Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Octavio Paz: Poemas Prontos

Allow me to begin by saying that I am out of my depth here. I don't mean to say that the Spanish is beyond me, although it took a while to get used to Paz' vocabulary. His word choice is more varied and precise than either Lorca's or Borges', and I have a feeling some of the subtlety is lost on me. Aside from that minor difficulty, I have to say that I could never write this well. Tennyson, Wordsworth, Borges--I could, under the right circumstances, write what they have written. Not Paz. Oh boy, this is universe-class stuff.

Take, to begin with, his imagery. "Tus hombros tienen la marca de los dientes de amor" (Semillas Para un Himno). Wow! Or, "Cataratas de abejas sobre los ojos mal cerrados" (Mutra). Where would a person come up with this stuff? And it packs every line. I was constantly out of breath with awe at his poetic choices and humbled at the ease with which he amazed me.

And his thematic fearlessness is equally amazing. For Paz, the day in its infinite variety represents the entirety of human experience. While, for most people, the night is simply what separates the days, for Paz it is the opposite. The day represents the "fulgor de agua astancada donde flotan / pequenas [sorry, no tilde] alegrias" (Mascaras del Alba). The day is stagnant, the solitary instant which doesn't end, change, or progress. This is not to say that it is insignificant, merely that it does not serve the function we might ascribe to it. The night, on the other hand, is where the action is. "Es un combate a muerte de inmortales," the shards of which "se buscan en mi frente." (El Rio). All night, the poet drowns in blood, ink, and the alphabet, which become synonomous with one another, the result of which combat is that"el papel se cubra de astros y sea el poema un bosque de palabras enlazadas" (El Rio). The crystal forest which the poem becomes is the only way to escape the perpetual conflict between stagnant day and overwhelming night. We must "descrifar el tatuaje de la noche y mirar cara a cara al mediodia y arrancarla su mascara" (El Cantaro Roto).

And the only worthy path is to"merece lo que suenas," to deserve your dream (Hacia el Poema).

Finished three books in one day. And you just thought I was lazy . . .

Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

Here is a perfect example of what happens when an author gets too big for his britches. Just as Thomas Paine produced a work of genius and promptly became an obnoxiously self-important boor, so Lewis Carroll seems to have taken the success and masterfullness of his first Alice book too seriously and forced a level of literariness on his second book which makes it seem self-conscious and forced. Part of the delight in Wonderland, for me, comes from it's utterly unpretentious lack of structure or explanation. Alice trips dreamily from one scene to the next without exposition and, more importantly, without ever saying that she is in a dream world (although it is understood). The indelible characters, the fabulous puzzles and wordplay, take most of their allure from their complete whimsy.

Not so with Through the Looking Glass. Alice's environment shifts about her very heavyhandedly, as though Carroll is going to some effort in making his story more accurately represent a dreaming state. Also, there is a sense of continuity in the conceit of the chess game that leaves less to the reader's imagination. Perhaps this is why, with the possible esception of the White Knight, all of the characters in the latter Alice volume are quite forgettable. And the White Knight's nice characterization seems to come simply from the moral attached to Alice's encounter with him. In the person of the aging caballero, Charles Dodgson (not Carroll) reminds Alice Liddell, the intended audience, that there is virtue in befriending a pathetic elderly admirer. What a giveaway.

1 Maccabees

Is it possible that the Bible is a treatise on the Tragic Flaw? If so, it is no wonder that this book did not make it into the final canon. The family Maccabeus has none of the dramatic character flaws that make David (lust), Noah (intemperance), Moses (pride), and Paul (just a jerk) such formidable figures. In fact, with the exception of Jesus (open to debate) and Daniel (as you may know, one of my favorites), the heroes of the Bible all seem to suffer from some sort of Greek Theater complex, and are responsible for their own downfall. Not so with the family Maccabeus. Each brother (and presumably, as the narrative continues in 2-4 Maccabees, grandsons et al) is an upright and valorous defender of Truth whose end has nothing to do with his own faults. Booring.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Peter J. Gomes: The Good Book

Reading this book served a double purpose. In the first place, my reading group has placed it upon the altar to be pecked at like a wounded chicken, on top of which I volunteered to lead the discussion on chapters 12-14. Of course, this predicated my actually reading the book, so I did.

In the second, and more relevant place, however, I am still in the process of baking a theology from scratch, (a metaphor of which I'm getting sick), and one of the central questions is, of course, "How much weight to grant the Bible?" My upbringing brought with it a substantial body of Biblical knowledge, although weighted heavily on the side of right-wing morals. As I read the Bible with an open mind for the first time (currently stumbling through 1 Maccabees), I wonder whether to read it as another piece of literature, or to cut some extra slack under the premise that it is inspired in some way. This is the question Gomes purports to answer.

He suggests that the Bible reader approach the text with an intense scholarly scrutiny of difficult texts (homsexuality, Women, etc.) and broad appreciation of the Bible's larger themes (suffering, evil, and temptation). I appreciate his approach, and find it a nice balance of what he calls "Biblical idolatry," that is, worship of the text rather than of God, and strict literary criticism. In practice, however, Gomes presents a watery version of the text that is guilty of the same sort of selective scholarship of which he accuses more conservative parties. He presents a compelling case that homosexuality is not condemned in the Bible, merely ignored, but what help is that to a homosexual man who wants to take something away with him from the text?

In short, I am no closer, after reading this book, to deciding what to do with the Bible. I suppose I'll keep reading it, and let it decide for itself.

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Reading Uphill Lately

I've been readin things! Honest!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: Juvenilia

I'm not sure whether this collection of Tennyson's poetry is genuinely worse, or if I simply have been in a critical mood. No matter; here's my reaction. The inconsistent meter which seems to contribute to Tennyson's later works seems simply lazy here. With the possible exception of "Mariana," the first lines of which every gay man will recognize, not much here kept my eye. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see the seeds of Tennyson's characteristic themes, brotherly love and the poetic mind, in such poems as "The Gardener's Daughter," and the revealingly titled, "The Poet's Mind."

Bel and the Dragon, Susanna

These apocryphal books are a nice, if merengue in their insubstantiality, addition to the story of Daniel, who seems rather poorly characterized in his own book. Nonetheless, I can't quite give them credence. They clearly don't belong to the same author as that book, and have an almost renaissance feel to them.