"A Sound in the Night" by Thomas Hardy

Woodsford Castle (c) Mike Searle

Here is another one of my favorite poems by Thomas Hardy.  This well-crafted macabre poem even features a spooky castle on a cold, dark, and stormy night.  Woodsford Castle is considered an excellent example of a fortified medieval manor house of the mid-14th Century.  The construction of Woodsford Castle was completed in 1370, and it is located just a few miles south of Dorchester in Dorset County, in the heart of the 'Wessex' countryside that Thomas Hardy lived in and wrote about in much of his fiction and poetry.  In fact, Hardy's builder father, Thomas Hardy, Sr., was involved in an extensive restoration effort at Woodsford Castle in 1850.  One simply has to imagine that the ten-year-old Hardy would have accompanied his father to the castle during the restoration and must have prowled about all of the nooks and crannies of this old building.

A Sound in the Night
(Woodsford Castle: 17--)

"What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband?--
What is it sounds in this house so eerily?
It seems to be a woman's voice: each little while I hear it,
And it much troubles me!"

''Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:
Letting fancies worry thee!--sure 'tis a foolish thing,
When we were on'y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,
And now it's but evening.'

'Yet seems it still a woman's voice outside the castle, husband,
And 'tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.
Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure
Ere ever thou sawest my face?'

'It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,
If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,
Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatches
Like a creature that sighs and mopes.'

'Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,
And it saddens me much that so piteous a sound
On this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrow
Should so ghost-like wander round!'

'To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,
And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,
And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,
And throw the light over the moor.'

He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber,
And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight,
And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern,
And go out into the night.

She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,
And his voice as he unclothed him: "'Twas nothing, as I said,
But the nor'-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath'art the river,
And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head."

"Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,
Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,
The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,
Why is it silent now?

"And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,
And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,
And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,
And thy breath as if hard to get?"

He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing,
Then started up and walked about the room resentfully:
"O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded,
Why castedst thou thy spells on me?

"There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:
She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,
As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e'en the cry you heard, wife,
But she will cry no more!

"And now I can't abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on't,
This farmstead once a castle: I'll get me straight away!"
He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,
And went ere the dawn turned day.

They found a woman's body at a spot called Rocky Shallow,
Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground,
And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly
  known her,
But he could not be found.

And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,
And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,
And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,
And sometimes an infant's moan.

***
A Sound in the Night was published by Hardy in 1922 in a volume of poetry entitled Late Lyrics and Earlier.

"A Trampwoman's Tragedy" By Thomas Hardy

A Trampwoman’s Tragedy

                                I

From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,
The livelong day,
We beat afoot the northward way
We had travelled times before.
The sun-blaze burning on our backs,
Our shoulders sticking to our packs,
By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks
We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

                                 II

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,
We jaunted on, —
My fancy-man, and jeering John,
And Mother Lee, and I.
And, as the sun drew down to west,
We climbed the toilsome Polden crest,
And saw, of landskip sights the best,
The inn that beamed thereby.

                                 III

Ay, side by side
Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,
And where the Parret ran.
We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,
Been stung by every Marshwood midge,
I and my fancy-man.

                                 IV

Lone inns we loved, my man and I,
My man and I;
'King's Stag', 'Windwhistle' high and dry,
'The Horse' on Hintock Green,
The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap,
'The Hut', renowned on Bredy Knap,
And many another wayside tap
Where folk might sit unseen.

                                 V

O deadly day,
O deadly day! —
I teased my fancy man in play
And wanton idleness.
I walked alongside jeering John,
I laid his hand my waist upon;
I would not bend my glances on
My lover's dark distress.

                                 VI

Thus Poldon top at last we won,
At last we won,
And gained the inn at sink of sun
Far-famed as 'Marshal's Elm'.
Beneath us figured tor and lea,
From Mendip to the western sea —
I doubt if any finer sight there be
Within this royal realm.

                                 VII

Inside the settle all a-row —
All four a-row
We sat, I next to John, to show
That he had wooed and won.
And then he took me on his knee,
And swore it was his turn to be
My favoured mate, and Mother Lee
Passed to my former one.

                                 VIII

Then in a voice I had never heard,
I had never heard,
My only love to me: 'One word,
My lady, if you please!
Whose is the child you are like to bear? —
His? After all my months o' care?'
Gods knows 'twas not! But, O despair!
I nodded — still to tease.

                                 IX

Then he sprung, and with his knife —
And with his knife,
He let out jeering Johnny's life,
Yes; there at set of sun.
The slant ray through the window nigh
Gilded John's blood and glazing eye,
Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I
Knew that the deed was done.

                                 X

The taverns tell the gloomy tale,
The gloomy tale,
How that at Ivel-Chester jail
My love, my sweetheart swung;
Though stained till now by no misdeed
Save one horse ta'en in time of need;
(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed
Ere his last fling he flung.)

                                 XI

Thereaft I walked the world alone
Alone, alone!
On his death-day I gave my groan
And dropt his dead-born child.
'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,
None tending me; for Mother Lee
Had died at Glaston, leaving me
Unfriended on the wild.

                                 XII

And in the night as I lay weak,
As I lay weak,
The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
The red moon low declined —
The ghost of him I'd die to kiss
Rose up and said: 'Ah, tell me this!
Was the child mine, or was it his?
Speak, that I my rest may find!'

                                 XIII

O doubt but I told him then,

I told him then,

That I had kept me from all men

Since we joined lips and swore.

Whereat he smiled, and thinned away

As the wind stirred to call up day. . .

--'Tis past! And here alone I stray
Haunting the Western Moor.

***

NOTES--

Stanza I 

Fosseway - The "Fosse Way" a very straight Roman road that runs from southwest England all the way up to Lincoln, a distance of over 180 miles.  The Somerset portion of the Fosse Way actually touches Windwhistle, mentioned in the poem.

Stanza II

Fancy-man - common-law husband, or a man living off the earnings of a prostitute. 

Landskip - archaic form of "landscape," descriptive of inland scenery (from 17th c. Dutch painting).

Stanza III 

Blackmoor - This, like most of the other places mentioned, is in south-west England, especially Dorset. Blackmore Vale (Valley) is just beyond the Dorset Uplands, north-west of Dorchester. 

Marshwood midge - a stinging, gnat-like insect.

Stanza IV 

King's Stag, Windwhistle, The Horse - the names of inns located along the Fosse Way.  Hardy's reference to the "Windwhistle high and dry" refers to its location on top of a hill and had no well and only alcohol to drink.

Stanza VI 

Tor and lea - The Tor at Glastonbury is a medieval watchtower on a steep incline known as Tor Hill. "Lea" means "a tract of open ground."

Stanza VII 

Settle - a wooden bench with high back and arms.

Stanza X 

Blue Jimmy - a British horse-thief of some renown.

Stanza XI 

Glaston - Glastonbury, an ancient town in southwestern England famous for its abbey.

***

Thomas Hardy and his bicycle

It is October, and fall is upon us.  I thought it might be fun to post a few of Thomas Hardy's narrative poems that are somewhat spooky or border on the macabre, and A Trampwoman's Tragedy certainly qualifies on both counts.  Apparently, Hardy had taken a bicycle ride up around Glastonbury in Somerset County and had heard a story about a woman named Mary Ann Taylor, and when he returned to his home (Max Gate) in Dorset he crafted this poem in 1902 and submitted it for publication to the Cornhill Magazine for publication.  It was rejected as "unsuitable for a family periodical".  It was, however, published in the North American Review in the November 1903 issue.  Hardy came to believe that A Trampwoman's Tragedy was "upon the whole his most successful poem", and included it among his collection of poems entitled Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses published in 1909.  

[The black and white photograph at the top of the post is an image that I took in 2007 on a cold and blustery day on Tehachapi Pass in the southern Sierras east of Bakersfield, California.  It very much reminds me of some of the landscapes Hardy describes in this poem.]

"At a Pause in a Country Dance" By Thomas Hardy

At a Pause in a Country Dance
(Middle of Last Century)

THEY stood at the foot of the figure,
And panted: they'd danced it down through--
That 'Dashing White Serjeant' they loved so:--
A window, uncurtained, was nigh them
That end of the room. Thence in view

Outside it a valley updrew,
Where the frozen moon lit frozen snow:
At the furthermost reach of the valley
A light from the window shone low.
'They are inside that window,' said she,

As she looked, 'They sit up there for me;
And baby is sleeping there, too.'
He glanced. 'Yes,' he said. 'Never mind,
Let's foot our way up again; do!
And dance down the line as before.

Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1883

What's the world to us, meeting once more!'
'--Not much, when your husband full trusts you,
And thinks the child his that I bore!'
He was silent. The fiddlers six-eighted
With even more passionate vigour.

The pair swept again up the figure,
The child's cuckoo-father and she,
And the next couples threaded below,
And the twain wove their way to the top
Of 'The Dashing White Serjeant' they loved so,
Restarting: right, left, to and fro.

--From the homestead, seen yon, the small glow
Still adventured forth over the white,
Where the child still slept, unknowing who sired it,
In the cradle of wicker tucked tight,
And its grandparents, nodding, admired it
In elbow chairs through the slow night.

***

Edel Rodriguez, NY Times

I love Thomas Hardy's poetry on so many levels, and this poem is just such a fine example.  First, Hardy is incredibly adept at portraying the 'country rustics'--the people--of his beloved Dorset; and, in fact, much of his fiction and poetry centers upon this part of southwestern England that he called "Wessex".  The people he writes about are fun-loving, earthy, and incredibly connected to the landscape around them--the farms and fields, the forests and orchards, the rolling hills, the villages and towns, and the streams and rivers.

Hardy, as many of you know, is a master story-teller; who absolutely excelled at his craft, and it doesn't matter if it is one of his poems, a short story, or one of his famous novels--Hardy can can tell a tale.  Hardy typically takes his reader to the heart of the matter--and it is generally an unbridled mix of passion and joy, sadness and grief, and sometimes even a touch of the macabre.  Somehow, Hardy was able to unerringly hone in on the fabric of Life and what it is that we like to think of as the 'total human experience'.  And it was in that dynamic between a man and a woman that Hardy truly found ever so much to write about.  I have to think that "At a Pause in a Country Dance" was spawned from the fond memories Hardy had of accompanying his father to country dances where they both played the fiddle for the dancers.  Perhaps there's even a remnant of some bit of idle gossip he heard whilst at one of these dances.  Who knows?  It is simply a wonderful example of the brilliant little poetic vignettes that Hardy was so fond of writing. 

["At a Pause in a Country Dance" was published in a collection entitled Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles in 1925, three years before Hardy's death in 1928]

My Top "Great Reads" In 2011--The ProSe Awards

I spent the weekend going through all of my bookshelves, culling out books for donation to the public library, and doing some major shelf organization/reorganization.  As I lovingly handled and flipped through many of my books I reflected upon just how many good books that I'd been privileged to read during 2011.  I thought it might be fun share a list of my top, or favorite, reads of 2011.  Also, as I do read about as much poetry as prose these days, I thought that I'd issue my ProSe "Great Reads" awards in two categories:  Poetry and Fiction.  So, without any further ado, here are my lists of my top "Great Reads" in Poetry and Fiction for 2011.

 Top-Ten Great Reads in Poetry

1. The Iliad, Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald (1974)
2. The Iliad, Homer, translated by Stephen Mitchell (2011)
3. The Iliad, Homer, translated by Stanley Lombardo (1997)
4. The Oresteia, Aeschylus, translated by Ted Hughes (2004)
5. Sophocles' Antigone: A New Translation, translated by Diane J. Rayor (2011)
6. The Complete Plays of Sophocles, translated by Robert Bagg & James Scully (2011)
7. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo, by Anonymous, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien (1975)
8. War Music, Christopher Logue (2003)
9. All Day Permanent Red, Christopher Logue (2004)
10. Memorial, Alice Oswald (2011)

Top-Ten Great Reads in Fiction

1. Middlemarch, George Eliot (1871)
2. The Crippled God, Steven Erikson (2011)
3. The Children of Hurin, J.R.R. Tolkien (2007)
4. Towers of Midnight, Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson (2010)
5. The Woodlanders, Thomas Hardy (1887)
6. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien (1977)
7. The Songs of the Kings, Barry Unsworth (2002)
8. The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie (2011)
9. Return of the Crimson Guard, Ian C. Esslemont (2010)
10. The Passage, Justin Cronin (2011)

Well, there they are, my top-ten "Great Reads" in Poetry and Fiction for 2011.  I honestly very much enjoyed reading each and everyone of these books, plays, or poetry collections.  Have a look and I truly hope that you may find something of interest to you in one or both of these two lists.

***

Happy New Year with New Books!

I hope all of you had a wonderful, safe, and happy holiday season!  Here it is January 2, 2012, and I am ever so glad to finally be back in our home in sunny southern California.  Susan and I left here on the 21st of December and over the next ten days spent time in El Paso, Texas; Green Valley, Arizona; and Phoenix, Arizona whilst visiting family and friends.  Susan flew to El Paso while I drove hauling all of the packages and luggage.  I actually had to sit in Lordsburg, New Mexico for several hours on Christmas Eve and wait for the New Mexico Department of Transportation to clear Interstate 10 of snow and ice.  It actually snowed on me from Wilcox, Arizona all the way to El Paso, Texas, and made for a very nice Christmas mood for all of us that evening when I finally did arrive in El Paso!  Anyway, 'tis great to be home, car and luggage unpacked, laundry done, and closets cleaned out and reorganized.  But what to do with all of the wonderful new books that I received?  Hmmm, what a great problem to have, eh?  ;-)

Okay, I'm going to take a stab at compiling a list of the books that I received, and I am going to list them by categories--

Fantasy Fiction

The Book of Lost Tales, Part II, J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (single volume 50th Anniversary edition)
The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch
Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch
The Dragonbone Chair, Tad Williams
Stone of Farewell, Tad Williams
To Green Angel Tower, Tad Williams
Lord of Snow and Shadows, Sarah Ash
The Prisoner of the Iron Tower, Srah Ash
Children of the Serpent Gate, Sarah Ash





Fiction
Achilles, Elizabeth Cook
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
Morality Play, Barry Unsworth










Drama/Theater
King Lear, Shakespeare
The Tempest, Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare
Phedre, Jean Racine, translated by Ted Hughes






Poetry
The Riverside Chaucer, Geoffrey Chaucer
Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, Wolkstein and Kramer
Flower Fairies of the Spring, Cicely Mary Barker
Flower Fairies of the Summer, Cicely Mary Barker
Flower Fairies of the Autumn, Cicely Mary Barker
Flower Fairies of the Wayside, Cicely Mary Barker
The Alliterative Morte Arthure, The Owl and the Nightingale, translated by John Gardner
Beowulf, translated by Frederick Rebsamen
The Beowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry
Beowulf: A Dual Language Edition, translated by Howell D. Chickering, Jr.
Beowulf, translated by Burton Raffel
Idylls of the King, Alfred Lord Tennyson
Helen in Egypt, H.D.
The Inferno, Dante Alighieri, translated by Stanley Lombardo
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by William Vantuono 
A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver



As you can see, I scored big-time!  I am really looking forward to diving into this huge stack of new reading.  My biggest issue right now is to find the shelf space for all of my new treasures!  I love having a problem like that!

Time to go watch some college football!  Happy New Year!

***

A Bit of Prose on Prosody--Part 1: The Structure of Poetry--Meter & Line

'News Flash!'--I like poetry.  That certainly won't come as much of a surprise to any even casual readers of ProSe.  In fact, I tend to view poetry as the highest literary art form.  While I can honestly say that I always 'liked' poetry, even as a grade-schooler, it wasn't until I really started reading and studying poetry that I truly began to love poetry.  I currently have something around 100 volumes of poetry, including a few anthologies, sitting on my bookshelves.  I tend to read as much poetry each week as I do other literary forms.  While it isn't particularly popular in the realm of the book-blogosphere, I like to post poems that I like or describe poets and their works that I have recently discovered.

As some readers are aware, I recently started a regular weekly project featuring the poetry of Emily Dickinson (see my postings associated with The Dickinson Project), and in those postings I describe and discuss not only her beautiful poems, but also try and focus on Dickinson's interesting poetic techniques, as well as the craft of poetry itself.  I am also getting set to start another regular weekly project focusing on the 154 sonnets written by William Shakespeare.  I am very excited about both of these projects, as they involve two poets that are especially near and dear to my own heart.

It struck me though, that it might be useful to spend a little bit of time and talk about the "science and art of poetry"--also known as Prosody.

"prosody 1. the science or art of versification, including the study of metrical structure, stanza forms, etc. 2. a particular system or style of versification and metrical structure."

(Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition, 1988)

So, the remainder of this post is going to 'wax prosodic' and discuss some of the primary elements associated with prosody.  It is my hope that by having a better understanding of some of the terms and definitions associated with the different types of poetry, the structure of a poem, as well as the craft of poetry itself will help some readers gain a new appreciation for this beautiful literary art form.

Simply put, I would define a poem as an arrangement of words in a rhythmic fashion that expresses one's thoughts, feelings or ideas, and often incorporates the use of meter, metaphor, and may involve the use of alliteration, rhyming or other schemes.  I'm quite sure that there are other (and probably better) definitions of what a poem is out there, but this will suffice for my purposes.

I think that the logical place to start is with the structure of a poem.  A poem is generally comprised of lines of words arranged in such a fashion to take advantage of latent rhythms associated with the syllables and stresses in those words.  This gets us to meter.  Meter can be thought of as the quantitative measure of the rhythmic quality of the line of poetry being looked at, and is really just the organized succession of syllables at quasi-regular intervals in the line.  The unit of measure is known as the metrical foot.  The foot is typically associated with the accented syllable, and the number of feet in a line then yields the meter used in that line.  For example, five feet in a line of poetry is known as pentameter, and is a very common form in English poetry.  Homer's ancient Greek sets up well for hexameter, i.e., six beats-per-line, and this was what Homer used for The Iliad.  Not that I would know first-hand, but apparently it is fairly difficult to translate the poem from the original Greek and present it in hexameter in English.  Anyway, it is theoretically possible that one could have poems written in monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, and so forth.  The old Norse and Icelandic 'saga' poetry (e.g., Poetic Edda) is a pretty good example of poetry that was largely written in tetrameter, i.e., four-beats-per-line, and it is generally often alliterative too (more on that later).  Generally though, the poetry that an English-speaking reader will commonly encounter today will include the following metrical types: no meter (i.e., free verse), tetrameter, pentameter, and hexameter.

I also want to spend a moment or two on the different types of metrical feet that one can encounter being used in poetry.  It gets a little complicated here, but bear with me and I'll do my best to make sense of it all.  Apparently, there are twenty-eight different types of metrical feet that have been utilized in poems written over the ages.  Fortunately, in the English-language poetry that is typically written and read there are five types of poetic feet, and include the iamb, anapest, trochee, dactyl, and spondee.

An iambic metrical foot is the most common foot, and consists of two syllables, a short or unaccented syllable followed by a long or accented syllable.  For an example, I am going to use the first line from John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale--

"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains"

The bolded words, or letters, indicate the stressed syllables.  As we have five unstressed/stressed pairs in this line of poetry, we are looking at a classic example of "iambic pentameter".  See, its not so hard.

An anapestic metrical foot is made up of two unstressed or short syllables followed by one long or accented syllable.  Here's an example you'll quite likely recognize--

"Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house"

Again, the bolded words or syllables indicate the end of the anapestic foot; and as we have four anapests, this is a line of "anapestic tetrameter".

The trochee, or trochaic, metrical foot is simply the long or accented syllable followed by the short or unaccented syllable.  The Dies Irae of the Latin requiem mass is a great example of the use of trochees--

"Dies irae, dies illa"

So, what we have here is an example of "trochaic tetrameter".

The dactyl, or dactylic metrical foot, is comprised of three syllables, the first of which is the long or accented syllable, followed by the two short or unaccented syllables.  A commonly used example of the use of a dactylic metrical foot is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Evangeline--

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hem locks"

The first five metrical feet in the line are dactylic, with the last dactyl followed by a "spondee", which is our final 'foot' to be defined.

A spondee is a metrical foot with two long or equally accented syllables, e.g., "bread box" or "shoe shine".  Given the nature of a spondee, it really makes no sense to actually construct a poem made up entirely of spondees.  Typically, spondees are used in an anapestic metered poem, and can emphasize or enhance the meaning of words in a line.  Here's a one-line example of the use of spondees from Tennyson's In Memoriam: A.H.H.--

"When the blood creeps and the nerves prick"

Well, this is probably enough for now.  I hope that this very brief description of poetic meter and the more commonly used metrical feet was interesting, and may be useful as you read the next poem that you encounter.

I do hope you'll stay tuned, as I plan to cover "stanzaic" and "verse" forms and some other interesting poetic schemes and techniques in my next posting.

For those of you getting an early start on the Thanksgiving holiday, please travel safely and have a wonderful holiday.  I hope you are able to get some good reading in, and throw that volume of Keats or Tennyson in the book-bag too.

***

New In November!

I wish all of you the best as we enter the month of November (Sheesh, where has 2011 gone?). Anyway, on this first day of a new month I'm kind of excited, for myself and for my literary blog, ProSe, to announce that I'm going to be starting two projects that I hope will be of interest to some of you. I have been thinking about both of these projects for a while, and have finally decided to roll them out.

Amherst College Archives

The first project I am introducing is going to be a weekly posting entitled the Dickinson Project, where I plan to feature a selected poem from among the nearly 1,800 poems that Emily Dickinson wrote, and then offer some thoughts and commentary associated with that poem. I also want to place Emily Dickinson and her poetry in the context of her time, and bring in some of the other arts and literature of her contemporaries. Emily Dickinson's poetry has always been very important to me, and I hope to be able to successfully share my love and enthusiasm for her poetry with all of you through this weekly feature.

The second writing project is also poetry-related, and will feature a weekly posting of one of Shakespeare's sonnets. I am going to start with Sonnet No. 1 and then, week-by-week, move through all 154 of them. Again, I hope to provide some interesting thoughts and/or commentary and related information in these postings. I am really looking forward to this project too, as I have yet to read each and every one of Shakespeare's sonnets. In fact, I'll wager that I've probably only read 25-30% of them, so this is going to be a wonderful new learning experience for me too.

I am hoping that both of these weekly features become somewhat of a signature item for ProSe over the next three or four years. Personally, I think it will be a great way for me to intellectually challenge myself and learn more about both of these literary giants, and be able to do something with my blog other than simply reviewing the books I happen to be reading. I am under no pretensions that I am doing anything remotely original with either of these projects, as I am quite sure that there are plenty of bloggers out there who've posted about Dickinson's poetry and Shakespeare's sonnets. That's okay! I really am doing this solely for my own gratification, and I am hoping that some of the rest of you may get some enjoyment from it too.

So, what do you think? Would you like the opportunity to learn more about the poetry of Dickinson and Shakespeare on a weekly basis here on ProSe? I hope so, because here it comes!

"The Iliad" Redux--Which Translation?

I know, I know, you're probably getting mighty tired of my postings on The Iliad by now.  I'm almost done, I promise.  I only have one major translation left to read, and I'm not getting to it until early next week while I'm on a three-day business trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Having said that though, I thought I'd spend some time putting together a posting that compares and contrasts the translations that I have read, and also provide some suggestions for some pleasurable side reading.  This information may prove useful to readers who want to tackle Homer's epic poem, and are wondering which translation to read.  It may also be interesting to those who've read The Iliad and are considering reading a different translation at some point in time.  I am going to list the translations that I've read organized by date of translation and/or publication.

Richmond Lattimore (1951)--

This is, of the modern translations, probably the most classical, formal, and elegant rendition.  Lattimore uses what he calls a "free six-beat line" in his verse translation of Homer's dactylic hexameter verse of the original Greek.  Based upon all that I've read about these translations, Lattimore was ruthlessly faithful to the Greek spellings of places and names, and utilization of the formal epithets (e.g., "grey-eyed" for Athena, or "father of gods" for Zeus, etc.) when describing the cast-of-characters.  It is colorful and incredibly descriptive stuff to read.  If you love Homer, and specifically The Iliad, Lattimore's poetic interpretation is one that you should eventually read.  It is the 'Elder Big Brother' of modern 20th century Iliads.

Robert Fitzgerald (1974)--

Fitzgerald's translation reads easier, in my opinion, than Lattimore's.  This is a qualitative statement on my part, and is probably more a function of the kind of reader that I am these days.  Fitzgerald also doesn't include all of the repetition that the original Greek text has, as this is really a relict of The Iliad's oral tradition.  Fitzgerald chose blank verse as the meter for his translation, and it really does seem to correspond better to the dactylic hexameter of the Greek than using English hexameter or rhymed verse.  While Fitzgerald's blank verse reads very, very well, it still manages to sound traditional and is not flamboyant at all--it is simply good poetry.  I have to say that 'at the end of the day' I really enjoyed the Fitzgerald translation.


Robert Fagles (1990)--

The translation of The Iliad by Robert Fagles was the first one that I read cover-to-cover, and it really was a life-altering experience, and the beginning of my love-affair with Homer and all-things 'Iliadic'.  Fagles believed in the performance-driven aspects of The Iliad, and he did his very best to emphasize this element with his translation.  Fagles did a terrific job at translating the Greek into his lines of verse that maintain a lyrical and rhythmic five or six beats per line while maintaining a very sensible and readable text.  As I read his translation I found myself completely caught up in the beauty of the mythology, and fully able to experience the pathos, drama, and tragedy of this great story.  I have to say that by the time I was finished with this translation, my overall reading experience was something approaching the sublime.  I guess I'll probably always be partial to Fagles' translation as 'it was my first'.  Finally, I should note that the Introduction to the Fagles translation was written by Bernard Knox and is simply magnificent in its own right and a 'must-read' for any reader of Homer and The Iliad.

Stanley Lombardo (1997)--

Lombardo's translation was fun to read!  Apparently, Lombardo is very interested in restoring the oral tradition associated with people experiencing Homer and The Iliad and The Odyssey.  His translations very much lend themselves to being read aloud and hearing (and even feeling) the lyricism and rhythms of the words and verse.  In fact, it is my understanding that Lombardo does performances of various books of The Iliad on the stage for audiences (would I ever love to attend one of these!).  Frankly, Lombardo's translation begs to be read aloud and shared with others.  Trust me, it works in a similar fashion for the reader reading it alone too--it is a performance on every page!

I also really liked how Lombardo inset and italicized the similes in the poem (and there's gobs of 'em).  It makes it so much easier for the reader to relate each simile to section of the poem it applies to.  It was really quite clever (and makes it ever so much easier when reading aloud).  Lombardo is a firm believer that The Iliad is a living poem (after all, it has been translated into English approximately 150 times since the 17th century!), and that "living poetry means living speech".  I completely agree.  For new readers, or readers who might be unsure of whether they'd like The Iliad, this might be a great translation to start with.  If you're an Iliad junkie, like me, you ought to read it too.  Lombardo's translation is powerful and relevant.

Stephen Mitchell (2011)--

Stay tuned!  I do plan to provide a review of Mitchell's new translation (October 2011) some time in the next couple of weeks.  I have it sitting on the TBR shelf right now, and I plan on starting it early next week while on my business trip.  Apparently, Mitchell has utilized a relatively recent reworking of the Greek text by the scholar, Martin West.  If you're interested in this new translation by Stephen Mitchell, you can read about it in an earlier posting of mine here.  I'm pretty excited to read this and compare and contrast it with the other versions I've read.  It should be really interesting.

Bonus Material--

If you read The Iliad, any of the translations referenced above, or others, I also strongly recommend that you consider picking up the following books.  I think they'll add significantly to your overall experience with Homer and his epic poem.

The Odyssey--Obviously, if you've read The Iliad, you probably ought to go ahead and read The Odyssey.  All of the translators referenced above have translations of The Odyssey, with exception of Stephen Mitchell, and he's working on his rendition even as I write.

Ransom--This little book by Australian writer, David Malouf, is seriously one of the most gorgeous works of fiction I've ever encountered.  It focuses and expands upon events occurring in the last three or four books of The Iliad.  It is hauntingly beautiful and powerful prose that borders on poetic for much of the time.  If you're interested in Malouf's novel, you can check out my review here.

War Music, All Day Permanent Red, and Cold Calls--These little books of poetry by British poet, Christopher Logue, are his retelling of significant portions of The Iliad and are not to be missed.  Once you've read The Iliad, dip into War Music and prepare to be 'gobsmacked' up side the head!  If you're interested in Logue's poetry, have a look at my posting here.

The War That Killed Achilles--This non-fiction book by Caroline Alexander (2009) is superb, and places Homer's epic poem in historical context.  It is just over 200 pages, and is extremely well written.  I am so glad that I read this as it really shed a lot of light on the events associated with the Trojan War, as well as the psychology of the major players.

A Brief Iliadic Glossary--

Some interesting words and definitions that I've encountered during my reads:

androktasia = combat death description (these abound within The Iliad)

aristeia = display of martial prowess (e.g., Book 5 is the aristeia of Diomedes)

eris = refers to 'strife between heroes' (mortal or immortal)

teichoskopia = viewing from the walls (refers to Helen and Priam up on the walls of Troy looking down on the Greek commanders)

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My 100th Posting!

This is my 100th posting to ProSe!  It seems hard to believe, at least to me, but I've been adding to this blog since August 2009.  I thought it might be worthwhile to spend a moment or two and look retrospectively at what I've done and ask myself several questions--

First, am I still being faithful to my original intent in creating this on-line 'writer's and reader's notebook'?

Yeah, I generally think I am.  I started ProSe because I wanted a place to journal about and discuss the great literature that I was reading.  If anything, I think that through my own use of this blog, and my interactions with other book-bloggers and readers, I have actually become a better writer, reader, and much more adept at critical thinking.  So, in retrospect, whilst the blog has matured, so have I as a reader and a thinker.  Those are very good things.

Secondly, what could (should) I do to improve the overall quality of ProSe, and my own personal on-line blogging experience?

At first blush, the obvious answer is to participate more consistently week-in, and week out.  When I look at my record of posts, it is a record of fits-and-starts.  I'll be really active for a few weeks, even a few months, and then I'll kind of go on an extended 'vacation' for two or three months.  I think I need to become a more disciplined writer and actually make the extra effort to maintain my on-line 'writer's journal,' i.e., this blog.  Hey, I don't ever stop reading great books for weeks or months on end, so why stop writing about them?  As I said above, maintaining ProSe has made me a more complete writer and reader.

I think another area in which I can improve is to make more of an effort to link subjects, topics, and discussions that I feature on ProSe with similar topics and discussions that I encounter among all of the rest of you.  It never ceases but to fascinate me when I encounter postings from other bloggers that are reading, or have just read, the same books that I am reading or just finished.  It is so cool to be able to read your experiences while still mulling over my own.  So, I think making more of an effort to bring your pertinent thoughts and observations into the discussion and connecting them with my own can only continue to make me a better reader and critical thinker.  Also, I would be remiss in not pointing out that it has been through my interactions with all of my fellow book-bloggers that I have been regularly turned on to some really terrific books over the past couple of years.  Thank you, my friends!

Thirdly, and this is a rhetorical question, why is it that postings about poetry are almost universally ignored?

Now, I am sure that this a gross over-generalization, but it seems to me that 99.99% of all the postings associated with literature that I am encountering on-line are about fiction and non-fiction books, and virtually nothing is being posted about poetry.  As most of you are aware, poetry is probably my favorite literary art-form, followed by fiction.  Part of my rationale for creating ProSe was to give me a forum to post and discuss some of my favorite poets and their works.  I am always somewhat amused though at just how little attention these poetry postings of mine receive.  I think there are only two conclusions that I can draw from this: (1) I am a terrible presenter and that my scribblings about poets and poetry are about as boring as watching paint dry; or (2) poetry is just not something that most readers are interested in these days.  Let me qualify that last observation by saying that I am most certainly not casting any aspersions, nor am I being judgmental.  It is what it is.  Rest assured, I plan to continue postings here that involve and feature poets and poetry, as it is a very near and dear art form to me.

Finally, I would like to invite all of you to grade ProSe and my performance as a blogger.  Are there particular things you'd like to see me change, or include?

Well, there it is--my 100th posting.  Personally, I'm proud of myself, and I'm proud of what ProSe has become over the past 26 months that I have been blogging.  This is the dawn of a new phase for me as an on-line writer, as a reader, and for ProSe, and I am hopeful that my next 100 postings will continue to show the growth in my writing, reading and critical thinking.  I also want all of you to know just how inspiring you have been, and continue to be, to me.  I have made some wonderful new friends, and found many, many of you that share many of the same interests that I do.  As I move forward into the future I am very much enjoying the ride, and hope that some of you will continue to join me.  Cheers!

P.S.  The photograph I've included with this posting is one I took at dawn on the shores of beautiful Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana.  I spent a lovely morning there with my wife and oldest daughter a few years back, and looking at it always brings back such great memories.  Please feel free to 'click' on it for a much larger view.

A Poem for the Day: Fragments from Antiquity

I thought I'd share some of the bits of this and that that I've encountered in the course of my reading recently.  I maintain a writer's journal, of sorts, where I jot down nifty things that I encounter in the books that I'm reading, and looking at it this morning I thought that posting some of these might be of interest, and even inspiring, to some of you.  All of the 'fragments' included here come from the various plays of the ancient Greek classicists that I've been studying of late.

First, I want to share some lines from Aeschylus' Agamemnon (first performed in 458 B.C.), the first play in the the great trilogy we know as The Oresteia.  The following lines have stuck with me for much of my life, and I always search them out in each new translation of The Oresteia that I encounter.  These were the words spoken by Robert F. Kennedy upon hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968--

"For it was Zeus who set
men on the path to wisdom
when he decreed the fixed
law that suffering
alone shall be their teacher.
Even in sleep pain drips
down through the heart as fear,
all night, as memory.
We learn unwillingly.
From the high bench of the gods
by violence, it seems, grace comes."

[Agamemnon, Lines 200-210, translation by Burian and Shapiro, 2003]

And here are the same lines translated and interpreted by the late-British Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, from his brilliant The Oresteia: A New Translation (1999)--

"I call God Zeus
And Zeus, or the greater one
Who wears Zeus like a mask for man to imagine,
Has given man this law:
The truth
Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives
By suffering
Nothing speaks the truth,
Nothing tells us how things really are,
Nothing forces us to know
What we do not want to know
Except pain.
And this is how the gods declare their love.
Truth comes with pain."

[Agamemnon, Ted Hughes, 1999]

No pun intended, but I do believe that there's a lot of truth in these words, unfortunately. I love the classical elegance of the Burian/Shapiro translation, but marvel at the power and visceral directness of the Hughes translation. They both speak to me on a very emotional level. Which do you prefer?

Now, staying with the theme of The Oresteia and the House of Atreus, I would like to share a few lines from Anne Carson's amazing translation of Sophocles' powerful play, Elektra (written between 440-420 B.C.?).  These nine lines are the response of the Chorus to Elektra's palpable and heartfelt grief and anger over the murder of her father, Agamemnon, by her mother, Clytemnestra--

"Not from Hades' black and universal lake
can you lift him.
Not by groaning, not by prayers.
Yet you run yourself out
in a grief with no cure,
no time limit, no measure.
It is a knot no one can untie.
Why are you so in love with
things unbearable?"

[Elektra, Lines 186-193, translated by Anne Carson, 2009]

While it may seem almost unfathomable to others (like the Chorus here), I think we all have either felt grief that is so all-encompassing and consuming, or know of those close to us who've experienced it, and the only cure is simply the passage of time and compassion from our fellow humans.  Carson's words caution us against being completely and utterly consumed by grief.

Okay, it is time to pick up the tone, and move out of the 'shade' over to the 'sunny side of the street.'  I want to share some beautiful lines of poetry from Euripides' moving play, Ion (probably written between 412-410 B.C.).  Ion, simply put, is the story about a mother and her son (and so much more, but that's for another posting...Note to Self).  This first bit is timeless, and something we can all relate to--

"Let the oracle be straight and clear
We've waited so long
For the great gift--Children

Lush endless happiness
Belongs to those who see
Shining in their children
Golden generations yet to come"

[Ion, Lines 456-462, translated by Di Piero and Burian, 1996]

Or this next simple, but ever so effective, little 'ode to joy' from Kreousa as she is reunited with her long-lost son, Ion--

"To heaven's bright unfolding,
my joy sings,
shouts high and far.
Joy I never imagined--
Where does it come from?"

[Ion, Lines 1398-1402, translated by Di Piero and Burian, 1996]

Isn't that just beautiful?  It is spare, minimalist, and almost reminds me of something done in Haiku--but we all know, from reading those few words, that Kreousa is full of joy!

And I want to close with the last lines from Euripides' Ion, because I think it circles around and addresses what Aeschylus was talking about in our first fragments above, but with a more upbeat take-home message--

"Goodbye, Apollo, Son of Leto and Zeus.
Now we have learned to give the gods their due
and to take heart when we're driven by disaster.
In the end, the good get what's good.
The bad, by nature, get what's bad."

[Ion, Lines 1588-1592, translated by Di Piero and Burian, 1996]

I think what I love the most about reading these plays is the joy of discovering all of this amazing poetry!  Sometimes I wish that I could read these lines in the original Greek, but for now I must rely upon the expertise and talents of the translators to do their best in preserving and interpreting the author's original intent as well as the aesthetics of the work as a whole.  For these reasons, perhaps the job of translator is even more difficult than that of author, I don't know.  I do know though that, for me, a new translation is much like a box of chocolates--you never quite know what you have until you've opened it and read it.  Some you just like better than others, and others just miss the mark entirely.  I now spend a lot of time researching various translations of works that I am interested in acquiring.  Using all of the book reviews of my fellow book-bloggers, and the reviews and discussions I access via my on-line book groups (i.e., Goodreads and Shelfari) has really allowed me to hone in on the right editions to purchase and read.  In fact, I think it is fair to say that most of what I'm reading these days (and for the past few years) is a direct result of my daily interactions with all of you, and for that I'll always be eternally grateful!