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Hippolytus
(Ἱππολυτος)
Euripides
429 BC
(Disaster ensues when Phaedra falls for her stepson!)
The gods will have their play, and we piteous humans must suffer in double jeopardy. First, vice will eventually bring destruction, and yet we are by nature weak and prone to vice. Second, everyone is subject to fate, which is not kinder to good people than to bad. So we are doomed—we cannot be virtuous as we want to be, and so we are in trouble; and yet even if we could be virtuous we would get smacked anyway by the vicissitudes of fate! Hence Euripides’ fist-waving at the gods… yet he manages to preserve some reverence. Artemis tells us that the pious are still much more highly regarded by the gods than the impious. When the impious person suffers, the gods nod “take that!”, whereas the faithful incur their favor, which can bring some benefit. So, given our sad lot in life, it is better to be suffering and good than suffering and evil. Or that is Euripides’ line anyway. In this play we see how this web of cosmic influences plays out in the life of a chaste and honorable man destined for greatness by rights, when (through no fault of his own) his stepmother takes an improper liking to him.
Twain’s stories
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
1865-1890
(A champion of common sense and nonsense casually delivers his colorful yarns, witty satires, and twisty dramas.)
Sitting with Mark Twain when he’s in a storytelling mood, we get to know the man—or at least he leads us to believe we get to know him. He lets us in on private jokes; he talks to us freely and without affected polish, perhaps puffing on his pipe in the middle of a sentence; and he doesn’t mind making clever offhand remarks about even the touchiest of matters. And, to reciprocate the casual friendship, we allow him to wander on tangents, even if it prevents him from ever getting to his point; and we don’t let on that we mind when he decides not to tell us the end of a story, or when he makes fun of something that we happen to like; and, especially, we just don’t get too critical with him in general. Since Twain’s favorite literary pastime is to smirk at people who take themselves too seriously, when we take him too seriously the joke is on us! Besides, the path of his narrative, though unpredictable, is as organic and spontaneous as a stream– who can criticize a stream?
Songs and Sonets
John Donne
d. 1631
(An earthy, imaginative, thoughtful soul reveals his view of love, steeped in metaphor and emotion.)
Crop of Francesca da Rimini with her lover Paolo, by the Scottish painter William Dyce (1837). This painting can be seen in the National Galleries of Scotland. Though not quite as scandalous as Paolo, who is here courting his brother’s wife, John Donne did sneak around with his master’s daughter against his will, eventually marrying her.
Donne is a master of love poetry– some say the best of them all– because he combines rich experience with deep and varied thought. The whole person is writing here, his intellect and his heart in a powerfully effective, if strained, cooperation. He is at once philosophical and romantic, a learned dreamer, an impassioned thinker. On one hand these poems are often acutely emotional and physical, full of sweat and tears. Love and death are often intimately associated, by virtue of heartbreak as well as the sheer weight of true love itself. But at the same time the poems are bursting with erudite imagination, especially loose analogy and illustration (“conceits”) from physical science, alchemy, astronomy, and ancient and medieval philosophical and theological ideas. Donne sees no problem in linking his love to events and bodies of astronomic or even divine proportions. He employs so many characteristic devices, has so many surprising and intriguing perspectives, that his poems can be enjoyed just for these, even if we knew nothing of love. But of course, love is the main thing on his mind… really the only thing on his mind. Everything else is playing a supporting role. For those who think of Donne as the Reverend Doctor, the dean, the spiritual teacher… you will see that person here mainly in his cleverness, his breadth of education, a few metaphors, and of course his deep affinity for things spiritual. Otherwise, here our Donne is a much more earthy bloke– here he is Jack Donne, the lover. Then again, perhaps there is more to the continuity. The man who is first fascinated by women and drama and then later by God and church, is a man of fierce and fervent heart, seeking a worthy object of devotion. (more…)
Cimarron
Edna Ferber
1930
(The Oklahoma land rush of 1889 gives Yancey Cravat an opportunity to rescue his wife from civilized mediocrity, and head west for the untamed life of the pioneer.)
Yancey Cravat is the Cimarron—the wild one, like an aimless river or a jousting bighorn sheep. He may tote legal volumes as easily as a gun, and be as quick with a Shakespeare quote as with a trigger; and yes, he’s a lawyer and the editor of a socially active newspaper… but this is no milktoast city boy. This is Buffalo-Head, the tall, gruff, steel-eyed pioneer for whom three years in the same place or a single day without some sort of risk or conflict is evidently his idea of hell. And, no doubt, the wife of such a one is bound to be some kind of woman: Sabra, a sharp, spirited, strong, self-sufficient saber of a woman. In fact, although most assessments of this book will tell you that its permanence lies in its presentation to the world of the unforgettable Yancey Cravat, who is it that ties the book together? Whom does the narrative follow, when Yancey’s itchy traveling bone takes him to Alaska or the Spanish-American war? Not him, but the determined, toiling Sabra. Granted, she lacks the explosive flash of her husband–her way is much too pragmatic to put her in much danger or make her many enemies. But she is really the central character of the book, the one who grows, the one who succeeds in adapting herself to the various jolting cultural shifts that get thrown into her path by the errant Yancey, or by her son, or by the discovery of oil. At first entry into the fledgling land rush town of Osage, Oklahoma, fresh from the overprotection of her family the proper Venables of Wichita, she breaks into sobs when kissed by a stranger on the street. But give her eight or nine years, and she’s riding in the middle of the night into an Indian reservation during a mescal ceremony and demanding that her unconscious son be thrown onto her cart so she can bring him home. But of course, yes, we do want to hear about Yancey, despite… or maybe partly because of… his refusal to stick around. He’s idealistic, imposing, and indomitable. Take one particular tent meeting, for instance: in the course of giving a sermon, he manages to work in a self-defense killing—yes, the actual killing, not the story of a killing. And when warned that his pro-Indian editorials are going to get him killed, his reply is simply the unearthly death-scream of the Cherokee. (more…)
Madame Bovary
October 21, 2020 / Leave a comment
Gustave Flaubert
1857
(An unhappily married woman pursues a lifelong quest for the fulfillment of her romantic desires, by any means necessary.)
When a novelist is said to rebel against romanticism, anyone with an imaginative, adventurous, passionate, chivalrous, or spiritual streak may be forgiven for wanting to give it a pass. Such a writer sounds staid and dry, shaking a finger at anything beautiful or enjoyable; or worse, morose—seeing the gray in everything and anxious to spend hundreds of pages sharing it with you. So who is this Flaubert, then? Flaubert with the beautiful descriptions, the engaging plot, the dramatic scenes, the fevered dialogue? With this great author’s help we should make a crucial distinction. Flaubert’s aim is leveled not at imagination or adventure or passion or chivalry or spirituality per se, but rather at the perverse attention romantics often pay to the emotional effects that these things have on us. Just as it is not money itself, despite frequent misquotes, but the love of money, that is said to be the root of all sorts of evil, likewise it is the worship of imagination’s fancy-tickling effects, rather than imagination itself, that novels like Madame Bovary seek to dethrone. Emma Bovary ruins her life because, in Flaubert’s words, she seeks emotions, not landscapes. She has a sentimental rather than artistic temperament, meaning she wants to gobble up beauty rather than appreciate it. The romanticism Flaubert criticizes is selfish, subjective, emotivist. It is that attitude which confuses sensual appeals of luxury with the joys of the heart. It is what says “Give me that” rather than “That is wonderful”. Even a true romantic, a healthy romantic– perhaps especially such a person– can doff the hat to Flaubert for this.
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