way is chastitie:
"Eternall thraldome was to her more liefe,
Then losse of chastitie, or chaunge of love:
Die had she rather in tormenting griefe,
Then any should of falsenesse her reprove,
Or loosenesse, that she lightly did remove."

III. ix. 30 This is a difficult part to make out exactly (I believe Cupid may just be working his perfidious effects on a pair of lovers with the aid of alcohol), but the poetry, as far as both language and the artfulness of the images, is remarkable:
"Thenceforth to her he sought to intimate
His inward griefe, by means to him well knowne,
Now Bacchus fruit out of the silver plate
He on the table dasht, as overthrowne,
Or of the fruitfull liquor overflowne,
And by the dancing bubbles did divine,
Or therein write to let his love be showne;
Which well she red out of the learned line,
A sacrament prophane in mistery of wine."

III. x. 48 A cuckold watches his wife in action:
"At night, when they all went to sleepe, he vewd,
Whereas his lovely wife emongst them lay,
Embraced of a Satyre rough and rude,
Who all the night did minde his joyous play:
Nine times he heard him come aloft ere day,
That all his hart with gealosie did swell;
But yet that nights ensample did bewray,
That not for nought his wife them loved so well,
When one so oft a night did ring his matins bell."

There are a large number of female warriors (as well as monsters) in the poem, which brings to mind that allegory in itself is entirely, as Blake pointed out, a pagan form, and is in fact antithetical to Christianity, which is revealed truth.

This painting is David's Death of Sappho, with Phaon. It too has nothing to do with the Faerie Queene (there is a Phaon character in the poem, but there is no allusion to this story). However, it came up when I was searching for a picture and I decided I wanted it in my collection. I have expressed my fondness for David, albeit largely unexamined, on this site before. This painting looks to be in the collection of the Hermitage in St Petersburg, which I still have a hope of getting to someday, though for what serious purpose at this point I could not pretend to say. It looks increasingly unlikely that that will happen anyway however.
III. xii. 18 (1-5) Displeasure is like me. Pleasance, of course, must be Mrs Bourgeois Surrender:

"After them went Displeasure and Pleasance.
He looking lompish and full sullein sad,
And hanging downe his heavy countenance;
She chearefull fresh and full of joyance glad,
As if no sorrow she ne felt ne drad..."

III. xii. 24 (3-5), 25 Catalogue of unsettled spirits:
"Repentance feeble, sorrowfull, and lame:
Reproch despightfull, carelesse, and unkind;
Shame most ill-favourd, bestiall, and blind...
"And after them a rude confused rout
Of persons flockt, whose names is hard to read:
Emongst them was sterne Strife, and Anger stout,
Unquiet care,and fond Unthriftihead,
Lewd Losse of Time, and Sorrow seeming dead,
Inconstant Chaunge, and false Disloyaltie,
Consuming Riotise, and guilty Dread,
Of heavenly vengeance, faint Infirmitie,
Vile Povertie, and lastly Death with infamie."

IV. i. 21-22 On discord. This could be sung over legs of mutton and ale, like a real epic poem. The theme of the 4th Booke is Friendship, by the way.
"And all within the riven walls were hung
With ragged monuments of time forepast,
All which the sad effects of discord sung:
There were rent robes, and broken scepters plast,
Alters defyl'd, and holy things defast,
Disshivered speares, and shields ytorne in twaine,
Great cities ransackt, and strong castles rast,
Nations captived, and huge armies slaine:
Of all which ruines there some relicks did remaine.

"There was the sign of antique Babylon,
Of fatall Thebes, of Rome that raigned long,
Of sacred Salem, and sad Ilion,
For memorie of which on high there hong
The golden Apple, cause of all their wrong,
For which the three faire Goddesses did strive:
There also was the name of Nimrod strong,
Of Alexander, and his Princes five,
Which shar'd to them the spoiles that he had got alive."

IV. i. 51 (5) Good line:
"All things not rooted well, will soon be rotten."

IV. ii. 27 (1-4) Western civilization in a nutshell:
"And of them all she that is fayrest found,
Shall have that golden girdle for reward,
And of those Knights who is most stout on ground,
Shall to that fairest Ladie be prefard..."