richardjnovotney

Posted on 30 Jan 201630 Jan 2016 by richardjnovotney

Poe Quote – Saturday 30 January 2016

This atmospheric and dreary poem, ‘The Haunted Palace’ was originally published in 1839, but eventually made its way into Poe’s masterpiece ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ as a read-aloud verse attributed to the fictional character of Roderick Usher.

In the greenest of our valleys

By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace—

Radiant palace—reared its head.

In the monarch Thought’s dominion,

It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair!

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow

(This—all this—was in the olden

Time long ago)

And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A wingèd odor went away.

Wanderers in that happy valley,

Through two luminous windows, saw

Spirits moving musically

To a lute’s well-tunèd law,

Round about a throne where, sitting,

Porphyrogene!

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch’s high estate;

(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)

And round about his home the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

And travellers, now, within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows see

Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody;

While, like a ghastly rapid river,

Through the pale door

A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh—but smile no more.

The story here is simple and not unusual for Poe: The glorious past has decayed. All things beautiful eventually fade. Porphyrogene was a Latin emperor of Constantinople who eventually fell to ruin. As is so often the case with Poe, past tragedies warn of the future, and this poem is a warning that life will eventually steal everything from us: disease, circumstances, any number of evils, weaken us, subvert us, destroy us. However, in the meantime, enjoy the lyrical beauty of this verse.

‘The Haunted Palace’ has enjoyed a lot of success on its own through the years, whether it was Roger Corman stealing the title for a Lovecraftian film adaptation that had nothing to do with Poe, or a European rock band translating it into Bulgarian for lyrics.

The image comes from a poster for the 1963 film of that name which, as we said above, had very little to do with Poe. It did star Vincent Price, who made many other Poe adaptations that actually had something do with the poet.

Posted on 24 Jan 201624 Jan 2016 by richardjnovotney

Sunday Sonnet – 24 January 2016

Shakespeare wrote in an era where women were considered property. However, if one looks at the trajectory of his plays from his first in1589 to his later plays in the 1600’s, his female characters become more complex, more powerful and, indeed, more fully human. It’s in this deeply sexist society that Shakespeare began to break away from the Elizabethan norm. So too his Sonnets (published in 1603), specifically in the Poet’s love affair with the Dark Lady, where the Poet finds himself ensnared into a relationship with a woman who has become utterly and completely more powerful than him:

150

O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantize of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O, though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:
If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
More worthy I to be beloved of thee.

In this Sonnet, the Dark Lady excels in all things bad; her dominion over the Poet remains despite all her flaws. But he doesn’t hate her–he loves her! His sonnet argues that her unworthiness has made him love her, and because of that he’s the one who deserves her love in return. Her power over him is so strong, that he would even disbelieve it’s light during the day: ‘To make me give the lie to my true sight / And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?’ Moreover, she executes her evil actions so skillfully, he thinks them better than anyone else’s good acts:

That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantize of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?

Personally, when I read this sonnet (and some of the other Dark Lady sonnets), I can’t help but think of Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, written in about 1606). One of Lady Macbeth’s most astonishing speeches is about a society where her femininity has no power. So she must calls upon the spirits to be to ‘unsex’ her:

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

To cry “Hold, hold!”

—Macbeth, Act I, Scene v

So magnificent, what an incredible speech.

And what an amazing writer. Shakespeare was somehow able to see beyond the patriarchal constrictions of the Elizabethan world, and dared to imagine what it must be like to be a woman; that is, powerless.

The image is of the amazing Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth from the 2010 film.

Posted on 17 Jan 201617 Jan 2016 by richardjnovotney

Sunday Sonnet – 17 January 2016

In composing his sonnets, Shakespeare remained wisely circumspect about any specific references to his own life (lots of dangerous stuff goes in the sonnets)–to the point of not even publishing the verses himself. But in Sonnet 111, he gives a hint of a reference to his own life as an actor and why, perhaps he chose that profession:

111

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand:
Pity me then and wish I were renew’d;
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel ‘gainst my strong infection
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penance, to correct correction.
Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

The Young Man apparently blames bad luck–‘Fortune’–for forcing the Poet into such an ignoble profession as ‘public means.’ What does this mean? Some critics and scholars, though not all, believe it’s a reference to Will’s profession as an actor–and that he went into a life of acting to avoid a lot of other awful possibilities for employment in the Elizabethan world. However, though lucrative, acting was not considered a reputable profession in Elizabethan England: women weren’t allowed to act, actors were considered vagrants unless they were licensed under the patronage of a noble (hence Shakespeare’s ‘Lord Chamberlain’s Men’), and the Puritans considered all stagecraft to be the work of the Devil.

Members of the theatre crowd were notorious. ‘Public means’ breeds ‘public manners’, a reference to the ill behavior and bad reputation of theatre rascals, a reputation that’s tainted the Poet: ‘Thence comes it that my name receives a brand.’ If you dig into Shakespeare’s life, you’ll know that after he gained some wealth (by becoming part owner in the actual theatre company he wrote for), he labored mightily to acquire a Coat of Arms for the Shakespeare name, thereby gaining the respect and social station that comes only of being a ‘Gentleman’.

So yes, I know, not everyone agrees that the Sonnets were autobiographical, but there’s some compelling biographical hints in Sonnet 111. Certainly the Young Man would look down on the Poet’s social station as an actor if the Young Man was indeed the 3^rd Earl of Southampton, a nobleman. There’s ample circumstantial evidence that the Earl was the Young Man.

The sonnet takes an interesting turn with ‘Potions of eisel ‘gainst my strong infection’ (eisel is vinegar). One of the common dangers of ‘public manners’ was the pox, otherwise known as venereal disease. Venereal disease is revisited in later sonnets with the Dark Lady, and in those there’s little left to the imagination (see numbers 153 & 154). Did Shakespeare at some point in his life contract syphilis? There’s evidence outside of this sonnet that he did, and if that’s the case, then Sonnet 111 teases us with a couple of compelling glimpses into what might’ve been events in the Bard’s life.

The image comes from a section of Wenceslas Hollar’s 1642 drawing of London, here showing Shakespeare’s rebuilt Globe Theatre.

Posted on 10 Jan 2016 by richardjnovotney

Sunday Sonnet – 10 January 2016

Even a genius like Shakespeare can’t always hit a home run. But even his run-of-the mill sonnets exhibit all the best qualities of great verse, and if he had not written some of his scintillating treasures, we’d probably still be forcing high school students to read ones like 81. Sonnet 81 is included with ‘Rival Poet’ sequence, though the rival really doesn’t show up here. What is mentioned is the immortality of verse, and how only Art can make us humans mortal.

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse
When all the breathers of this world are dead;
You still shall live–such virtue hath my pen–
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

The really cool part of this sonnet is when the Poet tells his Young Man that the Poet’s verse is so darn good, that it’ll not immortalize the Poet, but immortalize the Young Man:

…I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men’s eyes shall lie.
Your monument shall be my gentle verse…

Ironically, today we know who Shakespeare is, but there are only theories as to whom the Young Man might’ve been.

The best part of this sonnet, I think, doesn’t get the attention it deserves, and that’s the final couplet. By the end of the Sonnet, the Poet has already made clear how great he thinks his verse is, and how that verse will immortalize his Young Man beyond the grave. Then final image, tying the act of composing with a mortal man’s dying breath. You see, a common practice in Elizabethan England was to use a feather held to the lips of the dying, to see if breath still fluttered, or if they had finally died.

You still shall live–such virtue hath my pen–
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

This famous 1575 image of Queen Elizabeth, artist unknown, is just one example of the importance of feathers in Elizabethan life: fashion, quills for pens (pens being a personal favorite of Shakespeare’s), fans (fans being a personal favorite of Elizabeth’s), and for testing the breath of the dying.

Posted on 8 Jan 20168 Jan 2016 by richardjnovotney

Friday’s Poe Quote – 08 January 2016

Here in Wisconsin a dim shroud of chilling fog hangs over the January day–too warm to actually snow, but cold enough to chill the bones. A perfect time to read aloud one of Poe’s most atmospheric verses, a great example of Dark Romanticism.

Dream-Land

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule—

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of SPACE—Out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,

And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,

With forms that no man can discover

For the tears that drip all over;

Mountains toppling evermore

Into seas without a shore;

Seas that restlessly aspire,

Surging, unto skies of fire;

Lakes that endlessly outspread

Their lone waters—lone and dead,—

Their still waters—still and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread

Their lone waters, lone and dead,—

Their sad waters, sad and chilly

With the snows of the lolling lily,—

By the mountains—near the river

Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—

By the grey woods,—by the swamp

Where the toad and the newt encamp,—

By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the Ghouls,—

By each spot the most unholy—

In each nook most melancholy,—

There the traveller meets, aghast,

Sheeted Memories of the Past—

Shrouded forms that start and sigh

As they pass the wanderer by—

White-robed forms of friends long given,

In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion

’T is a peaceful, soothing region—

For the spirit that walks in shadow

’T is—oh, ’t is an Eldorado!

But the traveller, travelling through it,

May not—dare not openly view it;

Never its mysteries are exposed

To the weak human eye unclosed;

So wills its King, who hath forbid

The uplifting of the fring’d lid;

And thus the sad Soul that here passes

Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have wandered home but newly

From this ultimate dim Thule.

–Edgar A. Poe (1844)

Read aloud, this lush and lovely verse is hypnotic. Poetically speaking, Poe pulls out all the stops: he employs rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance (repeated vowel sounds within words) and a trove of literary and mythological allusions, such names as Eldorado, Titan, Thule and Eidolon, to wonderful effect. This truly is a verse to be read aloud. Granted, all verse should be read aloud, but if you just read this 19^th century poem silently off the page, it’ll seem stilted. But if you take the time to speak it aloud–preferably while holding a glass of wine or brandy–it blooms into life.

I’m not going to bore with you by trying to analyze this poem. There isn’t universal agreement on what it’s about. Very briefly, it strikes me as being about imagination, and how an artist’s dream life–that is, their imagination and subconscious–can be their salvation from the miseries and travails of reality. Poe’s reality was terrible: tragedies, losses, suffering, rejection, poverty, depression. What are many of the strange horrors described in this poem? Are they the stuff of fancy, or of real life?

Read it aloud and decide for yourself. What do you think?

The image comes from the front of my house, a photograph I took moments ago: it could be a photograph stolen from Poe’s own ‘Dream-Land.’

Posted on 3 Jan 20163 Jan 2016 by richardjnovotney

Sunday Sonnet – 03 January 2016

Trysts, betrayals, heterosexual and bisexual romancing, profound expressions of undying love summarily cast aside and–love triangles! Shakespeare’s sonnets have it all. Sonnets 79 through 86 tell of a rival Poet vying for the love of the Young Man.

O, how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,
To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame!
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark inferior far to his
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat,
Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride;
Or being wreck’d, I am a worthless boat,
He of tall building and of goodly pride:
Then if he thrive and I be cast away,
The worst was this; my love was my decay.

When the Poet realizes that a rival has entered the scene, he right away admits the rival is a better poet, but in so admitting that, displays his own formidable skill at poetry and creating metaphor. In this, it’s nautical:

‘since your worth, wide as the ocean is’ – your worth is wide as the ocean
‘the humble as the proudest sail doth bear’ – you bear both humble and proud suitors
‘my saucy bark inferior to his’ – my brazen love is less than the rival poet’s (a ‘bark’ is a boat)
‘your broad main’ – your circle
‘your shallowest help will hold me up afloat’ – your slightest attention to me keeps me hoping
‘upon your soundless deep doth ride’ – the rival poet enjoys your deep affection
‘or being wreck’d, I am a worthless boat’ – if I lose your favor, it’s because I’m worthless
‘I be cast away’ – I’ll be marooned

This rivalry goes on for eight whole sonnets, where the Poet protests too much at how the rival’s poetry leaves the Poet ‘tongue-tied’. Yet, though inferior he supposedly may be, the Poet continues showing off, writing circles around anything that would be written for the next 400 years. It’s all a kind of game, I think. Perhaps there were actual events that led to this rival poet sequence–an actual competitor for the Young Man’s affection that Will Shakespeare himself was involved with. If so, then Shakespeare’s response was to write his way out of it.

But isn’t that how Shakespeare solved everything? He wrote his way out of it. He wrote his way to success, in his plays and other verse. Wrote his way contemporary literary acclaim, wrote his way into Queen Elizabeth’ Court, to wealth and, finally, immortality.

The painting, circa 1700, by an unknown artist, is of the Spanish Armada being defeated by Elizabeth’s superior navy–you know, the Spanish Armada of goodly pride inferior to the saucy barks the British built.

Posted on 30 Dec 201530 Dec 2015 by richardjnovotney

Year’s End Shakespearean Quote – 30 December 2015

As we near Year’s End, time is on our minds. Shakespeare was obsessed with time, and in his great tragedy, which came late in his career, Macbeth obsesses on it too:

Macbeth:

If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly. If th’ assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease, success: that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all—here,

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We’d jump the life to come.

—Macbeth, Act I, Scene vii

Macbeth’s ruminations involve his and Lady Macbeth’s plans to assassinate the King of Scotland. But aren’t there always unintended consequences?

Thus we have that lovely line ‘upon this bank and shoal of time’, where Macbeth wonders about this life and the next life. He’s on the verge of venturing into a kind of beyond. A shoal is a shallow, and a bank is a sand bank; to cross those shallows will take you into the ocean’s depths–from this life to the next life. Shakespeare begins his nautical imagery earlier in the speech with ‘trammel’ and ‘catch.’ A trammel in Elizabethan times was a fishing net. What’s really neat, though, is that trammel was also a word used to describe the binding up of a corpse!

Finally, with ‘be-all’ and ‘end-all’, Macbeth frets that his assassination of the King (this being the first ever recorded use of the word ‘assassination’) might not be the final act–but rather a catalyst to set off a string of unintended consequences.

Such a lovely little soliloquy, so simple on its face, but deep with imagery and foreshadowing. And if you read the entire play–or watch one of the several movie versions–you’ll see that Macbeth is thick with references to time. Shakespeare abhorred time, and how it slowly destroys everything we humans love. In the end, though, Shakespeare won: his plays and poetry have outlasted time, venturing well beyond the bank and shoal of anything any Elizabethan could’ve imagined.

The image is of Michael Fassbender as Macbeth in the latest film version of Shakespeare’s masterpiece.

Posted on 27 Dec 201527 Dec 2015 by richardjnovotney

Sunday Sonnet – 27 December 2015

The central conceit of Sonnet 31 is strange, almost supernatural, and creepy. By this point in the sonnet sequence, the Poet has fallen in love with the Young Man and now sees in this fair youth the loving essence of every old lover the Poet has ever had–to the point of likening the Young Man to a grave:

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,
And there reigns love and all love’s loving parts,
And all those friends which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear
Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things removed that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,
Who all their parts of me to thee did give;
That due of many now is thine alone:
Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.

‘Thou art the grave where buried love doth live’ – you’re a grave where dead loves return to life

‘many a holy and obsequious tear / Hath dear religious love stol’n from mine eye / As interest of the dead, which now appear’ – I’ve shed tears at funerals for old loves I believed dead, only to find them in you

It’s pretty crazy. But when you consider the Elizabethan world and its life expectancy–plague, disease, bad nutrition, horrific medicine–and the middle-age of the Poet in love with a younger man, perhaps this grave and resurrection analogy isn’t so out of place.

And in the final couplet, the Poet says something beautiful and eloquent: That the Young Man embodies all of the loves the Poet’s ever known, and in that the Young Man has all of the Poet:

Their images I loved I view in thee,
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.

Shakespeare was a genius at bringing together opposites: tragedy and comedy residing check to check in his plays; seemingly disparate themes and notions not colliding, but coalescing into one. The despair of the grave becoming the joy and solace of great love.

The image is of Shakespeare’s own grave at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. Photo taken by Yours Truly.

Posted on 25 Dec 2015 by richardjnovotney

Merry Christmas from Edgar A. Poe! 25 December 2015

With this year’s rare instance of a full moon on Christmas, I thought this the perfect time to enjoy this little gem from Poe. Of course, remember it’s Poe, and so in this case the moon is malevolent; it’s the evening star that brings hope of a better future:

EVENING STAR

‘Twas noontide of summer,

And mid-time of night;

And stars, in their orbits,

Shone pale, thro’ the light

Of the brighter, cold moon,

‘Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

Her beam on the waves.

I gazed awhile

On her cold smile;

Too cold–too cold for me-

There pass’d, as a shroud,

A fleecy cloud,

And I turned away to thee,

Proud Evening Star,

In thy glory afar,

And dearer thy beam shall be;

For joy to my heart

Is the proud part

Thou bearest in Heaven at night,

And more I admire

Thy distant fire,

Than that colder, lowly light.

–Edgar A. Poe, 1827

Poe published this in 1827, and by that time had already suffered many of the privations of his hard life. So this evening star provides some kind of hope, a focus away from the pallor of the moon that seems to shine over the Poet’s life. And if Mr. Poe hadn’t been a grand dreamer, full of hope, he never would’ve managed to create many of his masterpieces we still enjoy today.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Posted on 20 Dec 201520 Dec 2015 by richardjnovotney

Sunday Sonnet – 20 December 2015

One of the many amazing things about Shakespeare’s sequence of 154 sonnets is that taken together and in the order numbered (a numbering Shakespeare never publically contested after they were published without his permission) is the sense of narrative. These sonnets tell a tale. Near the end, things come to a head. In the 149^th sonnet, the Poet complains with a kind of emotional madness against the Dark Lady:

149

Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,
When I against myself with thee partake?
Do I not think on thee, when I forgot
Am of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake?
Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?
On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon?
Nay, if thou lour’st on me, do I not spend
Revenge upon myself with present moan?
What merit do I in myself respect,
That is so proud thy service to despise,
When all my best doth worship thy defect,
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes?
But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind;
Those that can see thou lovest, and I am blind.

This sonnet is basically a take-down of everything that’s wrong with the Poet and Dark Lady’s relationship; it’s so dysfunctional it could be a popular movie today:

You are so cruel – ‘O cruel!’
You claim I don’t love you even though I take sides against myself – ‘When I against myself with thee partake?’
I think of you and never of myself – ‘Do I not think on thee, when I forgot / Am of myself’
Anyone who hates you is no friend of mine – ‘Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?’
If you scowl at me, I punish myself – ‘if thou lour’st on me, do I not spend / Revenge upon myself with present moan?’
The best in me worships the worst in you – ‘all my best doth worship thy defect’
Go ahead and keep hating me, because you love people who can see, and I’m blind:

But, love, hate on, for now I know thy mind;
Those that can see thou lovest, and I am blind.

There’s no grand metaphor here, and this is actually one of the more conventional sonnets of Shakespeare’s radical collection. What makes this one so different from the typical Petrarchan romantic sonnet is there’s no final ‘turn’ to reconciliation at the end, merely a confirmation of how ugly and deplorable this whole mess has become.

The image is of Romeo and Juliet kissing is from the 1996 film. Romantic, right? Judging from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, including the one above, and what he did to the happies couples in (a clue: they were farcical, doomed or evil), Shakespeare doesn’t seem to much believe in the idea of Romantic love.

Art is My Religion

Author: richardjnovotney