He is nothing but war.

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Alongside my reading of The Iliad itself, I have collected a few books from the library that are commentary or retellings. When I think about how many people have translated, interpreted and commented on Homer over the centuries, I realize I can only hope to scratch the surface layer of their insights, and of the poem — or poems, if I go ahead and read The Odyssey as well.

I am really enjoying The Iliad, but at this point in my life I don’t expect to gain enough knowledge to put together a whole essay. I will, however, feel free to share little bits related to that epic that are interesting to me. One of these is from a “Bloom’s Guide,” in which the literary critic Harold Bloom gives an introduction, and assembles a few articles by various other scholars. Bloom is known for his bold statements about culture and literature, and I appreciate that style, which is often refreshingly clarifying. This is an excerpt from the introduction to his guide to The Iliad:

“The heroes of the Hebrew Bible — Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, David — have no affinities whatsoever with Achilles. Even David, the only professional warrior among them, carries on their blessing from Yahweh and so is in a position beyond tragedy, despite his many griefs that terminate in the death of his beloved son, Absalom. You can make a covenant with Yahweh and then trust in the covenant, but no one can trust Zeus. Achilles is half a god, and he says that ‘who trusts himself to the gods will gain their hearing,’ but he knows that the response to such a hearing is likely to be equivocal, and they cannot free him from war, since despite his disillusion he is war and nothing but war. The poetic strength of Achilles is that he is a man. No other purely literary figure is nearly as heroic, or is aesthetically satisfying to us, but Achilles’ otherness, in relation to us, is now his dominant characteristic.”

-Harold Bloom

Real flowers and imaginary creatures.

books, wildflowers, , , , , , , ,

 

It’s the season in California when one is likely to encounter wildfire smoke blowing in from somewhere, hopefully distant. It happened to us this week when I was up at my daughter “Pippin’s” in the way north part of the state, but it wasn’t thick enough to keep us indoors, or prevent us from going on a wildflower walk.

Tolkien

Are you familiar with the custom of the traditional walking tours that C.S. Lewis and some of his friends would take through the English countryside, about a hundred years ago in their case? The first book of the fictional Ransom Trilogy by Lewis opens with the protagonist on a solo walking tour; it sounds like a wonderful kind of recreation. I am reading a book by Humphrey Carpenter titled The Inklings, about some members of this group, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Hugo Dyson, Owen Barfield and others. Lewis’s brother Warren (“Warnie”) was one of them, too.

Here is an excerpt about how it was on these long walks:

Tolkien ought, on the face of it, to have been an ideal companion for Lewis and Barfield on their walking tours, but when he did accompany them, he found that twenty miles or so a day carrying a heavy pack was more than he liked….  Tolkien’s own idea of a walk in the countryside involved frequent stops to examine plants or insects, and this irritated Lewis.  When Tolkien spent some time at Malvern on holiday with the Lewis brothers in 1947, Warnie remarked, “His one fault turned out be that he wouldn’t trot at our pace in harness. He will keep going all day on a walk, but to him, with his botanical and etymological interests, a walk, no matter what its length, is what we would call an extended stroll, while he calls us ‘ruthless walkers.’”

I had made a point of copying that section to read to Pippin and her family this week. The relative ruthlessness of our walking styles is a continual factor to be dealt with when we are on a walk or a hike. Not just their family, but all of my children and extended family. Pippin was remembering as an example our stay in Greece last summer, when three of our group were on the ruthless side of the scale, while Pippin and I as usual lagged behind, looking at one more flower or leaf.

On this recent walk, however, it was just Us Girls. No one was in a hurry, but only two of us were paying much attention to the flora and fauna. Ivy was reading aloud to me from the book at right, Pembrick’s Creaturepedia, and trying not to stumble on the path that wound uphill through a meadow with mossy streams flowing alongside.

She’s been telling me for years about her favorite series of books, The Wingfeather Saga or Tales, by Andrew Peterson. This little encyclopedia of creatures illustrated by Peterson goes along with those stories, and the word descriptions and illustrations are all clever, well written and drawn, and often very amusing. Online I found one page from the book to show you as an example, a more poignant entry that Ivy didn’t read to us.

The narrator tells a story from his youth: While on a campout with a friend, he had foolishly eaten all the available food too soon, and was quite famished. Just then, “I spotted a bright yellow sweeft, aperched on the branch of an apple tree, and though hardly believing myself able to hit such a tiny target [with his slingshot], I knocked it from the tree with a single blow. It landed in a swump of sweefty feathers, dead. I held it in my hands and wept for shame. My father commanded me to honor the bird’s death by eating it, and thus I did….”

In each Creaturepedia entry is a description of how the animal tastes. For the sweeft, it is “Like sorrow.”

We strollers were neither hungry nor hunting that day; Pippin and I were admiring what wildflowers had not faded already, and I saw several that were new to me, including two types of yellow monkeyflowers. (Monkeyflower makes me think of the Creaturepedia again, though there is no animal in there that is named anything like monkey. I found a listing for gunkees, though…)

Though the larger landscape was blurry with smoke, we gave our attention elsewhere, to Ivy’s introduction to fantastical beasts, and making friends with the bright flowers at our feet.

Whispered to a child.

poetry, ,

This poem reminds me of “Life is Beautiful,” the Italian movie by Roberto Benigni, released in 1997. Do you remember it? I thought it was very good, but some people who watched with me did not like the way the father in the movie dealt with his truly heartrending dilemma.

WORDS WHISPERED TO A CHILD UNDER SIEGE

No, we are not going to die.
The sounds you hear
knocking the windows and chipping the paint
from the ceiling, that is a game
the world is playing.
Our task is to crouch in the dark as long as we can
and count the beats of our own hearts.
Good. Like that. Lay your hand
on my heart and I’ll lay mine on yours.
Which one of us wins
is the one who loves the game the most
while it lasts.
Yes, it is going to last.
You can use your ear instead of your hand.
Here, on my heart.
Why is it beating faster? For you. That’s all.
I always wanted you to be born
and so did the world.
No, those aren’t a stranger’s bootsteps in the house.
Yes, I’m here. We’re safe.
Remember chess? Remember
hide-and-seek?
The song your mother sang? Let’s sing that one.
She’s still with us, yes. But you have to sing
without making a sound. She’d like that.
No, those aren’t bootsteps.
Sing. Sing louder.
Those aren’t bootsteps.
Let me show you how I cried when you were born.
Those aren’t bootsteps.
Those aren’t sirens.
Those aren’t flames.
Close your eyes. Like chess. Like hide-and-seek.
When the game is done you get another life.

-Joseph Fasano

From the movie “Life is Beautiful.”

So fancy is the world.

beauty, poetry,

New housemate Bea has been browsing my bookshelves, which I encouraged her to do; it’s always a little sad to think of how lonely all those books are, the ones that have been in the same place for months or years without me even touching them, much less taking them down to look inside. One morning she was reading in a collection of Mary Oliver’s work, and when she discovered this poem below she brought it to me to read, too. We liked the part about stones, because we are great collectors of them. And the singing — and the silence.

THIS WORLD

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open
and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

-Mary Oliver