“The Story of of Cadmus” (ll) – Ovid
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Tag: Hamlet
December 10, 2020
Cadmus salutes the soil, and gladly hails
The new-found mountains, and the nameless vales,
And thanks the Gods, and turns about his eye
home
Of aged trees; in its dark bosom stood
A bushy thicket, pathless and unworn,
Amidst the brake a hollow den was found,
With rocks and shelving arches vaulted round.
Deep in the dreary den, conceal’d from day,
And now with dreadful hissings fills the skies,
All pale and trembling at the hideous sight.
Of such a bulk, and such a monstrous size
The serpent in the polar circle lyes,
Some are devour’d, or feel a loathsom death,
December 27, 2014
“How I Didn’t Get Myself to a Nunnery” – Suzanne Lummis
“Ophelia“ (1852)
_________
according to Suzanne Lummis Ophelia
“g[o]t outta town”
Suzanne Lummis is Ophelia here, this
is a dramatic monologue, I can’t tell you
how much I find that exciting
you’ll want to run to the source, of course,
to find pertinent references, so I’ve linked
a few for you from the text below to their
counterparts in “Hamlet“, if it’s coloured,
just click, otherwise a couple of asterisks
explain two probably too obvious items,
in which case you’ll forgive me my
infelicitous impertinence, my unintended
and hapless presumption
thanks
How I Didn’t Get Myself to a Nunnery
That girl they found ensconced in mud and loam,
she wasn’t me. Small wonder, though, they jumped.
To a conclusion. Water puffs you up,
and we pale Slavic girls looked much alike—
back then. Deprivation smooths you out.
Yes, that was the season of self-drowned maids,
heart-to-hearts with skulls, great minds overthrown.
And minds that could be great if they could just
come up for air. Not in that town. Something stank. *
But me, I drifted on. I like rivers.
And I’m all right with flowers. I floated
on a bed of roses—well, O.K., rue
and columbine. It bore me up not down.
That night I made a circle with my thumb
and finger, like a lens, and peered through it
at the moon—mine, all mine. My kissed-white moon.
“Moon River wider than a . . .” Mancini/
Mercer wrote that, sure, but I wrote it first.
You wonder where I’m going with all this?
Where water goes. It empties into sea.
Sold! I’d take it—the sea or a fresh life.
Some other life. A good man—good enough,
fair—fished me out. He’d come to quench his thirst.
No sun-god prince,* of course, like him I’d loved,
still loved. (Some loves don’t die; not even murder
kills them.) I married his thatched hut, hatched chicks—
kids running underfoot. Don’t cry for me,
Denmark. I’d learned the art of compromise
back there, in the black castle—then came blood,
ghosts. Something in me burst. If not lover,
father, king, ** then whom can you trust? Alone,
I took up some playing cards. I played them
into skinny air. A voice said, Swim or drown.
It said: Your house caught fire, flood, caught fear—
it’s coming down. No one loves you now, here.
By land or water, girl, get outta town.
* i.e. Hamlet, of course, prince of Denmark
** Hamlet, Polonius, Claudius
our debt to Shakespeare in literature
is enormous, after even 400 years –
“Hamlet” was written in 1602 – his
literary form, his countless neologisms,
his stories, his blueprints, transformed
into ballets, paintings as above, operas,
have become our myths, our moral and
philosophical standard, our modern
Olympus, the measure of our time,
our epoch, Shakespeare is our “Iliad“
only Beethoven in music has ever
matched this, in the visual arts, no
one
you’ll notice that the poem itself is a
monologue, in answer, in homage, to
Shakespeare, it’s in iambic pentameter,
also his wont
mine too, incidentally
Richard
January 19, 2014
Meditations, Book l – Marcus Aurelius
“From Rusticus I received the impression that my character required improvement and discipline; and from him I learned not to be led astray to sophistic emulation, nor to writing on speculative matters, nor to delivering little hortatory orations, nor to showing myself off as a man who practises much discipline, or does benevolent acts in order to make a display; and to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing; and not to walk about in the house in my outdoor dress, nor to do other things of the kind; and to write my letters with simplicity, like the letter which Rusticus wrote from Sinuessa to my mother; and with respect to those who have offended me by words, or done me wrong, to be easily disposed to be pacified and reconciled, as soon as they have shown a readiness to be reconciled; and to read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book; nor hastily to give my assent to those who talk overmuch; and I am indebted to him for being acquainted with the discourses of Epictetus, which he communicated to me out of his own collection.”
Meditations, Book l, 7
______________
recently a website caught my attention
with news of a shared interest in things
of, to my mind, significance, a guide to
a moral life
Marcus Aurelius, an emperor, 121 – 180
A.D., along with Epictetus, 55 -135 A.D.,
a slave, are probably the only two
philosophers we know today specifically
devoted to that profoundly noble
intention
the juxtaposition of states here, from
the imperial to the abject, is instructive,
if not even inspiring
both from their divergent positions
proposed a considered life, of probity
and tolerance, what more do we
need of philosophy, fundamentally,
than that
above is an excerpt from Book l, others
will follow
Richard
psst: I found it hard not to imagine here
Laertes responding to Polonius in
“Hamlet”, Act l, scene l, lines 55 – 80,
nor Rudyard Kipling’s son responding
to his father’s poem, “If“, with its
famous, indeed timeless, exhortation,
“… you’ll be a Man, my son!”
daughters should also participate
March 13, 2013
Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (10)
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2013 21:28:13 +0000
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To: Richibi’s Weblog
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Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
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Hi Richard,
Have you thought of writing or already written memoirs? I think I’d enjoy reading them.
Your second story reminded me of the Confessions by St. Augustine,
in which he grieved over the death of his beloved friend.
Descartes might say this about your “This is the census” moment: “I lisp, therefore I exist”.
But how would you interpret the “parable”?
What caused you to stop ministering at the palliative care unit after ten years?
a parable is in the eye of the beholder, Nemo,
nearly by definition, and therefore wide in the
possible breadth of its interpretation, that wide
net, should it catch the imagination of many,
can describe a potent, though indefinable,
moral precept that even whole communities
can then propagate and follow, mysticized
fairy tales, for these last serve a similar
purpose, maybe the age of the listener,
reader, here, is the distinguishing factor,
adults have a hard time with fairy tales
dimension to my lisp, if you’re asking what
moral precept I derived from that tale, it is
that something was profoundly watching,
unobtrusive, but gently ready to nudge just
enough to inspire hope, like a second wind
I felt, however solipsistically, that something,
someone, was listening, and that was enough,
that indeed would be, wouldn’t you think,
though the information was entirely
metaphorical and abstract
but I’ve experienced too many moments of
transcendence not to subsribe to a more
than merely rational agenda, Shakespeare
again, “There are more things in heaven and
earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your
philosophy.” – “Hamlet“, act 1, scene 5,
lines 186–187 – which I heartily second
no philosopher has ever admitted that but
Proust and Beethoven, which is why I’ve
somewhat put aside classic philosophy,
though I love the Moralists, after Rome
and before Christianity, Saint Augustine,
I’m afraid, however, distorted the facts,
as well as his great acuity, in order to
entrench a mythology, the dominion of
a numinous, entirely male, incidentally,
Trinity, forcing Truth into a submissive,
not to say penitent, and furthermore
impotent, corner until the very Renaissance,
specifically until Descartes, and, by the way,
until his near contemporary, Shakespeare,
1564 -1616, nearly the equal of Beethoven
and Proust in his philosophical perspicacity,
“To be, or not to be” is of course the first
existential soliloquy of our era
Descartes, 1596 – 1650
after ten years at palliative care I had changed,
and the unit had changed, it had become more
regimented and constrictive than it had been in
its early, more companionable, and not yet so
regimented, years, I now had to go through
security to get to my station, which was not at
all the spirit in which I’d entered the service
I am now, I’m imagining, a poet, and live and
write accordingly, these very missives, Nemo,
are my memoirs, at present you are my muse
thanks
I hope you’re “enjoy[ing] reading them“
Richard
April 29, 2010
“Trouble” – Matthew Dickman
after the great hiatus of the Middle Ages Descartes declared “I think, therefore I am“, and set the modern world in motion, the Age of Reason, the Era of Human Rights
but even Shakespeare some seventy years earlier had given voice already to the consequent existential dilemma, by way of Hamlet in his “To be, or not to be“, the moral dilemma of the individual before existence – “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” – and the abyss of eternity, a question up to that point forbidden on dire pain of heresy
Emily Dickinson touches on the subject famously, others also of equal authority, but here is something I thought true, touching, beautiful, and ultimately inspiring for anyone who’s delved that deep
Richard
______________________
Trouble
Marilyn Monroe took all her sleeping pills
to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando’s daughter
hung in the Tahitian bedroom
of her mother’s house,
while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes
you can look at the clouds or the trees
and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground.
The performance artist Kathy Change
set herself on fire while Bing Crosby’s sons shot themselves
out of the music industry forever.
I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped
from an apartment window into the world
and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead
roles, leaped off the “H” in the HOLLYWOOD sign
when everything looked black and white
and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway
put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho
while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree
and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened
thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body
until it wasn’t his body anymore. I like
the way geese sound above the river. I like
the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they’re beautiful.
Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter
brought her roses when she was still alive,
and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite
in his own mouth
though it took six hours for him
to die, 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned
and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are
travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially
on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died
in prison, naked, a bag
around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer
Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet.
Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues
after drawing a hot bath,
in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water.
Larry Walters became famous
for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled
weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet
and then he landed. He was a man who flew.
He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush
my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best.
I want to be good to myself.
Matthew Dickman
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