The Saviours of God, or Black Extra-Cosmic Gulfs

DISCLAIMER: Before you read this article you should know that I worked a lot - for most of the day - 9 to 4 then 5-9. My jobs are tedious, but necessary evils. I do enjoy the work to a degree, but it's mostly tedium. I use this blog to exercise my mind, keep it healthy, and save it from the monotony of my everyday existence.

While sitting at the computer reading an article on Lovecraft, I came across a paragraph that struck me as familiar--almost deja vu.

The abyss is negative space, a symbol of the unknown and a recognition of the existence of that which exceeds our understanding.

It got me thinking about the Cretan writer Nikos Kazantzakis - who is virtually contemporary with Lovecraft. From his book Spiritual Exercises:

WE COME from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.

Both practically forgotten modernists, passed off by modern scholarship as weird, mad or aberrations. Both share a distinct fascination with forces of the unknown, those unexplored regions of the cosmos - coming from within and without - called chaos, maelstrom, abyss or the proverbial "without form". It would be interesting to compare the main characters of these novelists - Kazantzakis's protagonist is usually a hero of Nietzschean ubermensch proportions. He takes on the world and boldly looks into the abyss of the cosmos - depravity, nonsense, existential crises, evil - and laughs in triumph. He posseses a superior, superhuman wisdom learned after harrowing the abyss of the cosmos. Lovecraft's protagonist recoils at his experience of the incomprehensible, his sanity loosened by a torturous, blood-curdling horror worse than St. Anthony's temptation. But this protagonist is scarred by his experience, afraid to relive the terror of memory - now a proverbial maelstrom in his mind - his story told with reticence.

On a side note I can't help but feel that most scholars of Lovecraft suffer from a medieval mindset - glossing his texts with paraphrased, biased readings of his texts, not giving his writing the autonomy it deserves. This is something I remember discussing with Jeremy - most people are afraid to base their ideas, or articles on the texts themselves, averting their focus to outside ideas like a medieval gloss of the Bible. What happened to studying texts for their sakes? Nope, we're back into the Dark Ages, scholarship hinged to the institution, so it prefers to make reference to itself more than the text itself. Looks like the University has come full circle, except it skipped Abelard and went straight to St. Thomas and his followers.

Wanted: Dead or Alive

If anyone reading this blog knows a bit about Lovecraft I wouldn't mind if they got in contact with me. My email is heavymoc@yorku.ca. Perhaps you know a University prof or grad student with Lovecraftian interests? I'm trying to get a sense of what critics are writing about Lovecraft. Other than the journal(s) published by S.T. Joshi: Weird Studies and Lovecraft Studies, I can't find much.

Normally I'm Not

You Are 35% Normal (Occasionally Normal)

You sure do march to your own beat... But you're so weird, people wonder if it's a beat at all You think on a totally different wavelength And it's often a chore to get people to understand you

How Normal Are You?

At The Mountains of Madness

Since I am now finished school until September, I am relishing the free time outside of work to read whatever I please. In this case it's H.P. Lovecraft right now, particularly his lengthy "At The Mountains of Madness" - an Antarctic tale of unspeakable exploration, weird paleontology, and primordial horrors. I am taking the time to bask in the beautiful prose, even its occasional verbosity is a delight to read - Lovecraft is a true unsung hero of writing, who is only starting to get the recognition he is owed. The trouble with reading reviews criticising his writing is they shoehorn him as a verbose, over-the-top writer, instead of taking the time to see that his writing has a sensitive rhythm - no doubt the inspiration for music in horror movies - that depends on three (now common) stages of suspense: (1) the build-up (movie: think of the Jaws orchestra music) (2) heightened suspense (movie: the sharp, screeching violin, drum or trumpet followed by a brief moment of silence) , and the finale (3) ruptured language (movie: the sudden, violent orgasm of a violin, trumpet and drum, scream or onscreen violence).

But most of all I relish the profound, philosophical imagination--everything is a deep metaphor or symbol--he invests in his writing. Vivid prose like this is rare:

Less than a fortnight later we left the last hint of polar land behind us, and thanked heaven that we were clear of a haunted, accursed realm where life and death, space and time, have made black and blasphemous alliances in the unknown epochs since matter first writhed and swam on the planet's scarce-cooled crust. (513) --New American Library edition of Lovecraft: Tales.

His ideas and writing are simply chilling, yet blood-curdling at the same time. Infused with the mythological, evolutionary, and gothic, Lovecraft's tales of horror slice open our mind's imagination of the primordial past and present (1920s-30s) and performs surgery - often a lobotomy. Simply delightful.

Don't make the mistake of countless scholars: dwelling on the biographical to explain the prose. Lovecraft was a racist, no one ever argued otherwise, even his prose has racism in it - in "The Rats in the Walls" one of the characters has a cat named "Nigger-Man". But we cannot only see this as latent authorial racism - Lovecraft's tales are classic metaphors as well as psychological portrayals of the human mind and its inner being - but we must also see it as an interoggation or exploration of a certain psychological moment. Do we condemn Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird for the racism in its pages? No. We study it in high school. The author lived in a racist society, but so did Lovecraft. Why can't we examine them, like Richard Wright's Native Son as capturing a moment in time - which might eventually become a reminder, or relic as important as Homer's Odyssey.

Independence and Partition

Finished my last exam today. It wasn't that hard, though I won't say I aced it. Got back my last essay for South Asian Lit. class that I wrote on R.K. Narayan's Swami and Friends: B+ (78). Overall I think my grades improved as the course progressed - so I'll probably end up with a B+ average.

As my third year comes to an end, I will be working all the time - I start my second job tonight working the evening shift at my mother's workplace. Otherwise I have a 2 page, original essay to write on what I consider to be the best book published between July 1 2004 and June 1 2005 to win a 3-year $1000 scholarship from Chapters. I've selected the new American Library anthology of Lovecraft's tales as my title of choice.

Anyways, gotta scoot off to work.

Last Stand

I've got some last minute studying to do. Exam tomorrow, then straight to work afterwards. I'll post something soon.

ADDENDUM: As I end my studying - it is always my rule to stop studying 12 hours before an exam - I realized one sad thing about being an undergrad. Sometimes I spend so much time worrying about grades, exams or musing with mechanical skill - 'playing the game' - that the literature becomes dross. It loses its true meaning and becomes merely a function or necessary evil, a hump to get over. I find it a bit of a shame my best ideas and realizations happen during and after exam time, especially after struggling so hard all year. But I can say, as I reflect on this year, I learned so much this year - things I'd never encounter by my own volition - and appreciate now. I grouch, groan and gripe about it while I'm in school, but when I have to leave I realize how much I've learned, and how hard my teachers have worked - it's too bad I can't let them truly know how much I've learned. The only way I know how to show my appreciation is to use the knowledge and gifts they gave me: to repay them with the hard effort and respect they so deserved. I always want to let most of my teachers know that their work is not in vain.

Nanaca Crash

When I should be re-reading Tagore's massive book Gora, I find this game linked on Christie's site. My record after three tries is 6296.91 m. Don't worry, I think Christie had 14,921 m. What's yours?

Spelling Bee

It seems I've been drafted into the Chapters spelling bee team. The local bookstores and libraries come together annually at Novotel Hotel in Mississauga to spell regular, quirky, and unheard-of words. Two years ago our store won the event, but since then it's been nothing but shameful defeat. Last year one of our managers, who has an MA in Post-colonial Literature from Queen's University, misspelled 'echelon'. Kinda ironic. He thought there was an 's' in 'echelon'. I'll say no more. Just shake your heads.

Even if we lose I won't complain; I get a free dinner.

Forty Days and Forty Nights

Recently, I vowed to stop buying books in order to save up for more important things. Think of it as a booklover's Lent, a prolongued forty days and forty nights in the wilderness--desert--facing temptation. Except the wilderness is my workplace, a bookstore, and the temptation of Satan is Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code (just kidding!). So I give up books, but as you know some bacchanal (wild, footloose celebration) of sin has to happen beforehand, so I picked up a copy of Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers (for Viv) and the New American library anthology of Lovecraft's Tales (for me). What can I say? It was pay day.

Take Off, Eh?

YOU, my friend, are 100% Canadian! You are what
Canadians are all about! (and that's about. not
a boot.) You, my friend, are AWESOME!


How Canadian Are You?
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Hamburger Helper: Food For Thought?

Moments ago I was just sitting and eating my Hamburger Helper for lunch. So I grabbed a nearby magazine to peruse while I ate. The magazine I picked up was Locus, an American published sci-fi/fantasy mag. I'd back ordered a few issues from the magazine for some important articles written by China Mieville. Well, I came across a paragraph that summed up the importance, I believe, of the New Weird movement:

New Weird, in attempting lovingly to invert, subvert, culvert, and convert the cliches of the fantastic, is both a renunciation and a return. Hackneyed fantasy is a betrayal of the very fantastic it pretends to represent, and it is because New Weird surrenders to the fantastic that it wants to rescue it from itself.

It strikes me, even more after reading Heng's Empire of Magic, that Mieville is right. Fantasy--rooted in medieval romance--is anchored in history and trauma, held together by the imaginary or fantastic. He calls New Weird "post Seattle fiction", an interesting thought. It is political literature, exploring the politics of everything: the city, sex, race, architecture, anarchy, activism, hybridity, gender, power.

As Mieville has argued, and I believe too, the modern conception of fantasy has been supplanted by Tolkien's ahistorical, allegorical fairy-story--a simulacrum. No trace of the modern world (outside of allegory) exists in Tolkien, no doubt a symptom of his maxim of Escape from the modern world. Rural, bucolic = good, Urban, mechanistic = bad. This is the classic cliche of fantasy. So I find it is interesting how Mieville reminds me of Byron, who harkened to the Medieval and Renaissance Romances and Epics to evaluate his own world. It is as Mieville says, both a "renunciation and a return" of medieval conceptions of romance. Looking at his first novel, King Rat, Mieville sets his novel in the CITY, anathema for Tolkien-esque fantasy, but bases it on the myth of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. His conceptions of monstrosity, too, come straight out of medieval culture. The juxtaposition of pre-capitalist, medieval tropes to capitalist, modern equivalents is neat (The flute meets its modern equivalent in Drum'N'Bass music).

Well I've let myself get off-track from my studying, re-reading Difficult Daughters for Post-colonial South Asian Literature.

Davyth's Book Club

My apologies for all the academic blather I've been posting lately. Luckily I'll be starting work at two jobs after exams, so the last thing on my mind will be academic dross. I might offer an infrequent post about a book I'm reading, but otherwise I'll be busy working. My self-induced summer reading list is near completion, ranging from Chaucer to McLuhan to Gaiman. The total of books is sitting around 15 right now. I'm open for recommendations, too. Cheers.

My recommendations: China Mieville's King Rat and John R. Clark's Modern Satiric Grotesque: And Its Traditions.

The Great Escape

At this point I like Tolkien's urge to escape from world weariness into fantasy, or 'fairy stories' as he calls them. I'm sick of exams right now, even though I've only written two . Rather I should say I'm sick of ventriloquism, or seeing and feeling good knowledge fall prey to mass production--becoming tawdry imitations. The sad part is I'm guilty of contributing to the system--by regurgitating knowledge with an apathetic mindset at my history exam, almost like a hack telemarketer or salesmen. For the exam I wrote what I consider a penny epic: ranging from the Carolingian Period (8th/9th) to the beginnings of the Indsturial Revolution (circa 18th century). What few good issues I could raise I learned from reading outside of the course--Heng's Empire of Magic and Viv's Caribbean History course. So I focused on various ideas of nationalism and economy. My basic ideas were : (1) Charlemagne's attempt to revive the Roman Empire, and the connections he forged with Rome/Italy. (2) Urban II's militant attempt to unite Christendom with the Crusades, resulting in new everything--trade routes, goods, cultural experiences with the Mediterranean AND Islam. (3) The stumble, or dip in the fourteenth century--Black Plague and famine, into civil wars in the fifteenth--like the War of the Roses--that nearly sundered Europe. (4) The discovery of the New World, which basically saved the European economy, forging new ideas of nationalism and economy--yet seeming like an extension of the Crusades--at the expense of natives as Europeans were simultaneously tearing each other apart with the Reformation-inspired wars, etc.

With those wild, scattered thoughts I give you the words of the master of golden age fantasy from "On Fairy Stories". This tract is his greatest gift--gospel for 'fantasy' writers--and blackest plague for the post-modern world:

But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium. Before we reach such states we need recovery. We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses— and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.

ADDENDUM: It's interesting to compare Tolkien's need for a bucolic rural paradise--Eden to the subject of this brilliant book: The Modern Satiric Grotesque: And Its Traditions by J.R. Clark. The book is simply brilliant. I'd say it is to satiric and grotesque literature what Maureen Quilligan's brilliant book: Language of Allegory is to Allegory. So where do we escape now--the loo?

No Kidding Einstein!

There won't be much other than brief posts, and amusing surveys for this blog in the next while. My brain needs an intellectual vacation.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

School's (Almost) Out For Summer

I finished my exam today for Medieval and Early Modern Europe class. So expect a reasonable post soon, perhaps tomorrow after I clear my head.

We Come From A Dark Abyss

I wish I had time to read this: Nikos Kazantzakis's "Spiritual Exercises: Saviours of God", but I have to go shortly.

Exercising His Hyundais

One Hundred Years of Solitude x10

With two days left before I write my next long and overdue exam, I've realized how much I groan at the thought. It is not the exam so much as the gap, almost a lacuna of time in my life gone missing--an absence, or void produced by studying. I know, I shouldn't complain. I don't have a life anyways. But the prospect of recounting 1000+ years of history, roughly from the time of Augustine to the Carolingian to Enlightenment period(s), scares the carp out of me. Too many Richards, Charles and Henrys to my own liking. But I know I'll study, albeit begrudgingly. Oh well. Wish me luck.

Near Hillside, and the Elmcrest

You Are An Elm Tree

You are easygoing and a pleasure to be around. Good looking, you have a pleasant shape and tasteful clothes. You demand little in others, but you tend not to forgive their mistakes. Dominant, you like to lead and enjoy making decisions for others. Overall, you are cheerful, honest, noble, generous, and funny.

What is Your Celtic Horoscope?

To You, Whoever You Are, Who May Have This Book In Your Possession

Tonight I thought I'd post a brief excerpt from a much loved mystical, medieval text: The Cloud of Unknowing.

This darkness and cloud is always between you and your God, no matter what you do, and it prevents you from seeing him clearly by the light of understanding in your reason, and from experiencing him in sweetness of love in your affection. So set yourself to rest in this darkness as long as you can, always crying out after him whom you love. For if you are to experience him or to see him at all, insofar as it is possible here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness.

I offer this for your mind's pleasure - contemplation, meditation and musing.

My Brain

Your Brain is 53.33% Female, 46.67% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Back in the Day.

In 1983 (the year you were born)

Ronald Reagan is president of the US Sally Ride becomes the first American woman to travel in space Marines are killed when a TNT laden suicide terrorists blows up Marine headquarters at Beirut International Airport US Marines and Rangers invade the island of Grenada and evacuate hundreds of US citizens The Soviets shoot down Korean Airlines flight 007 The Internet Domain Name System was invented by Paul Mockapetris Ronald Wilson Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King Day Baltimore Orioles win the World Series Washington Redskins win Superbowl XVII New York Islanders win the Stanley Cup Return of the Jedi is the top grossing film "Every Breath You Take" by The Police spends the most time at the top of US charts The A-Team and Webster premiere

What Happened the Year You Were Born?

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Studying Hard For My Exams

To His Coy Mistress

Clark Ashton Smith "All Is Dross That Is Not Helena" 1911.

What wistful lover has not mused upon
The waste of years that never knew his love!
And, wanting her once more, the seasons prove
But dearth and draff to feed oblivion.

I deem that all is empty, in my turn,
Beyond your tender arms, your tender heart:
Void and deviceless are the nets of art,
And song and silence are of one concern,

Dearer than Paphos' joy, or Lethe's peace!
In you alone are solace and surcease
Of antenatal dolor, ancient wrong.

You are the supreme boon, the only good
To one, who finds despair in solitude,
And weariness of heart amid the throng.

Bleed Like Me

While I was at work, a co-worker of mine happened to bring these two CDs with him. Neither one is released in Canada yet, but readily available in the UK. So I snagged a copy of each, as well as an old Cranberries album. Otherwise I started studying for my Medieval and Modern Europe history exam next week. It's not as easy as studying for Shakespeare say, mainly because I haven't read half of the material. No doubt the material, though it should be valuable, is boring--like the teachers who teach it. I know, it's a bit immature on my part but I wish I could convince myself that I'm not just digesting dates and names. Alright, so I can't justify my laziness--I'm lazy, I admit it. I can be like the rest of my peers who take this course and could care less.

I was reading this book on the right, Empire of Magic, about the rise of the 'romance' in the medieval era. While it is a literary book, there is also much history in it, too. I enjoy reading this book, and savour the history, so I'm wondering why I'm having trouble studying for my history exam. Suggestions?

He Envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas

I thought it'd be funny to post a short, very terse story written by Neil Gaiman for the amusement of readers. It's called "Nicholas Was..."

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.
The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.
Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.
He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.
Ho.
Ho.
Ho.
--pg.48 from Neil Gaiman's collection Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions.

For those who squeeled with excitement over these clever words I recommend Neverwhere, American Gods and the Sandman graphic novels. Gaiman delights in creating a modern mythology, like Peake, with older, almost cliche tropes and characters BUT re-cast in a modern aesthetic. As Viv pointed out in a post a while back, there's a scene in American Gods reminiscent of Ballard's Crash--where the protagonist, Shadow's wife is killed in a car crash while performing fellatio on another man--almost a Futurist wet dream of cars, libido and head-on crashes straight out of Marinetti's "Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism". Trust me, it's worth it when near the end of the novel there is an apocalyptic, epic battle of Titans--amongst Ancient Gods (Norse, Egyptian, etc.)--to win human sacrifices to their cause. Just writing about it makes me want to re-read it, but I have a Medieval and Modern Europe exam to study for. Oh well. Cheers.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

I tried posting yesterday, however, it seems blogger.com was 'indisposed'. Perhaps there was a clog of traffic related to the pope's death and/or funeral?

As I was drawing near to the end of Mervyn Peake's beautiful, elegiac Titus Groan, I came across a striking passage in the novel. It seemed to paint a verbal picture using a particular artistic technique of an early twentieth century art movement: Futurism. At the time, yesterday, I did not realize the amazing discovery I had made. However, I searched a few dissertations available in electronic format to see if any of these 'experts' had noted this. After skimming over two papers I found what I was looking for in a U of T PhD dissertation written almost 20 years ago by Tanya J. Gardiner-Scott. Her introduction caught my attention immediately--as any good intro should--and I found a key to unlock the ideas in my mind. She wrote: "To Mervyn Peake, writing and drawing were two aspects of the same creativity, and he switched from the one to the other with ease during the course of his creative life."

It occured to me that Peake was using artistic techniques in his writing and descriptions, which would explain his unique style and idiom. While he was using Gothic and Romantic tropes and their subjects, he brought a modern artistic flair to create his own grotesque, satiric, dreary tale. Compared to Tolkien, whose tales had a tinge of romantic, escapist fairy-tales at best; Peake, like any true artist of his era, witnessed and painted a portrait of the horrific effect of the Second World War. Read Tolkien's "On Fairy Tales"--his mentality is pure, naive escapism into a fairy-tale past, which will cure the modern man's wounded soul. Peake knew that the world would neither escape nor recover from the scaring horror--as he was among the first to liberate the Concentration Camps he knew first hand of the demonic horrors of the War. I believe his novels--the Gormenghast trilogy--drew upon the Gothic and Romantic literary tropes and an artist's painterly technique to express this sense in a truly modern epic. He was also a professional artist, no doubt familiar with all major art developments. He was painting a picture with words. No doubt Gormenghast seems like a typical Gothic on the surface, but Peake seems to paint over this with a grotesque, satiric, artistic wit. Peake paints an extra layer of chiaroscuro over the already gloomy Gothic landscape, with a modern brushstroke.

Wow. I never meant to write that much--it just came to me. Well, here is the passage that inspired it all:

Flay, nonplussed for the moment, watched in fascinated horror the rapid succession of faces which the swivelling of Swelter conduced; faces of which he had hundreds; appearing and reappearing at high speed (with an equal number of rear-views of the huge head, interlarded, in all literalness). The whirr of steel was approaching rapidly. The rotation was too speedy for him to strike between the cycles, nor was his reach long enough were he to stand his ground. (341)

Now look at these Futurist and Dada paintings: Severini's Dynamism of a Dancer, Boccioni's States of Mind: Those Who Go, and Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. Take note of Boccioni's Second Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting, too. The Futurists developed the modern technique to capture motion in their art using a modified Cubist technique of multiple, fragmented, layered perspectives--as advocated in the Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism written by F.T. Marinetti in 1909. It was a poetic idea that was later developed into an artistic technique, so it is interesting to see how Peake develops this painterly technique into his own masterpiece prose.

Whenever I sit down to read Peake I see more than just words on a page. I see an animated painting, page after page in my imagination -- a dynamic brushstroke forever in a self-conscious motion (Futurist and whatever other Artistic) evoked by a painterly prose.

Something To Remember, That: Cats For Missiles

I will gladly purchase for the person who can guess where I got today's title, a pitcher of beer. This is no joke, it's a true quotation from a book I'm reading - a sign of true satiric wit, reminiscent of Swift.

Merchant of Venison

Apparently pigs do fly. I thought the whole Merchant of Venison shtick was a mere joke. It brings a whole new meaning to the Clown's words: "This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs." A Canadian sense of irony?

Embassy of Death

I wrote the exam for Shakespeare class today, and what a dreadful performance did I give. I finished half an hour early, fed up with what I had written for my second and final essay portion on the "theme of kingship and usurpation" in tragedy and history plays. I looked at Hamlet and Titus Andronicus for tragedy, and Richard 3 and Henry IV Pt.1 for history. For the first section I wrote on the Romance genre, discussing how every ending in a Romance play seemingly undercuts the three virtues of "forgiveness, redemption, and justice." I examined Cymbeline and The Tempest.

In case you're interested the questions I answered were as follows:

Part 1 #3 - Romance present comic human experience in a beautiful world, a place that embraces forgiveness, redemption, and justice. And yet, comic endings seem always to be undercut by the suggestion that all of these characteristics are undercut and challenged. Discuss.

Part 2 #3 - Consider the theme of kingship and usurpation and compare and contrast how it is treated in any two of the following genres: history, tragedy, comedy, romance.

I think I did well on the first part, but bombed the second part. Hence afterwards I went straight to The Absinthe and had a pint for pint's sake. After getting back my essay, gawd did I need it. I got a B+ (76) on my final paper, which I think is a fair mark. However, one of the comments my TA made was blatantly wrong--saying I didn't mention the critics whatsoever after page 3, when in fact I mention these two "absent" critics on page 5 and 6.....GEEEZE. Would it be worth protesting? Probably not. Here's the paper. Check for yourself. Apparently I don't make mention of the critics West and Edwards after each summary of their argument, which is not true. Likewise my TA didn't like the polemic against Greenblatt in my paper--said I should avoid "polemical language". Oh well. Good riddance. Cheers, indeed. Cheers.

Max Ernst's "Temptation of Saint Anthony"

Since I finally came across a better copy of this painting, I thought I'd re-post it with added thoughts. As you can guess, I love this painting--its effect, however, I've never been able to explain. There's something cartoonish about the image--particularly Saint Anthony--and the monsters seem horrific: pawing, tearing, torturing and crawling over the Saint with their vorpal tendrils. Yet there is something oddly robotic, unnatural about the setting--the landscape fashioned with phobia: spider webs, monstrous edifices, stark eroticism seeming to assault Anthony. Even the pool seems polluted with disgust and revulsion. I love those ominous clouds, creeping and crawling, seeming to engulf the sky with an eerie-ness. This painting evokes the deepest inner horrors, like a Lovecraft story--I can't help but feel there is a connection between the Surrealists and the Weird Pulp writers. An inkling, right or wrong?

Wallowing In A Pig-Sty

I just finished re-reading Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice--though I much prefer the dubbed version: The Merchant of Venison with clever lines like "This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs." It brings a whole new meaning to that pound of flesh.

To make up for this travesty I offer this interesting article.

I Have A Bulge In My Bookcase

If I wasn't so poor from buying books related to my studies, I'd gladly buy this. Looks like I'll have to stick with borrowing it from work--after exams. I tried reading it at the end of the semester, however I did avow to do well on my exams. Patience is a virtue, after all. One that I ought to learn, too. Besides I just bought a used copy of the Vision of Piers Plowmen to add to my growing list of 'to-read' books for after exams - and after my Medieval Religious Drama and Visions course I have no excuse. I have started piling these books from my list onto a shelf, ranging from Nikos Kazantzakis's monumental work The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (I vowed to read this massive 800 page modernist epic two summers ago but I kept digressing into his more popular works) to other greats like The Monk, Romance of the Rose, Faerie Queene and the Gormenghast novels, which I am reading as we speak.

Well, I've reviewed Henry IV Pt. 1 and Romeo and Juliet for my Shakespeare exam this Wednesday afternoon. Later I begin re-reading Merchant of Venice. Cheers.

ADDENDUM: I finally got my hard copy of Maureen Quilligan's Language of Allegory in the mail.

Hot On The Trail

While I was re-reading Henry IV Pt. 1 today I came to realize the similarities between Hotspur and Hamlet. The particular passage that caught my attention was Act 4 Scene 3 in Henry IV Pt.1 where Hotspur unloads his grievances to Sir Blunt, King Henry's agent. I'll admit I was looking for evidence, in the vein of G. Wilson Knight, to prove that a character commonly held as a villain such as Hotspur could be seen as a hero, or vice-versa As it turned out when I read this passage it resonated with the plot in Hamlet. Is not Hotspur to Henry IV/Prince Harry what Hamlet is to Claudius/Gertrude? I'm not saying that they are exactly the same, but it is interesting to see how a similar relationship is played out in two different genres. As our exam is not open-book like last year, we are expected to draw connections across genres, in advance. I think it is quite original, so I'll stick with it. Perhaps later I'll draw up a chart comparing the two figures: Hotspur and Hamlet.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I sat down to read T.S. Eliot for the first time--yes, yes, shame on me, I know--from the Poetry anthology Jeremy was kind enough to give to me...and now I see why Jeremy loves Eliot and Viv says I am like T.S. Eliot...

from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (lines 111-119)

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

This poem seems like a shadow both above and beneath me--a spectral reflection and shadow of me, grounded. Wow. I'm speechless. Simple yet beautiful.

Max Ernst's "Eye of Silence"

Studies In Weird Fiction

Once again, when I should be studying I stumble upon a brilliant, terse piece of writing, in this case, in a review. In S.T. Joshi's review of Sherry Austin's "Mariah of the Spirits and Other Southern Ghost Stories" from the journal Studies in Weird Fiction, he remarks:

“A ghost is chiefly a metaphor—a symbol for some human drama whose plangency is enhanced by the evocation of the supernatural."

Magnificent, simply beautiful. I couldn't have said it better, though I wish I had. My brain is stirring with delight, almost giddiness--or delirium. I know I keep harping on the supernatural, especial to Hamlet, but I think it's important because these ideas resonate even with Shakespeare. There has always been a significant role for the supernatural, monstrous, aberrant, disabled, 'other' to play in literature. I can't shake it off for there is so much undiscovered truth in them. Even when I read The Tempest now I think of David William's groundbraking book Deformed Discourse and the lore of the monstrous whenever I read Caliban--but no one else sees it because they haven't read the book. I had a heated debate over this idea in Shakespeare tutorial a few weeks ago when a post-colonial slanted classmate insisted that Caliban HAD to be non-white after watching a dramatisation of the play. It was ludicrous in my mind to shoehorn a brilliant figure like Caliban into 'race', and even more ludicrous when she accused me of being racist after I argued that hers was a modern interpretation--which I found comical because she was the one being racist. Oh how ignorant people are of what they project in their thoughts, words and answers!

I'm under the impression that most people thought, especially my post-colonialist classmate, since I kept raising biblical issues found in Shakespeare's plays, I was obviously ignorant of post-colonial theories--oh how ignorant. While I admit post-colonial theory is not my field, I am well aware of the typical post-colonial take and/or mindset--especially of The Tempest. When I suggested we should examine what the words themselves written in SHAKESPEARE's play suggest rather than falling back on the simplistic (yes, simplistic) conceptions of genre (romance, etc.), most of my classmates got scared at the idea of thinking for themselves, i.e. without a crutch. Why do I feel like I'm in the Matrix? Probably because I feel like everyone is floating, enslaved in their protoplasmic tubes, happy as a pig in shit...

On that note, I'll end this rant now.