Connie Looney Cassels
A few years ago, I had the privilege of seeing a collection of C.S. Lewis' letters in the special publications library at Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Watching the first 2 movies of the Narnia Chronicles brought to mind how impressed I was with Lewis’ insights.
Recently, my husband and I caught a matinee of Prince Caspian, the second movie of the Chronicles of Narnia. We both remarked on the beautiful cinematography and heart-rending soundtrack, but throughout the movie my husband kept elbowing me and saying, "I just don't see the symbolism in this one, do you?"
"What?" I exclaimed, a little too loudly. “You've got to be kidding! The movie is so full of symbolism I can't begin to catch all of it in one viewing.”After the movie, we agreed that it was necessary to "dig a little deeper" to see the symbolism. But, boy, was it ever there. I pointed to the scene where "the young kings and queens - Peter, Susan, Edmund, & Lucy" are looking for a way to cross the great chasm over the river to save the "Narnia" that they remember from their visit centuries before. Lucy, the youngest and noted for her pure heart, claims that she sees Aslan across the river telling them to come His way. When scolded and scoffed at by her older siblings who had not seen Aslan, Lucy remarked, "Well, maybe you weren't looking for him!"
The siblings refuse to follow her toward Aslan, urging her to go the way Peter leads them instead. The four soon find themselves with the Narnians who have hidden themselves in the forest because an evil king has taken control of the kingdom have declared them extinct. The prevailing culture often casts a blind eye to the existence of the ancient path.
This is why Lewis insisted that we need old books to correct this blindness. The evil king banished or executed those who taught the old ways.
After they are defeated in battle, with many losses attributed to Peter's lofty plan, Lucy leaves the group to go seek "salvation" for her siblings and the Narnians by finding Aslan. Lucy believes with her "childlike faith" that she can find Aslan and He can make everything right. Remember, too, Lucy's special “gift” in Narnia is the cordial that raises creatures from the dead or heals them when they are near death. One drop of special potion from the heart-shaped vial is usually sufficient. Here we find an allusion to the Blood of Jesus.
When Lucy finds Aslan, she falls upon him with joy and love, hugging and kissing him. However, she suddenly becomes sad when Aslan asks, "Why didn't you follow me when I showed myself to you?" Lucy replies, "I was scared and didn't want to come alone." After explaining to Aslan about the battle, Lucy asks Aslan, "What if I had come when you showed us the way? Would we have avoided this awful battle?" Aslan speaks, "Young one, we can never know what might have been." This is a recurring theme in Lewis’ Chronicles, emphasizing the limitations of our human existence and ability to know. Lewis maintained that “reality is very odd” and that “ultimate truth must have the characteristic of strangeness.”At several points in the movie, one or more of the characters refers to "waiting on Aslan", as if to say "we know He is coming to help us" or "He will show us what to do." Consider how Peter, Susan, and Edmund didn't see Aslan because they weren't looking for him. With Jesus, the same is true. We don't see His hand, His works, His grace, His plan, etc. because we're not looking for Him. Jesus tells us in Scripture, "You will find me when you seek me with all of your heart."
Peter's plans to fight for Narnia without Aslan’s help resulted in failure. His siblings and others kept telling him "we should wait on Aslan." But, he moved forward according to his own plan. The lesson for viewers is to consult Aslan (Jesus Christ) about His will rather than following our own.
When Aslan does come to help at the end of the movie, Peter is vindicated but ashamed. C. S. Lewis named Narnia “high king” after the Apostle Peter who had he denied Jesus three times at the time of his arrest, but was forgiven and restored to Christ after the resurrection. Jesus said, "Peter, you are the rock and upon this rock I will build my Church."
Can't see the symbolism? You've got to be kidding!
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Miguel de Unamuno's Prayer of the Atheist
The existential angst of Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) is evident in his novels, essays and poems. Along with Søren Kierkegaard, he is regarded as a Christian Existentialist, something he would probably find ironic! Unamuno learned Danish in order to read Kierkegaard’s work in the original language. In addition to Danish and his native Basque, he mastered 12 other languages.
A central metaphysical problem for existentialists involves alienation from self. Because others exist in the world I can take a third-person perspective on myself. This reveals the extent to which I am alienated from my being, because an objective sense of who I am can be revealed only by the Other. This is the problem with which Miguel de Unamuno struggles in the following poem.
La oración del ateoMiguel de Unamuno y Jugo
Oye mi ruego Tú, Dios que no existes,
y en tu nada recoje estas mis quejas,
Tú que a los pobres hombres nunca dejas
sin consuelo de engaño. No resistes
a nuestro ruego y nuestro anhelo vistes.
Cuando Tú de mi mente más te alejas,
más recuerdo las plácidas consejos,
con que mi ama endulzóme noches tristes.
¡Qué grande eres, mi Dios! Eres tan grande
que no eres sino Idea; es muy angosta
la realidad por mucho que se espande
para abarcarte. Sufro yo a tu costa,
Dios no existente, pues si Tú existieras
existiría yo también de veras
Prayer of the Atheist
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo
Hear my supplication Thou, non-existent God,
and in thy nothingness gather these my complaints,
Thou who never leavest poor men
without consolation of deceit. Thou resisteth not
our plea and our yearning thou seest.
When Thou from my mind withdraweth,
I remember again the pleasant tales
with which my nursemaid sweetened my sad nights.
How great Thou art, my God! Thou art so great
that Thou art nothing more than an Idea, it is a narrow
reality the more it expands
to embrace Thee. I suffer on thy account,
non-existent God, since were Thou to exist
I also would truly exist.
(Translation: Alice C. Linsley)
Hear my supplication Thou, non-existent God,
and in thy nothingness gather these my complaints,
Thou who never leavest poor men
without consolation of deceit. Thou resisteth not
our plea and our yearning thou seest.
When Thou from my mind withdraweth,
I remember again the pleasant tales
with which my nursemaid sweetened my sad nights.
How great Thou art, my God! Thou art so great
that Thou art nothing more than an Idea, it is a narrow
reality the more it expands
to embrace Thee. I suffer on thy account,
non-existent God, since were Thou to exist
I also would truly exist.
(Translation: Alice C. Linsley)
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
CS Lewis Explains the Allegory of Narnia
When a little girl wrote to CS Lewis asking him for an explanation of the Chronicles of Narnia, she never expected to get a reply.But the letter Anne Jenkins from Hertfordshire received when she was just 10-years-old is to be displayed in Queen's University's new CS Lewis Reading Room.
Anne wrote to the Belfast born author in 1961 after being intrigued by a particular passage in The Silver Chair.
Recalling that time, Anne said she was fascinated by the books and the mystical world of Narnia.
"I just used to scrutinise them quite carefully and it was a little bit at the end of The Silver Chair, that I just didn't understand what he was saying," she said.
"It was where the dead king Caspian is brought back to life by Aslan the lion's blood and Eustace says 'hasn't he died' and the lion says 'yes he has died, most people have you know, even I have, there are very few people who haven't'.
"For some reason this stuck in my brain, so I asked my parents what does he mean by saying that most people have died?
"They didn't know, so they said that I should write and ask him."
Anne has kept the envelope for 44 years, and as far as Anne is aware, her letter is the only known document from the author which supports the argument that Aslan represented Jesus Christ.
Anne said she has often thought about what exactly was in the author's mind at the time he wrote to her.
"I think it must have been the mood he was in at the time, his wife had died a couple of years before, maybe he was just thinking about it a lot at the time," she said.
"I see it as a coincidence, but maybe not."
In the letter Lewis simply states that the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tells the story of the "Crucifixion of Christ and the resurrection".
He also explains that the story of Prince Caspian "tells the restoration of the true religion after the corruption".
"If you read the letter he wrote to other children, none of them are like this at all," Anne said.
CS Lewis wrote to Anne when she was just 10-years-old. Anne believes the letter is just too important a piece of historical literature not to be shared with the world.
"The letter could easily have got lost it is just lucky I have kept it safe all of these years," she said.
"The letter is so valuable and really needs to go into the public domain now rather than where I've kept it in a wardrobe, which is quite appropriate."
The letter will be displayed in Queen's University's new £44m library, which is due to open in 2009. Until then it will be kept in the university library's special collection.
Thomas de Quincey on The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth
From my boyish days I had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth. It was this: The knocking at the gate which succeeds to the murder of Duncan produced to my feelings an effect for which I never could account. The effect was that it reflected back upon the murderer a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity: yet, however obstinately I endeavoured with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect.
Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else - which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of this out of ten thousand instances that I might produce I will cite one.
Ask of any person whatsoever who is not previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge of the perspective to draw in the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends upon the laws of that science - as, for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street as seen by a person looking down the street from one extremity. Now, in all cases, unless the person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists produce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make the smallest approximation to it.
Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is known and can be proved to be a horizontal line should not appear a horizontal line: a line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than a right angle would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down together. Accordingly, he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails, of course, to produce the effect demanded. Here, then, is one instance out of many in which not only the understanding is allowed to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to obliterate the eyes, as it were; for not only does the man believe teh evidence of his understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but (what is monstrous) the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. He does not know that he has seen (and therefore quoad his consciousness has not seen) that which he has seen every day of his life.
But to return from this digression. My understanding could furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not produce any effect. But I knew better; I felt that it did; and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve it. At length, in 1812, Mr Williams made his debut on the stage of Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those unparalled murders which have procured for him such a brilliant and undying reputation. On which murders, by the way, I must observe that in one respect they have had an ill effect, by making the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done in that line. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his; and, as an amateur once said to me in a querlous tone, 'There has been absolutely nothing doing since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of.' But this is wrong; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great artists, and born with the genius of Mr Williams. Now, it will be remembered that in the first of these murders (that of the Marrs) the same incident (of a knocking at the door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur which the genius of Shakspere has invented; and all good judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakspere's suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling, in opposition to my understanding; and I again set myself to study the problem. At length I solved it to my own satisfaction; and my solution is this: - Murder, in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, - that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same in kind (though different in degree) amongst all living creatures. This instinct, therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of 'the poor beetle that we tread on,' exhibits human naure in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet.
What then must he do? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with him (of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into his feelings, and are made to understand them, - not a sympathy of pity or approbation). In the murdered person, all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic; the fear of instant death smites him 'with its petrific mace.' But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion, - jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred, - which will create hell within him; and into this hell we are to look.
In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enormous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakspere has introduced two murderers: and, as usual in his hands, they are remarkably discriminated: but, - though in Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife, the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught chiefly by contagion from her, - yet, as both were finally involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed: and, on its own account, as well as to make it a more proportionable antagonist to the unoffending nature of their victim, 'the gracious Duncan,' and adequately to expound 'the deep damnation of his taking off,' this was to be expressed with peculiar energy. We were to be made to feel that the human nature, - i.e., the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdran from man, - was gone, vanished, extinct, and that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And, as this effect is marvellously accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by the expedient under consideration; and it is to this that I now solicit the reader's attention.
If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or sister in a fainting fit, he may chance to have observed that the most affecting moment in such a spectacle is that in which a sigh and a stirring announce the recommencement of suspended life. Or, if the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis on the day when some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and, felt powerfully, in silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man, - if all at once he should hear the death-like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away in the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting as at that moment when the suspension ceases, and the goings on of human life are suddenly resumed. All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensile, by reaction.
Now applying this in the case of Macbeth: Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stepped in; and the murderers are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured: Lady Macbeth is 'unsexed'; Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman; both are conformed to the image of devils; and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable?
In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be insulated - cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs - locked up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested, laid asleep, tranced, racked into a dread armistice; time must be annihilated, relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is that, when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard, and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them.
O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that, the farther we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!
Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else - which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes. Of this out of ten thousand instances that I might produce I will cite one.
Ask of any person whatsoever who is not previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge of the perspective to draw in the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends upon the laws of that science - as, for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street as seen by a person looking down the street from one extremity. Now, in all cases, unless the person has happened to observe in pictures how it is that artists produce these effects, he will be utterly unable to make the smallest approximation to it.
Yet why? For he has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is known and can be proved to be a horizontal line should not appear a horizontal line: a line that made any angle with the perpendicular less than a right angle would seem to him to indicate that his houses were all tumbling down together. Accordingly, he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails, of course, to produce the effect demanded. Here, then, is one instance out of many in which not only the understanding is allowed to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to obliterate the eyes, as it were; for not only does the man believe teh evidence of his understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but (what is monstrous) the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. He does not know that he has seen (and therefore quoad his consciousness has not seen) that which he has seen every day of his life.
But to return from this digression. My understanding could furnish no reason why the knocking at the gate in Macbeth should produce any effect, direct or reflected. In fact, my understanding said positively that it could not produce any effect. But I knew better; I felt that it did; and I waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge should enable me to solve it. At length, in 1812, Mr Williams made his debut on the stage of Ratcliffe Highway, and executed those unparalled murders which have procured for him such a brilliant and undying reputation. On which murders, by the way, I must observe that in one respect they have had an ill effect, by making the connoisseur in murder very fastidious in his taste, and dissatisfied by anything that has been since done in that line. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his; and, as an amateur once said to me in a querlous tone, 'There has been absolutely nothing doing since his time, or nothing that's worth speaking of.' But this is wrong; for it is unreasonable to expect all men to be great artists, and born with the genius of Mr Williams. Now, it will be remembered that in the first of these murders (that of the Marrs) the same incident (of a knocking at the door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur which the genius of Shakspere has invented; and all good judges, and the most eminent dilettanti, acknowledged the felicity of Shakspere's suggestion as soon as it was actually realized. Here, then was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling, in opposition to my understanding; and I again set myself to study the problem. At length I solved it to my own satisfaction; and my solution is this: - Murder, in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, - that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same in kind (though different in degree) amongst all living creatures. This instinct, therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of 'the poor beetle that we tread on,' exhibits human naure in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet.
What then must he do? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with him (of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into his feelings, and are made to understand them, - not a sympathy of pity or approbation). In the murdered person, all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic; the fear of instant death smites him 'with its petrific mace.' But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion, - jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred, - which will create hell within him; and into this hell we are to look.
In Macbeth, for the sake of gratifying his own enormous and teeming faculty of creation, Shakspere has introduced two murderers: and, as usual in his hands, they are remarkably discriminated: but, - though in Macbeth the strife of mind is greater than in his wife, the tiger spirit not so awake, and his feelings caught chiefly by contagion from her, - yet, as both were finally involved in the guilt of murder, the murderous mind of necessity is finally to be presumed in both. This was to be expressed: and, on its own account, as well as to make it a more proportionable antagonist to the unoffending nature of their victim, 'the gracious Duncan,' and adequately to expound 'the deep damnation of his taking off,' this was to be expressed with peculiar energy. We were to be made to feel that the human nature, - i.e., the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdran from man, - was gone, vanished, extinct, and that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And, as this effect is marvellously accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by the expedient under consideration; and it is to this that I now solicit the reader's attention.
If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or sister in a fainting fit, he may chance to have observed that the most affecting moment in such a spectacle is that in which a sigh and a stirring announce the recommencement of suspended life. Or, if the reader has ever been present in a vast metropolis on the day when some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp to his grave, and, felt powerfully, in silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagnation of ordinary business, the deep interest which at that moment was possessing the heart of man, - if all at once he should hear the death-like stillness broken up by the sound of wheels rattling away in the scene, and making known that the transitory vision was dissolved, he will be aware that at no moment was his sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary human concerns so full and affecting as at that moment when the suspension ceases, and the goings on of human life are suddenly resumed. All action in any direction is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensile, by reaction.
Now applying this in the case of Macbeth: Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stepped in; and the murderers are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes, human desires. They are transfigured: Lady Macbeth is 'unsexed'; Macbeth has forgot that he was born of woman; both are conformed to the image of devils; and the world of devils is suddenly revealed. But how shall this be conveyed and made palpable?
In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers and the murder must be insulated - cut off by an immeasurable gulf from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs - locked up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested, laid asleep, tranced, racked into a dread armistice; time must be annihilated, relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is that, when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard, and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them.
O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that, the farther we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!
Fiction Contest: Deadline June 30
Glimmer Train announces a short fiction contest open to all writers and all themes. Word count must be between 2,000 and 20,000. Results will be announced and posted online on August 31, 2008. Winning story will be published in Glimmer Train Issue 72.
Prizes:
1st place wins $2,000, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies.
2nd-place: $1,000 and possible publication.
3rd-place: $600 and possible publication.
Reading fee: $20 per story. You may submit several stories and tell the Editors that you read about the contest at Students Publish Here!
To submit a short story, go here and click on the yellow submissions tab.
Prizes:
1st place wins $2,000, publication in Glimmer Train Stories, and 20 copies.
2nd-place: $1,000 and possible publication.
3rd-place: $600 and possible publication.
Reading fee: $20 per story. You may submit several stories and tell the Editors that you read about the contest at Students Publish Here!
To submit a short story, go here and click on the yellow submissions tab.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Famous Shakespeare Quotes
"To be, or not to be" and "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?" and "We are such stuff as dreams are made of..." represent some of the most celebrated and well recognized lines in literature. If asked to recite some of Shakespeare's work most people would be able to recite these or the ones that follow.
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry". - Hamlet (Act I, Scene III).
"This above all: to thine own self be true". - Hamlet (Act I, Scene III).
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him". - (Act III, Scene II).
"But, for my own part, it was Greek to me". - (Act I, Scene II).
"The course of true love never did run smooth". - (Act I, Scene I).
Then there are the more obscure yet equally memorable lines, such as these:
"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall". - Measure for Measure (Act II, Scene I).
"The miserable have no other medicine but only hope". - Measure for Measure (Act III, Scene I).
"All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts" - As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII).
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude". As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII).
"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." The Tempest (Act II, Scene. II).
For other Shakepeare quotes go here.
Coming tomorrow: Thomas de Quincey's The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry". - Hamlet (Act I, Scene III).
"This above all: to thine own self be true". - Hamlet (Act I, Scene III).
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him". - (Act III, Scene II).
"But, for my own part, it was Greek to me". - (Act I, Scene II).
"The course of true love never did run smooth". - (Act I, Scene I).
Then there are the more obscure yet equally memorable lines, such as these:
"Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall". - Measure for Measure (Act II, Scene I).
"The miserable have no other medicine but only hope". - Measure for Measure (Act III, Scene I).
"All the world 's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts" - As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII).
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude". As You Like It (Act II, Scene VII).
"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." The Tempest (Act II, Scene. II).
For other Shakepeare quotes go here.
Coming tomorrow: Thomas de Quincey's The Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Great Reading for Less Money!
People who write and appreciate good writing come in all races, shapes, religions and nationalities. We are young and old, tall and short, optimistic and pessimistic. We tend to read everything and assess whether something is worth reading after the first few paragraphs. We read labels and signs and other lettered accoutrements that clutter our lives, often unconsciously. Reading is a passion because it feeds our writing.
This past year, with 3 blogs, I have been writing a good deal of non-fiction. This marks a change for me since in years past I have focused on fiction writing. My hunger for fiction has not gone away. If anything, it has increased. I realized this when recently visiting my favorite bookstore: Joseph Beth in Lexington. My intention was to purchase a few books for my Spanish students. I found the books and then immediately headed to the fiction section. Then came a terrible moment of decision!
On a limited book budget, if I wanted to purchase a novel, I would have to put back at least one of the Spanish books I needed. But then I saw a rack of literary reviews and quarterly magazines and realized that I could buy 3 of them for the price of that one novel. And that's what I did.
These past days I've been feasting! I recommend this approach to satisfying one's hunger for fiction. The variety is wide, the styles diverse, and the value for dollar is excellent. Here are some of the magazines I recommend:
Artful Dodge: Short stories, translations, poetry
Glimmer Train: Short stories and interviews
Mid-American Review: Fiction, non-fiction, translations and reviews
Rosebud: Short stories, wonderful sketches, and poetry
Salamander: Poetry, short stories and memoirs
Enjoy the feast!
This past year, with 3 blogs, I have been writing a good deal of non-fiction. This marks a change for me since in years past I have focused on fiction writing. My hunger for fiction has not gone away. If anything, it has increased. I realized this when recently visiting my favorite bookstore: Joseph Beth in Lexington. My intention was to purchase a few books for my Spanish students. I found the books and then immediately headed to the fiction section. Then came a terrible moment of decision!
On a limited book budget, if I wanted to purchase a novel, I would have to put back at least one of the Spanish books I needed. But then I saw a rack of literary reviews and quarterly magazines and realized that I could buy 3 of them for the price of that one novel. And that's what I did.
These past days I've been feasting! I recommend this approach to satisfying one's hunger for fiction. The variety is wide, the styles diverse, and the value for dollar is excellent. Here are some of the magazines I recommend:
Artful Dodge: Short stories, translations, poetry
Glimmer Train: Short stories and interviews
Mid-American Review: Fiction, non-fiction, translations and reviews
Rosebud: Short stories, wonderful sketches, and poetry
Salamander: Poetry, short stories and memoirs
Enjoy the feast!
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Want to Write Poetry? Study Literature!
What Does a Poet Need to Know?
© Linda Sue Grimes
My personal experience convinces me that a good foundation in traditional literature is indispensable for a writing career--especially in creative writing.
Personal Experience
When I was a senior in high school (1963-64), the opportunity opened for seniors to take creative writing instead of English literature. A number of us choose to do that. Actually, the class was probably about 30 of our total number of 76. The creative writing class was taught by the same teacher who had the previous year taught American history, and that year was this teacher’s first year at our school. That he was able to talk the administration into letting him teach creative writing is testimony to this man’s powers of persuasion. He was a poet himself and also taught English.
The English literature teacher had taught at our school for over thirty years, and she was an excellent teacher. I had in been in her sophomore English class and junior English, which focused on American literature.
But I chose to take the creative writing option instead of English literature, and over the years, I have regretted that choice. If I had taken the creative writing in addition to the English literature class, I would have received a much better education. Instead, by taking the creative writing, I missed out on learning about valuable foundations such as Beowulf, Shakespeare, and other important British literature.
At first I thought it didn’t matter too much, because I was very interested in foreign languages, and I considered becoming a teacher of Spanish, Latin, or French. It turns out that I became of teacher of German, but my interest in poetry soon returned, and I returned to writing poetry.
As I engaged my interests in creating poetry, I realized that my knowledge of literature was deficient. So I returned to graduate school to complete a degree in English. And after finishing the MA and PhD in English, I had finally caught up. I actually chose British literature as my concentration area for my PhD. Still, if I had just taken the English literature as a senior in high school, I would have been ahead of the game.
Very interesting. Read it all here.
© Linda Sue Grimes
My personal experience convinces me that a good foundation in traditional literature is indispensable for a writing career--especially in creative writing.
Personal Experience
When I was a senior in high school (1963-64), the opportunity opened for seniors to take creative writing instead of English literature. A number of us choose to do that. Actually, the class was probably about 30 of our total number of 76. The creative writing class was taught by the same teacher who had the previous year taught American history, and that year was this teacher’s first year at our school. That he was able to talk the administration into letting him teach creative writing is testimony to this man’s powers of persuasion. He was a poet himself and also taught English.
The English literature teacher had taught at our school for over thirty years, and she was an excellent teacher. I had in been in her sophomore English class and junior English, which focused on American literature.
But I chose to take the creative writing option instead of English literature, and over the years, I have regretted that choice. If I had taken the creative writing in addition to the English literature class, I would have received a much better education. Instead, by taking the creative writing, I missed out on learning about valuable foundations such as Beowulf, Shakespeare, and other important British literature.
At first I thought it didn’t matter too much, because I was very interested in foreign languages, and I considered becoming a teacher of Spanish, Latin, or French. It turns out that I became of teacher of German, but my interest in poetry soon returned, and I returned to writing poetry.
As I engaged my interests in creating poetry, I realized that my knowledge of literature was deficient. So I returned to graduate school to complete a degree in English. And after finishing the MA and PhD in English, I had finally caught up. I actually chose British literature as my concentration area for my PhD. Still, if I had just taken the English literature as a senior in high school, I would have been ahead of the game.
Very interesting. Read it all here.
The Frustration of Jonah
Christopher Johnson, host of Midwest Conservative Journal, writes amazing humor. Here is one on Jonah's frustrating task (to which all right-believing Anglicans can relate!)
"Jonah?"
"Yes, LORD."
"It approaches the end of forty days and the Ninevites have not repented. Prepare to leave the city before..."
"Listen, LORD, about that. How hard-and-fast is that forty day time limit?"
"Hard. And fast."
"The Ninevites were wondering if they could get an extension."
"A what?"
"An extension. More time."
"Why?"
"Well, frankly, LORD, and I mean this with the greatest respect, you know that. I mean, anybody that can create a fish just to swallow me up has got it going on, you know what I'm saying? But forty days is nowhere near time enough for Nineveh to repent."
"Help me out here, Jonah. I know that I, YHWH, am only the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it. But it seems to me that if I, YHWH, the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it, tell you to repent, you either do or you don't. Up or down."
"LORD, it's way more complicated than that. Here, it takes a lot longer."
"Once again. Why?"
"For one thing, the Nineveh Commission isn't anywhere close to finishing its work."
Read it all here.
"Jonah?"
"Yes, LORD."
"It approaches the end of forty days and the Ninevites have not repented. Prepare to leave the city before..."
"Listen, LORD, about that. How hard-and-fast is that forty day time limit?"
"Hard. And fast."
"The Ninevites were wondering if they could get an extension."
"A what?"
"An extension. More time."
"Why?"
"Well, frankly, LORD, and I mean this with the greatest respect, you know that. I mean, anybody that can create a fish just to swallow me up has got it going on, you know what I'm saying? But forty days is nowhere near time enough for Nineveh to repent."
"Help me out here, Jonah. I know that I, YHWH, am only the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it. But it seems to me that if I, YHWH, the Creator of the entire universe and everything in it, tell you to repent, you either do or you don't. Up or down."
"LORD, it's way more complicated than that. Here, it takes a lot longer."
"Once again. Why?"
"For one thing, the Nineveh Commission isn't anywhere close to finishing its work."
Read it all here.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
A Poem to Remind Us of What Matters
We Who Prayed and Wept
Wendell Berry
We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.
Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.
--Collected Poems 1957-1982
Wendell Berry
We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.
Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.
--Collected Poems 1957-1982
Friday, June 13, 2008
Mountain Poems
The MountainsThe days have closed behind my back
Since I came into these hills.
Now memory is a single field
One peasant tills and tills.
So far away, if I should turn
I know I could not find
That place again. These mountains make
The backward gaze half-blind,
Yet sharp my sight till it can catch
The ranges rising clear
Far in futurity's high-walled land;
But I am rooted here.
And do not know where lies my way,
Backward or forward. If I could
I'd leap time's bound or turn and hide
From time in my ancestral wood.
Double delusion! Here I'm held
By the mystery of a rock,
Must watch in a perpetual dream
The horizon's gates unlock and lock,
See on the harvest fields of time
The mountains heaped like sheaves,
And the valleys opening out
Like a volume's turning leaves,
Dreaming of a peak whose height
Will show me every hill,
A single mountain on whose side
Life blooms for ever and is still.
- from the Collected Poems of Edwin Muir.
Alone Looking at The Mountain
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.
Li Po
Returning to Songshan Mountain
The limpid river runs between the bushes,
The horse and cart are moving idly on.
The water flows as if with a mind of its own,
At dusk, the birds return to perch together.
The desolate town is faced by an ancient ferry,
The setting sun now fills the autumn hills.
And far below high Songshan's tumbling ridges,
Returning home, I close the door for now.
Wang Wei
From time in my ancestral wood.
Double delusion! Here I'm held
By the mystery of a rock,
Must watch in a perpetual dream
The horizon's gates unlock and lock,
See on the harvest fields of time
The mountains heaped like sheaves,
And the valleys opening out
Like a volume's turning leaves,
Dreaming of a peak whose height
Will show me every hill,
A single mountain on whose side
Life blooms for ever and is still.
- from the Collected Poems of Edwin Muir.
Alone Looking at The Mountain
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.
Li Po
Returning to Songshan Mountain
The limpid river runs between the bushes,
The horse and cart are moving idly on.
The water flows as if with a mind of its own,
At dusk, the birds return to perch together.
The desolate town is faced by an ancient ferry,
The setting sun now fills the autumn hills.
And far below high Songshan's tumbling ridges,
Returning home, I close the door for now.
Wang Wei
James Bernstein's New Book
"I began a study of the history of the Church and the New Testament, hopingto shed some light on what my attitude toward the Church and the Bible should be. The results were not at all what I expected." Fr. James Bernstein
Fr. James Bernstein, author of a new book called "Surprised by Christ: My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity," talks about his spiritual journey from Judaism to Orthodoxy to becoming an Orthodox Christian priest. Fr. James explains why he regards the Orthodox Church to be the true home for Christian Jews and for all who seek to know God as fully as He may be known in this life.
This is a great story! You can listen to Fr. Bernstein here.
Fr. James Bernstein, author of a new book called "Surprised by Christ: My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity," talks about his spiritual journey from Judaism to Orthodoxy to becoming an Orthodox Christian priest. Fr. James explains why he regards the Orthodox Church to be the true home for Christian Jews and for all who seek to know God as fully as He may be known in this life.
This is a great story! You can listen to Fr. Bernstein here.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Tropical Island Poems
I lived for 2 years on the island of Manila and have fond memories of my experiences there. I hiked through the jungle, climbed volcanic mountains, and visited an isolated village of head hunters. I discovered an abandoned Japanese munitions cave which I reported to the US military so that it could be cleared. I swam in flooded culverts and climbed mango trees to eat the green mangos with salt. I worshipped with my "ama" Helen in a Catholic 
Church with hard packed dirt floor swept with a brush broom. We stood during the Mass and chickens scurried about our feet. I learned to dance the Tinikling well enough to perform in public and I played many games of Sunka. I am posting 2 poems about tropical islands in honor of these wonderful memories of the Philippine Islands.
The Tropics
Love we the warmth and light of tropic lands,
The strange bright fruit,
the feathery fanspread leaves,
The glowing mornings and the mellow eves,
The strange shells scattered on the golden sands,
The curious handiwork of Eastern hands,
The little carts ambled by humpbacked beeves,
The narrow outrigged native boat which cleaves,
Unscathed, the surf outside the coral strands.
Love we the blaze of color, the rich red
Of broad tiled-roof and turban, the bright green
Of plantain-frond and paddy-field, nor dread
The fierceness of the noon. The sky serene,
The chill-less air, quaint sights, and tropic trees,
Seem like a dream fulfilled of lotus-ease.
Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen
Night by the River
The coldness that was brought about
by the shadows of the moon
With the flowing melody
of the river near the lagoon.
The music that the crickets
played for the lonely hearts.
With the non-stop drumming beats
of the croaking frogs.
Up, far away from me,
are the reality of dreams.
And beyond what I can see
lies a silver lined brim.
A ripple created, that shattered
the silence of the wind.
The darkness precipitated,
and swallow every green.
With every drop of rain
provides a bubbling sound.
The friction of the leaves
creates a double rebound.
Tonight in the silence
of the shouting whisper,
beside the lonely darkness,
and the rhythm of the river.
Arjane rona Cruz Torres, Philippines
Church with hard packed dirt floor swept with a brush broom. We stood during the Mass and chickens scurried about our feet. I learned to dance the Tinikling well enough to perform in public and I played many games of Sunka. I am posting 2 poems about tropical islands in honor of these wonderful memories of the Philippine Islands.The Tropics
Love we the warmth and light of tropic lands,
The strange bright fruit,
the feathery fanspread leaves,
The glowing mornings and the mellow eves,
The strange shells scattered on the golden sands,
The curious handiwork of Eastern hands,
The little carts ambled by humpbacked beeves,
The narrow outrigged native boat which cleaves,
Unscathed, the surf outside the coral strands.
Love we the blaze of color, the rich red
Of broad tiled-roof and turban, the bright green
Of plantain-frond and paddy-field, nor dread
The fierceness of the noon. The sky serene,
The chill-less air, quaint sights, and tropic trees,
Seem like a dream fulfilled of lotus-ease.
Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen
Night by the River
The coldness that was brought about
by the shadows of the moon
With the flowing melody
of the river near the lagoon.
The music that the crickets
played for the lonely hearts.
With the non-stop drumming beats
of the croaking frogs.
Up, far away from me,
are the reality of dreams.
And beyond what I can see
lies a silver lined brim.
A ripple created, that shattered
the silence of the wind.
The darkness precipitated,
and swallow every green.
With every drop of rain
provides a bubbling sound.
The friction of the leaves
creates a double rebound.
Tonight in the silence
of the shouting whisper,
beside the lonely darkness,
and the rhythm of the river.
Arjane rona Cruz Torres, Philippines
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
The World of Books Lives On
The World of Books
The World of Books
Is the Most Remarkable Creation of Man
Nothing Else That He Builds Ever Lasts
Monuments Fall
Nations Perish
Civilizations Grow Old and Die Out
And After an Era of Darkness
New Races Build Others
But in the World of Books are Volumes
That Have Seen This Happen Again and Again
And Yet Live On
Still Young
Still As Fresh As the Day They Were Written
Still Telling Men's Hearts
Of the Hearts of Men Centuries Dead
— Clarence Day
From here.
The World of Books
Is the Most Remarkable Creation of Man
Nothing Else That He Builds Ever Lasts
Monuments Fall
Nations Perish
Civilizations Grow Old and Die Out
And After an Era of Darkness
New Races Build Others
But in the World of Books are Volumes
That Have Seen This Happen Again and Again
And Yet Live On
Still Young
Still As Fresh As the Day They Were Written
Still Telling Men's Hearts
Of the Hearts of Men Centuries Dead
— Clarence Day
From here.
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