TonyH turns the page into 2014

Another New Year. I'd like to do much more reading, I can feel such an amateur compared to many in terms of amount read, especially when my lists are made up by many a slim poetry volume (albeit they are often read several times). Hopefully I will pick up a groove and dance with these texts and my responses, and in response to others. Best wishes to all for a healthy, happy and very well read year ahead.

My 2013 reading journal is here.

Reading completed in 2014:

1. The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche (31/12/13 - 2/1/14) Kindle ed.
2. Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov (11/1/2014 - 11/2/2014) Kindle ed.
3. Asklepios: Archetypal Image of the Physician's existence by C. Kerenyi ( ?/1/14 - 11/2/14)
4. Introducing Walter Benjamin by H. Caygill, A. Coles & A. Klimowski (9/2/14 - 13/2/14)
5. Sappho, stung with love: poems and fragments by Sappho, - 28/2/14 Kindle ed.
6. Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit by Timothy Donnelly Kindle ed. (10/3/14-11/3/14)
7. The Golovlyov Family by Shchedrin trans. N. Duddington (15/2/14 -15/3/14)
8. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies (book one of The Deptford trilogy (20/3/14 - 26/3/14)
9. The Manticore by Robertson Davies (book two of The Deptford trilogy (18/3/14 - 11/4/14)
10. Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit by Timothy Donnelly Kindle ed. Re-read.
11. Some Prefer Nettles by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki Kindle ed. ( - 9/5/14)
12. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima Kindle ed (12-25/5/14)
13. Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build your routine, find your focus and sharpen your creative mind ed. by Jocelyn K. Glei KIndle ed. (-1/6/14)
14. Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis by Wendy Cope (8/6/14-8/6/14)
15. Emily Dickinson: poems selected by Ted Hughes (9/6/14 - 15/6/14) by Emily Dickinson with an introduction by Ted Hughes. Re-read.
16. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami ( - 29/6/14) Kindle ed.
17. The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng ( ?/5/14 - 20/7/14) Kindle ed.
18. About Bloody Time by Simon Jenner Kindle ed.
19. Against Oblivion: some lives of the twentieth-century poets by Ian Hamilton Kindle ed.
20. The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot (a partial reread at least)
21. Choices by M. N. Thomas
21.5 Jordan Baker, Gender dissent and homosexual passing in The Great Gatsby by Maggie Gordon Froehlich
22. Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb
23. Brand New Ancients by Kate Tempest (Kindle ed.)
23.5 The Prelude, 1799 two book version by William Wordsworth Reread.
24. Hold your Own by Kate Tempest (Kindle ed.)
24.5 W. H. Auden's introduction to a Signet edition of Shakespeare's sonnets ed. W. Burto. (recommended in Clive James' Poetry Notebook.)
25. The Tower by W. B. Yeats
26. Poetry Notebook: 2006-2014 by Clive James
26.5. The Secret Auden by Edward Mendelson

currently reading:





The Prelude by William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth by Hunter Davies - a quickly readable biography I'm starting with.



How to read Kierkegaard by John D. Caputo



The Concept of Anxiety by Soren Kierkegaard translator A Hannay (Kindle ed.)



Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard - nearer the end of this one, short as it is, but at present stuck in my Kierkegaard reading.

Films and some television seen in 2014:

1.Gnomeo and Juliet - fun and playful, takes a Shrekian approach in some ways to the bard.
2. TrollHunter - Blair witch meets men in black meets all sorts, enjoyable.
3. Catch me if you Can
4. Edward Hopper and the blank canvas - documentary
5. Sherlock - didn't enjoy first two episodes, seemed too in love with itself and its foibles, episode three more fun well set up, still some shlock Sherlock, but then.
6. Bread and Roses, d. Ken Loach - projected big.
7. Anchorman - The Ron Burgundy story
8. Secret Ballot d. Babak Payami (Iran) - projected big
9. The Corporation - documentary, projected, re-watch.
10. The River Wild
11. The Skin I live in d. Pedro Almodovar - seemed a bit of a mess in some ways, but on the other hand a lot of rich ideas in it.
12. Bamako d. A. Sissako. Projected large.
13. The Grand Budapest Hotel, d. Wes Anderson, at the cinema.
14. The War against Democracy. Projected.
15. Alice in Wonderland d. Tim Burton
16. Persepolis. d. V. Paronnaud & M. Satrapi (writer). Projected large.
17. The Wire, season one.
18. Milk. d. Gus van Sant. Projected large.
19. Michael Clayton. d. T. Gilroy. re-watch.
20. The Guard. d John Michael McDonagh. re-watch
21. Clear and present danger. Rewatch. Guilty pleasure (about terrible things) on a work night.
22. The poet who loved the war. Documentary about Ivor Gurney's poetry.
23. Unstoppable d. T. Scott.
24. The Wire, season 2.
25. Central Station (Central do Brasil) d. Walter Salles (Brazil) projected large.
26. The Intruder (aka The Stranger) d. Roger Corman
27. The Wire, season 3.
28. Amores Perros (aka Love's a Bitch), d. Alejandro Inarritu (Mexico)
29. The Grey d. Joe Carnahan
30. Generation War
31. Le Sang d'un poete (The Blood of a Poet) d. J. Cocteau (cinema)
32. Y tu Mama Tambien (And your mother too) d. Alfonso Cuaron projected large
33. City of God d. Fernando Meirellles & Katia Lund projected large
34. Orphee d. J. Cocteau (cinema)
35. Nine Queens d. Fabian Bielinsky (Argentina) projected large (onto a wall, but not cinema size)
36. Theatre - Woyceck (Lyric Hammersmith Secret Theatre production).
37. El Bonaerense d. Pablo Trapero (Argentina) projected large
38. El bano del Papa (The Pope's Toilet) d. Cesar Charlone & Enrique Fernandez (Uruguay) (projected large)
39. Oh what a Lovely War d. Richard Attenburgh (cinema)
40. La Bana (The Maid) d. Sebastian Silva (projected large)
41. Burn after reading d. The Coen brothers
42. Theatre - Great Britain (National Theatre)
43. Nostalgia de la Luz (Nostalgia for the Light) d. Patricio Guzman (Chile)
44. Historias Minimas (Minimal Stories aka Intimate Stories in the states I think) d. Carlos Sorin (Argentina)
45. True Grit d. The Coen Brothers
46. The Fantastic Mr. Fox d. Wes Anderson (rewatch)
47. Andrei Rublev d. Andrei Tarkovsky (Criterion Collection)
48. TV - Great Poets in their own words (2 episodes)
49. Die Wand (The Wall) d. J. Polsler
50. The Great Gatsby d. Baz Luhrmann
51. Radio - Drama on 4, The Waste Land, with introduction by Rowan Wiliams, Matthew Hollis, Jackie Kay, Sean O'Brien. Read by Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins. Drama on 4 The Waste Land
52. TV - Sculpting Life - Rowan Gillespie (documentary)
53. Inside Llewyn Davis d. Joel and Ethan Coen
54. Visual essay by Kogonada for Sight and Sound on Richard Linklater and Cinema and Time
55. TV - documentary - Polka Dot superstar: The Amazing World of Yayoi Kusama
56. TV - documentary - (British) Abstract Artists in their own words
57. Wonder Boys (yet again :) ) d. Curtis Hanson
57.5 Defiance (most of) d. Edward Zwick
58. Theatre - Henry IV parts one and two on the same day, RSC
59. Bellissima d. Luchino Visconti (projected large)
60. Theatre - Two Gentlemen of Verona, RSC
61. Nights of Cabiria, d. Federico Fellini (projected large - this is in a cinema but it is only a wall sized projection)
62. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis d. Vittorio De Sica (projected large)
63. Shadows d. John Cassavetes
64. The Conformist d. Bernardo Bertolucci (projected large)
65. Rome, Open City d. Roberto Rossellini
66. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) d. Lewis Milestone (cinema)
67. Life is Beautiful d. R. Benigni (projected large)
68. My Summer of Love d. Pawel Pawlikowski (re-watch), wonderful film.
69. Good Morning, Night d. Marco Bellocchio
70. Il Divo d. Paolo Sorrentino
71. Le Quattro Volte d. Michelangelo Frammartino
72. Safe House - again, the second time for no better reason that the first!
73. Good Will Hunting (yet yet again :)) )
74. Salut les Cubains d. Agnes Varda.
75. The Tree of Wooden Clogs d. Ermanno Olmi
76. My Stuff d. Petri Luukkainen
77. Toy Story 3 d. Lee Unkrich
78. Skyfall d. Sam Mendes
79. Jack Reacher d. C. McQuarrie
80. The Lady Vanishes d. Alfred Hitchcock (re-watch first time since long time)
81. Gonzo: The life and work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson d. Alex Gibney
82. Once d. John Carney
83. Hunky Dory d. M Evans (most of)
84. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas d. Terry Gilliam
85. Elite Squad d. Jose Padilha
86. Hannah Arendt d. Margarethe von Trotta

I think reading poetry is an art that requires more time and thoughtful examination than most novels or non-fiction. The only poetry I have successfully engaged with has been that which I studied in foreign language classes - I think it might be easier to slow down and appreciate the art when you have to struggle with every word.

Thanks Kris, yes that can be so, I forget. My only foreign language versions are memories of Latin lessons at school (painful) and Virgil, wish I had studied them better, I do use my poor French a bit, but distrust it and have bilingual Spanish and German poetry editions I sometimes look at the foreign language versions in, but it means little to me -- but you make it sound tempting, I am all for slowing down around poetry. Which languages have you studied? and which poets in that way? I am in awe of how poets seem able to turn their hand to translation and see it as something I won't even aspire to -- I am terrible at grammar.

Sorry Kris, I replied having just read the entire introductions thread, now I catch up to myself I see your language interests.

>4 tonikat:, Tony - Happy New Year. I've actually only studied Russian poetry in any depth. When I was a teenager, I went to Russian immersion summer camp and we spent a decent amount of time reading poems from a dual language anthology The Heritage of Russian Verse. I don't at this point remember which specific poems - I think some Sergei Yesenin, Aleksander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, some fairly awful Soviet Socialist realist odes to factories and whatnot. I also read a lot of Vladimir Mayakovsky because of a boy I had a crush on. lol

Happy New Year to you too.

I want to read more Akhmatova. I haven't read many Russian poets - I have read some Mandelstam and like him and his prose too, have more lined up. I'd like to read Pasternak. I enjoyed this short intro to and poem by Andrei Voznesensky in the TLS I admire you tackling the Russian.

1. The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche



I began this right at the end of the year and finished it tonight - its first half or so was a thrilling read, a page turner of philosophy. Later sections I found less so though as he looked at his contemporary world.

So, what's it about - the birth of tragedy being about the origins of Greek Tragedy. For Nietzsche this rests in Greek myth and the tragic aspect of it - an insight into the nature of nature in its sorrowful, tragic aspect - the idea that no good comes of it and as he quotes the Greek folk lore of a companion of Dionysus (Silenus I think) that, in life, it is better to die quickly. And yet, and yet out of contemplation of this there may be something important, a touching of some primordial oneness of the poetic -- and then for Nietzsche at this point a vision may be given of something more palatable, whilst that first view is characterised as Dionysiac, revelling in this tragic aspect, another aspect of nature is more moderate, beautiful, individuated (of Apollo). For Nietzsche early Greek Tragedy captured this - the chorus seeing things the Dionysiac way and commenting on the more moderate aspect of the action that follows a more Apolline poetry, on viewing the Apolline the Chorus allowing for an apprehension of the truly tragic Dionysiac foundation of the world (we see the Apolline vision and also see through it), this experience being healing. Powerful stuff -- and he traces the development of this and the decay of this tradition through Euripides and then later comedy. My expertise on ancient tragedy is limited, not nil, but it may be such a powerful argument can hold me sway -- it may also be that I am especially held sway by his account of lyric poetry coming from Dionysiac encounters before the Apolline view gives it structure, it spoke to me as perhaps nothing has so directly spoken to me of the process of writing poetry, it seems especially relevant to a poet who is a survivor of the mental health system and issues (an abyss to be sure) and to this poet who is such.

I found his move into his contemporary time less powerful -- I found his magisterial tone less fitting for that time, and his judgements more suspect (he had had such perspective of the ancients but cannot surely have it of his present yet assumes the same tone). However this tone and knowing it better may better equip me for Thus spake Zarathustra which I haven't been able to stomach previously. I wonder if his view say of Goethe as someone that did not did not break fully back into his Dionysiac world is suspect - if we read for Dionysiac in touch with the poetic it must be hard to say Goethe was lacking in that aspect -- and as Seamus Heaney may have it it may be hard to take such criticism from someone that has not themselves produced substantial work, for someone that writes so empathically about poetry and its source he perhaps shows a limitation.

His view of Socrates is instructive to me and will inform my further thoughts on him - I had not seen him as so simply the theoretical man, I suppose I had begun to wonder if he was a transition point to Plato, for example in his refusal to write down his view, I may have been romanticising.

His own self criticism is powerful, and playful - yes why didn't he just write poetry I agree, and with much else of it. It doesn't seem like he saw his tone as an issue though. I could wonder about some of his view as a comment on his own psychology -- his words on spiritual purification for example - but such a view may simply be teleological given his biography. It does lead me to think about this book though as a product of his own psychology and to wonder about that, whether there was an Apolline and Dionysiac aspect of this, if he thought this himself (of course he is clear in seeing these aspects as fundamental to nature and so therefore aspects of himself). I also wonder about the origins of the work for himself, what prompted him - and have to confess I have not yet read the introduction, must do that, it may explain. If this work came from a Dionysiac experience of his own, is in some ways a tragic work, it is tempting to wonder if it therefore contains the seeds of his own destruction, and maybe of the destruction of its own thesis -- and if this is something which he himself enjoyed being in the book, whether he could have been aware of such -- and I can only wonder really at these things -- and having just completed my reading tonight will be silent for now and probably think about this book for a very long time, and yes I will read the introduction.

"A page turner of Philosophy" would be a contradiction in terms for me; my mind just does not work that way. Enjoyed reading your review of a book that is still controversial I believe.

Ditto what Barry said; very thought-provoking.

Heavy stuff to start the new year. Wonderful review, even if I had to read your second paragraph twice to start to make sense of it. Much to think about.

Among other things, your review makes Nietzsche sound accessible.

Barry and Rebecca - yes I think a page turner and I am also not likely to say that of such works, usually I find a little of them takes me a long way and I don't finish them -- but this has a poetic lucidity, especially for the first two thirds, though as I explain above maybe there are reasons why I may be in thrall, perhaps a fellow rhapsodiser as he may have it in his self criticism. I highly recommend it; having finished the introduction it's also important 5to note that perhaps for the rest of his life he wished he hadn't been so extravagant. I highly recommend this book, yes with caution, but it has reopened my eyes to Nietzsche, though I suspect I will still dislike the high tone of Zarathustra -- and perhaps with The Birth of Tragedy let8ing go of the caution and just going with it is a good ting to follow a series of insights of this quality, worry later about their justification.

I'd be very glad if I make him sound accessible Dan, as I say it has made him seem so to me again. I always loved 'on truth and falsity in their ultramoral sense' but not the tone of Zarathustra so far -- perhaps this will give me a key to see it in a new light. I didn't find this a heavy read, it was dynamite, the final third a bit less so.

Tony, happy new year!

By coincidence I also finished rereading Birth of Tragedy at the end of last year. I enjoyed your take on it. Like you, and many readers, I found the last third weaker than the first two thirds. They were in fact originally two texts that N cobbled together, which accounts for the difference in tone and focus. The first text entitled 'Socrates and Greek Tragedy' ended at the end of chapter 15, and the rest was new material that N added later, largely under the influence of Wagner.

Nietzsche's Attempt at Self Criticism where he looks back at the end of his (sane) life to write about the first work of his youth is very moving and powerful, I think.

word of advice, if I may be permitted, based on my own experience of reading Nietzsche. Leave Zarathustra until you have read all - or at least a few - of Nietzsche's other works, as Zarathustra is a kind of poetic/musical/prophetic outpouring of themes and ideas that N explored using more restrained, discursive language in his earlier works. N was constantly trying to find a new language to express his new philosophy, a language that was not influenced, as he says, by the language of Schopenhauer and Kant. Zarathustra is not to be understood as Nietzsche's voice, but as the voice of Dionysus. N conceived Zarathustra as a kind of modern embodiment of Dionysus, a Dionysus for a new age, as it were. It's a terribly difficult work, and one that has defeated me many times. but increasing knowledge of N's other works brings Zarathustra into new clarity for me.

You might want to check out Writings from the late notebooks for paragraph length snippets of Nietztsche's ideas. I think you would like it.

as you say, Birth of Tragedy is dynamite.

Hello tomcat and a Happy New Year to you too. Good to see you posting and thank you for your comments - I never knew that (I think) about Zarathustra being meant to be Dionysus, now I need to check in fact if in ancient times there was an overlap of them. I do now intend to work through Nietzsche in order (yet another quest), unless I sicken. I am interested in his biography now too.

I had a thought about thinking about Anna Karenin in light of Birth of Tragedy - of course it is not sung -- but it gave me lots of things to think about and added some drafts in my ever developing Tolstoy essay which I was hoping to get moving again. Tolstoy would be spinning I am guessing as I have read a coupe of comments of his on Nietzsche and on Zarathustra. It may have to go on hold yet further though as I am about to begin a reading group on Oblomov and also on Shchedrin's The Golovlyov Family.

Sadly now work has recommenced I am getting much less reading done again, sampling parts of several books I am making slow progress with.

I've had both Oblomov and The Golovlyov Family on my TBR shelves for years. I look forward to your thoughts on them. Maybe I will eventually get to them myself!

Oblomov now that is someone I can identify with, I loved the book when I read it way back when.

oh oblomov is a wonderful book.

if you're looking for a good biography of Nietzsche, I recommend Walter Kaufmann's.

Well, I will have to move it up on the mental TBR!

Everyone that starts their year with Nietzsche has my grudging respect. I like reading him - but not at the same time when I am not in the best moods on account of the new year and all signifies :)

And sounds like you are on a Russian reading spree (or something like that) - which is always a good thing to see... Will be really interested to see what you think of these...

Thanks bas, tomcat, Rebecca and Annie.

My image of Nietzsche was previously one of someone that may even make me feel a bit nauseous, but The Birth of Tragedy is quite the opposite, really opened him up for me. Out of it I was speaking with a friend who directed me to a recent article in Philosophy Now by Prof. Carol Nicholson in part about Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master and his Emissary and how his account of brain structure and function may account for the differences in view of largely anglo-saxon and Continental philosophy and I went on to McGilchrist's book and it is another page turner (and I say that as someone who usually avoids neuroscience seeking as Goncharov may mock me for doing so to find my answers in my own being). Yes, I am quite Oblomovian, but less so these days, I read and in reading Oblomov I have a desire to do the dusting. But back to Nietzsche, yes he was dynamite and I was happy to learn this week tomcat that he said that same thing about himself. But it interesting if maybe we think of Nietzsche and associate excess somehow, how in NIcholson's essay she points out how he warned of the danger of complacent extremism.

No reading finished yet but quite a lot of it happening and books to read piling up no end, so I thought I'd write this to make some sense of it to myself and record strands to it at the moment:

Oblomov and later the Golovlyov Family - for my reading group -- this has diverted some of my own projects at the moment but I don't want to lose this group, if I leave I may not get back in. However it has mushroomed some of my reading as ideally I'd also read Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage which I restarted, Eugene Onegin, A hero of our time, Superfluous man and Notes from underground to really begin to situate these novels. This alone is enough.

that group also suggests to me Natasha's Dance and I am definitely going to give it a try as I still hope to complete my Tolstoy essay and had begun to do some work on it and read more criticism/appreciation of Anna Karenin. I have quite a bit of this lined up and started Nabokov's lecture on Anna.

I have started the master and his emissary and its page turnerness is threatening to addict me -- and it having come at just the right time really with my interest in Dionysiac/Apolline and such. I got Untimely meditations from the library but it will have to wait a while.

Then there's all my other reading, I won't bore about it -- writing this is helping me to start to get hold of making a plan or none of it will get finished. I thought of starting a list of current reading but am not sure a list is the right place to put this, not especially looking to share it and it'll always change and always have things I give up on. I enjoyed making my list of all my reading on librarything, but maybe collections is the best way to do this, I just used to find them a bit unwieldy and used tags instead. Ther are a lot of other things reaslly in the currently reading category for me at the moment, which is not good - really I just needed to organise myself a bit and will focus on Oblomov, Childe harolde and the master and his emissary, if I am good.

Oh yes, and tomcat's post of the essay on Walter Benjamin on zeno's thread led me to start to read Benjamin, enjoyed his essay on his library strangely serious yet light.

Watched the film Bread and Roses this week, film group looking at some generally political films this term. This directed by Ken Loach and with a US setting was different for him. I like what I see of his films more and more. of course I tend to agree with its viewpoint I suppose, the plight of the worker and here the worker taken advantage of. I like Adrien Brody as an actor but found his part a bit out of place, almost designed as a sweetener for the film and his characters right on-ness and somewhat cavalier attitude I wondered about, maybe it is based on reality for all I know,but it made me wonder if it was added to give the film a structure that was felt to be needed - and romance of course.
More and more I like watching less established actors and non-professionals.
The film for all it speaks of the left has a view of the psychology of the right - the right may not agree with this I guess, may feel it is presented in a very poor light, but to me there was a lot in how the views of the right in a way may trickle down to the realities of how such exploitation takes place and somehow isn't then allowed to bother the world with its messiness and unfairnnesses.

Glad to see you have made a foray into Benjamin's writing, Tony.

I have been an admirer of Ken Loach since I watched Days of Hope on TV many years ago. The BFI screened all the episodes over about 10 hours last year in London. I watched the first 3 - still powerful after all this time.

I'm enjoying Benjamin. I think I must have read 'the work of art in the age...' when I was at university, it seems familiar somehow. I have Illuminations to read.

I don't know Days of Hope at all but will learn more I am sure. My favourites are Sweet Sixteen and Land & Freedom, but I don't know many others.

Another week another film - Secret Ballot d. Babak Payami - Iranian film about elections, I liked, it doesn't confront political division directly but makes some interesting points, a female election agent travels around a small island on election day with a soldier to gather votes. Yes, female, that's a big point Roger Ebert thinks it is the point in the review I read. I take that point but it also makes others, like that the ballot list has no one one group of people know on it, the ballot box literally being parachuted in, several people want the soldier nowhere near when they vote, one person votes for God. But I felt there is another presence in the film, it's shot in slow long takes for the most part and I felt the landscape was a strong focus, those slow and long takes giving perspective, maybe a spiritual perspective, to the puny whims of humans, that and a shot of a man at prayer might make me think it brings us back to God, or where God would be. But it is beautiful and this pace and the passing of their day is interestingly slow.

3. Asklepios: Archetypal image of the physician's existence by C. Kerenyi



A fascinating book, one I'd like to come back to as my knowledge of Greek mythology increases. He makes an argument for the place of the gods in ancient lives. We learn about temples to Asklepios in Rome (a fascinating account of how this franchise (in a way) was set up with a member of the Roman elite bringing two of the gods, snakes, back from Epidauros), also at Epiduaros such an important centre of healing, also in Kos home of Hippocrates before considering physicians more generally in the ancient world and in Homer and then looking at the birthplace of Asklepios in Thessaly. All the while with plates of ancient statues and pottery and thinking about the mythologies, the many versions of similar things and the meanings of Asklepios - chthonic god or hero physician, as a chthonic god his name being a possible surname for Apollo, very new to me. And some fascinating ideas of ancient ideas of healing, of the god being associated with some turn into the light from the darkest times, some fosterer of such sparks - and of the idea of a wounded healer, interesting to me as a counsellor, much has been written on that theme. Then also the idea that another aspect that of the physician warrior, always on hand in the Iliad for example, but also leading armies and as such one of his sons seen as an inflictor of wounds that he then heals. And Chiron the Centaur god that brings him up actually killed despite god status, an idea of the wounding of all perhaps from which there is no recovery, if I have understood correctly. I got my copy from the library, but a book I would like to have a copy of to come back to as reference. I am sure much of the subtlety of different traditions was lost on me - reading such different accounts can be dizzying and understanding what their significance as different accounts can be also dizzying, I start to see my way perhaps, to get more of a feel for this, but need to read more by him (his Dionysos book would go nicely after Nietzsche above) but also by others. He remarks how Homer kept a strict distinction between Olympian gods and the non Olympian, it made me wonder if he was trying to get beyond the dizziness and create an order, but of course we know in practice how widespread invocation of Asklepios was, just look at Socrates' final words, which make more sense with this association with Apollo at dawn and perhaps given what I have said about being someone wounded. And overall an idea of how people made sense of this world a long time ago and in some way respected it in ways that we often seem not to, myself included.

Interesting thoughts on Asklepios, Tony. Coincidentally I am reading the piece in Philip K Dick's Exegesis where he believes his visions are teachings in Greek Attic direct from Asklepios himself.

In fact he dreams the phrase 'Crypte morphosis', loosely translated as 'latent or hidden shape', and tries to make sense of what, he believes, Asklepios is trying to convey to him.

By the way, the archetype of the wounded healer is also of interest to me, one of a handful of archetypes that seem quite powerful across time and cultures.

Fascinating, Tony. I have been to Epidauros, and the place has a very special healing atmosphere, even in its ruins.

Zeno - I think I heard of Philip K Dick dreaming like that but I had forgotten all about it and that it was Asklepios that spoke to him, I wonder if he connected this to Apollo or if he saw him more as a hero figure - I'd be interested to learn more and also of how he interpreted that phrase, did he speak or read Greek or ancient Greek?
I'm cautious of the word archetype, but see the power in these mythic figures that reflect something very fundamental and pure, not pure just clean though.

Tomcat - that's interesting, I'd love to go there again. We arrived and it was just shutting and had to scale a fence to see the theatre before a guard and a not very healing dog suggested we leave, a long time ago. I love the Peloponnese, two visits there so far. But I can understand Epidauros having that sense from the little bit I got to drink in.

In the last two weeks I've been watching quite an interesting bbc series on Greek drama and its links to politics, which has fed into this as well. One more part to go which moves onto Rome I think. I don't know that much about Greek drama, I was interested to hear how the tragedies sometimes got rewritten in the years afterwards, Antigone with a happier ending whilst one expert, from Oxford no less made the point it wasn't as cut and dried as Nietzsche suggested I also kind of felt he made a point.

I've been reading all sorts, for some time making slow progress with Dylan Thomas' collected, will take me months to finish yet I think. I love the first eighteen poems which I am assuming are identical with his first book, but need to check that. After reading Under Milk Wood last year and having read Seamus Heaney's chapter in him in the Redress of Poetry I think I disagree with Heaney a bit, or at least for me they are still doing something Heaney thought they would do for him but found they did not when he went back to them to write that lecture - that was he had thought they'd have an Eden-like quality, how I may say it is that perhaps they dwell in Coleridge's cavern in Xanadu, a fundamental fruitfulness they have, that having read Milk Wood I cannot see as just somehow Egyptian, the best of them seem to go beyond to something religious. And I know Heaney did admire some of them and did so in his memory too, but he also notices this tone to them -- and I can see it, maybe it is a matter of what it is touching for me at the moment and what it did not for him at the time he wrote the chapter. Reading his take has also proven as fruitful as reading the Thomas. It's interesting he does not include Under Milk wood in his consideration, and it was that that gave me a sense of Thomas at the end that I did not wholly expect in my blurry memory of having heard bits of it a lot - a sense of the sins of adults being innocent in some way, like those of children, in some grand perspective of the world and it is such a grand perspective that I'm notic9ing in these poems, beyond some solipcism of a young man.

Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov (Kindle)



CONTAINS SPOILERS

I’m a counsellor, working from a person centred and humanist point of view. I say working, I use those skills in another way working to support people to help themselves with CBT techniques. But my therapeutic allegiance or faith is far more to counselling and it helps me to listen to the people I meet. This probably explains my take on Oblomov – I’ve read it as part of a group and I think emerged in a minority of one about this interpretation, so writing this is in part my defence in an argument most of you readers have no part of. As a counsellor I’m also a survivor of mental health issues, a survivor at the moment may be more correct to say, and of the mental health system. Prior to a crisis at one time I was very stuck in ways that have some similarity with Oblomov yet not identical at all, so I have some sympathy for him in that way, though I’ve never owned any serfs (people!).

It may be hard to write this without spoilers, I’ll try to give away as little as possible but it is inevitable to make an argument about the book that I must give some away – and if you have not read it and wish to I strongly advise you not to read on until you have read it – as the facilitator of our group suggested it is a book that rewards us in moving through it in tune with it, step by step.


I should explain that the interpretation I am battling against sees Oblomov as a lazy person, a person of such difficulty that he is one that could never change (I was assured that there are such people and we have to leave them to it). Also, my fellow readers whilst they see Oblomov and Olga fell for each other (more on this below), argue that perhaps a more mature love was found later by Olga (whilst Oblmov’s later love was seen for the most part as merely one based on opportunity and need as he becomes déclassé – though I might argue Olga’s love for Stoltz is also one of need). So, let me proceed with my argument.

Oblomov is a Russian landowner of the mid nineteenth century. He owns land and people (serfs, around three hundred of them), so he can afford it when in his city life he feels a need to withdraw from his civil service job. He retires to living very much at home and we meet him in in the first part in a series of almost absurd meetings with visitors all whilst he is in bed and failing to get up. He’s totally stuck in his life and also unable to make decisions about his estate. My reading of this, with a clinical view (not humanist) may be that you could explore whether he is depressed, experiencing generalised anxiety disorder and worry (he goes through schemes in his mind yet is unable to act on them or even to write a letter), there is a suggestion of panic and agoraphobia about going out and also some possibility of some social anxiety. On top of this, at the end of the first part we visit his dreams of Oblomovka, his land, where he was brought up and this dissolves into not just dream but flashback and possible reasons for why he is like he is, a childhood of being spoiled, of having to do nothing, of being sheltered from danger and brought up to be an image of an aristocrat that is somewhat unreal and detached from the problems of life and solving them, on some pedestal. I have not mentioned that in St. Petersburg he is attended by his extremely loyal serf Zakhar, who loves him it is even suggested somewhat like a dog may, but is quite ready to argue with him and steal a few coppers. I may argue that part of the reason Oblomov is so stuck is the nature of their relationship – that Zakhar needs him to be this unreal person and at the same time Oblomov cannot even put his socks on as that is Zakhar’s job. This life in Oblmovka and role he has grown up to take also may suggest to a clinical point of view some personality issues. I prefer to see this more humanistically, understanding how he has got to be how he is in Rogerian language by the conditions of worth imposed on him by the people in his life, as in his dream and to some extent by their interpretation of the system he is living in and his place in it. I do think the first set of issues he experienced may be something that if CBT had existed it could have aided, his view of himself that he is incapable due to Depression and anxiety, but overall there is also something deeper in his view of life that leads him to be stuck – yet also unlike many I would also defend the validity of idleness and of other views of how to live a life (though I do not go as far as to suggest he is a saint). He believes he cannot change himself because he gets lost in his own anxiety, a bit similarly to the extract of the Superflous Man of Turgenev we read at week one of the group, who mistakes his social anxiety for an inability to act as he wishes to until he fails again.

Part one contains all this and was written some time before the later parts of the book. It has elements of almost absurd comedy. It contains realism yet also allegory between his state and the state of things at that time in Russia.

In passing, Oblomov’s inertia is such that in reading him I have never been so driven to want to get up and tidy and sort out all the little things I may have let drift, his stuckness is nightmarish.

Oblomov has a friend, Stoltz, who is of mixed German and Russian heritage. He is very different, brought up to be and an enthusiast to embrace the world and be self-sufficient in it, a successful entrepreneur. He arrives at the end of part one and we follow him next into trying to shake Oblomov out of his stuckness. Stoltz loves this friend for some inner purity Oblomov has. We had a taste of that in part one when Oblomov reacts to a writer friend to plead that writers recognise humanity in people and not simply their socially assigned role, there is something grand in Oblomov’s view at that time. And also something poetic in for example his view from his window each day of the sun setting, some of the things he is in tune with are things the fast world of progress misses.

So, Stoltz takes him back into the social whirl and Oblomov may even begin to enjoy this. Most importantly he meets Olga a young woman of high intelligence, somewhat bypassed by society as she is true to herself and not playing easy social games. She sings Casta Diva for them one night, interestingly almost in a game to get a response from Oblomov and she gets it – he falls in love, expresses this to her and she falls too, that is my view. Part two follows this romance. He is changing, he moves flat to be near her in the country – but slowly reality starts to hit, the social conventions associated with courtship, marriage. He also gets a view of how others see him one night at the theatre, as simply a landowner – his sense of self is acutely self-conscious, shy, vulnerable and possibly ashamed of himself and unsure amongst others. He proposes marriage but before she allows him to speak to her aunt she demands he start to look after his affairs – and so she comes to impose conditions upon him, conditions of her love. And she does so about matters that have already defeated him, that when he shakes himself from this whirl that Stoltz had set him on he remembers when on his own that he feels unable to face these things; he is also aware of how society will judge him in their relationship. It’s not so much that he clearly recognises all of this – again he is a prisoner of inaction and worry and confusion of self and in the end when she feels he is failing her they reach an impasse. Perhaps it is that the language of this society is not one in which he recognises himself, his version of humanity.

We move to parts three and four and trace the patterns of their lives from there. Olga finds consolation in Stoltz and love, but different to that former passion she had had. Oblomov finds some love in someone that fulfils his need to be cared for unconditionally. Both I think they both find love in a person that meets some need in themselves, some basic needs for security and to be looked after. I‘d argue though that Olga knows she did love Oblomov and that the dynamics of her relationship with Stoltz are in some way such that they keep proving their love of each other to each other, as it needs to be said.

As for Oblomov, who was unable to deal with reality previously he has stood up to it and started to live and fallen in love and whilst in love, initially I think without any conditions he did start to grow, he is invigorated, alive, energetic even. But those underlying issues remain and the challenge she sets him imposes the very conditions that he already felt broken by. It may almost be too much but I may argue that these conditions and her ultimate withdrawal of love destroy in him the prospect of change. If he cannot change in this circumstance then he must come to feel that he cannot at all. I can only wonder how if she had been able to simply love him they may have reached a relationship that did not pander just to either of their needs but may have allowed both to grow and to be – as their early relationship and the change in him suggested. It would be tempting to speculate how this may be an allegory for tensions that people in Russia were unable to resolve at that time in the conditions they found themselves and co-created for themselves, but I’ll not go there. Right now I am interested in their love or not (and the sides of love they both found elsewhere that others may argue are more important than their deep first attraction); and in how his situation and personal history led him to feel lost in the world and unable to interact with it for the most part beyond fulfilling a role – and yet how even in that he remains human and humane and may exhibit cares that for the most part others bypass. Olga and Stoltz recognised this fundamental decency in Oblomov but in seeking to help him could only impose their view of the world, in a very real way they have not understood him and what is difficult for him (just as he cannot explain it, can only see it from how it must seem to society) and their view of things was exactly what he both could not face and chose not to face to find other aspects of the world, out of step with society but in step with something human within himself.

This is all fascinating (I read all the spoilers) and will certainly be useful if I ever get around to reading Oblomov, which has been on my TBR for years.

Didn't read the spoilers as this is on the TBR, but you make a convincing case for it anyway.

I remember Oblomov as one of the most beautiful characters in fiction. Read your review with mush interest. It is definitely time for a re-read.

Interesting work by Károly Kerényi.

Thanks Rebecca, it is a beautiful read -- I think the section about their initial relationship is one of the most beautiful depictions of people falling in love that I have read

Sassy, I hope you enjoy it and welcome you back to read my thoughts when you do.

Barry - that is a very interesting reaction and yes, and I have now read tomcat's review which is beautiful itself and highlights many aspects of his character I have missed - it is good to recognise the beauty of his character. I hope nothing I said spoiled that, throwing around some labels, but hopefully not precluding that beauty in his character. Most importantly I want to understand him humanistically - and was rather cross at some of the things suggested to me about him (as a simply lazy and un-redeemable character), and also as I have come to believe both he and Olga knew they loved each other in the end, but I can see my co-readers argument that other love was found, it's just I think what they had was what made the issue of seeing each other what it did

Edwin - yes very interesting, I want to read his general book on the Greek gods and the similarly titled book on Dionysos.

Man, I've marked post 28, so I can come back to it eventually.

I should add that my reading group met again a week later and more time was given to consider some of my point of view and some swung my way, but they listened and the facilitator opened up the discussion to let that happen. Though one person chose to see Oblomov as a leech, I bit my tongue as it immediately followed part of my defence.

4. Introducing Walter Benjamin by H. Caygill, A. Coles & A. Klimowski



Sometimes I feel a bit guilty when I read these summaries, but I've been sadly lacking in my knowledge of Benjamin. This gave me a quick overview - though with his dizzying range of interests it will have to be reading him himself that really engages me, this did give me that overview I needed of his life. I look forward to reading him more. I did have some awareness as I'd seen a documentary in the past about him and always remembered the circumstances of the end of his life. I quite like that maybe there is no one system for him, I like that in a thinker, but yes I do need to become more acquainted before I say much more. It's made me want to read Elective Affinities even more than I already want to do so. It's also part of a renewed interest in The Frankfurt School and hope to start reading Adorno and got a copy of the dialectic of Enlightenment from the library.

Hi, Tony. I haven't had a chance to keep up with you for a while, but as always, your remarks are extremely interesting. I read your (spoiler) section on Oblomov, although the book is still on my TBR, because I was sure it would be interesting.

It's dangerous, I think, to view a character in a novel as a therapeutic case. One could argue that a man like that is clinically depressed, or unable to organize his behavior because of upbringing (more the CBT view, I suppose), or of course it could be a combination. It is certainly reductive to view a character as simply characteristic (laziness, for instance), as in commedia del'arte. Is there something else that the author is trying to portray, in terms of the era, the society, a philosophy of life? I look forward now to reading this novel and trying to think that through.

Bamako

A wonderful film set in Mali. Set in a courtyard to a house a trial takes place, a trial in which the World Bank and IMF are the defendants for their interventions in Africa. Sounds dry? Yet not at all - wonderful witnesses express a plurality of experience of African people, people from Mali I guess. They don't bother too much for the world bank view, but I didn't care for that, we hear plenty of that. The defence lawyer an annoying man, who had no thesis really except to try to take the others arguments and evidence apart (perhaps the fate of defence lawyers, fair enough). May still sound dry yet all along we see the life of the people in and around the courtyard, some beautiful women in exquisite traditional dress, some men who seem lost, the witnesses and so we see some reality of Africa and a poetic glimpse, beautiful cinematography that balances this serious subject, an interest in the humanity of the context.

Early in the film a man comes to bear witness. He is not allowed to speak as it is not his turn. Basically he tells the court they do not understand speaking, that it must happen when he is moved to it. This understanding made me think of Socrates who I understand did not want his words written down. It seems an underst5andign of humanity and language of the highest order, yet downtrodden by the systems of the court. He tells them he will return and does, later, to sing a testimony almost, in a language apparently hardly anyone in the courtyard knew and which is not subtitled, yet the expression perhaps as in Frost's idea of the 'sound of sense' is understood. And for all the different modes of evidence it all seemed to me to speak to humans that listen, for all the sophistry and tricks of the defence lawyer. I recommend it to human beings.

-37 - thanks Judy. I hope I have not been reductionistic, I'd hate myself for that. I do think it is clear Oblomov was stuck some of the ways he was I know can be helped. but I prefer a humanisitic view of him. I am struck by Barry's view of him as beautiful and can go with that.
I think Goncharov said that if he had had any idea of what Oblomov would come to represent that eh would not have written it so well -- and he definitely wrote it well, so well I cannot claim to have a monopoly of truth on him.

#39 "I hope I have not been reductionistic, I'd hate myself for that" - somewhat reductionistic itself, curses.

5. Sappho, stung with love: poems and fragments by Sappho Kindle ed.



I was prompted to read this having read this excellent article

TLS - new poems by Sappho

. . . having been interested in the past due to my interest in ancient Greece, the use of one of her lines in the title of a Salinger story, and many another reason not least as she seems so beloved of many that seem like they are people whose opinions I value. I read quickly through her fragments in a kindle edition by Delphi - but this edition was more helpful in appreciating her poetry. Though sadly I did not find the formatting helpful - I think I understood the print edition had commentary facing text, but if so this was lost in the Kindle version and I found it hard to read the commentary and then read the poems, the print layout would have helped me.

There is so little of her work surviving to read it could be heartbreaking - yet what we have and her tone suggests happily that she lived with a very full heart. There is an immediacy to her that I find very modern. I believe the reason we may not have her more complete is due to the censorship of the Middle Ages for whom this may have been very difficult, nevermind any issue of sexuality or even of gender power wars.

Something about her sparkles in observation and delight and in complicity in life, even whilst she may observe others. I'm not sure what more I could say - it was very interesting to read her having read of Asklepios this year and of course at times she is invoking the gods. It was very interesting for me to discover just how much education in her time meant education in lyric poetry, and made me think very much how that is exactly not what education is about now - it must be possible to leave school now with very little or no education in lyric poetry. Advances. And so much of the delight in her is delight in connecting to a voice that gets things so often lost in our modern world it seems, what is not valued, and hearing about living which seems most important really.

I feel a neophyte to really knowing her, so I will say no more for now - I should read her again. I have ordered If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho translated by Anne Carson to compare translation, I heard this is good.

Twenty-Seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit by Timothy Donnelly (Kindle ed.)



I was recommended this author's second volume The Cloud Corporation on another literature forum. So I bought (i.e. licensed) both for Kindle and began at the beginning. And was very glad to do so - I've only read it once and look forward to going back over it as I read it fast and I am sure there were bits I missed. But it seemed to demand this moving through. At first I thought it might just be more clever contemporary poetry - but I soon put that aside, this grabbed me, I found it a page turner as I suggest above -- more in fact, as I read it it delighted me, I wanted to read it aloud and did, it was a pleasure, a joy, to read much of it, to mouth the words in that order to that effect. What more can I say. It seemed of course to be poetry by someone very well versed and educated, but lost nothing in its immediacy, zany humour, delight in words and communication of one human being to another. I'm looking forward to reading the next volume, I want to reread this first, to see where I am after that two day rush. I rushed so much I cannot find the section that connected me to my mouth, quite unplanned, so I cannot add the nice quote I hoped to, if I reread I'll try to come back and add it in an edit.

One downside was that I didn't like the Kindle edition formatting, no new page for new poems, bad.

Edit 7/4/14 - I wanted to add an excerpt/s and I'd have liked to add the one that I connected to that made me read aloud, I didn't mark it -- but I started to reread this today and by the third poem in I was getting this feeling (earlier than I remember it last time)...so here is the first section of that poem, in fcat no, a section from poem two instead as three is too long:

Nice, yes? As I keep rereading and if I recognise the part that got my voice going I'll post some of that in too, though it is hard to get the formatting right - no strike that, impossible to get the formatting right as far as I see so far, there should be indents - well I would't want anyone to post my stuff if it is not properly formatted -- so said quotation is removed until I can get it right.

7. The Golovlyov Family by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin



I find my habit is changing, I am not writing up my thoughts as immediately as I was - this has a benefit in that perhaps I can mull over my thoughts more, but loses some of the immediacy of reaction that I like and also runs the danger that things become foggier not clearer with time as life moves on.

Back to the subject - a wonderful book. I think it has a reputation as deeply depressing. Its subject matter is unremitting. We follow the Golovlyov family - dissolute father turned to drink and bawdy rhyme living mainly in his room, Mother (Arina) runner of the household and estate (they are landowners, at the start serf owners) who has increased the holdings of the family ten fold - severe is an inadequate word for this lady. Then three sons - the first chapter sees the eldest ruin himself on gambling, have to come home (where he is sure he will have no real support, and he is right) fall into drink and finally descend further and reach an end . So, cheery it is not. The rest of the book follows mainly the decline and succession of the mother and the rise and trajectory of son Porphry, described in the blurb on the back of my copy as "one of the most memorable monsters in all of world literature", they were not wrong. Within this we also look at the lives of two female cousins that Arina is guardian to.

The core of the book is about the nature of the relationships between these people - or to many I am sure lack of relationship between them. It seems that exchange of emotions is mostly displaced into their financial relationships - on the death of the father, Arina does not speak of love of her children or her motivation for having increased the estate so grandly, but does seek to hand over the reins to them , somewhat Lear like. Porphyry comes to gain control of the family and in so doing sees all his relationships through the prism of finance - or else his resort to a crass religiosity and the certainty of truisms, every day sayings and morality that he'll stick to even in the face of the possible demise of others. He comes to pray more and more and treats even the clergy to a paternalistic patronisation that avoids emotional meanings of situations to leave him with a certainty in some ill defined ideal in mealy mouthed trite sayings. Though I have to say I see him as a monster wholly created by his upbringing, his character a survival technique in the face of such lack of love and the apparent way the dynamics of the family work. Put it this way - when the eldest son returns having gambled away what he had he eats the scraps off his mother's plate and lives in a bare room on the floorboards - this is severe. Porphyry's weasel words and manipulations seem a natural way to survive in such a situation where alternatives are not on offer - and his grasp of some safety in a basic understanding of the morality of the church or of stock phrases show a wish to find something else but which he has never been shown in depth, what love really means.

The trajectory of the book is relentless - it is very good on the decline to death of several family members. In the end Porphyry is left alone almost and in the undoing of his routine starts to glimpse himself. This is brought home by a visit of one of the cousins. Is he becoming suicidal, does he consider putting them both out of their misery -- I think he starts to grasp what things really mean. In doing so, after his lifetime of hypocrisy and control it is not surprising his mind may turn to ways to seek certainty and control through such things -- and such things are only ever suggested and then barely, the idea of a him killing her and then himself is something that went through my mind it is not on the page. But I do start to extract some hope as he moves to this ending, that he can start to see how things are, to feel remorse BIG SPOILER - in the end he feels impelled to ask forgiveness (it is Easter week) and he goes out into the cold to find his mother's grave and to ask her for this. And in this I do see some hope -- though none terrestrially. it made me think of John Keats' comment that 'life is a vale of soul making' and to see him in his journey even start to reach some clarity, to perhaps to have started to make his soul. But this is a somewhat optimistic reading that many would disagree with and optimistic only for his soul and maybe if there is any afterlife for that, before his God. If he even is there in his journey - coudl he have been true to it?

Speaking of God - this book is written with an insight into the soul that is biblical, and understanding of these matters that astounds. In some ways I compare it to a gospel as somehow the opposite, it has no good news (other than my perhaps forced reading above), but in having no good news at all it consistently begs the question as to how else it could be and in so doing made me aware of lack of love and the importance of love throughout, whilst love is not written about consideration of it frames the book, for me anyway.

One of my guiding principles in writing my comments, even since I began, was to avoid writing spoilers, and here I am having done it twice in as many months. Liked I was hooked on making meaning to myself, yet I can do this without the spoiler I think.

8. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, the first book in The Deptford trilogy (20/3/14 - 26/3/14)



I had a week's holiday a few week's ago and found myself in an Oxfam bookshop with the D's in fiction at eye level. I remembered a friend had posted on another literature forum how she had found herself at eye level with her library and the D's were there and she got into reading a Robertson Davies she had not read and enthused greatly on his writing. So, tongue in cheek, I looked for a Davies, I mean what's the chance...but there was The Manticore the second of the trilogy. I take it out and start the usual examinations, thinking I may take a chance on it and there in the back it even says you can read it out of order, it stands alone. So, ok I think, flirting with thinking this is somehow synchronicity, being open to it....I knew that Davies was influenced by Jung and this book also looked interesting on that front, I'd got this far by being open to, to something different, I mean don't I have enough books to read already. I got home and started and was really enjoying it, but my friend suggested the trilogy should be read in order, so an order went in and two days later I began this the first of the trilogy.

I add this little story as it is important to me and to me somehow in keeping with the tone of voice I read the book with and which I read in the book. It's a wonderful story, well told, warm somehow and more than anything aware of parts of life that are not really about thought or reason. Maybe this appealed to me as despite being a counsellor my job is very much about the rational - the cognitive behavioural - holidays are a chance to reconnect to some other of the flows of life - and meanings I am taking from it are challenging me to also find ways to be in touch with these amidst the work, to find better ways would be better to say. So, the story traces the lives of three boys from an incident that connects them in childhood of a thrown snowball. I realised as I read that a long time ago I saw a documentary about this, there is a scene in a gravel pit that I remembered I had heard about - but I also had a sense of deja vu in reading the book that I cannot quite account for, maybe I am pushing this all too far, but it's been very good to read of lives addressed this way, a healing sense to this. The book focusses especially on one of these boys lives, his development, his view of the world. I found some of the later sections moving. The end of the novel comes together with great power, although some of it may be predicted it really worked for me and went beyond any of my prediction. Davies writes with authority, his style simply of story telling. At times it can feel he tells you things he believes he has to, like a student in an essay, but this is not a big problem -- his style is astonishingly effective and his interest in the deeper flows of life, as you can tell, spoke to me. I'll always think of this book with warmth and gratitude for stating so well, helping me feel and affirming a view that so much of the modern world ignores.

Your review makes me want to reread Fifth Business.

Love the story! I haven't read any Robertson Davies for years but perhaps I should start going into Oxfam shops and looking at the Ds... if I remember rightly there is quite often a Robertson Davies or two to be found there ;-)

Go or it Rebecca, i am enthused.

The D's would be the place to find him wandering_star, I know that's not so strange :) It was just I found myself in that situation and remembered her post, went with it.

9. The Manticore by Robertson Davies (2nd novel of The Deptford Trilogy



Continuing the story, we follow the son of one of the three boys from book one, getting the story of their relationship, largely as we follow the process of a Jungian analysis. It's an interesting imagining of this process and once again puts a strong case for these points of view, the value of dreams, how we might look at the. The story of how The Manticore itself finds its way in the story is quite powerful. I didn't find this novel as emotionally moving as the first, but still thoroughly enjoyed it and its stand against rational and the journey into feeling of its protagonist. Once again it also came together at the end in ways partially unexpected -- and I especially liked how despite his liking for Jung he gives Liesel a strong argument for why its important to become the author of our own therapy, not simply resting on another's system or approach, very positive and quite inspiring.

10 Twenty-Seven Props for the Production of Eine Lebenszeit by Timothy Donnelly (reread)

Yes, turning the page back so fast - I read this so quickly last time, having reached a momentum of reading with it that piled me through. One reason that as you go the poems open more to you that drove me through them, a bit headlong, a bit out of control, and as I read I go back rereading and beginning again all the time, to keep some overview of the sense. I hesitate to say these poems are difficult, I don't know that they would be to others, and I am not sure they are to me, they just take a certain type of reading and accepting. They rattle along but switchback on themselves as well and digress and digress. I haven't read many of the metaphysicals but something about this puts me in mind of that, his tone in some way...and a determination to speak poetically, and yes definitely something of the quasi-unintelligibility he speaks of here:

Harriet blog at Poetry Foundation (I highly recommend this.)

In fact there is nothing quasi about it, there are a couple of poems at least and many parts of poems that I just don't get -- yet it may be on the last read I did somewhat. Yes, but it is not unintellligible at all, nor indirect really. And often his theme is metaphysical, a lot about identity and experience of an I, of being. And through all this a zesty wit, its laugh out loud funny at times, and his hip wit could remind me of Pynchon at times, it's hot and as I said before a joy to read. I didn't remind myself of where I started to get it last time, but this time I am sure it happened faster that I was enjoying such sections - I still won't quote though as pasting losing the formatting he gave it. I still dislike the Kindle version but have a hard copy of it it winging its way to me, which may also allow me to compare his own notes to the poems more easily. I love the way his subject kind of inhabits his lines, allowed to express itself in a leisurely way, not forced, danced with, thoughts delighted in a way of thinking and speaking delighted in. Hard to pin down specifically. Reading it is an experience. I'm looking forward even more to The Cloud Corporation.

Enjoyed the poetry blog link.

I thought I might read The Deptford Trilogy last year as it was Davies centennial year, but I never got to it.

I'm glad that you're enjoying The Deptford Trilogy, Tony. I bought that same edition in London last fall, in anticipation of my Canadian Literature challenge this year, and I'll probably read it this summer.

Thanks Bas and Darryl - you can see I'd heartily recommend it.

Back to Timothy Donnelly, my comment on the metaphysical poets made me look into them a bit further, He's not liek them in that he is very lyrical and yet he does have complicated formulations at times. My book about them has short poems in it but I understand they sometimes write longer poems, which he tends to do. His phrasing is also interesting, more gothic in that I mean elaborate or old fashioned in some ways a lot, yet he can be very concise and modern. He seems to delight in playing, that's maybe the most I want to say and plays with his approach. His interests are often metaphysical, but often just where that meets the physical. As you can see he's not easy to pin down, but that is a good good thing.

I got the State of the Thing email today, and it was good to read how we can see the gender breakdown of our books and how this is being debated. My own library sadly at a little under 13% female. Yet it made me aware that this gender breakdown was purely of male and female. As someone just a little what some call gender gifted I was aware of this - and coincidentally came across this article about exactly how many ways of looking at this there may be, far beyond even my own tiny mind. So, thought it may be interesting to post:

Daily Telegraph - gender identity survey offers 57 options on gender identity

On the poetry thread we have recognised the need to be inclusive of female poets - of course that should go for all, and not necessarily about just representing gender in choice of poet.

That is a fascinating survey, Tony. I became aware of the push for a variety of gender identity classifications because of some work I was doing, but I had no idea there were so many. I suppose some of them overlap to some degree, but it was nonetheless interesting.

Thanks Rebecca, I had no idea either. Positivity important.

In our last reading group we read Oblomov and the Golovlyov family - in a context of the pressure to westernise or stay more eastern in Russia. This term we're reading twentieth century Japanese writers. Japan also faced a similar tension and more sharply than Russia with the end of the Shogunate.

It struck me thinking about this problem of culture that the tension felt can actually be the wrong question - do we go west or go east, a problem of identity. The reason it may be the wrong problem is that identity rests in neither, it is an illusion to feel this would resolve their identity issue to have gone one way or the other. As even if you do achieve one, it is not the answer to all questions of identity. That is never achieved, surely? However it seems eminently understandable that as a previously coherent culture is challenged to react to the pressures of an outside culture, especially one in some ways seen as more developed or with features seen as beneficial that in the face of this the human reaction is one of asking such questions regarding such a polarity of identity - it must be possible to get lost in this, in ideas and also in the practical everyday demands the changes this unleashes could place upon a person, the flux unleashed into the society - it may be the experience of being in such a society is that it continually urges a person to ask such a question. As I read the Japanese authors, two of whom committed suicide, I am going to bear this in mind. The Japanese adaptation may have been more successful, quicker -- I wonder if their social system and nation state was more ready simply to assume some new techniques from outside when they turned to the west. Yet may it also have therefore caused a clearer questioning of these two sources of identity?

In fact I suppose I am suggesting it is a question of ideals and what happens when we relate ourselves to an ideal.

I don't know.

Am I looking at it wrongly? I've not even been to either place never mind been part of their societies. It also occurs to me that different people's experience of identity may lead them to need different answers to this, and how difficult it may sometimes be, given an answer we need to allow for other answers. I'm interested in what others think -- is this obvious and beside the problem, do others agree, is there a flaw in my thinking.

So far I've read two Akutagawa short stories (Rashomon and In a Bamboo Grove - lovely) and I'm several chapters in to Tanazaki's Some Prefer Nettles.

What an interesting reading group you're in.

It is, it is so :) After many years of no groups and not feeling able to be in any group.

11. Some Prefer Nettles by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki



A short novel. Japanese of course. Published in 1929. I found it very interesting, very enjoyable and engaging in parts, in others and in other ways at times I felt quite detached from the characters. It follows Kaname and his wife Misako and their son Hiroshi. Kaname and Misako seem to have fallen out of love - or have they? - anyway something is wrong. Misako has the attention of another man and so we see the tensions of cultural identity (as I indicated above between east/tradition and west/modernisation) play out amidst this crisis of marital status. Kaname and Misako are stuck, they cannot see how to move forward, it takes excruciating time. They seem not to have the language to be able to deal with the situation, nor the conventions. And of course they are not conventional - they are well off, he puts an appearance in at the office weekly. He also seems especially dislocated, he has perhaps an artist's temperament and yet he has no art. He is drifting, lost - his identity seems in constant flux between the east and west -- I think he doesn't realise how free and western he is, he seems to have demolished the codes of eastern convention (though he is highly attuned to them) and really now has no code for his own free identity, all at sea. And he is always thinking of this -- and also of this through the prism of his marriage issues -- I might say he worries, and in this can remind me of Oblomov, he thinks things through and gets nowhere, cannot act. He is uncertain, but not just in an artists uncertainty, though it is this too.

They have a huge problem, her father, and how to play this out socially. They can't even decide what and when to tell their son and in the end someone else acts. But her father has his own answer to the issue of identity and cultural identity - he is treasuring the past, the old ways as he sees them, complete with Mistress decades younger than he whom he insists obeys those ways. And Kaname is drawn to spend time with them, there are trips to puppet theatres in which he gets a sniff of clarity, for once he puts worry aside, can feel life again with a slow dreamy sense and takes in the lessons of the plays (which may be very relevant for such situations - but with some very traditional answers). Does the father flaunt his submissive mistress to the son-in-law? look how it can be my boy? He certainly tests the Mistress's patience with his insistences. Does Kaname begin in his contact with them begin to see his own play, his own views of women, does he recognise he may have been looking for a doll of sorts? Or does he not, does he simply become more confused as to his identity?

It's quite an open ended book and I will not spoil the ending, that is very open ended and I think a reason why many criticise it now. However, if Kaname worries, then he might be seen to have a generalised anxiety and in such experience the role of uncertainty can be important, the ability to tolerate it (or not if anxious) -- so I find it quite meaningful if there is uncertainty about the ending, and I am glad I am able to tolerate it, at least for now. As I said in my earlier post, I do not see identity resting in any of the certainties of east or west, modern or traditional - say you take one of those paths, you still have to create meaning and identity within them, for it to be given to you would be to have turned yourself into a robot or zombie somehow, mad for certainty accepting it in such answers. At times I wondered if this was a cold book, emotion is often at bay. Whilst it has a western structure/style it is full of eastern content and I could see the chapters as very eastern in their presentation of a scene, like a picture almost. The people do not interact as western, for the most part -- it is striking what Kaname can say in English compared to the strictures upon him in Japanese dress and language. It gives the book a curious quality of familiarity and distance (to me) - but I think it is one that surprises me to find I really want to go back and stare at those pictures again, to read them and their subtleties. And I find in the marital issues, in struggles for identity (yes of east v west, old v new, man v woman, more? - yes of ideas/ideals v the real (especially on the man's view of woman)) that whilst it is highly specific to Japan then, that it is also universal in appeal.

Excellent discussion on Some Prefer Nettles

Thanks Barry, always good to get your feedback. I've followed your thread but don't have so much to say. Zamyatin interested me, he lived locally at one time. Not sure I could read one of those novels now, may find it too oppressive.

12. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima



A powerful book based on powerful events. I found the thinking of its protagonist and especially his "friend" Kashiwagi difficult at times and wearying, more so Kashiwagi maybe. Yet when he made his decision it assumed a page turning urgency. It's a wonderful book of understanding of mental ill health - a young man that stutters, with difficult parental relations seems to compensate with ideas of beauty and in so doing perhaps confuses aesthetics and ethics. As I have read this I came to Kierkegaard properly for the first time and this and his notions of anxiety seemed so relevant - and the protagonist's final choice explained by his confusion of ethics and aesthetics. Tragic, with some comic tones at times. And in showing this what empathy Mishima seems to have shown, to me at least, as we follow the thinking of this young man - at times is this thinking not just stunning insight, honest access to feelings before language, poetic yet hard to unentangle from the times he leaps from one type of insight into another of confusion as I suggested of aesthetics and ethics, at least as my first understanding of it all.

I interpret his path as his rebellion against his own confusion which seems to be a self therapy of the most wonderful sort, if it had remained psychological. Maybe it might also be seen as the inevitable course of an illness, as he himself does not really realise the therapeutic side as such, to tear down his own mental structures as this idea comes from within his own ideology itself. And so due to the deepness of his illness it itself gives him the reason why even in rebelling he repeats his error and makes this ideological revolution actual in a way problematic to say the least. How this worked speaks of the power of such illness. But the affect of his actions explain how he feels at the end. I want now to see the film Mishima, which I saw at least part of a long time ago.

Your review made me think about this book differently in that you emphasized Mishima's empathy; when I read the book, I kept feeling I was missing a lot.

I don't think I've ever commented on a cover before, but even before I read your review of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, the cover leapt out at me. The contrast of the delicate flowers on their narrow stems against the blood red of the cover, echoing the dagger like shape of the leaves was almost overpowering. Knowing what we know now, it almost seems like Mishima confronting his end. I know that's not so, but a powerful cover all the same.

Will you be reading World of Wonders?

>64 rebeccanyc: thanks Rebecca. I can understand that missing something, I think for much of my life I may have felt the same. I think one reason the character was as he was was because he had something missing (something to do with love and connection) that he replaced with something else (the beautiful) (if you can follow my was's - I have had a day like this).

>65 SassyLassy: Thanks Sassy - very interesting comments, you made me think about the illustration, I think the flowers may be Irises which feature in one of the many interesting episodes - how that pans out may interest you. I want to find out a lot more how this book fits with Mishima overall.

I'll definitely be reading World of Wonders - I've only delayed due to this course on Japanese fiction and also in preparation for this as I started to read the garden of evening mists which I hope to finish soon. Together with some philosophy and poetry reading -- but this may all also be an excuse to tackle World of Wonders when I'm on holiday as it was so good to read him on holiday in March and I am expecting it all to come together big time. But first, Murakami Norweigan Wood.

good stuff on Mishima, Tony. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion is one my favourite Mishimas and I reread it regularly. You are right about Mishima's empathy.

>67 tomcatMurr: Thanks Murr, I should have thought you may be interested.

I just read the chapter on Mishima in The Search for authenticity in modern Japanese literature by Hisaaki Yamanouchi - the discussion of his other works were interesting but beyond me as I've not read them. Yamanouchi has an interesting interpretation but in my limited experience I was aware of whilst Mishima has these structures of meaning I am sure so much of what he is up to is in the detail, as Yamanouchi does perhaps lead me to realise, Mishima's writing assumes great life.

Reading the section on his death and Mishima's thoughts before it, especially the quote from the magazine 'The Waves' in which he speaks of his creativity being born from the tension between art and life and how having completed his tetralogy he could not conceive of a world suddenly seems to place him too in ground similar to he protagonist of Temple of the Golden Pavilion, which I saw as a confusion of art and life - it seems Mishima kept these two things very thoroughly distinct. It's tempting to think that when that ran it's course he had no reason to live - but I'd need to learn a lot more about that to really think that thought had any truth. Yamanouchi earlier considers Confessions of a Mask and says:

"And yet the fact remains that the nihilism of the hero inevitably reveals the abyss in the mind of the author himself, which made the artistic device all the more necessary. The author's own nihilism and his urgent need to disguise it under the highly artistic device were to become Mishima's major preoccuptations."

As this is what I wondered about his life when that tension between art and life may have run out (perhaps this tension is what gives his detail such force?) - but that in a way his suicide may have been a rebellion against this possible nihilism. To make such a decision about life does remind me of Mizoguchi in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. It is interesting to be thinking about Kierkegaard at the same time as I guess this question about life, that may be interpreted as nihilism, may seem a starting point for him (Kierkegaard) rather than a reason to picture it as pointless or unthinkable and this is the viewpoint I tend to feel for I think. But the leap from the aesthetic to the ethical Mizoguchi makes reminds me of this leap in The Waves where Mishima says "I cannot conceive of the world after I finish this novel" (i.e. The Decay of the Angel). But in holding the world in this way what beauty, what pain, in fact what other aesthetic values, what pleasure, it may suggest.

This suddenly leads me entirely unexpectedly to wonder if outside of that aesthetic world the real world has those values, or just is. There's a question.

Of course the real world is made up of the aesthetic too, for all of us it cannot escape that (?) - and I am suddenly on ground of another essay I read this morning, again unexpectedly - a previously unpublished Oxford essay of T. S. Eliot on metaphysics (Edit - in this week's TLS). He argues the world is made up of both the knowledge and action. Sorry I cannot add a link, it doesn't seem to be publically available on the website but I highly recommend it - not least as he considers: "The token that a philosophy is true is, I think, the fact that it brings us to the exact point from which we started" which I always like to hear from him.

13. Manage your Day-to-day: Build your Routine, Find your Focus & Sharpen your creative mind ed. by Jocelyn K. Glei Kindle ed.



For a spell in February and March I was struggling with the various tasks I have. Workload was increased at work, in my own time I was going through a patch of struggling to get any writing done and was stumped for a while with one project - the two sides of the problem were affecting a feeling of being under it all on top of everything else. I like to think I'm quite organised and I work in helping people help themselves so I know a lot of answers to dealing with workload. But more than anything I was coming to a conclusion that my organisation wasn't organised enough - and creatively I realised I still held a candle for the idea that it'll get done when inspiration comes. I was starting to rethink this, to consider what I could do differently both creatively in my own time and for handling my workload at work. Amidst all this I got an offer from Amazon for this book due to another purchase, well not just this book a range of books but I decided to go for this one (I usually avoid such books, as I say I know a lot about self help and creatively I tend to cock a snook at them). But it really hit the nail of these issues on the head - it validated a load of things I already knew but helped me put them into place with more conviction, many basic things I knew but somehow wasn't quite doing. It increased my knowledge and widened my perspective on these issues and reminded me they were understandable, not just down to my shortcomings. It was a big help in catching up with my work workload which was becoming a mountain. The book's definition of creative is wide, and the first parts helped with my less obviously creative job. But then it has also helped me re-establish a routine and focus to write more regularly -- I still have a way to go, but as I've been taking a break from writing groups I realised how much less I was even trying to write, caught again in some of those beginners traps I thought I had got over. Its really helped me establish a better work pattern- I still believe in inspiration, but as I have realised before I'm more likely to catch that if I have a work routine.

The book re-enthused me for exactly what was overwhelming me, or was part of that process. Its really nicely presented - short chapters by different contributors tackle different aspects of these themes and it's broken into the three sections, routine, focus and sharpening your creative mind. Mostly I found these chapters to hit these nails on the head and the info about contributors suggests further reading in their areas. They suggest concrete things and helped me in my own path of deciding which aspects I needed to sharpen. It's a lively book - yes I was alive to these issues at that time anyway, but I found it stimulating. I'll be buying the next volume and I've favourited the 99U webpage.

>69 tonikat: I could certainly do with reading that book.

14. Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis by Wendy Cope



My first Wendy Cope. I enjoyed it, found it refreshing overall. She is very witty, Rowan Williams is right about that, though of course it is politic for any poet to say that. Why politic you may ask if you don't know her. Well, the book is divided into three parts. The first has poems in the style of some famous poets for examples nursery rhymes in the style of Wordsworth, limericks about The Waste Land, and these are good, yes she seems to channel Wordsworth, and it is funny. Poets including her contemporaries are among her targets.

I liked the forms she took and her rhyme, it works, she is a Mistress of form. It begins with a funny riposte to an engineer's question as to why there is no engineer's corner in Westminster Abbey, then loved her 'A Policeman's Lot' in response to a comment by Ted Hughes about how a writer's progress is marked by times they escape their inner policeman. But this section also contains personal poems and poems not about other poets. These have several themes, her father, a school acquaintance among the personal poems but a theme emerges where it is not clear what is personal and what is not or maybe bestrides both, of lovers and relationships and lonely hearts of course with female perspective. I very much liked the sequence 'From June to December' following a relationship.

The second part largely follows a Mr Strugnell, a poet who can rhyme and scan and write to form, but not really a poet in himself. This has some humour, she's puncturing something about masculine arrogance, and maybe it's only natural this unsettled me. But my problem with these poems, which are often influenced by or in the style of others is that maybe the conversation is really with herself but her target is instead this pompous unlikeable man who says 'One doesn't need much literary skill / To be the Casanova of Tulse Hill.' What makes Cope's poems so good is that they do not fall into the traps of Strugnell, they fly with understanding of poetry and the world and it seems hard on him to put him down, fictional though he may be. Of course in the process she does lampoon the masculine literary establishment of the time (Hughes, Heaney, Larkin among them). I am sure much needed from the female perspective and in general no bad thing to skewer male assumptions. But it seemed hard to me on Strugnell and through that hard on certain ways of understanding the world or misunderstanding it for all the poetry they try to read that it may be more helpful to understand -- having said that of course I do not think Strugnell was above using his 'knowledge' at the expense of others especially in his Casanova goals, maybe there were many that needed to be so skewered. It just seemed an easy target - and I wondered her relationship to her own inner Strugnell. I didn't notice any of his poems that were good really, though I did laugh at the one that lampooned Andrew Motion. I quite liked his fifth sonnet. But I'd have really liked it if she had credited him with more insight having read all that poetry, if he had written something just a bit interesting. Otherwise what I am wondering about is how this may just be a clever witty person laughing at being less clever and witty, which needs its own lampooning. (I can be unrealistic about others limitations, maybe I fear them and seek always escape from them. I know some master never escaping. I mean maybe i am being unrealistic about the Strugnell's that may exist.) Maybe I also question Strugnell as her wit seems so much sharper in part one.
Maybe he is also not the point and that is really the themes of these famous male poets and their ponderousness, self importance.

The third part is a hoot. The title poem has long intrigued me and now I know its truth.

I saw a copy of this volume she had annotated on the Guardian website and I think it was there that she noted a theme of this volume was father figures, which I had not got as far as in recognising her themes, older men maybe is what I'd have said, not that I'm disputing her and maybe it goes to explain the nature of her target to me and a need to nail Strugnell as she does. The more I see the world from the female stance of course I realise the more I understand how many "awful men" there are out there, maybe that answers all my questions.

Overall I enjoyed these poems, especially the first and third parts and look forward to reading her more, to see where she goes, or has gone to date. She's witty and fun mostly, and where I found her not maybe that's me in an aspect of maleness.

15. Emily Dickinson: poems selected by Ted Hughes by Emily Dickinson with a Introduction by Ted Hughes.



An unplanned read as I gave this copy to a friend at the weekend, I have her complete poems. But a wonderful read, reread in fact. Hughes' selection nice, has me eager to open up that Complete. His introduction also fine and led me to some internet research about her, strange how there were things I had forgotten and most of all how I had forgotten the flavour of her poems, how they are so much more than any simple description...and especially when you enter her sea of poetry and read one after another, get a feel for her tides and currents.

I'm a bit of a David Sylvian fan and I think I have to trace not reading her poems to a listening kick to his versions of "I should not dare" and "A certain slant of light", excellent as they may be. Or maybe it is just the physical size and weight of the Complete poems that is stopping me. Somehow I have not been motivated to read her but this has re-energised me and revolutionised the tropes of my thinking about her. Also interesting to read her having also been reading Kierkegaard recently, someone else so interested in the eternal.

In some ways I'd like to say anything in the form of a poem, and it'd have to be a bloody good one, or prose that is on fire to capture her, anything else just not enough. (Btw I enjoyed Wendy Cope's poem on and her and how true about editors, but sadly Wendy it was true to Emily's time too and they rewrote her poems to remove those dashes and punctuate orthodoxly.) I greatly enjoyed reading again in my reading around about the garden she kept which sounded wonderful and for all she may have stayed at home she seems very free. Wonderful.

>70 baswood: - sometimes there is just too much to do Barry, I'm going through another of those periods at work at the mo.

16. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (kindle ed.)



A beautiful book in which grief and love are intricately linked, motivations for love linked to loss. Traumatic loss at that, yes maybe isn't it always, but especially here and at the summer of life. Never just about growing up, maturing, though it is about that too, in this context of grief. It doesn't dwell on the tradition/modernity debate in the same way the other Japanese novels I read recently do - it is maybe another step along, the modernity has just happened and this along with the grief is a reason for a sort of ennui that pervades the novel, the protagonist - Toru Watanabe (like being called Wandering Smith). Toru is modern and his dialogue with tradition is interesting as if he is not concerned with that tradition then how does he negotiate the waypoints of life, that most important one, loss -- and the book answers this, totally idiosyncratically. In the end they invent their own ritual.
It's also still a book about identity in the midst of all this, in some ways Toru is curiously passive, non decisive, again maybe as his identity is not given in the same way, he wanders as a result. In the end has he even found it at the end of the book (he's given his answer)? But maybe at the end of his reflection that brings the book about will lead to this. For all this ennui it has it is remarkably precise in detail throughout and sense of his aliveness.
I find it a wonderful book, I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though it's thrown my plan to read Murakami in order right out of the window. But it stimulates me to get back at that plan.

End of Japanese literature reading group/course. Maybe the end of reading courses for a while as they're such a big commitment not to mention taking my reading away from my own pathways.

(to myself - in some ways is he the wood, especially in a lurid sense as well as a steadfast one, and on fire - is he just an object the women play against?) he seems an everyman, through being no man.

I read Norwegian Wood a couple of years ago and like you found it beautifully written. I also had no trouble in identifying with Toru Watanabe although others in my boo0k club did. Yes I also read it as a book club choice.

17. The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng



I came to enjoy this book very much. At first I was a bit unsure of its style. At first I felt it gave facts before then dropping into a poetic observation and this was something I noticed as a pattern and found slightly irritating - I wondered if it was meant to be authentic to the protagonist. Either I got used to it or it became subtler or stopped. She grew on me as well.

I began it as a preparation for my recent Japanese literature course/group. Whilst set in Malaya/Malaysia it follows the relationship between a Chinese Malaysian woman and a Japanese man, former gardener to the Emperor of Japan (Aritomo), who has made a Japanese garden in the Cameron Highlands. It follows her story of pre war childhood, wartime imprisonment during Japanese occupation, post war relationship with Aritomo amidst a communist insurgency and we also meet her late in life, the perspective from which she looks back at all of this - as she faces illness. It really gives a sense of those times and places, I found it vivid in that sense and the characters memorable. I realise I know very little of Malaysia and this book has made it fascinating to me.

In many ways the book is about memory and identity, how what we make of the past defines the present. It is a book about grief and loss and forgiveness and being in the present, to me anyway. We learn about Japanese Gardening and also the art of archery - she learns these things with this man. The stillness and meditative calm of the garden and the archery I found very attractive, there is dignity and connection to self and others amidst chaos and threat to self - through the discipline real presence is worked towards, things seen more as they are, things forgiven and moved beyond without that ever being a spoken goal, more a consequence. Many gifts are given by Aritomo to Kun Ling. Yet their relationship can unsettle, with developments near the end, what more was he aware of that he could not share, could only do so in code it is suggested, another Japanese man leaving his mark on her - or am I swift to judge - whilst what he gives has helped her, she has also helped him, as her late dream suggests, to act according to his code of being having perhaps shot an arrow at the sun of his own belief, having seen things as they were and possibly given her the physical answer she wanted most. Two possible views of him, he remains something of a mystery. I like that where she has got to in the end is somewhere that allows her freedom, not having to seek her physical answer, though she has recorded her journey on paper. In many ways it is a book about coming to terms with reality, with landscape, with pain, with imperfection and divisions between people, in this sense I find it a hopeful book, the human finds ways to connect.

I had to put aside the last 150 pages whilst my course stared, only finishing it now, apologies if I dwell more on the end than the slightly mistier, to me now, start. An interesting pun of experience.

>75 baswood:....i can kind of identify with watanabe, I didn't know it showed. Sorry for late reply Barry.

I am thinking that The Garden of Evening Mists might well be a good choice for my book club. Good to see that you enjoyed it and it gave food for thought.

It really grew on me Barry and I think could be a good book group choice, such a lot in it.

Patti Smith reviews Haruki Murakami's latest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/books/review/haruki-murakamis-colorless-tsukur...

I saw that in the Times book review and will read it later this morning. I loved Patti Smith's Just Kids, and enjoyed another book she wrote the introduction, Astragal (in fact, that's why I bought it), so I'm looking forward to her thoughts about Murakami and she may even get me to read him!

>81 rebeccanyc: I enjoyed the review of Murakami. There is something about Murakami that I like. I read a review of what i talk about when i talk about running in the TLS, which as I remember it was dismissive of a lack of rigour or precision in him. Yet I liked the book. I used to run a lot, when knees allowed. Sometimes I feel he may be light, but the way I read him partly that's part of his message. So it was good to read him appreciated by someone else who is creative. In the other forum I inhabit someone else had posted about one of his recent books, its quite a hard core forum on "literature" and this guy wrote how for any drawbacks to the book he had read, that its images had stayed with him more than any other book he'd read for a long time, and that made me feel less like dismissing him, that and my recent read and discussion group on Norwegian Wood.

I don't really know Patti Smith's music - I bought a friend Just Kids for her a birthday when it came out and she loved it. I should try and listen to her stuff.

I enjoyed your review of Astragal, I'll keep my eyes out for it, I'm curious now.

18. About Bloody Time by Simon Jenner thoroughly enjoyable poems, often difficult, some footnoted. I didn't understand a lot I am sure, but sticking with it was good leading to many lovely moments of poetry. I struggled with e kidnle edition where some titles followed on as body text from the previous poem, but I liked this all enough I had to buy a hard copy too.

19. Against Oblivion: some lives of the twentieth-century poets by Ian Hamilton



A book of short sketches on twentieth-century British and American poets, inspired by Dr Johnson's Lives of the poets. I haven't read any other Ian Hamilton. Although I am into poetry I was not so much in the past to read the magazines he edited to what I understand was enormous influence. I have also not read his poetry nor any of his other books.

I feel a bit battered by this book, it's short chapters tempted me to OD on these rich lives, just another before bed. I haven't read most of these poets, may never, yet all familiar names, so you expect maybe they have some weight. But some felt very dismissed by him, as I remember H.D especially. And I did not agree with all he had to say - Dylan Thomas for example dismissed as valuing the sound of words more than the sense even to "simple minded(-ness)". I also remember finding his take on Edward Thomas' struggles before he met Frost and started to write poems as harsh, yes he could be harsh in these evaluations -- and I wondered if sometimes he missed something about a poet in this as it was not to his taste. And this made me wary of some of what I read of others, let alone some of the gossip about them. But it did give me an overview of these poets and their lives and relationship to poetry and where his interest interacted with me and my interest he was often very precise, giving much I'll think about for example the chapters on Larkin and Keith Douglas, I wonder if this was especially so with more contemporary poets. And I wondered if he'd read each of these poets comparably, he must have had his own enthusiasms.

Speaking of which in reading it somewhere as I did I came across someone saying somewhere that Hamilton himself only really trusted two poems for sure (I'd be interested which they were)...and so it seems an interesting choice to have such a refined taste commenting on this tranche of people who must therefore only have let him down.

This also chimed with seeing part one of the beeb's new series 'Great Poets in their own words' which I enjoyed - though maybe not as much as their last 'Great artists in their own words'. Curiously I'm wondering if the artists words were better than the poets, especially on process. It chimes further as I have an idea that in writing poetry many poets refine and refine their poetics, their idea of what a poem is...often I think the clearer they are on this the better a poet they are....but conversely it may also happen that this can seem to silence them (unless they don't mind breaking their own rules), as it makes it harder and harder for them to write an actual poem? I think of Laura Riding for example or Eliot's struggles with production. Hamilton himself wrote few poems. Of course this isn't all poets, just quite a few of them. Just something that interests me and something to mull over. I'd be interested in others thoughts on this hypothesis. I am looking forward to the next episode of 'Great poets in their own words' as it comes to the more modern times.

>82 tonikat: I am not that into Patti Smith's music,* but I loved loved loved Just Kids. It's one of the best books I've read about the drive to be an artist.

*You can probably find some on YouTube to try it out. "Because the Night" is one of her most famous songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0peTfMOdDoo

ETA I bought another book by Sarrazin, The Runaway/La Cavale, after I read Astragal, but haven't read it yet.

Thanks for that link rebecca; one of the best driving songs ever: up the hill, fly around the curve, drop down to the water and Patti singing in the background.

You sent me off to other performances, including Gloria with great still photos, and then a performance I had never seen, with Neil Young, singing Young's Helpless. I had always thought Joni Mitchell in The Last Waltz did the best job on that with Young, now I know there's another way to listen to it.

My first exposure to Patti Smith and I was hooked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6aUbrZYjYE

It must be such a temptation to overwork a poem and that is very similar to some painting, How do you know when it is finished. William Wordsworth published his Prelude and spent a large portion of his later life re-vamping it. No one thought he improved on it. It is interesting to read about the lives of poets, but especially where the information is about the actual process of writing poems. But then again a favourite subject of many poets is about the writing of poems.

>85 rebeccanyc: -- you set me off listening to Patti, and the thing is I don't seem to have ever got her music, I have heard Because the Night many times, it just doesn't do it for me really. So I listened to that version of Helpless, quite liked her chant to that, and quite liked Gloria, I watched a live version in Berlin (>86 SassyLassy:), but yes the one that did connect the most was your link Bas (>87 baswood:), powerful. Is her style always the same, a lot of a blend of speaking/singing lyrics? But I'm not really driven to listen to a lot of her.

I think a lot of poets never see a poem as finished - hence many versions in 'collected poems' being different from earlier versions. I think the second version of Prelude is often rated, but then people wonder about later versions, though some challenge this. There can be that idea that a poem is all the right words in the right order, but I wonder if for the poet that is ever the case, whether for them it is always open to debate/change? Then some poems this can seem true of, 'the red wheelbarrow' comes to mind, I wonder if it was for Williams.

A poet friend once warned me off writing poems about the process of writing poetry and I see wisdom in that, it can feel like it closes some circle I could get stuck in when I want to be looking at things to inspire me -- its like the opposite of the idea 'just do it', and as with sport I think self consciousness can inhibit. I was asked to write a piece for a blog on what attracts me to poetry and I have been struggling with it ever since, and again at the same time my poetry output has gone down, lots of people deliberately don't like to write about that, I can understand the fear it could stop the source. But yes there are lots of poems about writing poetry - my current favourite is interpreting R. S. Thomas' The Garden in that way, need to find out more about that poem for him.

I just brought up 50 films/tv/theatre with Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby, yes I hadn't seen it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Such a strong story based on such a strong view of the world, but this flies with aplomb, I think. He made me laugh with Gatsby's entrance, thanks, and was that a bit of a Harry Lime smile from di Caprio? It made me think of that entrance. It made me think once again of Scott Fitzgerald whom I've never read further and an idea of these characters as parts of him, maybe its not so simple, but it made me interested in him again. I've also been reading from T. S. Eliot's The Sacred Wood and it was interesting to see this in light of Eliot's idea of art, which of course was just the opposite of my thinking of these as all parts of the author, but it has that distance in it's delivery that he seemed to feel is needed...and then it is interesting to think of Luhrmann (and co-writer) framing it as a story written by Nick on a journey to healing and so maybe getting a distance that way, to be well. There seemed to me to be a healthy aspect to Eliot's idea the perfect critic and poet. The point about such a person having a structure, scaffolding, sensibility which relates to the object seemed very true of this film (in relating the story but also to the novel) and of course again Fitzgerald's novel. This may be obvious, just my circles.

Film forty-nine was excellent as well, The Wall, inspired me to read that book too. One I do not think I had heard of, but a journey I now want to read.

Choices by M. N. Thomas



I wondered about writing about this and decided to as for all clever language and playfulness I read or write I value sincerity very much. This is a straightforward story about very unstraightforward things. It's not aspiring to be literary, but can be very effective, moving at several points I found it.

We follow Tim as he grows up, conflicted though he does not know it, an honest and decent person really who is conflicted in ways he does not understand. Drawn and falling in to some more stereotypically feminine interests and time with the girls, but this is not something he actively seeks somehow, just how it happens and not sexual in some way. And no paragon of masculine physical development. We follow his first relationship and the challenges it faces and his confusion and anger at this. Then his time in college, avoiding dorms and paying his way with a night job at weekends - and how he really starts to change then, experimenting with make up, hair, but still not understanding this. After college he falls into a job, a great job and things continue to develop positively - sometimes in this book things happen too easily it seemed at times - after three years of growing his hair alone he make his first trip to a salon (I can't see how anyone even just growing their hair can get away without a salon trip in three years, but anyway) there he makes a friend, a transsexual hairdresser. Everything seems to be developing, s/he, Tim/Tiffany, starts to accept this aspect of herself, but a choice s/he makes turns the book - in some ways this was predictable and disappointing, but I liked this character and went with it, I won't say where this leads, perhaps a transgender fantasy perhaps but one that will be most rare. Things work out well in the end - Tiffany's basic decency gets her a long way and s/he does right by things and people, a happy ending. I think it was that decency that struck me most, a role model to many I am sure. Could be - for all the challenges of life s/he does not lose faith in people and this journey she makes is really quite moving, whether it is to higher literary tastes or not, I really enjoyed her emotional journey, all of which I have not revealed and which is very understandable. It is a book I am glad I read.

(I should note it has some short strong scenes when tim/tiffany encounters forms of abuse, though in many ways every day abuse she may have later encountered is not present.)

What is choices? Is it a novel?

Good question, yes fiction, a novel, quite short 260 pages.

But I hesitate to say novel, its a story is how I think of it, without meaning to be snooty.

Guardian review of Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb . I began it a few years ago but didn't really feel it - not sure why I picked it up but now I have feel I am reading it more ironically with a view to its comedy despite the main character's tragedy than I remember the last time I read it when I was trying to understand him in his own labyrinthine misunderstandings and am now really enjoying it, only a third of the way through so far though.

I'm also questioning whether sincerity is worth it, but trying to keep faith in humanity.

Well, that was an interesting review. I came to Journey by Moonlight after reading other works by Szerb and it isn't my favorite although I gather it is considered his masterpiece.

Some faith returning, thanks Rebecca. I will want to read more Szerb. The road to Rome has been suggested.

Don't know The Road to Rome, but I thoroughly enjoyed The Pendragon Legend (my favorite) and Oliver VII. I'm just started Love in a Bottle, a collection of his stories, and am enjoying it.

oops...no the road to Rome is not a novel, but pertains to a turn in journey by moonlight.I'll look forward to trying the others.

Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb



A wonderful book. A friend gave me it a couple of years ago but I got stuck after chapter four, I think I was taking the protagnonist Mihaly too seriously in his own terms yet that had an emptiness to it. This time I read it in a tone that was much more helpful, reading him ironically in fact as foolish in some way, not trusting his stated definitions and this tone was light and wise and knowing. But the book does not make a fool of Mihaly - to the contrary he seems to act foolishly so much, but in so doing comes to act more and more authentically a curious double aspect and at the end has made a real journey in his inaction (inaction that becomes action), a journey that may seem to be invisible to many but which seems quite real even in its messiness. And in the course of the journey we have aspects of life and modern life so well observed.

I'm not sure what else to say, if I start to think about many aspects of the book I may get drawn into spoiler land again. I am a bit uncomfortable with an idea that some sort of authenticity may be suggested to be out of reach directly for a petite bourgeois like Mihaly, or even Erzsi - and yet both of them face such authenticity and find their part in it, yet for both in an indirect way. On the other hand it seemed very strong on how authentic feelings can be misinterpreted and confused by our interactions with others who give us an apparent model to understand our own path by - to me Mihaly has an authentic journey that is disrupted by his view of others he feels experience it more authentically without the restraints of his social background which twists his understanding of his own problem - and yet such lostness in itself seems to me to be authentic, that our psychodrama can be affected in this way. Early in the book the joke seemed to be how little he could understand himself, even in allowing himself to experience what he himself felt was good sex with his wife. Through his journey he does start to listen, he finds a way with his myths of the world to his own drama with their parts, first by accident but more and more as he has to so that in the end he can be himself by accident facing what he must, listening to his heart of hearts. And Szerb is very good at showing us the process of our feelings, how we may have feelings that conflict absolutely yet we feel them both and yet find which is part f our part f the world. I enjoyed following some of the references made during the book, Cor Cordium leading me to Swinburne's poem and look forward to learning more of death hetaira, academically (!! for now I hope).

Another thought - at times I wondered if Mihaly was gay, his liking for Tamas, and a chance missed with the woman he seems to seek. Also if this could explain some of his inauthenticity, of not knowing his place in the world, not feeling it (not because he is gay but maybe because he doesn't know he is). Yet this is not an obvious theme, nor I guess could it have been even if Szerb had meant to make it so. As with so much of this novel I like this ambivalence and uncertainty. And it leads me to think that somehow the place he finds amongst his adolescent friends leads him in his generosity to give up some certainty in himself (of himself as the hero in his own psychodrama), and it seems this is what he starts to find on hos journey, a Rogerian counsellor would say his locus of self, having been dazzled by his friends who seems to locate their locus better than him, he thinks, in a way he may covet - not realising what he may have (the man his rival Szepetnaki would say may have been the best schoolboy centre half in his country). Given this perhaps it would not be surprising if this lack of clarity about himself may have a sexual aspect, yet of course this is speculation I cannot remember any direct sexual interaction of that sort. The clearest aspect of sexuality seems to be his suggested passivity and passivity much more generally.

This review undoubtedly makes no sense unless you've read the book, sorry if so, but reading this I highly recommend. As Len Rix, the translator I read suggests it has a wonderful intelligence of both the head and the heart a maturity of both and no lack of compassion whilst able to show absurdity.

Very much enjoyed your review and thoughts on Journey by Moonlight. Mihaly's curious inaction that leads to action because something or someone intervenes and he follows his instincts and lets life take him where it will; it is a journey that allows him to face up to his past and learn about himself. It is a very good book

That is such an interesting way of looking at Journey by Moonlight; it makes me appreciate it more than I did when I read it (and almost makes me want to reread it). Thank you.

I am so sorry I did not get to your thread much sooner. My excuse is that I started late in the year and have been behind right from the beginning.

Much of your reading resonates with me, and I have added some books to my wish list based on your comments — Nietsche's Birth of Tragedy, Asklepios by Kerenyi and Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. Journey by Moonlight is already on my list.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the discussions here.

>100 baswood: and >101 rebeccanyc: thanks - I am looking forward to rereading this myself, it will be a pleasure. Yes, he definitely gets in touch with his instincts and I have a feeling he has done himself an injustice to have diminished himself as much as he has in comparison to Tamas and Eva, but he has, and a natural journey back, quite shamanistic in some way.

>102 Poquette: wow :) thanks for catching up, it has been a good year for me with books and loved all your choices, good to hear that. Look forward to reading your reactions to them.

edit - in fact now I mention shamanistic there is also a nod to Asklepios as Tiber island figures slightly in journey by moonlight, site of Rome's temple, and interesting that the priests of Asklepios did not treat people as such, the whole process was about waiting for a turn in health in the person.

I forgot to say about Journey by Moonlight -- that to some extent Mihaly's view of what he sees as his petite bourgeois upbringing versus his perception of authenticity in Tamas and Eva reminded me in some ways of the struggles of some of the protagonists of my Japanese reading earlier in the year and most clearly maybe Mishima's protagonist in the Golden Pavilion, though of a more gentle sort. An idea of the struggle between ourselves and our view of the world, between ourselves and the view of the world we are given. Mihaly meets a much more positive meeting point between world and self though, I think, though this too (in Mishima) had some positivity perhaps, but he lacked a wise Eva's perspective on his plan and so what happened happened.

Oh, that's interesting about the comparison of Journey by Moonlight (which I loved) and The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (which I didn't). Something to think about.

Long time since I posted. Reading coming and going in that time. But have felt a dearth of much of interest to say or energy to try to. But maybe a bit of a check in in order.

I'm conscious I never posted about The Waste Land. Partly I think what's the point, so much has been said I am sure, so much that can be said. I got some secondary literature on it from the library, but have not looked far into it. Although I did get about half way through Eliot's own The Sacred Wood which I liked very much, except his tone was so high in some ways that I wondered if this (which predated The Waste Land I think) could have had anything to do with later only being able to connect nothing with nothing on Margate sands. Maybe it is more complicated than that, I will have to read more of him and of this secondary literature to see. I do find something about him, such refinement, such consideration of his poetry that I wonder if it hindered productivity...can wonder that about Pound too....and Laura Riding Jackson possibly took such refinement to its ultimate....but maybe I should desist in this theory and read more of them and learn more. But here it has it's own refinement, and strength, that in its form its meanings speak despite fracture it is whole. It was helpful to hear the radio version shortly after reading it - I did set out to do all the translations and only got half way through (when I say do I mean look them up and all the biblical references), but the radio play helped stop me over reading, it gave the bigger picture (on the radio too) away from getting lost in there. Maybe this complexity of The Waste Land was also the start of my pause in things to say and highlighted my usual feeling that its hard to adequately capture what I read.
I've put The Sacred Wood to one side after getting about half way through as I have not read most of the writers the latter half looks at and it was frustrating me as I would like to very much, but I may need a course to help me focus on them.

I enjoyed the article on "Jordan Baker: Gender dissent and homosexual passing in The Great Gatsby", something quite obvious in some ways to some I am sure, interesting article and very much enjoyed Baz Luhrman's film a little before that.

I've read and often read aloud two books by Kate Tempest and enjoyed them very much, I think we have some similar interests (ancients, gods, the world today, Tiresias) - I can see how strong she is as an oral poet, but also overall as a poet...though I think some would be edited by some poets writing only for the page...but it all totally fits for her and works when read aloud, such rhythm to her words and flow, wonderful, no wonder she was chosen as one of the young poets recently - I very much enjoyed these (Brand new Ancients and Hold your own). She performed locally recently but I could not make it, I'd like to hear her read.

I'm reading a lot more poetry as I need to, want to. I have dropped out of my novel reading group, this is a shame, but with the number of things I have to do and the commitment this was last year when working it make sense and lets me focus on poetry. I've written a lot less of that this year, or of any that gets finished. But sad to be missing some Henry James and le Grands meaulnes this term. I think reading prose and prose gets more in my blood and reading poetry not surprising poetry is more there, and so more likely to get written and sadly with so much else to do I have to choose a bit more.

I reread Wordsworth's 1799 version of The Prelude and have the Norton Critical to work through the 1805 and 1850 versions, which I have never read entirely. I also bought Hunter Davies' biography of Wordsworth which is enjoyable and giving me more of an overview to the bits and pieces I had, but which I'll have to kick on from I think as it is an overview and does not address the writing in some ways. But I loved rereading the 1799 version, I wrote out in longhand some passages from the second part that seemed very relevant to me and working in mental health and just overall, great passages, typed them up as well, must remember to put one on my desk at work:

" . . . But who shall parcel out
His intellect by geometric rules,
Split like a province into round and square?
Who knows the individual hour in which
His habits were first sown even as a seed?
Who that shall point as with a wand, and say
‘This portion of the river of my mind
Came from yon fountain’? Thou, my friend, art one
More deeply read in thy own thoughts, no slave
Of that false secondary power by which
In weakness we create distinctions, then
Believe our puny boundaries are things
Which we perceive, and not which we have made.
To thee, unblended by these outward shews,
The unity of all has been revealed;
And thou wilt doubt with me, less aptly skilled
Than many are to class the cabinet
Of their sensations, and in voluble phrase
Run through the history and birth of each
As of a single independent thing.
Hard task to analyse a soul, in which
Not only general habits and desires,
But each most obvious and particular thought –
Not in a mystical and idle sense,
But in the words of reason deeply weighed –
Hath no beginning."

William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1799) Second Part (242-267)

Unfortunately I've made no progress with Wordsworth in the last two weeks, in fact I've hardly read in that time. So I hope this is not a permanent stall, again.

I was enthused this afternoon by reading the preface to Poetry Notebook by Clive James, which touched on many things in ways I enjoyed and resonated with lots I wonder at in poetry, I'm looking forward to it, though I have a number of books that do similar things and they are getting read very slowly, partly that is right, partly it is due to other foci which is frustrating. I still have his Dante to read too. I have not read much of his poetry, only what I've seen in the TLS in recent years. Sad to start to read him now as he is so ill.

Today is the one hundredth anniversary of Dylan Thomas' birth, seems to be being marked in a number of ways and lots on bbc news, not sure what I make of a lot of it but it's marked. But then I see he shared a birthday with Sylvia Plath, which I am not sure I'd ever realised, or maybe its not one of those things to file away to remember. but an excuse for some poetry, two from many:

" Crossing the Water

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada."

Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath, read the rest here

and

"Ears in the Turrets Hear

Ears in the turrets hear
Hands grumble on the door,
Eyes in the gables see
The fingers at the locks.
Shall I unbolt or stay
Alone till the day I die
Unseen by stranger-eyes
In this white house?
Hands, hold you poison or grapes?"

Ears in the Turrets Hear, by Dylan Thomas, click here to read the whole poem

>107 tonikat: Enjoyed the excerpt from The Prelude. I have dipped into it here and there but am not sure if I'll ever have the will to read the whole thing. Poetry is not one of my better areas mostly because I cannot seem to get inside it very often. I experience flashes of recognition, but they don't come often enough. This is funny for someone who loves stylish expression as much as I do.

>109 Poquette: so speaks the lady that just read The Iliad I think? Sorry could not resist. I think I understand the feeling you talk of, I have my own version maybe which came out of me misunderstanding what I was doing when reading/listening to poetry. But maybe I should not assume my version is like yours - and I will resist blahing on about what helps me with it (unless you want me to?). Of course a lot of poetry is just that, flashes, and reading Clive James he was talking about how the rest connects and leads up to these flashes.

I like Sylvia Plath. Didn't come to her until late. Whereas I used to know and like Thomas, but not so much anymore.

I have read the 1805 version of The Prelude, I did not realise there was an earlier version.

I read T S Eliot's at school and remember my paperback version being filled with notes scribbled all over the white spaces from the dictation by the teacher. I did not understand very much but loved the sounds the words made.

>110 tonikat: Please do share your understanding — even your misunderstanding. I can use all the help I can get in this area.

Re The Iliad and even The Odyssey, those are narratives with stories to tell. Some poetry that I cannot quite figure out seems very abstruse.

This is about my speed: "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes:

THE wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding--
Riding--riding--
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

. . . etc. ;-)

>111 zenomax: Interesting Zeno. I knew a little Thomas but about a year ago decided to work through his own Collected and was hugely enthused but I've slowed right down since reading Altarwise by Owl-Light, not sure why, it wasn't feeling so good, but I remember how good it felt when I was getting him so will continue that volume, I've run across quite a few of them already of course, and got the new complete poems too, oh and his early notebooks, so quite a project. But Plath I know better, though have not read all her earlier poems, I love her poems, she too sometimes I can feel sated with. I've read around her a lot more. I listened to an interview she gave the beeb not long before she died on You tube a while ago an it is well worth listening to her, I especially liked how she spoke of writing a poem as a marvellous experience, and also I think she spoke of how she did not just aim to be confessional (I hope I remember that second part right, it was also something touched on in the recent great poets in their own words series, I will have to listen to her again).

>112 baswood: the earlier version just has two parts Bas, he began it when in Germany, not a long read. T. S Eliot I read mainly because I wanted to read him as an example of great control and consideration.

>113 Poquette: I see I think, when the narrative is not so much there it is hard to see what's happening?

I don't think my misunderstanding was quite the same. Mine was about a number of things. Partly it was out of misunderstanding of myself, I thought the poetic was kind of not me, although at the same time I knew it was very much part of me. Without being taught about poetry I also felt it was kind of out of reach. And then lessons at school had also made me think everything had to be line by line analysis that killed it, but without which you didn't really understand what was happening. So, a real mishmash of misunderstandings and led me to be a bit scared (?) to read poetry (especially without it being taught to me) and then when I did maybe I imposed a kind of prose type understanding expecting it to work the same way and explain itself the same way. There were exceptions to this of course, I paint it too simply.

But what has helped? Actually trying to read more poetry meant I started to engage with it and get bits of it, like learning languages maybe. It also meant I started to find the poets I got more and the people I got less. Then also reading the stuff aloud helps me a lot...after all that line by line stuff sometimes I get bogged down over-reading and reading too much significance into everything, when it may be better to press on and come back for such minutia...reading aloud helps me get passed that, and it is such fun...out of hearing it this way sense can drop in that I was totally missing. Finding others to talk to about poetry has also helped, daring to say how it makes me feel or what it makes me think even though it may be "wrong", its a start. I think it builds as I got more into it I got it more and more and confidence grew and my range of what I read grows. I'll never have an Eng. Lit degree I think, but then that may be a good thing. I read them partly to be in touch with human feeling in a certain way, things that may not be said much, I missed a lot when I wasn't really reading it and getting in touch with it is a mainstay now for me. I wonder if it is at all like coming to appreciate a different painter or school in art, it can be so different but when you get it (and sometimes it may not be for you) but when you do it is wonderful. It's a playfulness often, and that can be in a different way from a lot of prose, but when you get a poem, when it clicks maybe the tone of voice that works for you imagining it to be written in, or the mood you imagine the writer to have had it is a marvellous thing like Sylvia Plath said about writing a poem (see >114 tonikat:). For the most part I find it helpful remembering that it is about humans communicating to other humans about their lives or about human feelings and experiences, and remembering that and how we all have a right to do this, to meet others in this way and be part of that communication, remembering that helps to keep it approachable, even when poets are being clever and exclusive or cryptic in how they try to do this.

>115 tonikat: You are right about the narrative. And something you said later about imposing "a kind of prose type understanding," that is probably at the heart of my own misunderstanding. The other thing is that I hate to admit it, but I am less interested in feelings than ideas and actions. I realize this is not an attractive characteristic, but I tend to be on the other end of the spectrum and that may be a problem when it comes to poetry. It may explain a lot, come to think of it.

I do have an English lit degree, but I was always more interested in older works like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and some of the early poets. Milton's Paradise Lost has been a challenge but I love the soaring language and it is, after all, narrative. I do love his shorter poems "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." It could be I just gave up too soon and if I would take the time to concentrate on some poetry, it might get easier. Also, it's good to know you are here and willing to talk about it, and perhaps we can discuss a poem here and there from time to time. Yes, "Finding others to talk to about poetry"!

Your comment "remembering that it is about humans communicating to other humans about their lives or about human feelings and experiences," I have had that very thought when reading dead writers from ancient times and the miracle of that communication over time always gets to me. But I didn't think to apply that idea when reading poetry.

Regarding >114 tonikat:, the idea of writing a poem being a marvelous experience, that reminds me of the time I wrote a song and at the time it practically sent me into orbit — most wonderful experience I ever had. You'll laugh at this: It was inspired by a Keats poem!

There is some poetry on my TBR that I plan to get to next year. And I am really going to make a determined effort.

Sorry about the long-windedness of this post! It's good to chat about this and I do so appreciate your insights!

Interesting conversation.

>116 Poquette: and >117 rebeccanyc: - yes it is. I've been really pushed for time in last few days, will say more soonish, but (nearly) always glad to talk about poetry. Writing a song, now there's a thing. With all this the more you do the more you get, I think. I am not well read of early poetry, I have read some of Milton's short poems and liked them. But more for the TBR pile.

By some strange serendipity, possible synchronicity, I spied this thought it sagacious to post it here - The Atlantic - How to read poetry

>119 tonikat: Great article in The Atlantic

>119 tonikat: A very inspiring article -- it made me want to go out and read poetry!

>119 tonikat: What a great find, Tony! So apropos. I have copied it for deeper reading. Thanks!

Life is Beautiful d. Roberto Benigni (1997)

I'd like to write about many of the films and plays I've seen, but the usual sort of reasons get in the way. This film is demanding I write. Life is Beautiful the film insists, correctly I think, if met in the right way...and is a nightmare when it is not met that way.

This is a film about a man connected to enjoying life and being true to himself, no fool for the false gods of twentieth century life. He meets life with humour and his quick wit. This helps him woo a lady, his princess, in the face of much opposition (including the rationales of many of those false gods). He plays a kind of Italian Chaplin, but very much in his own style. Humanity infuses this film, a real and understanding and kind and loving and humorous humanity. But this man is Jewish and living in Italy at the time of the fascists and the war. I think this story is well known, so am not sure it is a spoiler but just in case he is shipped to a German concentration camp, and with his very young son - and this is his biggest test, whilst in the camp he meets each thing with his humour to concoct a fairy tale to protect his son, and have him believe it is a game. . In this sense it seems a fable or fairy tale - yet at the same time is a greater truth than truth the bullies insist. Apparently some are offended by this response, I can understand how it may seem that way, but it seems to miss the message of the film, which to me contains no less than a key to defuse the power of such ideology and a strong hint to a valuable secret of life.

How can I make such claims for it? Well, it certainly hinted to me the importance of the link between the heart and language and how when language and manners are connected to human feelings founded in genuine love and understanding then possibility abounds. But when those links are broken nonsense, hatred, mistakes flow freely. The consistent example of this man debunks the hubris of so much he faces -- and is just a gentle and funny and loving and wise exploration of the world. We have examples of the nonsense spoken when those links above are broken, for example the instance of discussion by a teacher of a maths problem in Nazi Germany asking for calculations of money saved on welfare by execution of certain the sorts of people...but there are other examples, often subtler, but this one very clearly speaks of how language can be disconnected from the reality of feelings for the situation. This film just made that very clear to me - and how the nonsense spoken by some views of the world can be totally debunked by such love and understanding of life, that empowers individuality. Important at times such as these we are in when people, often influenced by desperation may lose hope this is possible or that this view can ever win....or for any of many other reasons, perhaps false gods or views of God, are acting so against the good of others (and themselves). And how much more can be achieved in the world and in quality and experience of the beauty of life by not following such false gods or ideologies or losing faith in what is possible.

Mr Benigni's father I understand was in a camp during the war. So I was interested to picture him (he plays the father) not just as the father here but as the son in this film. To take a tangent it also made me think about Quentin Tarentino's film Inglorious Basterds (sic), in which, in a way, a wish is sent back to the time of the war to have a group of soldiers meet the hatred of the Nazi's with equivalent terror and hate (maybe I am wrong to say hate but destructive force, violence). Maybe it is wrong to mention that film here - but it struck me this film also sends a wish back through time, but with a far superior message, in which hatred is met with love, people cope through love and that that is what lasts, that is what makes life beautiful, that is what makes the best of life possible...and so much else...and what makes living together possible when it is understood for others and in others and communicated between people. And in a sense it struck me powerfully as a message back to his father, who survived a camp, of love and accompaniment through that great test by his son, who could go on to understand life so deeply and share his joy at it and his father's. This will always win. This film inspires much including better personhood which in so doing may gain the world.

Nice thoughts Tony

Thanks Barry :)

This week I was lucky to see that Tan Twan Eng who wrote The Garden of Evening mists was speaking at our university (one of them), a coincidence I had read it this year as it was specifically about that book. He was charming and spoke in a very real way. It was interesting to learn that many Malaysians don't know much about the occupation and the emergency and that marking the war mainly comes from foreigners (as I understood him). He told an interesting story of how he found, made, space to write, as a lawyer. We could ask questions but I couldn't think of a way to frame mine without sounding like I was cuddling up. He said he practiced at one time at least Aikido I think. Above I wrote how the book is often about memory and identity and I also noted the stillness in the book - but what's occurred to me with time is that that stillness is very much connected with the present and coming in to the present moment, its obvious maybe a book dealing with Zen gardens and the art of archery and in other ways...and also that given the nature of many of the memories in the book, trauma, that that coming in to the present is in a healing way. I'd have liked to know his thoughts on this, but maybe I don't need to, he wrote his book.

I'm focussed on poetry at the moment and hope to finish off maybe half a dozen books before the end of the month, there are a few I have not got in that currently reading list above.

Interesting to hear of your attending that event with Tan Twan Eng; it is my choice for this months book club read and I think my fellow members will enjoy The garden of Evening Mists

I hope you and your group enjoy it Barry.

I read this today: footage found of Isaac Rosenberg?

Poetry Notebook: 2006-2014 by Clive James

I remember I was surprised many years ago when I learned Clive James was a poet, I think others can have the same reaction. But since then I have enjoyed things by him I came across and some interviews. This is his latest book, made up of essays on poetry, often they've been published elsewhere but not all. It's the first of his books I have read, won't be the last hope.

He speaks generously and knowledgeably on poetry. Generously both in his understanding of others and also from himself, giving of his understanding. This can of course be exposing for anyone. There are things in the book I don't agree with (an things that hint at views I don't agree with), but thats ok, I'm sure he expects this of his readers. I've read it over several weeks, so some of those early ways I disagreed are not as clear now - overall he argues for formalism in poetry, form, metre, rhyme. I am not against that at all, in fact I spend time trying to learn these skills better. He says he is not wholly against free verse, but he has certain expectations of it and isn't afraid to say when he thinks it has not come up to standard (I think I can infer from him that is a very very large proportion of such verse). I seem to remember he had problems with William Carlos Williams' red wheelbarrow, and my reaction was that maybe there was something that Clive James was missing.

But he is very good too - and very good at teaching me about formal poetry and at recognising great exponents of it - my reading list has grown with poets he loves since the second world war, some less recognised due to their formalism. James does have bias for this, maybe its as I think he came to writing poetry late, as I did - sometimes I have a feeling he is looking for how poetry is done, and yet he is often far far ahead of such a thought. He does appreciate those that can write a poem ahead of those that write poetry...an interesting recognition. He appreciates John Updike's poems, especially his late poems and says ". . . he not only had the whole tradition of English-speaking poetry in his head, he had the means to add to it." and views like that slip out now and again, maybe I should't argue with this, but it speaks to me of an urge to know it all so that you can be a poet, to know all the technique in order to be a poet. And this can be a very powerful and understandable urge. But I am not sure you really do need to know all that in order to be a poet, in fact many many would be poets may be hamstrung by such knowledge. In fact I listened to the first of his dialogues with the late Peter Porter on James' website last night and Porter said something similar about not needing to know it all, maybe I should go back and listen again to hear where James was coming from and how he responded to that. I just don't think such an absolute claim to knowledge can or should be made - and I do not think it is altogether needed as a reader or a writer.

I think such an impulse comes of his enthusiasm, you read his book and wish for such a person to have long conversations with. Those poems of his I have so far read, in recent years mainly in the TLS, I have liked, but I need to read more better to know how much I like them better.

I'm wary also of his dismissal of so much poetry, all those attempts. yes the may not be great poetry, but they may be important and helpful for those writers - this has value beyond any price or estimation. Also, as someone that began writing free verse, I suspect of the kind he'd hate, yet as someone educating themselves to write more formally, it is important not to close the door to such transitions. His argument may be to break the rules you need to know them first; yet for me surely poetry may come first and asserts itself despite any rules and those that know established rules should not discourage those that have to learn. Or maybe this is less now abut James and more about my own dialogue.

But I liked this book very much and his generous sharing of his views, for all my quibbles and occasional sense he is too obsessed with technique and rules.

Is there nothing Clive James can't do? He formed a very good songwriting partnership with Pete Atkin (James wrote the lyrics) and I have even seen him singing on stage (he didn't need much persuading).

I have to say I like him and I will look out for that collection of essays.

Very interesting review; thanks.

Enjoyed your review of Poetry Notebook very much! This is going on my wish list. But you remind me that I have another book by Clive James called Cultural Amnesia which is over 900 pages! Probably why I haven't tackled it yet. He seems to be such an interesting man and while my exposure to him has been limited to occasional sightings TV and a writing here or there, I was immediately attracted to his book when it came out. Anyway, thanks for bringing this to our attention!

Oh, I have Cultural Amnesia too, and the 900 pages are probably why I haven't read it either.

Merry Christmas to all on Club Read.

I'll read more of James, I do find him overall generous in sharing his thoughts on poetry, if sometimes annoying and I am afraid privileges technique further than I do, for now...maybe his ear is better tuned than mine, I fear that misses and also fear it validates an idea, a bit like inheritance or status may, and clouds something else ... and maybe almost as though he seeks the top marks, to be right. But surely it cannot be so simple and I pay a lot of attention to his generosity of spirit to share so much of his own journey...I must go back to those conversations with Peter Porter. I heard in a recent interview on radio 3 that more work with Pete Atkin is being completed, I have not heard any of that. I do feel like reading more of him.

I'm on a good christmas break, have seen some nice films, have wasted some time, have done some christmas duties and have found some time in the last day or so to do some reading. I'm working my way through Shakespeare's sonnets - i was reading and keeping up with various commentaries but am now behind in my commentaries. Paterson I know was criticised for his, and I can see why - and yet, again he is generous in sharing his reading and I have a lot of time for that, though he annoyed me especially with commentary of 24 and 31. Booth hasn't done much for me, but I'm sure has lots of useful academic points. Duncan Jones is handy with comments facing poems, though sometimes missing things I am interested in and read 24 very differently to me. But I was advised to try Martin Seymour Smith's version, and am working through his introduction at the moment and enjoying his approach. But no commentary is going to agree perfectly with any reader, readings are too various...I'd like to work back through and make my own notes on each poem, if I ever got the time.

I'm through the first seventy. A lovely process. For James his (Shakespeare's) best poetry was not in the poems, these may be argumentative, but I don't mind that and clearly there is much poetry in here too (more than memory of argument may suggest I'd suggest). Reading them reignites something, memories of love and dusty corners of the heart, the freedom to explore processes as he explores his own. I'd never written a rhymed poem, I experimented a bit with abab rhyme schemes in the last year, but got nowhere, but then on reading these i found myself writing my first shakespearean sonnets, and by accident, i started writing and they happened, not because i sat down to try, so it has been a happy process from that point of view and has helped me liberate myself to explore again (I have not written much this year).

Bt it is holiday time and other things to enjoy too, hope you are finding some respite at this time too.

edit - I was thinking I did write some terza rima once

Merry Christmas TonyH

Holiday time and Shakespeare's sonnets - perfect

yes, pretty good Barry, merry christmas to you too.

Two things i have come across - first an idea i have met in various ways but nicely summed up here, and as against rules:

"All poetry, as discriminated from the various paradigms of prosody, is prayer." Samuel Beckett apparently in Humanistic Quietism from 1934 which I now want to read. And want to be careful of this quote too, not to mention it becoming a rule.

And I was very happy to happen on The Secret Auden by Edward Mendelson on Christmas Day.

Have a Happy New Year, Tony!

My first book in 2015 will be a book of poetry. Hoping I will enjoy it, and will have something concrete in this area to talk about in the new year.

What more is there to say? It's felt like an exciting year of reading, started off with dynamite of course. Much I have read is incomplete and I do not intend to say that much about all that. I have given up my novel reading group, it is a pity but it is allowing me to read more poetry.

I did complete Yeats' The Tower recently, but am not sure what I can say of that, it's one that I think needs to filter in slowly, and I need to reread. It slips things in, conversationally almost, and is part of the reason I want to reread, I could miss them. This and reading Shakespeare's sonnets liberated me to explore a bit more myself, without worrying so much about 'poetry' whatever that is, and out of it came something. I guess the argument would be that the later Yeats knows exactly what he is doing when he dips into such (plainer) language, I think Clive James made that argument for him.

I have been thinking about poetics - possibly one reason I wrote less. I think after several rewrites of a piece it was suggested I write on this, what attracts me to poetry, I conclude I am best off just doing it, defining it can kill it, can never capture it.

I've written about the books I read but you may see I've also logged the films and theatre and some television I've seen...and why stop there, why not music too...but I have not written as much about these, though they've also been many highlights. Big highlights were the seasons of Latin American (Y tu Mama Tambien, what a film) and Italian films I saw, they deserved more to be said. But also the Cocteau, Coen brothers and Ken Loach films I saw, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Die Wand, Bamako and The Great Gatsby.

Where does it all leave me? Reading more poetry, yes. Valuing more and more non professional acting in many of the films I have seen, yes. A recent theme is a renewed interest in language and the connections between language and the heart (and yes the head), and how things can go wrong when this goes wrong (I know from experience, not alone there) - so more and more valuing sincerity, both ironic and vanilla. Valuing exploration and valuing this done in ways that are not just fixed on a destination the writer/director already knows. Valuing generosity in authors to share their thoughts and feelings and also that of others, here, to do this. All the more aware of how I chase meanings that are only my meanings and how multivarious not to say multidimensional and valid are those of others that disagree, but how hard it can be to let go and really let these be, something to work on. And so also more and more aware of how unimportant in some ways the academic approach is to me, whilst also still important, but when bad can suck the life that is what I need. But those answers also lie outside the text and in how I approach it. But, how we, I mean I, can set faith in what we're told and shown, and how I can need it. A wish to set sail, again, with other's journeys and mingle, liking and leaving, loving, none of it really kept except, except in the heart and in my way to ways, that is often lost or seems it (isn't there something call nomad poetics, must read that, Pierre Joris?). This makes me think of my reading on Asklepios, and how perhaps his was a way to finding our way to health by our selves by living a certain way that's not so certain, but open to something and focusing on some things that help.

Another current theme for me is how peace is under funded ( see the UN web page on this ) - and this is linked to language connected to the heart for me, as key to peace it would seem to be is mutual understanding and commitment to sincere dialogue and acceptance of the inherent rights of all human beings, by all of us. If we over fund war then it makes sense that some people will pursue such ways of thinking into action, some may say it may always be this way, but that's no reason not to do what we can. So, to learn more of this and who helps and how.

I don't mean to harp, you may all already know, and to do so lightly (but maybe this does also need to be spelled out more as those not in touch with it are just that, not in touch with it) - but want to keep on my toes...if I've not put you off I'll be continuing here for 2015.

I don't usually do this, but some numbers:

Authors read:

Male 19
Female 7.5

Dead 14
Living 11 (to best of my knowledge, just based on books not articles)

Novels - 9
Poetry - 10.5
Philosophy 2
self help - 1
mythology / ancient history - 1

time period writing is from:
Ancient - 1
C18th - 1
C19th - 2
C20th - 12
C21st - 9

Author nationality:
German - 2
Russian - 2
Hungarian - 2
Ancient Greek - 1
American 3
Canadian - 1
Japanese - 3
UK - 7
Malaysian - 1
Irish - 1
Australian 1
Unknown - 1
changing citizenship 1 (TS Eliot)
Dual citizenship - 1 (Clive James)

Format:
physical book - 11
Kindle - 13

unowned - 3
library books - 2

rereads - 2.5

Unfinished - at least 16 that I’m well committed to, probably a lot more overall.