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June 3, 2007
The Children of Húrin
I have been a long-time admirer of the ability of J.R.R. Tolkien to weave a story. I loved both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings despite some misgivings about both the implicit theology of the works and of much of the writing (most particularly the poetry.) The same problems hold true for this book, only more so.
The Children of Húrin is a long narrative cobbled together from the bits and pieces of a variety of writings--many of them previously published. Christopher Tolkien took upon himself the task to creating a coherent narrative of the whole story and he has done a very fine job.
The problem I have with this book is that it is as though Tolkien were thumbing through the Index of Folklore and Mythology and pulled out some random threads that he then inserted and interpreted with a ruthlessness that may have served the first age of Middle Earth, but doesn't leave the reader satisfied. The net effect is to create a lay, book, story, or what have you in which evil unequivocally triumphs over good. Perhaps only temporarily, but resoundingly, thoroughly, and disastrously. And this is a strain in Tolkien I don't quite trust. He seems to have greater confidence in evil than in good.
At the end of Lord of the Rings the triumph of good leads to the destruction of nearly everything good. Lothlorien is abandoned, the Shire is overrun with foulness, and the elves all leave Middle Earth.
It is naive to assume that the triumph of good means good results for all; however, it is equally naive to assume that evil consistently betters good.
Okay, my quibbles aside, how is The Children of Húrin. For a cobbled-together story it is quite readable and very entertaining. The tale is a bit disjointed, and perhaps because of its origin has bits and pieces that seem extraneous to the main point--but even these extraneous moments are of high interest and so perhaps extraneous only in the sense that we do not have the fuller story that might have resulted had Tolkien ever been led to finish it himself.
The story is told in a convoluted difficult diction that is orotund and epic but doesn't approach the turgidity of some sections of The Simarillion. Overall, once one gets used to the effects of the language, it flows smoothly in its course and helps to create the atmosphere.
So, net recommendation--certainly for Tolkien completists, and perhaps for those who want some insight into the Earlier ages of Tolkien's mythos without the investment of a huge amount of time and energy. But for those who have not found Tolkien easy going, this certainly will not change their minds
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:31 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 4, 2007
Samuel Report
I know this subject is not of the moment to the world at large, but to the small coterie of readers I'm privileged to call friends, this will be important because it occupies a major part of my world at present.
In recent days Samuel has been involved in several matters musical. To start with, a few weeks back he went for his Royal Conservatory exam--this consisted of playing three different pieces of music (surrounded by all sorts of incomprehensible criteria), several pentascales identified only by their key (C major, A minor, G major, etc.), listening and playing back a melody played by the examiner, clapping out a rhythm played by the examiner, and perhaps a few other things I'm not recording here.
Last week we received the results of that exam--1st class honors with Highest Distinction. We haven't received back the full exam commentary yet, but I'm looking forward to it. It will have some places to coach Samuel and help him to improve playing.
At the same time, he's begun to compose short pieces and even notate the compositions. Naturally, they are short and at this point a little repetitive, but he's learn the style of elaboration and development that will foster a full-fledged ability to compose (I hope).
More--he was in four different dances in the dance recital this weekend. This was his first experience with multi-performances as two of the dances were repeated on the second day of the recital. In each of these (his tap and ballet), he was a featured performer because boys are so rare in dance classes. On the first day he performed his tap, his acro, and his ballet. Between the tap and acro he even had a quick-change (only two dances between them). On the second day he performed his Jazz, his ballet and his tap, the performance occurring at the very beginning, approximately in the middle, and at the very end. Samuel is a very charismatic performer and really engages audience attention. He had literally dozens of people come up to him and tell him after each show how well he did. And he did do very well.
The stage is much larger than the usual performance area they practice in. As a result to get to center stage in the same number of steps at the same count as he would do in the usual space he had to take exaggeratedly large steps. It was both hilarious and charming. In both tap and ballet he was playing the center of interest of a bevy of young ladies. The songs--"Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" and "Build me Up, Buttercup." The performances went off without a hitch despite disastrous rehearsals and every dancer did his or her very best. It was remarkable to see that much talent in so small a physical and temporal space. The shame of it is that so little of that ability will ever be shared beyond a very small circle. It is my sincere hope that it is not so with Samuel. Nevertheless, whatever may ensue, for now it is the stuff of great memories and tremendous fatherly pride.
I have been so richly blessed by this young person.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
MIT Open Courseware
Here. Interesting and provocative. One wonders how effective it would be with most. As we are well aware self-pedagogues are among the rarest of individuals--at least "complete" self-pedagogues. It's probably a worthwhile source for "dipping into" from time to time.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:43 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 6, 2007
A Purgatorial Poem
Being of a melancholy cast of mind this morning, a purgatorial poem seems best to fit the mood:
Cuchulain Comforted
William Butler YeatsA man that had six mortal wounds, a man
violent and famous, strode among the dead;
Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone.Then certain Shrouds that mutter head to head
Came and were gone. He leant upon a tree
As though to meditate on wounds and blood.A Shroud that seemed to have authority
Among those bird-like things came, and let fall
A bundle of linen. Shrouds by two and threeCame creeping up because the man was still.
And thereupon that linen-carrier said
'Your life can grow much sweeter if you will'Obey our ancient rule and make a shroud;
Mainly because of what we only know
The rattle of those arms makes us afraid,'We thread the needles' eyes and all we do
All must together do.' That done, the man
Took up the nearest and began to sew.'Now we shall sing and sing the best we can
But first you must be told our character:
Convicted cowards all by kindred slain'Or driven from home and left to die in fear.'
The sand, but had not human notes n or words,
Though all was done in common as before.They had changed their throats and had the throats of birds.
Something about these shades resonates within me. The poem speaks out of shadow and into shadow and is shadow-strewn all about.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 6:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lest We Seem Too Far Gone
A contemporary British haiku, thank you.
[Haiku] Wendy Cope(iii)
November evening:
The moon is up, rooks settle,
The pubs are open.
That never-ending Japanese obsession with the pubs here creeps into British poetry.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
In the Season of the Spirit
Veni Creator
Czeslaw Milosz
Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards,
or when snow covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.I am only a human being: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well,
that the statue in church lift its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore, call one person, anywhere on earth,
not me-after all I have some decency-
and allow me, when I look at that person,
to marvel at you.
And as a result, my life is better.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 7, 2007
Confused Love
And love can be most confusing:
I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You
Pablo Neruda
I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.
And another, quite lovely even in translation:
Saddest Poem
Pablo Neruda
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Fierce Poetry, Fragile Poet
I post these because they speak for me when I have no tongue or sense and they say what cannot be said by me even were I longing to say it.
To My Lady of Poetry
Alfonsina StorniI throw myself here at your feet, sinful,
my dark face against your blue earth,
you the virgin among armies of palm trees
that never grow old as humans do.I don't dare look at your pure eyes
or dare touch your miraculous hand:
I look behind me and a river of rashness
urges me guiltlessly on against you.With a promise to mend my ways through your
divine grace, I humbly place on our
hem a little green branch,for I couldn't have possibly lived
cut off from your shadow, since you blinded me
at birth with your fierce branding iron.
Note "My lady" not "Our lady." The poem seems to be about the Blessed Virgin and is certainly strewn with her trappings, but what is adored here is not Mary, Mother of God, but the muse of poetry. And what is said here is said thoroughly in the last tercet because it seems to me that there is a way of seeing that cannot be undone or unseen, a blindsight that is the gift and curse of the poet and no amount of undoing can change it or alter it one iota--it is laid upon one at birth, or at least very early on and it is through that lens that all is seen that can be seen and seen in ways that it seems others do not. Although that last may simply be pretension and pride.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google Books
Google books provides a search that doesn't merely give you key word associations, but allows you to search the entire text for a phrase or word. In addition, you can use the advanced search to carefully limit how the search is conducted and how it is displayed. If you set the parameters accordingly, the results of the search can be a downloadable PDF.
Bill White has been touting this for some time and rightly so. You do have to become fairly expert at searching if you want to avoid a frustrating experience; however, the resources that become available to you as a result are enormous. And given the partnerships that Google is forging, those resources are likely only to become larger.
Yes, I know we love our books, but welcome to the digital age--PDFs are not the most comfortable volumes in the world, and yet the vast universe of things they make available to us may well be worth a little trouble. And in a proper time there will be some clever maker of PDAs who will do the Sony E-Book thing, producing a paperback sized eInk readable screen--who knows what other wonders await?
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack