dchaikin part 1 - out of the dark ages

Petrarch, 1304-1374, was the first humanist, and gave us the concept of the dark ages. He discovered many of Cicero's letters, oversaw the first translation of Homer from Greek to Latin, wrote numerous letters (were they sent?), and, of course, wrote Italian poetry. He's is my personal theme for the first part of this year. I plan to learn about him and then read some of his works. (A candidate for his Laura is on the left.) I also plan to read Nabokov's English-language novels, work through the Booker longlist on audio and on paper, and, maybe, throw a stone at the TBR pile. Through the whims of groups on Litsy I plan to read Willa Cather and Shakespeare (I help run those groups).


Vaucluse, France., where Petrarch spent some of the plague years.

Currently Reading   


Currently Listening to


Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel (started reading Mar 21)
Henry VI Part Two by William Shakespeare (started reading Feb 28)
Petrarch: Selected Sonnets, Odes and Letters edited by Thomas Goddin Bergin (started reading Feb 19)
Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta by Mark Musa (started reading Feb 18)
The Poetry of Petrarch by David Young (started reading Feb 1)
Collected Stories by Willa Cather (started reading Jan 25)
Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi, read by Sneha Mathan (started listening Mar 22)

Themes by year

2012 - old testament
2013 - old testament and Toni Morrison
2014 - old testament
2015 - old testament, Toni Morrison & Cormac McCarthy
2016 - Homer, Greek mythology, Greek drama, & Thomas Pynchon
2017 - Virgil, Ovid & Thomas Pynchon
2018 - Apocrypha, New Testament & Gabriel García Márquez
2019 - Rome to Renaissance, James Baldwin, Willa Cather, Shakespeare, the 2019 Booker list
2020 - Dante, Vladimir Nabokov, Willa Cather and Shakespeare, the 2019 Booker list
2021 - Petrarch, Vladimir Nabokov, Willa Cather and Shakespeare, the 2020 Booker list

links to all my old threads:

2009 Part 1, 2009 Part 2, 2010 Part 1, 2010 Part 2, 2011 Part 1, 2011 Part 2, 2012 Part 1, 2012 Part 2, 2013 Part 1, 2013 Part 2, 2013 Part 3, 2014 Part 1, 2014 Part 2, 2014 Part 3, 2015 Part 1, 2015 Part 2, 2015 Part 3, 2016 Part 1, 2016 Part 2, 2016 Part 3, 2017 Part 1, 2017 Part 2, 2018 part 1, 2018 part 2, 2019 part 1, 2019 part 2, 2019 part 3, 2020 part 1, 2020 part 2, 2020 part 3

Books read this year - just covers

This year in audiobooks

Found and starred your thread! Happy new literary year!

Happy New Year! Have fun with Petrarch and Nabokov :-)

Happy New Year! I look forward to following your reading in 2021.

Happy 2021, Dan! I look forward to following you here and on Litsy.

Happy 2021, Dan! Looking forward to whatever paths you explore this year.

Another great challenge for the year, Dan. You certainly never give yourself the soft options. Happy new year.

>1 dchaikin: With a thread title like this, how could I not follow? Looking forward to your reading.

You are steadily making your way through the classics... :) Always interesting to see what you make of them.

Happy New Year, Dan!

Look forward to reading you on Petrarch whom I've gotten to know a little in recent years and on more Nabokov, I enjoyed your review of The Gift (which I've not read). Happy New Year.

>6 raton-liseur: >7 Dilara86: >8 BLBera: >9 ELiz_M: >10 lisapeet: thanks, welcome and Happy New Year all

>11 AlisonY: sometimes soft options are harder on me than others. : )

>12 SassyLassy: : ) Thanks. I like the extra intended meaning.

>13 AnnieMod: Thanks Annie. Stumbling through, but it's been very rewarding. I do need to hide many titles from my over-optimistic eyes to make any progress though.

>14 tonikat: Do you have an posts on Petrarch? I would like to look them up if I missed them. Thanks, re The Gift. It's is special kind of lost book, a little difficult to hack through, unfortunately.

Happy New Year and Happy Reading! Always fascinating to see what direction your reading takes.

>16 stretch: Thanks Kevin. Happy New Year.

A reality check moment.

It's Jan 1 and I'm imaging my reading through the year, but there is a kind fly in ointment - I've been tracking my reading time (and pace). So, I now know about how many hours I can expect to read a month and how long each book will take to read. And... my plans are profoundly not realistic.

Initial January plan:
- Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer
- Wolf Hall by Mantel - to work up to The Memory and the Light on the Booker longlist.
- The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Nabokov
- 1/4 of The History of London (goal is 12 hours)
- The 50 pages of stories for my Willa Cather group read on Litsy

That seems a little ambitious, but maybe possible. But, then I added the numbers. I read about 40 hours a month last year and I roughly know my reading pace on these books.

8 hours: Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer
27 hours (!!): Wolf Hall by Mantel - had no idea this was so long, and it's a re-read! I read it in 2010.
7 hours- The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Nabokov
12 hours: 1/4 of The History of London
3 hours: The 50 pages of Willa Cather stories
----
57 hours of reading >> 40 hours I'm likely to read in January (42.5% greater)

So, there go those plans.

>18 dchaikin: Being realistic is all well and fine, but shouldn't our reach exceed our grasp, at least as it applies to reading?

>19 RidgewayGirl: well...

>18 dchaikin: This is next level! (I mean this in a good way) Now I want to somehow help you achieve your reading goal though that is, of course, impossible.

I've also thought that I would like to read The Mirror and The Light however this would require a reread of Wolf Hall (2012) which I'm not opposed to in theory but I have so many unread books already.

Hi Dan! Happy New Year! A star is dropped for this year! You reading sounds very thoroughly planned, with all its limitations. But then again, you might surprise yourself and get in more reading than you thought.

Happy New Year, Dan! I eagerly await your thoughts about A History of London, as it wouldn't take much to get me to read another book about my favorite city.

57-40 hours = 17 extra reading hours in a month. That's a little more than an extra half hour of reading per day. I say it's very doable.

Hopefully we can meet up again in Philadelphia later this year, after we're both fully vaccinated and life returns to somewhat normal.

>18 dchaikin: good tracking, but you might fly through Wolf Hall this time?

>15 dchaikin: zero posts on Petrarch, I've not read anywhere near enough, I mentioned him in something I wrote, Mt. Ventoux was very good to read about and I should complete the sonnets, one day.

>21 rhian_of_oz: you mentioned a Cromwell trilogy group read. Would provide great motivation.

>20 dchaikin: I’ll have to go find your thread. And, yes, maybe. Or I could end up reading faster or go off the my map and go on reading something completely different. :)

>23 kidzdoc: A History of London is terrific early on and then slowly gets more and more detailed. I think most readers will hit a point where they feel it’s too much, but it will vary. For me it was about halfway through, in the 19th-century. I get what Innwood is doing and when I finish a section i feel rewarded, but so much information goes through my fingers. On the other hand I’m getting familiar with London neighborhoods... Anyway I do like it, and the first half was terrific prep for my 2019 visit, but overall it’s a serious time commitment.

I would love to meet in Philly and need to get back and visit my mother in her new assisted living home that’s still on lockdown and has been since she got there. I think she gets her 1st vaccine dose today. !!

As for the extra half hour a day... : )

>24 tonikat: kat - Wolf Hall demands a slower pace. I might pickup once i get into the swing, but I’ve started with a 3-min/page pace and not feeling like I’m reading too slow.

>27 dchaikin: aha, I'm sure you know -- I got to 80 pages or so from the end and decided I really did not like him and left it. So, I'll never know. It is grim I remember that.

As I mentioned in the What Are You Reading thread, I reread Wolf Hall (originally read in 2010, my first ebook) in March, just as we went into stay-home mode, in preparation to also reread Bring Up the Bodies and then The Mirror and the Light for the first time—and then didn't get any further. I'll definitely follow your progress and maybe jump into the second book around the same time you do, as a prompt if nothing else.

On record as having loved Wolf Hall fiercely, but yeah—it's definitely a necessarily slow read. Or was for me, anyway.

>28 tonikat: I had forgotten that, but I vaguely remember now.

>29 lisapeet: curious how the group read will go, but Rhian is thinking March for Bring up the Bodies, which would work well for me.

Just for fun, my 2020 book shelf. These are books I read last year and have a physical copy. I’ll take the shelf down soon.

ETA: test 2

>30 dchaikin: lol I meant I'm sure you know what pace is right for you

nice photo

>31 dchaikin: Nice! And even though I've read most of your reviews, I was still compelled to zoom in to read the titles. And discover, perhaps unfortunately, why the author of this weekend's impulse buy of Bluebeard's First Wife was familiar. Sigh.

Hi Dan, Dropping my star on LT too!

Hi Dan, looks like it will be an interesting year bookwise.

>32 tonikat: it's going a little faster now. : )

>33 ELiz_M: oooh, I'm intrigued by your book. I wasn't in love with Flowers of Mold, well certainly not like I was with the cover, but I found what she was doing interesting.

>34 Simone2: Hey Litsy buddy. Thanks.

>35 markon: Hi Ardene. Hope so. Welcome.

Hi, Dan, returning the visit and paying respect to the thoroughness of your reading. It doesn't look like we'll be overlapping much (maybe on Shakespeare--been yearning for some Shakespeare...) which makes it all the more interesting.

Is the figurine atop Dune... a funko doll of a Fremen or what? If it's OK to be curious... :)

>37 LolaWalser: This is why I'm so bad at literature. Dune and Fremen makes so much sense. My head went to Monty Python and the black knight.

>37 LolaWalser: >38 stretch: I believe it’s the physical experience of extraordinary arrogance - well a sketch of it anyway. I need to double check the date - it’s from one Petrarch’s old books, and I think he might have been around to approve the portrait...but I might be wrong on that.

Lola - my group has lots of Henrt vi coming. We should start part i in two weeks. (I’ll “lead” part 3).

>38 stretch:

I prefer your guess!

>39 dchaikin:

Typical luck of me, instead of something with fairies or cross-dressing shenanigans, to fall on a "historical"... maybe, if you haven't done it yet, I'll rouse my cheap-thrills-loving self for Richard III... :)

>40 LolaWalser: We have run through most of Shakespeare’s best hits so far, I think. (Although I missed a bunch, joining the group a year in). The leftovers are heavily weighted on histories and now we’re trying to knock some out. I’ve never read (or seen) Richard III. Hopefully we hold out for it. (The group contributions dwindle with histories.)

Hi, Dan, and Happy New Year! You report so thoroughly that I have gotten bogged down in your thread, so matter how worthwhile you posts seem. That means I may get behind again this year, but I'll by visiting.

I might want to try that London history, and I'm considering Willa Cather this year. I've read little if any ... not sure.

>42 sallypursell: thanks Sally. Same to you, Happy 2021! I’m flattered by the word “thorough”. I’ve actually been trying to be less thorough and more readable, but it just hasn’t come out that way yet.

Forget that London book, Cather has earned the love. Try My Mortal Enemy - a special novella. 🙂

List of books I've read
Links will go to my review post here

JANUARY

1. **** Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer by Christopher S. Celenza, (read Jan 1-6)
2. **** Real Life by Brandon Taylor, read by Kevin R. Free (listened Dec 22 - Jan 6)
3. **½ How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang, read by Catherine Ho & Joel de la Fuente (listened Jan 7-23)
4. ***** Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (read Jan 1-23)
5. ****½ The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov (read Jan 24-30)

FEBRUARY

6. **** Henry VI Part One by William Shakespeare (read Jan 6 - Feb 8)
7. ****½ History of London by Stephen Inwood (read half Dec 11-31, 2019, the rest Dec 25, 2020 - Feb 14, 2021)
8. ****½ Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (read Feb 14-28)

MARCH

9. **** A Promised Land by Barack Obama, read by the author (listened Jan 23 - Mar 13)
10. **** Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov (read Feb 28 - Mar 20)

The list above sorted by year published

1592 Henry VI Part One by William Shakespeare
1939 The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
1947 Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov
1988 Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
1998 A History of London by Stephen Inwood
2009 Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
2017 Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer by Christopher S. Celenza
2020
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang
A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Some stats:

2021
Books read: 10
Pages: 2670 (time reading: 124 hours)
Audio time: 47 hours
"regular books”**: 7
Formats: Paperback 4; Audio 3; ebook 2; Hardcover 1;
Subjects in brief: Novel 6; History 3; Non-fiction 3; Classic 2; Biography 1; On Literature and Books 1; Drama 1; Memoir 1;
Nationalities: England 3; United States 3; Russia 2; China 1; Zimbabwe 1;
Books in translation: 0
Genders, m/f: 7/3 unknown: 0; mixed 0;
Owner: Books I own: 10;
Re-reads: 1
Year Published: 2020’s 3; 2010's 1; 2000’s 1; 1990’s 1; 1980’s 1; 1940’s 1; 1930’s 1; 1500’s 1;
TBR numbers: 8 acquired, 9 read = net -1

"Everything"*
Books read: 1126
Pages: 289,961; Audio time: 1793 hours (74 days)
"regular books"**: 724
Formats: Paperback 598; Hardcover 242; Audio 169; ebooks 78; Lit magazines 38
Subjects in brief: Non-fiction 465; Novels 323; Biographies/Memoirs 198; History 178; Classics 153; Journalism 95; Poetry 90; Science 81; Ancient 75; Speculative Fiction 66; On Literature and Books 57; Nature 55; Anthology 45; Essay Collections 44; Graphic 43; Short Story Collections 41; Drama 37; Juvenile/YA 34; Visual Arts 26; Interviews 15; Mystery/Thriller 13
Nationalities: US 651; Non-American, English speaking 218; Other: 262
Books in translation: 195
Genders, m/f: 720/309
Owner: Books I owned 780; Library books 280; Books I borrowed 66; Online 11
Re-reads: 24
Year Published: 2020’s 8; 2010's 255; 2000's 277; 1990's 169; 1980's 114; 1970's 56; 1960's 44; 1950's 26; 1900-1949 56; 19th century 16; 16th-18th centuries 25; 13th-15th centuries 5; 0-1199 19; BCE 55
TBR: 697

*well, everything since I have kept track, beginning in Dec 1990

**"Regular Books" excludes audio, lit magazines, small poetry books, juvenile, graphic novels, podcasts, etc. It is just meant to count regular old books that I picked up and read.

Hi Dan, and Happy New Year. Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Willa Cather reads I participated in. One of my goals this year is to go back and fill in those the group read before I joined, and the 2 at the end where I fell off (Lucy Gayheart and the short stories).
Hope all is well for you in Houston. My daughter there has gotten her covid vaccine, and my husband here will get his in 10 days, but I am out in the cold because our county has run out of vaccine for the elderly, which I can't believe I am, but I am.
>46 dchaikin: Wow! Such detailed statistics!

>47 arubabookwoman: I am out in the cold because our county has run out of vaccine for the elderly,

Boo! Hisssss! Hope they get more in soonest.

Petrarch‘s personal copy of Virgil's works. The handwritten note over the beginning of the Aeneid (all in Latin) says, “It is already from this point that the conflicts of the gods and their interventions in human affairs begins. Almost no part of this entire work, all the way up to the end, remains untouched by them. In this respect Virgil follows Homer‘s lead most of all. ..."

>47 arubabookwoman: Thanks for the note Deborah. The group reads on Litsy have been special. (Should I tell you we don't start discussion Cather's short stories until Jan 30? 🙂) And that sucks about the vaccine. Need to get this admin out of the way...

>48 markon: yeah!

22-yr-old Petrarch being pierced by an arrow emanating from Laura‘s gaze - from a 1470 codex of his poetry.

1. Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer by Christopher S. Celenza
published: 2017
format: 246-page hardcover
acquired: December
read: Jan 1-6
time reading: 7 hr 45 min, 1.9 min/page
rating: 4
locations: Avignon, Rome, Vacluse, France, Milan, Venice, Padua, Arquà, Italy, etc.
about the author: born 1967 on Staten Island, currently James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins

This is the year I read Petrarch and I picked this book up to learn something about him, and to get me excited to read his poetry. I wanted to know who he was, and who his Laura was.

Petrarch is generally considered the Renaissance kick-off point because he bemoaned the "dark ages" (a term he came up with) and the forgotten past of Roman intellectual life. He heavily and successfully promoted Latin and the reading of the Classical Latin works like Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Livy, etc. This is all maybe his biggest claim to fame. He's also famous for this laurel crown, his Latin letters, which are preserved, and especially for his Vernacular poetry, Canzoniere, written in Tuscan and the model for modern Italian.

This is a nice, readable, pretty and somewhat brief overview of Petrarch. It makes a good start for my look into him this year. It made me want to read his poetry, especially his Canzoniere, and it also kind of made me not want to read any of his letters or other works.

I wrote a 1900 word review, but I'm also trying to be more readable this year. So, in that light I'm experimenting with hiding all the stuff you don't need read, but that I still want available to me, as spoilers. These are basically my notes.

A long biographical sketch of Petrarch.
Petrarch has Florentine heritage and associated himself with Florence, but never actually lived there. Born in 1304, he grew up outside Avignon during the Papal schism. His father was a notary, which was at that time something like a secular clerk and lawyer, and he was sent to school to become a notary, but left school upon his father's death, having mostly imbibed Virgil and Cicero in Latin. He read them over and over again, memorizing them. Setting out on his own he found ways to ingratiate himself with wealthy and ruling families, who would sponsor him. Like Dante, he promoted a unification of Italy through a re-creation of the Roman Empire. This led to embracing tyrants, some embracingly deranged, and also conveniently led him to a life of constant patronage through wealth ruling families that really liked this pro-tyrant idea. Part of the reason he never lived in Florence is that it was essentially a republic during his entire life time and there was no patronage for him. (Boccaccio was a younger contemporary and also Florentine, and was famously not very well off...but I don't know his life story yet.)

As a person Petrarch gains some sympathy in his continual self-questioning and contradictions, and also a lot disgust for his arrogance and associated insecurity. He would almost never mention Dante by name - a sign he felt insecure about how his work matched up. He developed a close friendship with Boccaccio, while also counseling the younger scholar to be content with being Florence's 3rd best poet, behind himself and one other unnamed poet (Dante)--this is found in this personal preserved letters. But he had a friendly affect on many scholars who essentially worshipped him, and they are responsible for preserving and spreading his work after his death in 1374. Many of Petrarch's personal notebooks and other materials are available today in various museums, with his personal handwriting and signature.

As an intellectual Petrarch helped spread obscure Roman-era manuscripts, famously discovering lost letters by Cicero in a monastery in modern Belgium, Pro Archia. His great failed work was a Latin epic on end of the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, especially on Scipio, the general who finally defeated Hannibal. The unfinished work is titled Africa and is not highly regarded. He is also famous for his letters, many written to person friends, but also many written to dead historical figures. He not only carefully preserved them, but reworked them throughout his life. It was a big part of this intended legacy. He kept a kind of secret notebook where he generated a dialogue between a fictional self and a fictional St. Augustine. Petrarch was devoutly Christian and this book explores his balancing of Christian ethics, and humbleness with his full out push for and desire for fame (and maybe by implication sex). It's a work that apparently was not shared during his lifetime, but has been preserved.

Petrarch was an extremely devout Christian. He spend a lot of effort merging Roman and Christian ethics, and was famously, and importantly, hostile to the intellectual trend in universities to blend Christianity with Aristotle (and Aristotle's medieval Arabic commentator, Averroes). This led to a famous letter he wrote condemning these Aristotle scholars. In it, all written in Latin, he tore apart the scholars for pronouncing things they had no evidence for and so could not validate it, while pushing heavily for Christian faith - this makes an interesting pro-science/anti-science contradiction. His influence would go both ways, both toward suffocating empirical methods under Christian faith, and eventually toward promoting them. His legacy of not accepting the conventional wisdom of the universities would justify a trend of always questioning the experts and conventional wisdom and would place a link between him and the likes of Erasmus and Montaigne.

on the Canzoniere
But Petrarch's Latin writings aren't so highly regarded today and aren't widely read. Instead it's his collection of Tuscan dialect vernacular poetry that makes him read today. He always associated his poetry with a phase in his youth, but he wrote and reworked them throughout his life, keeping the evolving collection together and calling them in Latin his rerum vulgarium fragmenta, or his fragments of things in vernacular. They are known today as the Canzoniere, or, in Italian, songs. This poetry would help define modern Italian.

Celenza doesn't go into his poetry in depth, but he does bring out interesting elements. Petrarch's poetry brings all his contradictions together, in one place, in tension. His Christianity and desire for chastity and humbleness and meaning are in tension with his sexual desires and need and quest for fame. He claimed as a young man to have fallen for a married woman, who he called Laura, specifically on April 6, 1327 in Avignon. His personal copy of Virgil, which still exists, has numerous notes by him about the work and about key events in his life, especially death notices. One notice is on the death of this Laura when the Plague hit Avignon in 1348.

It's interesting to me that Petrarch basically followed Dante in having a poetic muse presented as real and married and unreachable, and who died in a plague during his lifetime. Dante did marry but does not mention his wife or children in any of his preserved works. But if you read his Comedia, you could not be blamed for imaging he was gay. There is a distinct kindness to homosexual sinners and some other arguably homosexual touches in this work. Petrarch does not have this gay element. He was always associated with ecclesiastical roles and was never supposed to marry. He never named the mother of his two acknowledged children, but clearly has an affection for woman. I make this point because when Dante wrote his love poetry, his Vita Nuova, he writes in layers, beautiful on the surface and heavily ironic underneath. They are not sincere. If you read this work and think the author is crazy and over infatuated with his Beatrice, you aren't alone. Mark Musa has a wonderful essay on how this is Dante's intended meaning in his translation of Vita Nuova. Plutarch does not seem to have had this ironic sense of humor. Seems he was more sincere in his poetry. Well, I haven't read it yet, so I'll have to see what I can gleam in translation. (I'm now wishing I had Musa's translation. I have David Young's. The Poetry of Petrarch.)

miscellaneous extra stuff
As I seem to be writing everything down, I'll add some more details on Petrarch.

-- He essentially founded and named Humanism - that is the study of the humanities, namely grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy. Or, if you like, roughly the word for secular intellectual pursuits of the era after him. The word comes from Cicero's Pro Archia, the work Petrarch discovered in Liège (in modern Belgium) and then promoted, where Cicero defends the arts (as a legal defense of his client, the poet Archias).

-- He had himself coronated, as a literary conqueror of sorts, in Rome with a laurel crown. (The laura/laurel linguistic connection and the association of the laurel with Apollo, the Greek god of the arts and poetry, is something he worked into his poetry.)

-- Celenza breaks his contradictions down this way. He promoted the vernacular, but wrote mostly in Latin and praised Latin as the best language to use. He pushed for fame, and yet minimizes this in his work (and seems to have battled this contradiction for real, internally). His poetry and other writing focuses on his love interests and his mythical Laura, while downplaying them by claiming this was a fault of his youth that he had overcome in middle age. He continued to write and rework these poems throughout his life. His love for Laura epitomizes what he sees as the earthly struggle of Christians for chastity, a maybe fourth contradiction.

-- There are in a way three historically important Petrarchs. First the classicist that damned the dark ages, condemned the conventional wisdom on universities, and promoted a return to the Romans and classical arts. Second the Latin specialist. And third the vernacular poet, whose Canzoniere promoted both the Tuscan dialect and all vernacular languages in to the arts.

a bit on tyranny
One last note on the Roman Empire. Rome was a Republic for several hundred years, from its mythical past until Augustus walked into Alexandria Egypt in 31 bce, ending his civil war with Mark Antony and becoming the unchallenged ruler of the empire. From then on Rome promoted itself as empire. Almost all the great preserved Roman works, those by the poets Virgil, Ovid and Horace, by the historians, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, Dio Cassius, Pliny the Younger, by the philosophers Lucretius, Emperor Marcus Aurelius and by the naturalist Pliny the Elder, worked within the empire and within the sort of unofficial censorships of that state. Virgil's work is literally designed to justify Augustus a emperor (and to get Virgil his patronage). So we are left with a heavy pro-Empire propaganda legacy. I bring this up because I find it interesting that both Dante and Petrarch bought this propaganda whole and preached it in all their works. The Roman Republic gets short shift. They are all about empire ... and its tyranny. (of coarse they lived in a chaotic world of violently competing small states and no real legal justice.)

On this book itself
Celenza writes like a contemporary professor talking to his students. He expresses some over-certainty early on in promoting his topic as a great one. But he wants the reader to follow him and catch all his facts and leads the reader there step by step, limiting his references to maybe his favorite ones. He's thorough but also avoids any real literary or philosophical exploration. He sticks to the accepted perspective - which does cover the literary and philosophical aspects, but takes no risks. It's a also a pretty book, well made, with color photographs of Petrarch's own books with his own handwriting and also of beautiful 15th century illuminations in some early copies of his works. His book seems to serve as a solid introduction to Petrarch, and is recommended to anyone looking for that.

Nice review of Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer, Dan. I promise to come back to read the hidden comments...

Thanks Dan very informative on Petrarch. I have not read a lot and think I had to borrow a book, but I think he wrote a letter I read about climbing Mount Ventoux which is also a claim of his to fame (to start with as he claimed to be the first person to do it for fun since the ancient world, but for other reasons too it is an interesting read). About him an empire he was also into Cicero who was of the republic of course. I suppose he and Dante (who had to leave Florence) were both aware of factionalism and splits in their world, himself (P) in religiosu ways too (Avignon). I think the founder of humanism is also a huge achievement, maybe wrapped up with all three of those you mention towards the end.

>53 kidzdoc: - A glutton for punishment. Thanks Darryl.

>54 tonikat: Celenza talks about Mount Ventoux and the of-the-moment quotation from St. Augustine at the summit. This was all a big moment in Petrarch's life and writing and some mountain climbers today embrace it. Good points with the rest, Kat. Cicero of course worked to preserve the dying Republic. I guess that did not make enough of an impression on P.

I think you're always readable, Dan. As far as I'm concerned you don't need to trouble with extra work spoilering.

Well, I've been put off Petrarca's sonnets well and good in school but of course all this chatter is making me consider doing a remedial.

>56 LolaWalser: Thanks. Experimenting. Maybe I need a tldr, or some kinder label for a summary section up front. As for these sonnets, I'm not sure what I'll make of them. It doesn't help that practically all my poetry reading the last 3 or 4 years has been the ancient epics. I'll have to figure how to read these 300 sonnets.

Great stuff Dan you seem well prepared to tackle the Canzoniere. I read the David Young translations here is my review https://www.librarything.com/work/28128/details/84605296

At the moment I am reading some of the Elizabethan sonneteers many of whom based their poems on Petrarchs template. They succeeded in many respects of making clichés of Petrarch's poems.

>58 baswood: from 2012, wow. I read your terrific review and was going to thumb it, but it was already thumbed. I’m really happy to have read it just now before I launch. My plan is to start the morning of Feb 1 and give myself all the time I might want to work through them, however it works. (I have a psalms fear - the book of Psalms with its 150 psalms was torture for me to read through and I’m pretty sure i blocked them all out of my head. Anything I know about them now comes from reading about them elsewhere. But hopefully Petrarch is more original.)

An ambitious start to the year, Dan! And I like your 2020 shelf of books. Will stop by from time to time to check what you are up to.

Hey, Dan! Finally checking in here. Great work on the Petrarch, thanks. Lots of luck with the rest of your stack. See ya 'round the bookshelves!

>60 avaland: Maybe ambitious. I think I’ll have to make some compromises with real life reality somewhere along the way. And thanks, Lois

>61 rocketjk: thanks Jerry

Great info and background on Petrarch, Dan. I love it when people get deep into the weeds on what they read—that enthusiasm is contagious, at least to me. He was never really on my radar, but the link to Montaigne, whom I flirt with shamelessly without knowing enough about, is an enticement. And I love that illustration! Is he holding an asp? (As protection against Laura?) Do you have a link to the source? (Or did you scan it from the 15th-c. manuscript that you have lying around the house?)

>63 lisapeet: Yeah, what is that critter doing? Maybe it's encouraging him. The illustration was in the book. I took a picture of the page (I actually posted on Litsy and then linked from there to here)

>52 dchaikin: Very nice review. I am not interested in the topic but reading your notes is as informational as reading a professional review. :)

2. Real Life by Brandon Taylor
reader: Kevin R. Free
published: 2020
format: 9:25 audible audiobook (329 pages in hardcover)
acquired: December21
listened: Dec 22 – Jan 6
rating: 4
locations: UW Madison
about the author: from rural Alabama, born 1989

My sixth book on the 2020 Booker longlist, and while I didn't exactly love this book or find it fun, I liked it a lot and particularly enjoyed all the layers happening simultaneously. Wallace, black, gay, from rural Alabama, is a biochemistry grad student in the very very white University of Wisconsin, in very very white Madison, WI (neither the school or city are mentioned by name). He is desperately searching for and wanting some kind of intimate connection, while doing everything conceivably possible to avoid or limit this. He's lonely, unexpressive, unwilling to let anyone see any part of what's inside of him, and he presents an outwardly milk toast faux-cheerful calm, an armor of dullness. He's constantly aroused by men around him, and in a constant battle not to feel that, not to feel any emotion. Also, he's a good, but mediocre grad student with that defeated aspect that grad students typically have hanging over him, while surrounded by a bunch of fellow grad students in roughly that same empty mental place. (Being in grad school, and hanging out with grad students is sometimes a weird experience of being surrounded by smart interesting people you more or less admire and hating everything about it. That is vividly captured here.) But Wallace is extra-self-defeating. His contradictions, the racism, the homosexuality and the defeat run through this novel.

Taylor claims he wrote this book in five weeks, which is interesting because of how much he put into it. At five weeks an author doesn't have time to struggle with doubt, or rethink. He must have had all this in mind at the start and carried it out. What I really like is he conveys all this stuff above without talking about it. He just goes through a weekend, and a series of interesting enough things are happening on the surface, but these atmospheres (plural intended) pervade and mix.

In a so far disappointing Booker longlist of monotonous and overly-long texts, this stands out.

>66 dchaikin: Hmm - you might have got me with a BB on that one, Dan.

Nice review of Real Life, Dan. I'll probably read it this coming spring.

>66 dchaikin:

I've seen a review before but your approval confirms its interest.

>67 AlisonY:, >68 kidzdoc:, >69 LolaWalser: glad there's some interest. I'm hoping to see this title pop up here a little. (ridgewaygirl reviewed this in September. And, actually, it's a really nice review that captures some of Taylor's language. Not sure if anyone else has posted on it.)

Just stopping by to wish you a Happy New Year (I'm slow this year). I love the photo of your 2020 books - nice idea. Also love your resolution to 'be more readable this year', which made me laugh (nicely). I always enjoy reading your thoughts on books I am unlikely to read...as well as on the odd thing we both read.

Happy New Year, Dan. Visiting your thread is always educational. I’ll pop in once in a while to see what you are reading. Your plans are very impressive.

>71 rachbxl:, >72 NanaCC: Thanks and nice to “see” you both here. Rachel - we do overlap occasionally. Colleen- plans are partially imaginative, I guess

I’m thinking I haven’t visited either of your 2021 threads yet. Will get there!

Dan, have you seen this?

Rarely-Seen Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy Are Now Free Online, Courtesy of the Uffizi Gallery

(Did I send it to you already? I have ZERO short term memory anymore.)

>74 lisapeet: thanks! New to me and beautiful!

3. How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang
readers: Catherine Ho & Joel de la Fuente
published: 2020
format: 9:08 audible audiobook (288 pages in hardcover)
acquired: Jan 6
listened: Jan 7-23
rating: 2½
locations: 19th century California
about the author: Born in Beijing, 1990, grew up in the US.

My seventh audiobook from the 2020 Booker Longlist. Zhang seems to have taken in the depressing stories of early Chinese gold prospectors in California, but she writes a story here with a heavy twist on that...so she touches the topic, but then plays with it. Great idea, but I thought the novel was flawed and didn't like it overall.

She opens with a poetic prose as two sisters, identified by a banker as "chinks", drag the decaying body of their deceased father across a barren 1850's California. This writing is not like that of the barren, natural world kind of poetic, but something different and curious. More human, less natural elements. Also the dad corpse gets disgusting. I found it all interesting enough, but I never took to it. Then the book does two sudden changes. First the narrator voice changes and book becomes simpler, but also fascinating because everything we thought needs to be rethought. I was ready to go to the beginning and re-read. Then it switches a second time...and goes all Alice Hoffman. yuck yuck yuck. Zhang's same poetic prose for the first time needs to drive a plot forward, and it really didn't work well for me, it felt forced. I thought it was awful - two hours of awful on audio. And that's how it closes. I'm not going back to re-read.

This books left me with the impression of being a compilation, a mixture of good and bad parts. It's a first novel of a young author and I'm thought it felt like a first novel, and that it's flawed, and that it lacks authorial mastery (I listened while also reading Hilary Mantel, who _has_ authorial mastery.) I would call Zhang a developing author of interest.

4. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
published: 2009
format: 537-page Kindle ebook (because I lost by paperback)
acquired: January 1
read: Jan 1-23
time reading: 27 hr 24 min, 3.1 min/page
rating: 5
locations: 1520’s-30’s London mostly
about the author: born 1952 in Derbyshire, England to parents of Irish descent.

This is a re-read from ten years ago, and I'm reading as part of the CR group read. I'm re-reading because the third book in the Cromwell Trilogy made the 2020 Booker Longlist. I'll try to keep this more a brief comment then a review.

But, this was special to revisit. The life of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to King Henry VIII felt more real this time. And, my goodness, the amount of historical details. They are simply wonderful and they and let this book drive itself, just by history. Mantel is, I think, a masterful and always in control. She creates an atmosphere of motion and partial remove. There is touch and distance at the same time, and it just glides by, the reader conveyed along. My memories from 2010 are a mixed bag, but I have no memory of how fresh this feels, the prose crystalizing things, and becoming stunning when Mantel gets going. When she has a paragraph just to elaborate on an idea or an impression, the more ineffable the better, she makes the most of it. And then moves on.

I liked this book in 2010, I adored it this time. A 5-star reread.

>78 dchaikin: I loved Wolf Hall when I read it way back when, Dan. I also loved Bring Up the Bodies. I haven’t had a chance to read the new one, but I might try re-reading the first two before I do. Your comments are telling me that I should.

>79 NanaCC: I don’t reread much, but also I like rereading. Anyway, this one rewards. So much in there. (Of course, you can always check out the group read here in CR if you’re interested.)

>76 dchaikin: Good to know. Based on other reviews I thought it might be a book I would like. Now I'm pretty sure I won't, so thanks for sparing me a disappointment!

>81 raton-liseur: glad I could help. : ) Although other reviews shouldn’t be discounted, of course. I’m just be one, maybe jaded, reader.

I liked this book in 2010, I adored it this time. A 5-star reread.
My sentiments exactly. This time around I know more about the Tudors, and I'm a much better reader in general, I think. Authorial mastery is right—she's amazing. I'm looking forward to my reread of Bring Up the Bodies, which I remember very little of other than the general plot.

I'm going to have to reread Wolf Hall. Nuts. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy it, but I've been sitting on this third book while going back and forth on whether to reread the first two first.

>84 RidgewayGirl: You will almost certainly be glad to did, you know.

>84 RidgewayGirl: you have all Feb to stay on pace with the group read. : ) ( >85 sallypursell: I agree)

>83 lisapeet: the rest is new to me. I just bought Bring Up the Bodies (and The Mirror and the Light) last month.

from Collected Stories by Willa Cather

I'm reading through Willa Cather's collected stories with a group on Litsy at roughly 50 pages a week. I'm thinking about posting some thoughts here on each week's set. This week was three stories from The Troll Garden (1905), her first published collection of short stories. These are all out of copyright and publicly available.

Flavia and Her Artists

A striking opening story where a quiet philologist is invited to stay with a self-important New York City socialite determined to collect and host in her grand house the best and brightest minds in the world in different fields. Flavia Hamilton, wife of successful Arthur Hamilton of Chicago, makes an immediate impression on her guest, our view point, philologist Imogen Willard. Flavia is simply so crazy serious in her self-importance and her pontifications about how everyone should strive for the "best" of this or that, tiring out the word. The story works because of the characters and their varied relationships, some unanticipated, and also because of some wonderful prose. Of one guest, Cather writes, "Her eyes were as keen and grey as a windy April sky", and that might be a good description of her prose.

The Garden Lodge

A brief story about a practical wife carried away by the impression left by a visiting opera singer. Caroline Noble was the child of a broke composer and his fawning wife. She rejects the financial debt and strangles her own musical development to become self-independent...and marry an older wealthy widower. She swoons on the memory of the singer's innocent and natural suggestion. It's out of character, not entirely innocent, and momentary, before being firmly rejected by Caroline herself.

"...he quickened and in a measure gratified that something without which—to women—life is no better than sawdust, and to the desire for which most of their mistakes and tragedies and astonishingly poor bargains are due."

The Marriage of Phaedra

A story of an incomplete masterpiece painting and a deceased artist. MacMaster visits the artist's studio in London shortly after his unexpected early death from a stroke. MacMaster befriends the caretaker, the artist's hired man, and is so enraptured he dedicates himself to a biography. Alas, the artist's widow and finances compromise things a bit.

-----

Overall so I'm wondering about Cather's thoughts on women in society. She takes them down for being irresponsible, for being responsible, for thinking of themselves. She doesn't put it this way, but they can't win. Also I'm surprised how little these novels reflect her prairie trilogy, and how much they point to two of her novellas from the 1920's, two of my favorite of her works, A Lost Lady and, especially, My Mortal Enemy.

5. The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov
Introduction: Michael Dirda, 2008
published: 1941 (written January 1939)
format: 215-page paperback
acquired: October
read: Jan 24-30
time reading: 7 hr 44 min, 2.2 min/page
rating: 4½
locations: pre-Soviet St. Petersburg, 1920’s & 1930’s Cambridge, London, Paris, Berlin and other places throughout France, Germany and England
about the author: 1899 – 1977. Russia born, educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, 1922. Lived in Berlin (1922-1937), Paris, the US (1941-1961) and Montreux, Switzerland (1961-1977).

I'm reading through Nabokov's novels, and this was his first English language novel. My copy comes with an excellent introduction by Michael Dirda, who explained that Nabokov wrote this novel in Paris, on a desk laid on a bidet, for a competition in England with a January 31, 1939 deadline. He got the manuscript sent off just in time and later regarded as a tour de force. But it didn't win, and didn't get him a position in England. It was later published in the, then, pre-war US in 1941, and may have been lost to history if Nabokov did not later become famous.

Thomas Pynchon fans should take note. Dirda also describes the book this way: "V. travels from England to Switzerland to Germany to France in his quest for the identity of the elusive femme fatale who wrecked his brother‘s life.” Fans of V. might be quite struck by that sentence. A little googling will show that Pynchon took classes from Nabokov at Cornell, and highly regarded this novel, which influenced all his work.

So, I knew all that before I had read the first word. And I knew this was a complex novel, an unreliable narrator writing a biography of his older half-brother, a Russian born English-language novelist who died young of a heart attack, and who has a few parallels to and a few key opposites from the life of Nabokov. And, Dirda emphasizes, it's a novel to reread.

I reread only chapter one. I did this when I was about half way through the novel and struggling to get in tune with a flow. (It did help) It's a difficult book to read, but also fascinating on many levels. Nabokov is playful and clown-y with language, structure, story, purpose, everything. Paragraphs end on topics completely different from where they began, routinely. Grammar is stretched, and playfully inconsistent. And nothing is as it seems. As readers we know our narrator, V., is unreliable. We aren't even sure he likes his older half-brother, his subject. We might doubt he is even actually who he says he is. So we aren't wondering whether to trust him, we are wondering what he is actually doing and why. What is V. actually searching for? And, maybe, what is wrong with him? Also I was left wanting to know more about this Sebastian Knight, author of several novels, all of which Nabokov goes into in some detail and all of which left me wishing they were real (and some elements were real). Mixed in all this play are a few notes on how this author thinks about writing...I mean, of course, maybe. How Sebastian Knight "used parody as a kind of springboard for leaping into the highest region of serious emotion", as if he was, "a clown with wings". Or later, V. commenting on all Knight's aspects, he says, "It's not the parts that matter, it is there combination". And he has interesting things to say on how an author struggles writing in English as second language, searching for words or expressions that he can't find or don't exist in the language. And the novel has moments of seriousness, but is quick to undermine them. The two most moving parts of the novel are each based on a humorous error. And they're still moving. This is a difficult but enjoyable novel.

Nabokov has a clear theme of having a character or narrator talk about what he's doing in way that makes sense to him, and that also thoroughly undermines him to the reader. It's a difficult trick he has kind of mastered, or was mastering. He touches on this in 3rd person in Laughter in the Dark, and pushes it heavily when the narrator becomes a murderer in Despair, or a pedophile in The Enchanter. It's where I'm expecting Lolita to go, which I hope to read for the first time this April.

(so much for being more readable this year)

Great review of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Dan. Nabokov is one of the writers I'm not that familiar with whose work I want to read in its entirety, which is probably something I'll do after I retire in 2026 or so.

>88 dchaikin: interesting review. I had not read any of his English language novels except for Lolita. Not sure that I have the patience for all of his novels but I enjoy reading about them when you review them. And a few of his Russian ones are glaring at me from a nearby shelf. :)

Enjoyed your review of The real Life of Sebastien Knight which is the first review of that book that I have read. Nabokov looks like a great project.

I'm a bit behind so I'll keep this brief.

>78 dchaikin: "Touch and distance" is great way to describe how Mantel handles Wolf Hall. She somehow achieves the perfect balance of giving us all the facts yet at the same time allowing us to come to our own conclusion as readers.

Your Cather and Nabokov literary journeys are fascinating. You're enticing me to read from both authors, yet I've a wariness as I know you embrace complexity in books, whereas at this point in life when my work is so busy I tend to steer away from anything that might make my brain ache too much. Cather I gather isn't overly complex, but I'm not sure if her prairie setting is calling me just yet.

On the Zhang book, it sounds like a writer who hasn't found her own voice yet. She's painting one room of her house in dark, bold colours because that's what's trending, in another she's going for the maximalist look, and in yet another part of the house she's favouring a pare-backed calming feel of neutrals and soft taupes. Or have I been looking at too many Instagram interiors accounts lately...?

>90 kidzdoc: reading through VN has been a fun project. For the most part he has been a painless rewarding novelist - although I would not call anything I’ve read essential reading. (Invitation to a Beheading still stands out as a personal favorite so far.)

>88 dchaikin: wondering which Russian VN novels are glaring. He usually doesn’t demand patience, actually... but a notable exception is The Gift.

>92 baswood: thanks. The introduction was the first I had read about Sebastian Knight.

>93 AlisonY: i need to check out your WH review. Will get there sooner or later.

Turns out Cather’s early short stories - with their heavy Henry James influence - are far more demanding than her novels where she is pretty kind to her readers. That’s been interesting. Nabokov isn’t always demanding but certainly can be. He rewards, though.

Zhang - she deserves more attention. I like your analysis. I feel she did a “put everything in” first novel thing. That she has feedback on stuff she excels at and made it sure it was there. I’ll bet she loves her latter chapters - the ones i hated passionately. I do hope I’m not being unfair. In a more editor-heavy era she might write a different and better book. Her next book will interest me (although I’ll await reviews. ☺️).

January reality check-in

my January plan, which I knew was unrealistic, looked like this:

8 hours: Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer
27 hours: Wolf Hall by Mantel.
7 hours- The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Nabokov
12 hours: 1/4 of The History of London
3 hours: The 1st 50 pages of Willa Cather stories
----
57 hours of reading

It played out like this:
7:45 : Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer
27:24: Wolf Hall.
7:44: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
7:05: of The History of London (have about 12 hours to go)
2:44: The 1st 50 pages of Willa Cather stories
5:03: Henry VI part1
---
57:45 !!

So... I did actually make the 57 hours. Seriously, that's crazy. More than I read in any single month in 2020. Inevitably it leads to this:

February Plan

14 hours: Poetry of Petrarch, 30 minutes a day
9 hours: 165 pages of Willa Cather stories (for a Litsy group)
5 hours: Henry VI part I - Act V and afterward stuff in Signet (for a Litsy group)
3 hours: Henry VI part 2- intro and Acts I and II (for a Litsy group)
12 hours: to finish The History of London
10 hours: Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
8 hours: Bend Sinister by Nabokov
---
65 hours

clearly I need some help...

>96 dchaikin: And February is only 28 days!
So you're planning about 2:20 hours of daily reading. It sounds like a dream come true, doesn't it?
And I'm enjoying your reviews along this crazy journey!

>96 dchaikin: I admire your ambition!

>97 raton-liseur: I'm denying that number, happy denial

>98 LibraryLover23: Thanks! : )

Petrarch trouble. I'm struggling with David Young.

poem #10 - original (I can't read this)

Glorïosa columna in cui s'appoggia
nostra speranza e 'l gran nome latino,
ch'ancor non torse del vero camino
l'ira di Giove per ventosa pioggia,

qui non palazzi, non theatro o loggia,
ma 'n lor vece un abete, un faggio, un pino
tra l'erba verde e 'l bel monte vicino,
onde si scende poetando et poggia,

levan di terra al ciel nostr'intellecto;
e 'l rosigniuol che dolcemente all'ombra
tutte le notti si lamenta et piagne,

d'amorosi penseri il cor ne 'ngombra:
ma tanto bel sol tronchi, et fai imperfecto,
tu che da noi, signor mio, ti scompagne

-----

Young's poem #10

Glorious Column, raising up our hope,
and carrying great Latium's reputation,
who never turned aside from the true path
despite Jove's anger and wind-driven rain:

we have no palaces, arcades, or theaters:
we have instead a fir, a beech, a pine—
the green grass all around, the neighbor mountain
which we climb up and down, making our poems;

these lift our spirits up from earth to Heaven;
and then the nightingale laments and weeps
from shadows every night so sweetly that

our hearts grow heavy, filled with thoughts of love.
Yet all this good you spoil and make imperfect
because my lord you do not come and join us.

I'm having trouble finding that meaningful to me. I'm not really sure why, but my thinking is that I find "who never turned aside from the true path" too soft and meaningless. "making our poems" seems notable but inconsistent with the rest. Why "making"? And I find the breaks, "these lift" and "and then the nightingale" and "Yet all this" as disconnecting. Cutting it up, maybe.

I looked online and there is this freely available version from A S Kline

Glorious pillar in whom rests
our hope and the great Latin name,
that Jupiter's anger through wind and rain
still does not twist from the true way,

who raise our intellect from earth to heaven,
not in a palace, a theatre, or arcade,
but instead in fir, beech or pine,
on the green grass and the lovely nearby mountain,

from which poetry descends and rests;
and the nightingale that laments and weeps
all night long, sweetly, in the shadows,

fills the heart with thoughts of love:
but you by departing from us my lord,
only cut off such beauty, and make it imperfect.

----

Whatever its flaws (I still don't like "cut off", for example), it's all one thing. Actually the meaning has changed. But also it's one interconnected whole. The pillars (columns) raise us, and from this poetry descends (passively, but no awkward "making"). The only break is "but you". I feel this interpretation is tied together, beginning to end. You can't break it apart. I like that aspect a lot. I feel I'm getting at an intended meaning. Am I really? Not sure. But in comparison I feel the Young poem has a put a large distance between me and Petrarch. Again, just a feeling.

I also looked up Mark Musa, same poem

---

Glorious column upon whom there rests
our hope and great renown of Latium,
whom even the wrath of Jove with buffeting rain
has not yet turned aside from the true path:

there are no palaces, theaters, loggias here;
instead a fir, a beech, a pine tree stand—
between green grass and mountainside nearby,
where we in poetry descend and climb—

to lift out intellects from earth to heaven;
there is a nightingale that in the shadows
sweetly lamenting weeps throughout the night

and burdens every heart with thoughts of love.
From goodness you alone cut short perfection,
keeping yourself far from us here, my lord.

---

Different. No "making" poetry. But is has the same issues of being broken up. Unfortunately, I don't which version is truer to Petrarch. Is his Italian broken up like this, or does it all gel, like Kline has it?

Thinking out loud more

1st stanza seems to about a Roman column that withstood time and therefore represents Rome’s resilience.

No way Young imparts that meaning with “you never turned aside”, which sounds awfully biblical psalm-ish. Kline misses too. He says “still does not twist”. Musa is more effective here, for me, because of “buffeting rain” - which implies attack of time - combined and closely associated with Jove’s “wrath”. I don’t like “aside” still, but i get the column is a survivor. “whom even the wrath of Jove with buffeting rain” tells me this.

2nd stanza, plus one line

qui non palazzi, non theatro o loggia,
ma 'n lor vece un abete, un faggio, un pino
tra l'erba verde e 'l bel monte vicino,
onde si scende poetando et poggia,

levan di terra al ciel nostr'intellecto;

Google translate : )

here no palaces, no theatre or loggia,
but there was a fir, a beech, a pine
between the green grass and the beautiful mountain nearby,
whence we descend poetry and rest,

they rise from earth to heaven our intellect

The general meaning, as far as I can tell here, is that this resilient column is surrounded by nature and mountains that are themselves poetry, once Petrarch has allowed himself to be immersed in it, and that becomes as a whole spiritual.

Young

we have no palaces, arcades, or theaters:
we have instead a fir, a beech, a pine—
the green grass all around, the neighbor mountain
which we climb up and down, making our poems;

these lift our spirits up from earth to Heaven;

We get the nature aspect, but no poetic immersion. "making", which is contrived, kills that. And the "we haves" are a weird modern casual hand waving. I'm hate this.

Kline

who raise our intellect from earth to heaven,
not in a palace, a theatre, or arcade,
but instead in fir, beech or pine,
on the green grass and the lovely nearby mountain,

from which poetry descends and rests;

several awkward things here. The first line is actually the last one (the 9th) repositioned. It's in a different stanza. And the "who raise" implies a plural. Not a single column, or a single Jove even. He's re-directed to "our hope and Latin" heritage to this who. Actually, that's better. But the point is made. We are not in civilization, we are in ruins and nature and poetry naturally descends and rests

Musa

there are no palaces, theaters, loggias here;
instead a fir, a beech, a pine tree stand—
between green grass and mountainside nearby,
where we in poetry descend and climb—

to lift out intellects from earth to heaven;

This is actually the most accurate, and preserves correct order. What is awkward to me is the "to lift our". It breaks up what should be all one thought. Google does better (!) with simply "they".

simplest, my version of the moment

lone Roman column
relic
that has withstood time
memorial of its era.

removed from culture or civilization
surrounded by just these trees
and mountains
immersed in poetry

becomes for us spiritual.

>101 dchaikin:

I'm having trouble finding that meaningful to me.

Hmm, do you mean the whole poem, "what it is about", or specific lines? Also, I presume there are notes explaining the references?

My quick 'n' dirty take--first, I'd bet my firstborn that this is a laudatory, dedicatory (or funerary?) poem of some sort (b/c Petrarca was like that, a brownnoser--well ok not much choice in those times)--and probably to someone from the Colonna family. Which is reinforced by the last line, about the "my lord" departing and thus leaving us all bereft in darkness--yes, that is how close poets were to calling their masters gods.

The general meaning, as far as I can tell here, is that this resilient column is surrounded by nature and mountains that are themselves poetry, once Petrarch has allowed himself to be immersed in it, and that becomes as a whole spiritual.

Eh, well, the Colonnas were one of the few families with Roman ancestry--hence they can symbolise the glory that was Rome. And Rome was pagan. The nature imagery in the poem describes the eternal beauty of Italian landscape unrelated to Christianity AND declares that our spirits are elevated by that beauty and glory alone--quite a naughty poem in this light (and there's the "Jove" at the beginning, although I think poetic convention at this time may have already made syncretised to a point ancient myth and Christian references.)

No question this is radical, underground stuff. :)

>105 LolaWalser: You’re spot on that it’s dedicatory to a person from the Colonna family. Book is at home, so can’t look it up just now.

And thanks for this, that adds a lot.

By meaningful to me - i mean that I’m not getting it. : ) Also that the words and meaning I am catching aren’t resonating. There is a lot here. !!

>105 LolaWalser: revisiting and your comments changes the whole meaning of the poem for. My marble isolated column becomes a recently deceased lord. And as a memorial, it’s all very different. The pagan and nature aspects are playful and suddenly many layered. Thanks for this. (And apologies to anyone hacking through all my thinking process and its wrong turns.)

>107 dchaikin:

Oh, you're welcome--er don't rush to bury him, it was just a thought about perhaps being funerary, maybe he had just left the room . :)

Right--sorry I was rushing and didn't detail--so, Colonna means column (Latin and hence all the derivations, down to and including the lowly colon in our guts), it was even in the family's coat of arms, and that would have been plain as day to the audience. Then everything else follows.

Yep, it's a rockin' humanist novelty, the whole attitude in it. Incidentally some day you may want to read Leopardi to see how this standard was borne through to the later generations--one could argue (and bet someone has) that there are germs of Risorgimento right here already.

I still have the early English sonnet writers to peak into before Leopardi. : ) I had to look up Risorgimento. Indeed the Petrarch-an dream.

>105 LolaWalser: just to follow up, Young’s notes say: “This sonnet was written to Stefano Colona the Elder, from the estate of his son near the Pyrenees.”

>110 dchaikin:

There you go--I thought a reference would be obligatory, as it's such a key to the poem. My shoddy knowledge of Renaissance Italy comes through for once. :)

I just remembered I have a polemic somewhere Petrarca wrote "in defence of Italy"--if there's an earthly chance of finding it in my mess, I'll join your journey from the sideline. You will be a while, no? Is this the whole Canzoniere you're reading? Sorry if I missed this above.

>110 dchaikin: Musa's notes say Jove is "the temporal ruler", the rain is "harsh political conditions", the fir "the common people", the beech "oracular or prophetic literature", and the pine "St Peter's tree, the Holy Roman Church". So he's clearly reading it as a political poem. The nightingale is the voice of the suffering people, and Colonna isn't around to unite the tree-potential-energy and redeem them. Or something like that.

>111 LolaWalser: yes, reading just the Canzoniere, but that’s a lot. And one translation might not do (as >112 thorold: indicates, perhaps i better get Musa - not expensive on Kindle)

>112 thorold: thanks! Kind of fascinating, kind of just entertaining. Definitely more here than I was getting.

>113 dchaikin: On Kindle you presumably lose the advantage of parallel text on facing pages, if that matters to you. But I suppose you’ve got that already anyway.

>114 thorold: Free Association Friday!

"On Kindle you presumably lose the advantage of parallel text on facing pages . . . "



Sorry. As you were.

:) Thanks for that, maybe-Jerry.

>114 thorold: I can see only make so much of the Italian. But paper would be better. I’m still at the i-have-no-idea-how-to-proceed stage.

Dan, your posts about trying to figure out the meaning of poem #10 were interesting to me, and I'm glad also for Lola_Walser's and thorold's input. They add to the richness of the poem for me.

And I agree with you that the Kline translation flows best.

While I'm not ready to tackle Petrarch, this makes a Dante's inferno read more intriguing, as long as I have a good commentary.

Seems like your dilemma is which combo of commentary and translation with original verse is best - and that it may be hard to find everything in one package.

Dan, you professed some interest in Magellan's voyage, and wanting more detail. I am now reading a book that provides this, from the available first degree sources, such as they are. It is called Over the Edge of the World and if your touchstones are working, you can see the rest. In case not, the author is Laurence Bergreen and it seems to be reasonably exhaustive, regarding the mutinees, the details of the expedition's progress, and, I presume, the death of Magellan, although I have not got that far. I'm enjoying it, but it isn't really a quick read. It does seem to match that novel I read in most matters. Let me know if you take it on!

>117 markon: Hi. I think I probably need an annotated version of Petrarch. I'm not sure I have the patience to read through Young without many notes and get anything out of it, not sure. I read Dante last year and it was much much easier. And I loved it. But also I had a wonderful edition with extensive notes (the Hollander translation).

>118 sallypursell: I've read a book by Bergreen - well listened. His book on Marco Polo was mostly terrific. (I did get a little overwhelmed in some details. : ) ) Thanks for the note.

>119 dchaikin: It seems there was an updated version in 2019. If you do read it, I'd like to know which version.

Also, I see that he wrote a number of biographies or near-biographies. Louis Armstrong, Al Capone, and some others are listed.

>120 sallypursell: looks like I listened to the 2007 version (in 2019). https://www.librarything.com/topic/301619#6772201

>117 markon: >114 thorold: >111 LolaWalser:

Amazon scared me off of checking out different print versions. I should have checked my library, but i seem out of practice. Anyway Abe had much more reasonable pricing. Easy to avoid the $100 editions. I picked up Musa at a reasonable price and, for about $5, a copy of a bunch of dated translations, collected by Bergin. (Young calls them Victorian in feel, making fun of them. But i like the idea of a having a more traditional version around.). Kline is hit and miss. So for now i will check out him out only online. (His translations are here: https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/canzoniere.html )

Anyway, this frees me to read Young carelessly while i wait for my shipment.

Today's safe outing. I did think of you while I was traipsing through the deep snow....30 miles from home (more on our thread)

>123 avaland: ❤️❤️❤️

I’ve been discussing her short story, Coming, Aphrodite! today. (It’s a terrific story)

>122 dchaikin:

Sorry that I can't help with the English versions, I would only say that, assuming you have the time and will for it, annotations are necessary for everyone, native readers included. As you must have already seen with Dante, there's a lot of "current affairs" talk in this material!

>125 LolaWalser: I’m hoping Musa’s will fulfill that gap. I may have forgotten a little or under appreciated just how special the Hollander notes on Dante are and how much they helped made the Commedia enjoyable.

My current reading of Young is something like - “that phrase - I know that’s important - he’s saying something extra there - ok, I have no idea what - ok - I think it’s important. Because he could have said it another way - or is this Young’s input - ... - ... - ... - ok, I surrender, moving on - wait, start this one over again”

>100 dchaikin: I always find it so strange that Italian from this period is so much more intelligible than English from the same period. I know why, but it still seems strange. I can speak some Italian (although it’s rusty) and I’m pretty sure that I understood more of that sonnet than I would have done if I’d read some Chaucer in the original.

>127 SandDune: I’ve wondered that. I don’t know why. Clearly Chaucer was not used to standardize English.

>128 dchaikin: Actually I think Chaucer was using standard English. It’s just that English had only just come together from Anglo-Saxon and French (and Norse) and so was still going through a period of rapid change. I assume that Italian was standardised much earlier (at least as regards the language spoken in Tuscany).

If you look at something like Piers Plowman which is in a slightly different dialect, then it’s even more difficult:

Bidders and beggers faste aboute eoden,
Til heor bagges and heore balies weren bretful i-crommet;
Feyneden hem for heore foode, foughten atte ale;
In glotonye, God wot, gon heo to bedde,
And ryseth up with ribaudye this roberdes knaves;
Sleep and sleughthe suweth hem evere.

I have very little idea what that is about, except there are some beggars and knaves in it!

Maybe some gluttony too. ?? I do want to read that - and Chaucer.

Petrarch was used to standardize Italian. Chaucer clearly didn’t have that kind of future impact.

(Dante inspired the Tuscan (especially Florentine Tuscan) dialect to become the language of the whole boot, but I think Petrarch’s Italian poetry was more generally considered as a guide.)

>127 SandDune: - >130 dchaikin:

I've never seen a clear explanation for the difference, but I guess it's got something to do with the way cultural centres in Italy were distributed throughout the whole peninsula and there was a lot of exchange of written (literary) texts between them, so that you could get a widely dispersed standard written language that was detached from local spoken languages (and remains so even today in a lot of areas). And maybe also that the written vernacular was relatively close to Latin.

Obviously there was never the same amount of cultural exchange in the vernacular in Britain until printing came along. Maybe because there were only the two centralised court cultures of England and Scotland, a long way apart?

>130 dchaikin: >131 thorold: There was cultural exchange in Anglo-Saxon times, with the Wessex dialect being used as the standard to be followed, but apparently after the Norman Conquest the Anglo-Saxon language nearly fragmented completely into different unintelligible dialects, as its only speakers were peasants who were tied to the land, and didn’t travel. But the dialect of Anglo-Saxon that became predominant and developed into the English used by Chaucer was that spoken in parts of the Midlands and London, and it is that form that has found its way into modern English. It’s just in the 1300’s it was still Middle English as it was pretty early in the process of becoming a separate language as Anglo-Saxon and French combined. The first English king to speak English as his first language was supposed to have been Henry IV who was born in 1367 (but wasn’t brought up at court): all of them up to that point had spoken French.

Scots is different as it developed independently, but also from a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Norse. So the language spoken in the court in Scotland and the court in England would have been completely different in the 1300s. In Scotland it would have been Scots which would have seemed like a sort of version on English, but in England it was probably still French.

I’ve been working my way through the History of English podcast, which I can strongly recommend, although there is a lot of it!

>127 SandDune: I always find it so strange that Italian from this period is so much more intelligible than English from the same period.

Italian never met a language from a different language family in a dark alley... :) It had its influences but nothing like what happened to poor English.

>132 SandDune: noting that podcast!

>129 SandDune: I read William Langland's Piers Plowman back in 2011 the Everyman version edited by A. V C. Schmidt and this is what I thought about it back then:

The text contains many Latin phrases, which are translated in footnotes in this version. The glosses beside the text are sometimes essential for an understanding but sometimes they get in the way and I found it was better to ignore them and just plough through reading aloud. This is not an essential read, but then I am glad I took the time to battle with it, perhaps I would have been better to have read it in translation, but then I would have missed out on the poetry of the original

>135 baswood: I admire your ability to work through it and enjoy it without a translation. I think your review on this here in CR was the first time I had heard of Piers Plowman, and I think it's what made this seem some something I really want to try some time.

6. Henry VI Part One by William Shakespeare
Originally Performed: 1592 ??
format: 231-pages within a Signet Classic Paperback that includes Parts Two & Three
acquired: October
read: Jan 6 – Feb 8
time reading: 9 hr 54 min, 2.6 min/page
rating: 4
locations: 1400’s London and northern France
about the author: April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616

Signet contributors
Lawrence V Ryan – editor for Part One – 1967, 1989
Sylvan Barnet – Series Editor – 1963, 1989, 2005
Sources
Raphael Holinshed – from Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587)
Edward Hall – from The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York (usually called Hall's Chronicle) (1548)
Commentaries
Hermann Ulrici – from Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art (1839; editions, 1847, 1868, 1874), translated from German by L. Dora Schmitz (1876)
E.M.W. Tillyard – from Shakespeare’s History Plays (1944)
J. P. Brockbank – from The Frame of Disorder—Henry VI (1961)
Phyllis Rackin – Anti-Historians: Women’s Roles in Shakespeare’s Histories (1985)
Ralph Fiennes – Playing Henry VI (1993)
Lawrence V Ryan – Henry VI on Stage and Screen (1967, 1989)
Sylvan Barnet – The Stage History Since 1989 (2005)

This is an early Shakespeare history play and there is some uncertainty as to the date and authorship. The title is a little misleading in that regards. It certainly wasn't written as "Part One". The titles of Shakespeare's plays typically come from, or at least are derived from, the titles given in the First Folio edition, from 1623. But these were shortened titles. Advertisements would have elaborate titles that were essentially descriptions of the plot. So, maybe this play originally had Lord Talbot in the name originally, or something about Queen Margaret's fictional affair. Maybe this play was written after Part Two, as a kind of prequel to Part Two. There isn't enough documentation to say, and the First Folio is the oldest known version of the play.

But it fits nicely in the sequence of Shakespeare's history plays, opening with the funeral for Henry V (hero of the 1599 play, Shakespear's last proper history play...except Henry VIII, which he co-wrote), and largely leading to Henry VI Part Two (~1591). In the English history, Henry V marks a kind of high point in the 100-years war. England's attempt to conquer France was at its furthest extent upon his death, in 1422. The position was untenable. Henry VI was a baby when his father died. By the time he took over from his regent, Joan of Arc had come and gone, and England had lost most of its conquered territory in France. And England itself became unstable in defeat, and, in a simplified way, this opened up power plays leading to the War of Roses and Henry VI's tragic end.

Henry VI Part One marks the beginning of Shakespeare's version of the War of Roses. It is a kind of imaginative exposé of a sorts of how England defeated itself. You kind of need to know all this to appreciate the play. Because there are a lot of characters, a lot of somewhat random and unexplained infighting, and the points that Shakespeare is making are not always clear otherwise. There is a lot of set-up for Parts Two and Three. Lord Talbot's death marks the end of honorable English leadership in the fighting, and his dramatic death scene, dying along with his son in battle, was at the time probably the main attraction of the play. But we also meet Henry VI, generally considered a failed king, and his weaknesses are only characterized with some subtly. And we meet the future Queen Margaret, hated by Shakespeare, and given a fictional affair. But that's not enough plot. England's points of weakness and infighting are shown in several ways with several players, and a clean origin of the War of Roses is presented... sort of. Here it started with argument between two English princes, of Lancaster and York. But we never actually learn what the argument was about. And then there is Joan of Arc.

Shakespeare has long been criticized as missing a poetic opportunity with Joan of Arc. The romantic hero is not at all romantic here. The play hates her, even as it respects what she accomplished. Whereas Talbot fights honorably on the field, Joan sneaks in soldiers and supplies, and manipulates key leaders to change sides. The virgin saint is nearly presented a harlot. It's clear she's a warrior, as she beats everyone she fights, including Talbot one on one. But she is used to show that the French are weak and effeminate. It doesn't come out well with any later audiences not deeply in-tuned with the play's blind hatred of the French.

Sorry for putting so much foundation in here. The thing is once I processed all this stuff above, what began as a confusing, disappointing mess turned into a enjoyable fun play. The bard in this early play shows the fast and weightless dialogue that makes this plays so entertaining. And his work on the structure, on building the tensions needed to keep the plot moving, is apparent. His early art is on display. It is especially masterful and playful in the interactions between Lord Suffolk (a white rose Lancaster) and the captured princess-of-nothing-but-a-claim Margaret. The married Lord Suffolk works to seduce the Margaret and then works to get her married to Henry VI...in order to continue his affair. Margaret's father is titled the King of Naples, but has no control of Naples. It's a marriage with no English advantage. Margaret will become a villain in Shakespeare's cycle.

Apologies for another long winded review. The short version is that this is an early Shakespeare play that demands some prep from the reader, but that does offer some of what made him special.

Glad you enjoyed Henry VI part 1. It is probably the weakest play in the wars of the roses tetralogy the plays step up a gear for parts 2 and 3. There is a lot of fighting and it is difficult to keep a track of who is who. One of the great themes of this play was the end of chivalry, as you say, with the death of Talbot - killed by a french peasant (Joan of Arc). There are no great speeches, but the play does work. The BBC film of the play is quite good.

>137 dchaikin:

The virgin saint is nearly presented a harlot.

You should read Voltaire on her... :) 'Tis ever thus, men can't wrap their heads around the idea of a woman who has no time for men; what's she for, then?

The eternal Anglo hatred for France is equal parts amusing and alarming. I don't think the French give half a, er, flip in return. Serenely superior in every way that matters.

>137 dchaikin:, >138 baswood:, >139 LolaWalser: I know very little about this period of time, especially from the English side (from the French side, it is difficult to say what I know and what is part of the legend we like to tell ourselves), so this is really interesting. I had never thought about Jeanne d'Arc as a marker for the end of chivalry!

>137 dchaikin: Shakespeare is never subtle with what he believes to be universally hated (or derided) at his time - Joan here, Richard III in his other play. His plays are useful history - but more about what people were thinking at his time than what the plays are about.

As for the Lancaster/York spat - of course he won't tell us what the spat was about - the current queen is technically from both lines - showing that the whole upheaval was a grownup version of a sandbox quarrel won't end up very well (most likely). Plus if you have the reasons, both sides look equally guilty - and that is not how things were seen back then.

Nice notes on this play. I really need to reread the histories... :)

Recovering from freeze and 40+ hour power outage. Lost our hot water heater. Hopefully otherwise not too bad.

Wow, Dan. Texas was slammed. We have other friends in N Texas who are having rolling blackouts, with 20 minutes of power at a time. Did you stay at home? Did you have another source of heat? I just moved to Maine, and I'm glad the house I bought is wired for a generator.

Thought of you, Dan, when I heard the news from Texas.

Can we assume no frozen or broken pipes? Glad to hear your power is back.

>143 labfs39: yes, stayed home. It was around 50° inside. I’m learning the texas power grid has some flaws.

>142 dchaikin: thanks!

>143 labfs39: well, some pipe inside the hot water heater is broken. Otherwise - it’s just that we’re not done yet and might have issues we don’t know about yet. Have two more below freezing nights, tomorrow night around 20, maybe. Tonight hopefully ok as we’ll only get down to about 27°. Saturday I should be able to check around the house without snow and ice cover.

The problem with the hot water heater is that, of course, we’re one of thousands of houses that need plumbing work in the area. Apparently there’s no copper plumbing available, for example. So I don’t know how long it will take to fix or, almost certainly, replace. For two nights we have used our neighbor’s shower. And tonight we had my daughter boil water to hand wash pots and dishes. (She got paid for this. 🙂)

I feel very sorry for your situation. I remember being without power for a few days as a result of a hurricane. But we didn’t have to contend with below freezing temperatures at the same time. Stay safe.

>146 dchaikin: Ah, the climate. Texans will need to start thinking about generators and wood stoves for backup heat, and Mainers, like myself, are thinking about putting in AC

Just found you here on Club Read as I was worrying about you and your family in Texas. Having made it through an ice storm of five days without electricity here in the DC suburbs many years ago, I can only imagine what it must be like for you and your family. Hoping for warmer weather and repaired plumbing sooner rather than later.

Ugh, Dan—I was wondering how you were holding up. My husband has lots of friends and family in Texas, and I've been talking to library directors, and man, what a terrible mess. Our boiler broke on Wednesday (in sympathy? do we have a sentient, current-events-aware Murderbot-type boiler?) and we elected to get the more expensive, long-term fix—an electric pilot, versus the kind that we were constantly relighting and where the thermocouple would die every few years, which is what this time around was)—at least in part thinking of worse weather to come. Our boiler guy also pointed out that if this had happened the following day, we would have been stuck without heat for at least a couple more days, since we got a snowstorm yesterday.

Anyway, I hope you get your hot water heater fixed sooner than later. You should at least get some warmer temps this weekend.

I hope you've avoided the need to boil drinking water, which several cities in Texas have ordered. We had to do that after Hurricane Michael, and it was a pain.

Hi. Quick update. So far not much has changed for us. We have ordered a new hot water heater and we are waiting for broadband internet to pickup (our neighbors have it, with a different carrier. Sigh). We don’t need to boil water. (Yay) and we have power since Wednesday evening (yay). And the mail brought me the two other editions of Petrarch’s poetry.(yay) I spent 2+ hours trying to make sense if Musa’s 28 page introduction. (I got mainly it’s ambiguous and should be read as a at least partially fictional “i”, although also I shouldn’t overdue the perspectives of satire and “jollity” (Musa’s word).)

>147 NanaCC: thanks

>149 SqueakyChu: glad you found me here. Hi!

>150 lisapeet: - that stinks. Hope you have this issue resolved

>151 labfs39: - that hurricane was awful for you. Glad we have water and can drink it. Considering the cost of replacing our hot water heater (installed in 2019!), a whole house generator has appeal. Thinking about it. I’m trying to recall - between hurricanes, floods and power-plant comprising freezes - seems like we’ve had lot of “natural” disasters in my 22 yrs in Houston. (“natural” in quotes because standard us FERC regulations would have prevented the power plant shutdowns and hence most of the therefore non-natural and foreseen since 1989 disaster. Tx does not follow FERC interstate winterizing regulations. You would think it would be a massive setback for TX secessionists. But...it hasn’t been.)

(Pardon under-filtered ranting parts)

I’m glad to hear things are looking somewhat better, Dan. I hope your new hot water heater arrives quickly.

Glad to hear you are doing better, Dan! And hopefully things will get back to normal quickly.

>152 dchaikin: While I was still living in WA, near Seattle, we lost power for six days due to a windstorm. It was December, and my daughter was six months old. We had a gas fireplace and were able to sleep in front of that in our sleeping bags, but after three days we moved to a hotel, dog and all. That experience gave me a deep appreciation for generators. We eventually installed a gentran. Then two years in Florida and... Michael, 'nough said. We moved to Maine last year and since we needed to have a new panel installed anyway, I had the electrician replace the gentran in this house with a lock switch.

My daughter's friend lives in northern Texas, and their water pipes froze. I think generators are going to be sold out throughout the south. I hope you guys warm up soon. How nice that you were able to get some books in the mail at least, and Plutarch was able to provide some distraction.

(my rant would be on Florida building codes...)

>153 NanaCC:, >154 AnnieMod: thanks. normalizing. (water heater due tomorrow, new internet provider coming Thursday...fingers crossed.)

>154 AnnieMod: I'm really sorry about your daughter. I know the freezing was much worse in Northern Texas. Of course it's not unusual there. I know Dallas gets ice routinely. (as I've been told, no one moves to Dallas for the weather. Same applies to Houston.)

crazy stuff, nature

(and regulations. I always thought Florida building codes were stringent, at least in South Florida. My current home would not qualify.)

from Collected Stories by Willa Cather

I got behind on my Cather story reviews. Some stories to catch up on, all from her collection Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920). Between this collection and the previous one, The Troll Garden (1905), she had published her first four novels, including the Prairie Trilogy and her best known novel, My Antonia. Several stories from The Troll Garden were reworked for this collection.

Coming Aphrodite

This a terrific story and a wonderful change in this story collection. The Henry James style has been discarded. The story is open and plays with some racy stuff. It's about two young unestablished artists in Washington Square (New York City) who form a personality clash and yet establish a kind of relationship. Don Hedger is a orphan who works as needed, and paints for himself to develop his style. Eden Bower, born Edna Bowers in a small midwest town, is a singer whose current promise lies in her looks and figure. Where Don is cautious and safe, Eden is fearless and confident. Don finds a hole in his closet and becomes a peeping tom watching a naked Eden do exercises to keep in shape. Did not expect that. Both these oddball and iffy characters are memorable and leave an impression that changes in hindsight. And they stamp a time period of the last days of automobile free New York City.

from Collected Stories by Willa Cather

The Diamond Mine

Terrifically named Cressida Garnet is a famous singer from a small midwestern town. She supports her entire family, including siblings, a son, an (stereo-typed Jewish) accompanist who servers as her musical guide, and her 3rd and 4th husbands. We see her through a Cather-like friend who has followed her to New York. The various corruptions of money is a theme.

A Gold Slipper

Marshall McKann is forced against his will to accompany his wife and her friend and sit on stage to watch singer Kitty Ayrshire's performance in Carnegie Hall in Pittsburg. Later that evening McKann runs into Kitty on a train. She remembers his scowling and gleefully questions his attitudes, which come down to a condemnation of art as being impractical. Kitty gets a chance to respond, and, if you like, flip the male gaze.

"His religion was not very spiritual, certainly, but it was substantial and concrete, made up of good, hard convictions and opinions. It had something to do with citizenship, with whom one ought to marry, with the coal business (in which his own name was powerful), with the Republican Party, and with all majorities and established precedents. He was hostile to fads, to enthusiasm, to individualism, to all changes except in mining machinery in methods of transportation.”

St Paul's Cathedral during a raid in 1940, London Blitz. Photo by Herbert Mason

7. A History of London by Stephen Inwood
foreword: Roy Porter
published: 1998
format: 1040-page paperback brick (plus bibliography and index)
acquired: December 2019
read: Dec 11-31, 2019, and Dec 25, 2020 – Feb 14, 2021
time reading: 54 hr 24 min, 3 min/page
rating: 4½
locations: 🙂

1000 oversized pages that seem to each somehow get longer as the book progresses. I read half in Dec 2019 when I was able to visit London. Picked it up again Dec 2020 and finally finished last weekend. It‘s incredibly detailed and thorough. Fascinating throughout, although the interesting bits get more sparse as it goes forward and spends more time on regional government, housing, rails and roads.

I visited London in December 2019, having read to roughly the mid 1700's and I walked through The City, looking for all these locations I had read about, and, if you know London, you can imagine I was little bewildered. Of course, it's not till much later in the book Inwood explained how much was destroyed during and, especially, after WWII.

When I came back to the book this past December, Inwood began covering the expansion of London and all these famous suburbs, some of which I had managed to stumble through. I found this maybe my favorite part of the book. Of course, London kept expanding and expanding (and location names seemed to multiply exponentially).

A note about London in the 1930's

"It was, as it had been for two centuries, Europe's largest and richest consumer market"

on expansion

"By 1939 the area occupied by the London conurbation was more than twice as great as that occupied in 1914, and about six times that of 1880. Most of the London we know today only became part of the conurbation in the interwar years, and well over half the rest is late Victorian or Edwardian. Much of he newly developed land was fertile agricultural land of the highest quality..."

>160 dchaikin: I walked through The City, looking for all these locations I had read about, and, if you know London, you can imagine I was little bewildered. Some of the medieval street patterns are still there. I used to work on Cheapside, which is definitely medieval in origin (although the building most definitely aren’t).

Clearly just a minor annoyance, the weather mishaps, as your reading goes on unabated. :) Seriously, good to hear it wasn't worse.

>162 SandDune: That's cool. And, yes, streets are there, but a whole lot of office buildings.

>163 LolaWalser: Thanks. I'm lost here in CR. I'll start catching up once I get some life structure...and maybe landline internet. (storm was good for reading though... 😊)

>138 baswood: (on Henry VI p1) Thanks for this note. Keeping track is, for me, the main challenge. Noting BBC version

>139 LolaWalser: (on Joan of Arc) Voltaire has some great lines. Thanks for sharing.

>140 raton-liseur: (on... well, Jeanne d'Arc) Shakespeare's spin is both anti-French and pro-monarchy (and very much pro-social hierarchy). Her common person taking on the power mythology, was, to say the least, not appreciated. Wonder how the French view changed, if it did, before and after the French Revolution.

>141 AnnieMod: (on Henry VI p1)

"His plays are useful history - but more about what people were thinking at his time"

Yes. Have to keep that mind, the history of history, so to speak. Also good point about the Lancaster/York spat. And thanks.

from Collected Stories by Willa Cather

Scandal

Kitty Ayrshire (from A Gold Slipper, see >158 dchaikin:), now a singer struggling with a cold and nervous about her up and coming competitors, gossips about the New York social life, especially an immigrant Jewish New York clothing baron Siegmund Stein. The play is a hard criticism of Stein and his ilk.

Originally published in 1919, this takes the main character in The Rise of David Levinsky, a 1917 novel by Abraham Cahan, and shortens him to a Jewish trope. That is Jewish + immigrant + wealthy = cruel origin sinister immoral character (and also clothes manufacture). It's not her only antisemitic moment, although her most blatant so far. For Cather, Jews are an intricate part of all the ills of capitalism.

Paul's Case

Seems this is one of Cather's most famous stories. Paul is a school age outcast from Pittsburg. He is strange, non-social, lies continuously, is obsessed with theatre, and powerfully carried away by music. Feeling hemmed in by life, he steals a couple thousand dollars and spends a few days a wealthy New Yorker. Cather does a psychological study of Paul, who may be gay, and this aspect can leave a reader, like this one, thinking and re-thinking. She also has an interesting Anna Karenina tie-in.

A Wagner Matinee*

A little masterpiece, reworked from The Troll Garden. Clark welcomes his aunt Georgina from Nebraska to Boston, where he lives and where she grew up. As she was a music teacher, he takes her to orchestra show, and the hard pioneer's repressed musical soul struggles to break out, perhaps discomfiting Clark. This is something of a preview of My Antonia, with its semi-autobiographical take on Nebraska given in a male voice. But also this is a bit of a prose masterpiece, as Cather first captures the audience as impressionist painting, and then captures the music and emotions in the same language.

This post catches me up here.

*(not helpful on the antisemitic front)

Just catching up here Dan, glad to hear that you weathered the storm mostly alright!

Glad to hear that you and you're family are doing ok. I hope the rest of the winter passes uneventfully. I'm a fan of short stories and your descriptions of Cather's are convincing me that this may be the best place for me to begin with her.

>168 stretch: thanks Kevin.

>169 RidgewayGirl: actually that’s not a bad idea. I mean I hadn’t considered suggesting that to anyone. All the stories I have posted about so far are out of copyright and available freely online. Here is one link: https://cather.unl.edu/writings/books/0008

>170 dchaikin: Thanks, I've bookmarked this link.

I'm sorry, Dan, for your and your neighbors' traumas and troubles. I hope your needs are met and life gets easier. Thank goodness for reading, for the comfort and pleasure it brings.

Also bookmarking the Cather website. Enjoying your descriptions of these stories.

I'm sure you're looking forward to having that hot water heater installed.

>172 sallypursell: thanks. I’m a little worn down, some stressful catchup at work, but mostly back to normal.

>173 markon: water heater installed (Monday) and actually working! (yesterday). This is ridiculously exciting. Thanks, regarding Cather. Note that her stories can be found in many places online, including scans of the original magazines, some of which include illustrations.

Another little report

February Plan

14 hours: Poetry of Petrarch, 30 minutes a day
9 hours: 165 pages of Willa Cather stories (for a Litsy group)
5 hours: Henry VI part I - Act V and afterward stuff in Signet (for a Litsy group)
3 hours: Henry VI part 2- intro and Acts I and II (for a Litsy group)
12 hours: to finish The History of London
10 hours: Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
8 hours: Bend Sinister by Nabokov
---
61 hours

February actual

16:30 : Poetry of Petrarch (and I switched from one to three translations)
7:40 : 165 pages of Willa Cather stories
4:51 : Henry VI part I - Act V - finished
1:45 hours: Henry VI part 2 (intro and Act 1)
9:53 hours: to finish The History of London - finished
9:18 hours: Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga - finished
0:31 hours: Bend Sinister by Nabokov - just started
---
50:30

(less than January, but actually my pace per day was only 4 minutes less. Left me one overly optimistic book down)

March Plan

15 hours - Poetry of Petrarch
5 hours - 101 pages of Willa Cather stories
8 hours - Henry VI part 2 (Acts 2-5, no afterward stuff this month)
10 hours - Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov
20 hours - Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
14 hours - Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
13 hours - Summer by Ali Smith
---
85 hours !!

(so, Lolita and Summer will have to wait. And probably Bring Up the Bodies will carry over into April)

As I'm still playing catch-up with the Cromwell trilogy, I'm pleased that you'll still be reading Bring Up the Bodies into April.

>175 dchaikin: >176 RidgewayGirl: the way my dancing card looks like, I don't think I am getting to Mantel before April either...

>177 AnnieMod: Ditto.

Stopping by - enjoying your reviews. I'm hopelessly behind on so many threads. Sounds like you'd a pretty miserable time with that storm - glad all is relatively back to normal.

>176 RidgewayGirl: >177 AnnieMod: >178 lisapeet: how did that happen...asking myself. But April works great. I do hope to get through a chunk this month.

>179 AlisonY: Thanks for stopping by. That stupid storm took a lot out of me. (Including here on LT. I was actually doing pretty good on Feb 15. Now I'm trying to catch up thread by thread)

I was glad to read your post on another thread that it was in the 70s where you are in Texas. Some warm sunshine must feel good. It was -15 here on Tuesday morning when I woke up, but today it got above freezing which is always cause for celebration. Fortunately we didn't have the power outages I was expecting given the wind gusts in this latest storm.

I see Bring Up the Bodies, Lolita, and Summer are all planned for the end of the month/early April. I was commenting earlier today on Darryl's thread that I must get to Wolf Hall, as Mantel's books have trickled into every corner of LT and I have yet to read one, although I own several. I have read Lolita twice and have been confused by the ending both times. I need to read some criticism to better understand it. As for Ali Smith, I started Autumn this week and find it delightful. I wish I had had a Daniel in my adolescent life.

-15° !! Our weather has reverted to normal seasonal weather for a bit - 40’s to 70’s. Not complaining.

So many of us reading Wolf Hall was fun. And I appreciated it a lot more this second time through. Glad you’re Ali Smith. She’s terrific and fun. But, I can promise you no one wanted an adolescent dan in their life. : ) (I wasn’t even reading books then.)

>182 dchaikin: LOL. I meant Daniel, the character, but I'm sure you were nice too, albeit a nonreader. I find that hard to believe though. When did you get into reading? I can't remember a time when I didn't read. Books were at a premium though. My local library was a one-room, woodstove-heated, outhouse, kind of place. It was open 3-6 on Weds and 9-12 on Sat. Funny I can remember that. I think I read most of the books there before I was in high school. I particularly remember Peg Leg Pete, Whitefoot the Woodmouse and other Thornton Burgess books, and the White Cliffs of Dover. I've recently moved back to my hometown, and the old library is now the historical society and grumpy Mrs. Anderson has been replaced with a certified librarian. My niece and I are headed there this afternoon.

>183 labfs39: ah, Autumn. It's been long enough since i read it (two years) to blur that out. lol. I got into reading in steps. My version of this story: Books were everywhere a background as a kid, and for some reason I remember thinking of literature as part of the Jewish identity, although i can't explain where they idea came from. Some unexplored and unquestioned assumption. My my parents didn't read much and I didn't like reading. As a high school sophomore my Eng/Lit teacher gave us a little extra credit for reading any books off her shelves. I got my years worth of extra credit in the first quarter, about all the homework I did at that time, reading about maybe 4 minutes a page, and then stopped. But I liked those books. Then later as a high school senior I went on a ski trip with my mother's boyfriend and his son. His son finished Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, so I picked it up and got carried away. I even dreamt about it. That's where I finally decided there was something to this reading thing I was good with. It's not a traditional recipe to make a reader. : )

from Collected Stories by Willa Cather

The Sculptor's Funeral

Harvey Merrick‘s body comes home to the town he escaped. The body, coming from Boston, is accompanied by an admirer and protégé, Henry Steavens. This story, with its hints that Harvey and the younger Henry were gay, comes down to a rant against the money-obsessions that oppress a small Kansas railroad town. We‘re constantly meeting new characters, or new important details about them throughout the story, nonstop.

I somehow found I admired Harvey‘s abusive mother. "She filled the room; the men were obliterated, seemed tossed about like twigs in an angry water, and even Steavens felt himself being drawn into the whirlpool." And to her servant she gives “injured, emotional, dramatic abuse, unique and masterly in its excruciating cruelty”.

link to the story: https://cather.unl.edu/writings/shortfiction/ss008

"A Death in the Desert"

Katherine Gaylord, dying from TB in a rural home outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, is comforted by the brother of her musical hero.

The story is little bitter sweet as Everett Hilgarde, overshadowed by his famous brother Adriance, has practically fallen in love with this Katherine who worked with and is obsessed with his brother, a talented flame that left her “this white, burnt-out brand”.

(Several overt literary quotes are in here. The title is a Robert Browning poem linked below. Katherine will quote Dante and Shakespeare‘s Brutus (from Julius Caesar). The Dante quote is enticing! When Francesca tells Dante “and the book we read no more that night”, she means because they did some illicit stuff. Here it‘s possible Katherine means specifically she didn‘t do this with Adriance. Anyway, the reader and Everett have that in mind. Everett maintains a hard to read warmth.)

link to the story: https://cather.unl.edu/writings/books/0008#death

The title comes from a Robert Browning poem : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43752/a-death-in-the-desert-56d222942c57c

These two stories complete Youth and the Bright Medusa, Cather's 1920 collection. Whereas The Troll Garden is a developing author, this is a masterful author, although often reworking her older stuff. Together it makes a different theme from that of her prairie trilogy. The prairie books feel more removed, more historical than these stories that get into then contemporary American cultural. The themes of either life reflected in music or of the curse of finance (and its impact on family relationships) seem to be in every story, often both are.

>184 dchaikin: People of the book? It's amazing what a good teacher can do. In this case, simply point out the books, offer an incentive, and step back. Eye of the World, wow, that's a blast from the past. One of my first series like that, as a kid, was the David Eddings books, then Terry Brooks, and probably Terry Goodkind. I thought the Wheel of Time series started out ok, but got really repetitive after a while. And they went on and on, even after Jordan died. I remember not being fond of the multiple girlfriends thing. Series like these are great at hooking kids into reading, I think. Start off rather sensational and then keep going book after book.

8. Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
introduction: Kwame Anthony Appiah (2004)
published: 1988
format: 217-page paperback
acquired: December
read: Feb 14-28
time reading: 9 hr 17 min, 2.6 min/page
rating: 4½
locations: 1960’s Zimbabwe
about the author: born 1959 in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)

I read this as part of my effort to read the 2020 BookerLong List, which includes This Mournable Body. That novel is part of a trilogy that includes this, Nervous Conditions (1988), and The Book of Not (2006). I plan to read the trilogy.

Nervous Conditions is considered one of the most important African books, with a theme on the limits of women in Africa. I was expecting dark disturbing stuff, and this was reinforced by the first line. The book opens, “I was not sorry when my brother died.” But "disturbing" is not the first thing on a readers mind while reading. More like "fascinating".

This novel captures a childhood world in 1960's rural Zimbabwe, where life depends on crops and a local river provides key necessities. And then it shows this child's view of education in a Protestant mission in a city. The novel rings with cultural clashes—rural vs urban, uneducated vs educated, and, especially, cultural customs and westernization. And it looks at the variations of privilege, sexism, and racism and the unexpected stresses these bring up. This was a terrific read. Recommended.

>186 labfs39: right, people of the book. : ) Except the bible or Torah never came to mind, more like American Jewish authors and thinkers. And, since the Wheel of Time played such a role in my life, I have a high forgiveness for it's silliness and weaknesses. But actually it's not bad writing. Books 1-6 are terrific. Book 7 is ok. Books 8-10 are flat. Then book 11 is ok again, as is the rest of the series. Anyway, yes, it hooked me in.

Just stopping by to see what you're reading. All good stuff, obviously.I've not read the Cather short stories, so enjoyed your comments.

Willa Cather is one of my all-time favorites. I really should get back to reading her again, it's been far too long.

>189 avaland: hi and thanks. Happy to have you stop by.

>190 LibraryLover23: I do hope you get back to Cather. It’s been really special to me to read through her works, all for the first time. I read one book (Death Comes for the Archbishop) back in maybe 2018 or 2019 and it somehow sparked a group read on Litsy. We have now read through all her novels except the first, and now are working through her short stories.

>184 dchaikin: Education generally and reading specifically are big Jewish values, at least in my experience, so that tracks.

>192 Julie_in_the_Library: yes. There was a lot of value on education too. (Although again I can’t say where it came from. My mother went back to school when i was a teenager, and permanently molded, to get her degree that she never got. I was proud of her. But the thing is she literally went to college at 18 to get her MRS. And yet she still left that impression of valuing education.)

For the record, I consider the movie The Chosen very influential on impressionable adolescent mind (Book is terrific too, but i read it as an adult.)

I’ve really enjoyed the few Cather books I’ve read. I really should get back to her. I’m enjoying your thread, as always, Dan.

>194 NanaCC: Nice of you stop by, Colleen. I just finished another Cather story this morning, Neighbor Rosicky from her 1932 collection, Obscure Destinies. I think the story had elements of Death Comes for the Archbishop, although it's a very different story and I might be pushing a little. Curious what my the Litsy group thinks about it.

>195 dchaikin:

Sassy's latest Avid Reader question sent me riffling through my immediate-TBR stacks and what do you know, that's the Cather with a bookmark (Obscure destinies). No idea when I started it but as I recall so far they were all rural stories.

>196 LolaWalser: Neighbor Rosicky is a Nebraska story. It's the only I've read so far from Obscure Destinies. What caught my attention, regarding Archbishop, were little touches of spiritual elements, lines like, "A sudden hush had fallen on his soul. Everything here seems strangely moving and significant, though signifying what, he did not know."

I'll have to look up the context. Like all threads, I'm behind on the avid readers - some 100 posts between the two parts now... I blame the Tx freeze

>196 LolaWalser: Always happy to help out!

>187 dchaikin: Good review of Nervous conditions Dan. This is on my to read list.

I'm here to catch up, too, Dan. I, too, liked your review of Nervous Conditions. It was already on Mount TBR, but I may have to move this one up.

>199 markon: >200 sallypursell: thanks. Hope you both get a chance to try Nervous Conditions.

from Collected Stories by Willa Cather

Neighbor Rosicky

The first story from Obscure Destinies, published in 1932. Anton Rosicky is a Bohemian immigrant who spent time starving in London and making do in New York City before buying some land in Nebraska, marrying a younger wife and raising a family. He has heart trouble and knows time is running out. This is a slightly longer story for this collection so far, about 30 pages, and spends a lot of time looking at Rosicky's world and family and attitudes towards life. It's third person, but we also the perspective of Rosicky's doctor, who is enamored with his wife Mary, but in a kind, admiring way. The story is not plot-driven, but reflective, a theme Cather pursued in Death Come for the Archbishop (1927). There is a sense of healing and of things that are "untranslatable" or of a meaning one can feel but not really express. Some readers will not be surprised to learn that, despite name changes, Rosicky is basically Ántonia's husband in My Ántonia.

9. A Promised Land by Barack Obama
reader: the author
published: 2020
format: 29:10 audible audiobook (751 pages in hardcover... !!)
acquired: Jan 23
listened: Jan 23-Mar 13
rating: 4
locations: mainly the 2008 campaign trail and the White House
about the author: born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii

Read patiently by Obama, this long and drawn out memoir becomes warm and pleasant and was a terrific way to spend my various drives and walks. He states up front that his goal is to give the reader a sense of what it's like to be president, and he makes a good effort to actually make do on that. It covers Obama‘s campaign and first years as president. I found it terrific and also an interesting, and it has me, still, rethinking. I love how he reads this on audio and I love how he carefully works every topic through, capturing all the input from his various advisers and explaining his own reasoning for what he chose to pursue and do. And I like his humorous but reasonable responses to various crazy problems. I was kind of surprised how much he did accomplish those first years that I hadn‘t paid attention to. But I found this especially insightful to learn his thoughts on why he didn‘t do some things I really wanted him to do. Recommended mainly because it's an enjoyable mindset to spend some time with.

My part 2 is set up, link: https://www.librarything.com/topic/330945

>203 dchaikin: I must get to this some day. There is much to admire about Obama and his whole psyche and approach to life in general, not just his time as president (although I'd be really interested in his first person perspective on that).