Christmas Eve Dryden, revisited

I think a scan of precedents will
find that my custom of reading in
John Dryden on Christmas Eve has
been inspired by his brilliant 
translation of Aeneid. I haven't
any inhibition against admitting,
I love Dryden, because he's safe
from superfluous reprisals. That
said, as stoutly as I've champi-
oned to myself, at least, the 
music of his Aeneid, this year
in America, as this year in my
aging, has found me this evening
grateful for his lovely phrasing
of Virgil's bucolic masterpiece,
Georgics. There is not a poem be-
fore Pope's which I revisit more
constantly, or one which better
typifies my respect for music.

This year, I need the great mig-
ration of the priceless treasure
more, even than Aeneas' searches.
Say what one will, for defaults
in our study of Latin, that we
had such conduits as Pope and
Dryden to absolve us in their
mercy is, to me, a gift of God.
The night can withstand another.

Oh, fortunate farmers, he

famously had begun, in the

2nd book of Georgics, and 

every schoolboy will smile

to recognize, Shakespeare:

         O happy if he knew his happy state!

            The swain who, free from business and debate,

            Receives his easy food from nature's hand

            And just returns of cultivated land!

            No palace with a lofty gate he wants

            To pour out tides of early visitants.

            With eager eyes devouring as they pass

            The breathing figures of Corinthian brass.

            No statues threaten from high pedestals;

            No Persian arras hides his homely walls

            With antique vests which through their shady fold

            Betray the streaks of ill-dissembled gold.

            He boasts no wool, whose native white is dyed

            with purple poison of Assyrian pride.

            No costly drugs of Araby defile

            With foreign scents the sweetness of his oil.

            But easy quiet, a secure retreat,

            A harmless life that knows not how to cheat,

            With homebred plenty the rich owner bless,

            And rural pleasures crown his happiness ..

                    Ye sacred muses, with wise beauty fired,

            My soul is ravished and my brain inspired.

John Dryden

1631 - 1700

Selected Poems

  The Country

  [fragments]

1697

Steven N. Zwicker

  and David Bywaters

  editors

Penguin Classics, 2001©

  

Every Advent since coming to Virginia

Every Advent since coming to Virginia, we re-read a little Dryden. This custom is not one of design but of discovery. The Piedmont, the perpendicular strip of rolling land which faces the littoral slope of the Blue Ridge, is a bucolic enough terrain for most seasons, but in the longest, desolate nights of December the ground can show its hard-bitten and infamous meagreness.


"Too strong," in Marcia Davenport's phrase, "for fantasy" in most of its guises, the landscape buckles beneath Advent's demand for jubilation; and unless one is the kind to seek one's comfort in stores and restaurants, hunger and chill turn for delectation to deeper legacies. We have a Winter to get through. Plus, there are the Occasions to observe. And what are they all about, if not the existence of something fine.


How widespread, I'm astounded to find in the blogs, resort is taken to one's favourite reading lists at such times, whether on the solace of other chairs, other gardens, other kitchens or other romances. Many of these proferred Lists are of interest, both for their common testament to an aspiration for something fine, and for the depth of reward they undoubtedly afford. 

But, what is notable about these Lists is their offering of Society in a common undertaking - the structuring act of a sound mental life, the preceptorial in the readings of a week in college. An hour of rowing responsively in a professor's study, with peers. Orally, aurally.

I discover what I love with exertion and with concentration. There is no doubt that this feels like play, because at the end of the day, love is active; it is sociable or it is stillborn. Look to your left, look to your right. Does Terestchenko really blog, to throw away his photographs? 

Is Tassos really not embarked upon a Socratic escapade? Will David Johns not keep looking? 


I keep several versions of the poem whose theme is this exercise. The Fitzerald and the Fagles translations alternate movingly in their beauty, a new one by Sarah Ruden is an education in its spareness. But Advent is for pulling out the stops, and letting the great thing take hold, for achieving poetry's reach to stretch demand within it far. Jubilation. The game, all-out.






Far in the Sea, against the foaming Shoar,
There stands a rock; the raging Billows roar
Above his head in Storms; but when 'tis clear,
Uncurl their ridgy Backs, and at his foot appear.
In peace below the gentle Waters run;
The Cormorants above, lye Basking in the Sun.

On this the Heroe fix’d an Oak in sight

The mark to guide the Mariners aright.

To bear with this, the Seamen stretch their Oars;

Then round the rock they steer, and seek the former Shoars..

With shouts the Sailors rend the starry Skys,

Lash'd with their Oars, the smoaky Billows rise;

Sparkles the briny Main, and vex'd the Ocean fries.

Virgil
The Aeneid
  Book Five: The Argument
John Dryden, translation
1698
Frederick M. Keener, editor
Penguin Group, 1997©


Georg Frideric Händel
Alexander's Feast
  The many rend the skies
Ode by John Dryden
  for St Cecilia's Day, 1697
  Oratorio adaptation, 1736
Harry Christophers
The Sixteen
The Symphony of Harmony and Invention
The Sixteen Productions, Ltd., 2005©

An intentionally unempirical celebration

The colour fields in this canvas

are subordinated to its whole territory. Thus, what they lack in rank by iconographic virtue of hue, density or placement, they acquire by means of their con-centration in detachment from the frame. They create a possibility of a vortex or other mystery, possibly menacing in depth, a setting where investigation may become exploit and exploration, heroic. 

The painting has a title, Blue, Green, and Brown, dated 1951. If it were from The Aeneid, ca 19 BC, it might be Heavens, Earth, Underworld; but it isn't, and we resist unwarranted projection.

One doesn't walk right into a Rothko, any more than one strolls into the underworld in Virgil, unless escorted or at least equipped with a golden bough. Powerfully seductive as it is, the painting declares that something like courage will be exercised in addressing these fields, which are indeed enthralling independently as well as patently engaged with each other. If there were a narrative for braving their distinctions without being locked within one field, why could it not be that of the trials of the young man in establishing his place on an indeterminate shore? I find nothing in this painting to compromise its participation in that struggle, in its own brilliant, virile terms.

On the contrary. The tour d'horison of this paint-ing is not that of an afternoon's browse through Sotheby's list-ings of available villas. It is a saga. In Book 6 of The Aeneid, the wandering Aeneas implores the Sibyl to lead him into the underworld, for the most powerful of motives - and she warns, so famously that a reader cited her in "comment" to our Sunday posting, one might get in readily enough, but getting out is another matter.

   The Gates of Hell are open Night and Day;

   Smooth the Descent, and easie is the Way;

   But, to return, and view the chearful Skies,

   In this the Task, and mighty Labour lies.

Aeneas is demanding an audience with his father, who has finally succumbed under the ordeal of the flight from Troy. Alone among the translators, it seems to me, John Dryden has it right: he wishes for his father to be allowed to see him. I rediscovered this distinc-tion only because BL of Blue Remembered Hills had been thought-ful enough to cite the scene in "Comment" in the prior entry; and I found this illustration of what Aeneas might be facing in this story, only because Thea Beasley had thought to post it. All catalysts are welcome. We are all navigators.

Conduct me thro' the Regions void of Light,

And lead me longing to my Father's sight.

But for the sudden visitor, the persistent allure of this canvas lies in its luminously brilliant upper tier, almost blinding to study, as the eye nevertheless compulsively does for signs of prior passage of human life. What, yes, is the meaning of that outcry from this man? This magnificent painting, part of the incomparable Rothko collection of Mrs Paul Mellon, has been bequeathed to the people of the United States in what I take to be, first of all, a gesture of public service. I look to my would-be leaders to be cognizant of what they are dealing with, to engage honourably the distinctions between the world, their beliefs and their duties, and to be mindful of how they leave the place when they go. I am able to assert these demands of the Sibyl because people before me have shown me the way. One of them, happily, has been Mrs Mellon, whose birthday it will be, this Thursday.

Just sayin'. 







Virgil
Aeneid
op. post.
ca 19 BC
John Dryden, translation
1697
Frederick M. Keener, editor
Penguin Classics, 1997©

Mark Rothko
Blue, Green and Brown
1951
National Gallery of Art
Washington, DC

iv  James Marsden

Origins of Wednesday xxviii: That boy in the churchyard

Fans of Dickens in Italy are
a small elite who, whenever
they meet, start to reminisce
about characters and episodes
as though talking of people
they actually knew.

    I lent a dvd to someone at the

    office, which opens with a boy,

    accosted in a graveyard. All o-

    ver the world, the 3 letters in

    his name flood the mind on pre-

    cisely this synaptic sight. Pip.

    All over this world. And today,

    I can't offer you the name of a

    single man who knows who is his

    Congressman. Is this not sound,

    given the business they are in:

    serving-wenches to remote prop-

    rietors, mugging a way of life.

        Eternal preachers, that corrupt the draught,

        And pull the god that never thinks, with thought;

        Idiots with all that thought, to whom the worst

        Of death is want of drink and endless thirst ..

    This is not a discrimination e-

    lection. It is a way of life e-

    lection. Readers of Dickens in-

    habit this electorate in peril-

    ous abundance, and know, honest

    narrative of the wholesome life

    in trial to enjoy its dignity.

    The whole shell game of bi-pol-

    ar blame has finally exhausted

    "discrimination," itself, as in-

    adequate in measuring injustice.

    Did we ever discover Pip, beset

    by sadness? Oh, lovelorn, in a

    timely time or two; but angry,

    vituperative, outraged, defiant,

    pathetically cornball indignant?

    How well do these voices speak

    for his trust, his irrepressible

    energies, his gift for affection,

    much less his mental well-being?

    Yet the nation is under sentence

    to sustain nostalgic accusation,

    in default of urgent renovation,

    in a choice between a nitwit de-

    featable in four years, and Miss

    Havisham's incinerating umbrage.

    

    I think the avatar of our temper

    this year is Pip, in all genders.

    The election is not about Women's

    Pay, it is about Pay. It is not a-

    bout racist Flint, it is about de-

    cay. It's not about managing twi-

    light in one generation against

    the dawn of another. It is about

    securing open avenues to a thriv-

    ing way of life. No party favors,

    no extra charge for honesty, and

    no wars for sentiment's sake.

    The Party which attracted a can-

    didate of this position, has al-

    ways been determined to marginal-

    ise him. But the people are still

    coming, still listening, still in-

    nocently hoping, and still voting.

    

    As we exchange thoughts in this page,

    people are assembling Summer reading.

    Dickens is a cornerstone of that re-

    storative custom. Pip is coming.

  

Italo Calvino

Why Read the Classics?

Martin McLaughlin

  translation

Jonathan Cape, 1999©

David Lean, director

David Lean, Ronald Neame,

  Anthony Havelock-Allan

  screenplay

Great Expectations

Rank, 1947©

Lucretius

De Rerum Natura

   III, fragment

John Dryden

  translation

John Dryden

  Selected Poems

Steven N. Zwicker and

  David Bywaters, editors

Penguin Classics, 2001©

Albert Razumov

Cornwall, 1930s

    

Saturday commute cxxxviii: To peace and quiet

Ovid relates, as Dryden retells,
how Jupiter and Mercury go hunt-
ing for a place to crash for the
night, and after being met with
many locked palaces, come to the
shed of Baucis and Philemon, hos-
pitable, but tellingly austere -

    Inured to want, their poverty they bore,

    Nor aimed at wealth, professing to be poor.

    For master or for servant here to call

    Was all alike, where only two were all.

    Command was none, where equal love was paid;

    Or rather both commanded, both obeyed.

    And up they held their hands and fell to pray'r,

    Excusing as they could their country fare.

John Dryden

Selected Poems

Steven N. Wicker and

  David Bywaters

  editors

  Baucis and Philemon

    out of the Eighth Book

    of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'

1700

Penguin Classics, 2001©

i  Alair Gomes, photo

"They won't let us talk about God"

   The tragic open secret of
   a political party's fabri-
   cation of religious perse-
   cution, on the basis of a
   failure of its bigotries,
   is not remotely only an A-
   merican dilemma. But it's
   also not a proud American
   tradition, unless we mean
   the term as Homer did, as
   the harbinger of contempt.



      If others in the same glass better see,
      'Tis for themselves they look, but not for me:
      For my salvation must its doom receive
      Not from what others, but what I believe.



   I'd go into the dock with
   Dryden, before all the Ju-
   lius Streichers ever call-
   ed to lead their movement.

























John Dryden
Steven N. Zwicker and
  David Bywaters, editors
Selected Poems
  Religio Laici
1682
Penguin Books, 2001©
op. cit.