Late again. I'm heading back into the (part-time) work force, and it's eating up all my time trying to get up to speed, so reading and posting are going to be sparser than usual. I think the 10x10 challenge may have to be a two-year plan. But meanwhile, last week I finished two plays: Ben Jonson's Volpone (1606) and Sophocles' Philoctetes (409 BC), the latter in part because Middle Girl was reading it and in part so I could read Edmund Wilson's famous essay "The Wound and the Bow" and have it make some sort of sense. (But I didn't finish because Wilson started getting all Freudian and I long ago decided I have no time for Freudian literary approaches.) Volpone was chosen at atmospheric random and so goes into the "Plucked From the Air" 10x10 category; Philoctetes is going to give me Greece for the "Brexit Special." Now reading a quick-if-boring YA Landmark history book, The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt; and for my own entertainment, the century-old, awfully strange, oddly compelling Scottish science fiction classic A Voyage to Arcturus. I love how the protagonist prepares for his flight to the distant planet by knocking back a large amount of tea-and-whiskey. (I will try not to get the two confused at crucial teaching moments.) Thanks, Sandy!

We have a copy of Voyage to Arcturus from our last trip. Tell me when you start reading it and I will too.

Mmmm ... This is her first summer in many years with no Jaffa cakes. I'll remember to check for the chocolate-tucked-in kind!

Missed another week -- will catch up -- and meanwhile read two more books in my new 10x10 category, Symbolists, Decadents, and Surrealists: 51. The Symbolist Movement in Literature by Arthur Symons (who wrote The Art of Aubrey Beardsley, which I read/examined last week), and 52. Oscar Wilde's certainly most Decadent work, Salomé (the famous drawings for which play were by Beardsley, above). In Wilde's Salomé, the title character has Jokanaan (John the Baptist) beheaded not because Herodias wants him dead, but because that's the only way she can manage to kiss him. Salomé, having an extremely Decadent prose moment: Followed by one of the most hilarious moments of the 19th-century English stage: I saw Salomé performed once, and steeled myself to keep a straight face at this scene, but failed. Human nature can only take so much. So that's 52 books, if somewhat past the 26-week mark I'd hoped to achieve it at. Currently reading L. P. Hartley's 1953 novel The Go-Between, for the Little Oval on the Spine (aka Published by NYRB) category.

Big State U. is apparently a powerhouse in classics....

Thanks! I was thinking of giving it to Middle Girl, who is interested in the classics -- she's pretty sure that's what she wants to major in -- but if it's very out of date I may just read it and let her get on with current scholarship. Kitto also has something on Greek drama that I'm planning to read for my Gorey cover 10x10 challenge (and because literature is more interesting than history).

Missed a week, but since Sunday-before-last I finished Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent William Perry (ed.), 21 Texas Short Stories Arthur Symons, The Art of Aubrey Beardsley The Secret Agent, unlike most of Conrad's stories and novels, is set in London. You may remember the fog as a SYMBOL!!! in Heart of Darkness; but Conrad uses it pervasively in his works, and the setting gives him plenty of scope for his thick, sickly, and symbolic fogs. It's a detective story, sort of, though not a mystery. The title of 21 Texas Short Stories is pretty self-explanatory, and the stories range in quality from one very good Katherine Anne Porter to a laughably awful howdy-pardner cowboy yarn, with most of them being the sort of solid entertainment published in reputable mid-century magazines. The Art of Aubrey Beardsley is going to be the third entry in a new 10x10 category, Symbolists, Decadents, and Surrealists (until I can find a more entertaining title). I've become interested in the network of influences on what came to be called the Symbolist and Decadent movements in late 19th-century France and Britain. This was a kind of post- or anti-realism, though never a very unified thing. Simplistically: the poet Charles Baudelaire killed off both French Romanticism and the Realism (e.g. Zola) that was supposed to be its destruction. Poets, writers, and artists rejected both Romanticism's fetishized "Nature" and "Reality," either using the apparent and the real to suggest and move beyond appearances (Symbolism), or to reject Nature altogether (Decadence). Baudelaire is considered the father of both movements, with the late Romantics Gerard Nerval and Edgar Allen Poe as unknowing grandfathers. In Britain, the Celtic Revival had evident influence; Arthur Symons, the Cornishman from Wales who brought the French Symbolist poets to the attention of the British in his 1908 book The Symbolist Movement in Literature (this week's reading), was an adoring disciple of the elderly Yeats. (In Edinburgh and Dundee we enjoyed Symbolist art by Scottish Celtic Revivalist John Duncan.) (Riders of the Sidhe, by Duncan) Anyway, Aubrey Beardsley, together with Oscar Wilde and Swinburne, was an English Decadent decorative artist who was part of the famous Yellow Book project (see his cover art at the link). His illustrations for Wilde's Salome are famous, though not possibly to everyone's taste. That Symons calls Beardsley a "Symbolist" throughout this short book (much lengthened by the time needed to examine the copious plates) goes to illustrate how difficult it was, even by the end of the century, to distinguish the two movements that seem so clearly separate now. Future reading in this category: Rimbaud, Verlaine, Poe, Yeats, Huysmans, Lautreamont, Breton, and Wilde. (Baudelaire, though obvious, I think I've re-read enough for now. And I refuse to read Swinburne, sorry Swinburne fans.)

Isn't there a fix for that coming down the road?

Isle of May!

... and that's why I got my degree in literature and stayed far, far away from nasty sciences like biology. If I want that kind of depravity, I can read Jean Genet.

You could go very traditional: strew rushes on the floor, get a meat-roasting spit and a tripod with kettle in that fireplace ... looks like you've already got a hound lounging on the furniture, that's a good start!

Yes I was born in New Mexico and I won't even start on the ignorance from Texans about its status as a state. On the other hand, my mom tells me how, growing up in Albuquerque, she could not convince her cowboy-obsessed little brother that he could not go "west to Texas" to live on the range.

Don't feel bad! That's how many (most? all? who knows) fish go about it. When visiting Carlsbad Caverns, I innocently asked the guide, who was explaining the bats' behavior, how the mothers handled bringing food to the pre-flight-capable offspring. He gave me the compassionate look you give to the less fortunate of society, and explained that they were mammals, you see....

Ha! I'd move to Denton and commute. Notice the major city that doesn't even make the list. That one's actually in New Mexico, isn't it?

Thanks for sharing those photos Amy! Beautiful families. What did you see at the Globe? When we visited it was Hamlet. How I wish we could have joined you. No more UK-ing in our foreseeable future. Though Middle Girl is determined to apply to Oxford so who knows.

Of course that was precisely the problem; he published it in the magazine he edited himself. Wee Girl is almost done with Oliver Twist. It's the most "big kid" book she's ever read. In spring she was still struggling with picture books that had too much text. Huzzah!

Returned alive from a week of string camp in the sprawling Metroplex to the north, which may be three times as large as my home town but let me tell you has a severe lack of vegetarian tacos. And hipness in general. (In a nod to my 10x10 category "Don't Mess With Texas" (Texans, cowboys, or both), behold a primer on inter-urban attitudes, courtesy of Texas Monthly: "Fort Worth hates Dallas. Houston hates Dallas and Austin. San Antonio hates Austin. Austin wishes all the rest of us would just go away, and Dallas pretends none of the rest of us even exist.") Not much reading during my busy week, but I did finish The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry, edited by Perry Miller. Back in the '50s, Doubleday issued a wonderful series of well-edited books, many of them original (as is this one), with cover art by the yet-unknown Edward Gorey. These either cost a little from thrift stores, or a lot from bookstores that know about them. Beautiful ink drawings and typography. More importantly, a wonderful introduction to the political, social, theological, and literary thought of the New England Puritans. More here than we were taught in high school. Next up, since this category ("A is for Amy who...") needs some work, is Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, with a very Goreyish cover: ... and since I don't often enough participate in the weekly challenges, I'll also this week read Terence's Phormio (161 BC).

Yes on the consumption, though since the character is a publican, I mean nihilist, whose stony soul is softened by the sanctifying presence of Je- I mean, Prince Myshkin- I think it’s not so much the too-sensitive-for-the-world death but the nowhere-to-go-but-dead death. Similarly, Mary Mag... no sorry Nastasya’s fate won’t come as a surprise to anyone who read Clarissa. At least Dickens just shipped Little Emily off to Australia. You can’t go wrong with Karamazov or C&P. I also thought The Possessed (aka Demons) was good.

Finished Théophile Gautier's life of Charles Baudelaire, the literary father of both the Decadent and Symbolist movements, with translations of selected poems and prose poems, as well as his letters to Sainte-Beuve and Flaubert, and some reflections on Baudelaire's influence on English literature from the translator/editor, Guy Thorne, from which we learn that the French got Verlaine, Huysmans, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, while the English got the overrated Oscar Wilde and the unreadable Swinburne. Some things just don't cross the Channel well. Finishing up Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. Very readable, though it feels somewhat loose; in the past I've used a literal translation as an aid to reading the Anglo-Saxon. A particularly expressive bit: "Him se yldesta andswarode,/ werodes wisa, word-hord onleac" -- "The leader of the troop unlocked his word-hoard;/ the distinguished one delivered this answer" (Heaney). At first "unlocked his word-hoard" seems like a bit of overwrought figurative speech. But Beowulf and his men are in a delicate situation: they've just arrived, fully armed and uninvited, at Hrothgar's land, and are being challenged by the justifiably wary coast warden, armed himself and able to summon many more men. A good chief was defined by his gift-giving; his ability to choose exactly the right pieces of treasure, carefully weighed and judged, to distribute. So the image here is Beowulf, the naturally able leader, at this moment of high tension competently choosing precisely the right words and tone to navigate his meeting with the warden, and later Hrothgar, diplomatically. Beowulf has brought to completion one of my 10x10 categories: "Dramatic, Lyric, & Epic" (poetry), if I raid "The Hollow Crown" (chronicle plays) for a title, which I might as well because I could not read one more life of an English king in dramatic verse if the fate of the universe hinged on it. Sorry, dh. Which unfortunately leaves me short a category. Dramatic, Lyric, & Epic 1. Christopher Marlowe, Edward II 2. E. E. Cummings, 50 Poems 3. Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio 4. The Wanderer: Elegies, Epics, Riddles 5. Edwin Brock, from Penguin Modern Poets vol. 8 6. Gérard de Nerval, from An Anthology of French Poetry 7. St. John of the Cross, Poems 8. T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets 9. Théophile Gautier/ Guy Thorne, Charles Baudelaire 10. Seamus Heaney (trans.), Beowulf

There's suddenly an awful lot of plot in the last fifty pages. Sandy, those photos make me very happy. Sometimes I think, Why do I have a culture of cattle kings and oilfields and food trucks, when I could have had a culture of morris dancing and well dressings and all the best literature?

Yes.

I am SO glad that you enjoyed it! Well I suppose "enjoyed" can't be quite the right word for the satisfaction of reading that book, and feeling the missing pieces of the picture fall into place, completely transforming one's assumptions and understanding of the narrative.

Thanks for the poetry, Pen! More Gautier, on Baudelaire: Well all right then. Paging Edward Said.... Voici le poème lui-même (traduit): Charles Baudelaire (trad. Roy Campbell)

Finished The Idiot, at last. The critical essay I read on it charitably suggested that Prince Myshkin was Dostoevsky's practice run for the saintly Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov. Which latter I may re-read; but I don't think I'll re-read The Idiot. 10x10 category: Brexit Special (Russia). Now reading Theophile Gautier's life of Baudelaire, which the cat chose for me, pulling the lovely hundred-year-old book with gilted binding off the shelf and onto the floor below as her special way of telling me she'd waited long enough for her second breakfast. The second half is selected Baudelairean poetry, translated by Guy Thorne of whom I've never heard. Gautier was Baudelaire's mentor, to whom Les Fleurs du Mal is famously dedicated, and was a sort of late Romantic or early Decadent, depending I suppose on how one sees his literary relationship to Baudelaire. Sample: There's plenty more if you like that kind of thing. Which I do. Maybe I need to go read my book on the art of Aubrey Beardsley next.

My physical health continues to be very good (thank you, genes) as I head into my 50s.... but it's distressing that I now struggle with memorization. Learning poetry and Scripture by heart has been an important part of my life. But the old techniques don't work for me anymore.