Dante Alighieri’s Inferno

Dante Alighieri’s Inferno
Begin: 03/28/07
End: 03/31/07
Quality: Nine Out of Ten.
Reason:. Reading Plan.
Genre: Classics. Epic Poetry. Italian Literature
Original Language: Italian.
Date of Publication: 1314.
Fog Index: 11.5/63% are harder.
Flesch Index: 64.4/73% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 8.8/66% are harder.
Complex Words: 10%/71% have more complex words.
Number: Once?
Storyline: Dante takes a tour of hell, led by the Roman poet Virgil.

This is definitely just one of those books which I find myself completely unprepared and utterly inadequate to discuss or to write anything half way intelligent about since it’s one of the major works of the western canon. I mean it’s Dante’s Inferno, what the fuck do I have to say that hasn’t been said before. What the fuck can I possibly write after thousands of scholars have already talked and analyzed this work for centuries?

(It also doesn’t help that I’m pretty exhausted right now.)

I really enjoy it. I thought it was going to be a lot tougher than it actually is. I also found myself being really flabbergasted at the cruelty of the medieval Christian world view. It was pretty harsh. Eternal damnation? Shit. That is so pretty heavy stuff.

It was interesting to me also how Dante seemed to have two ideals, Christianity and the Roman Republic. He chooses Virgil as his guide through hell. The deepest levels of hell, actually Satan’s mouths, contain Brutus, Cassisus and Judas. The first two betrayed Julius Ceasar and the third Jesus Christ.

I am also curious about the episode with the Medusa. “O you possessed of sturdy intellects,/observe the teachings that is hidden here/beneath the veil of verses so obscures” (Canton IX, line 61-63) I believe they talk about it in the Medusa Reader so I am going to have to look that up.

I guess that’s really all I have to say about it. Well, also just that it is endlessly fascinating book. I mean the level of intricacy and creative genius that went into this work.



Here’s maps of the inferno.
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/dante/mapimages.html
http://www.tabula-rasa.info/Horror/Inferno.html

Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard

Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard
Begin: 03/27/07
End: 03/28/07
Quality: Five Out of Ten.
Reason: Modern Drama.
Genre: Drama. Fiction. Russian Literature.
Original Language: Russian.
Date of Publication: 1904.
Fog Index:7.1/87% are harder.
Flesch Index: 74.4/89% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.2/89% are harder.
Complex Words: 8%/78% have more complex words.
Number: Once?
Storyline: Here's the basic plotline. Madame Ranevsky is returning from Paris to her estate in Russia. It is going to be sold at auction to try and deal with her debts. She is coming back to try and deal with the situation. She has a couple of choices but doesn't necessarily like any of them. I will leave it at that since I don't want to give anything away.

The Cherry Orchard is considered to be the best of any of Chekov's work. It is also the last play that he ever wrote. He died within six months of its first production. (January 1904 for those keeping track) I read it a few years ago for my Modern Drama class when I was still a young and vibrant student. I remember really liking it then but now I seem to have much more mixed feelings towards it. I had a really difficult time getting into this play. I have been reading my way through the Modern Drama anthology and usually it only takes me an hour or two to get through one of these plays but this took some concentrated effort on my part, which is really uncommon for me. I live for reading. I also had an extremely difficult time connecting to any of the characters. I found them to be very alien and aloof. I can usually find at least one character to connect to but not in this play, at least at this time. And the finally comment that I want to make about my mixed feelings towards this play is in terms of it's genre. I couldn't help but obsessing over whether this was a comedy or a tragedy. The subtitle is "A Comedy in Four Acts" but it reads like a tragedy to me. I view it as a tragedy in many ways although I do find some of the situations funny. And I found myself concentrating too much on which one is was to really appreciate and enjoy it like I probably should have been doing.

I was not sure how much of my own thought was going into the play, but I definitely saw a very strong Marxist ideology shaping different aspects of the story. It wasn't complete Marxist propaganda mind you, but I definitely saw shadings with the ineffectual aristocrats, the former serf being the seeming victor at the end of the play as well as the speeches of the perpetual student, Trofimov. I am not sure how closely this play coincides with the Bolshevik revolution but I found that aspect to be worthy of further study. When it came to the characters, as I mentioned earlier, I had a really hard time relating to them.

Madame Ranevsky is the likely protagonist of this story but she doesn't really ever do anything but run away from things and seemingly avoid reality. She is such a character of pity but I had a hard time feeling that badly for her considering her choices. The play opens with her returning from Paris. She returns not only to try and solve the problem of what to do about the impending sale of her estate but also because her lover in Paris has left her for another women and her lack of available funds. We later discover that she fled to Paris in the first place because she lost both her husband and her son. The play ends with her going back to her unfaithful lover in Paris once her estate is sold.

She also seems incapable of making a decision as what to do about the impending sale of her estate. She has a few possible options but she doesn't really like any of them and seems to trust to fate instead of taking decisive action. Lopahin offers to help her out by converting the massive cherry orchard into rentals for summer tourists. She is horrified by this but ends up doing nothing and it ends happening anyway with Lopahin benefiting instead of her

On the opposite spectrum from the ineffective aristocrat is the effective merchant, Lopahin. I did like him a little bit more. His motivations seemed a little clearer to me but he still wasn't all that sympathetic, mainly due to my environmentalist leanings. (Destroy a Cherry Orchard for tourists!! The capitalistic bastard!!) He is a former serf who has made something out of himself. He has an interesting speech in the beginning of the play where he balances between humiliation in front of the aristocrats and pride because he has made something of himself. He seems to have a very intense love-hate relationship with Ranevsky. I am note sure she is aware of this but he seems preoccupied, much more than any of the aristocrats, with class and power.
I am actually seeing to like it more now that I have been thinking about it and writing about it. Isn't that funny how that works out sometimes?

So in the end, I guess, I really should re-read this play and not concentrate so much on trying to pigeon hole it but really get into the characters and the plotlines. It is considered to be Chekvo's best work and it was the last play that he wrote. Maybe in a couple of months.

Anyway, here are some quotes that I culled from the play that I felt were either important or interesting.
I.E. "Humanity progresses, perfecting its powers. Everything that is beyond its ken now will one day become familiar and comprehensible; only we must work….Here among us in Russia the workers are few in number as yet. The vast majority of intellectual people I know, seek nothing, do nothing, are not fit as of yet for work of any kind." (Act II)

Then last year, when the villa had to be sold to pay my debts, I left for Paris where he robbed me, deserted me and took up with another woman. I tried to poison myself. It was also stupid and humiliating. Then I suddenly longed to be back in Russia, back in my own country with my little girl. [ Dries her eyes.] Lord, lord, be merciful, forgive me my sins. Don't punish me any more." Madame Ranevsky

"Now the cherry Orchard's mine! Mine!... Don't laugh at me. If my father and grandfather could only rise from their graves and see what happened, see how their Yermolay- Yermolay who was always being beaten, who could hardly write his name and ran round barefoot in the winter-how this same Yermolay bought this estate, the most beautiful estate in the world" Lopahin

"She brought me over to the wash-stand here in this very room, the nursery as it was. 'Don't cry, little peasant,' she said. "You'll soon be as right as rain." Little peasant. It's true my father was a peasant, but here am I in my white waistcoat and brown boots, barging in like a bull in a china shop. The only thing is, I am rich." -Lopahin

"What truth? You see where the truth lies, but I seem to have lost my sight "Now the cherry Orchard's mine! Mine!... Don't laugh at me. If my father and grandfather could only rise from their graves and see what happened, see how their Yermolay- Yermolay who was always being beaten, who could hardly write his name and ran round barefoot in the winter-how this same Yermolay bought this estate, the most beautiful estate in the world." Madame Ranevsky

Reading Plan.

Reading Plan.

Widely influence by Harold Bloom.

Monthly:
Shakespeare Play.
Toni Morrison Novel.

Annually:
Divine Comedy
Don Quixote.
Iliad.
Odyssey.
Lesbian Body.
Canterbury Tales.
The Awakening.
Harry Potter Books.
Dune Books.
Mists of Avalon
Lord of the Rings

Often:
William Blake
Ernest Hemingway

William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra

William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
Begin: 03/23/07
End: 03/26/07
Quality: Six Out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Drama. Fiction.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1623.
Fog Index:15.5/28% are harder.
Flesch Index: 43.1/36% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 12.4/30% are harder.
Complex Words: 18%/35% have more complex words.
Number: Three.

Okay. First of all, I couldn’t get the images of Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra and Richard Burton as Antony out of my head. The movie Cleopatra dominated my entire reading of this play. All the actions of the play were completely imagined as parts of that movie. I kept trying to stop it but when I could get those images out, the actors from Rome would come up. I couldn’t fucking win.

I don’t really think I had the attention span to read this at the moment. I mean I got the basic plot but I know that I missed a significant portion of the story. I never really knew how to read Cleopatra or Antony or Octavius. It was very unclear to me their motivations.

“The breaking of so great a thing should make/a greater crack. The round world/Should have shook lions into civil streets/and citizens to their dens. The death of Antony/is not a single doom; in the name lay/a moiety of the world.” (Act V:i)

Toni Morrison's Love

Toni Morrison’s Love
Begin: 03/22/07
End: 03/25/07
Quality: Nine Out of Ten.
Reason: Unread. Morrison. Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. African-American Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2003.
Fog Index:8.1/85% are harder.
Flesch Index: 72.4/86% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 6.1/86% are harder.
Complex Words: 8%/82% have more complex words.
Number: First.

Ms. Morrison, would you marry me?
Please?

I love this woman. This woman is so fucking amazing. She just blows me away. Seriously, just blows me little brain away. And that’s saying something because I read quite a bit. And I can honestly say that I have very few writers that I would put up their with Morrison. Her stories are just so damn rich. The sheer lyricism of her prose so dense with power and meaning. The depth and gravity of her characters vibrant. I want to have her love child. Okay. Let me pause in my brown nosing for a moment to actually talk about the story and what it was that I got out of it.

It is, like many of Ms. Morrison’s stories, an interwoven tale. It’s a complicated tale with various perspectives and angles. It concerns the people around Bill Cosey, especially the women. The two major characters are Heed and Christine. They were once close friends but have since become bitter rivals and now live together in Cosey’s mansion. Then Junior enters the picture. She is hired by Heed to serve as Heed’s assistant. The story then begins to unfold both backwards and forwards as Ms. Morrison begins to weave her spell. We discover the history of Bill Cosey and the women in his life as well as the continuing events in the seaside town.

I got so much out of this novel but not a lot that I can actually coherently explain or verbalize.
Like every other novel that Ms. Morrison has written, this one left me feeling upbeat and positive while still tasting the bitter and the sad. I don’t really have much else to say at this point other than this book really got me thinking about a lot of issues and that it renewed my undying love for Ms. Morrison.

Here’s a quote I stole from oprah.com. It’s by Ms. Morrison about love.


"The idea of a wanton woman is something I have inserted into almost all of my books," Ms. Morrison said. "An outlaw figure who is disallowed in the community because of her imagination or activity or status—that kind of anarchic figure has always fascinated me. And the benefits they bring with them, in spite of the fact that they are either dismissed or upbraided—something about their presence is constructive in the long run. Sula, for instance, was someone the other characters missed terribly when she was gone, even though she was the pariah. In Love, Junior is a poor, rootless, free-floating young woman—a survivor, a manipulator, a hungry person—but she does create a space where people can come with their better selves."

She said she was alarmed when she realized the title of this book might be Love, but the fact of her alarm was so interesting to her, it kept her from dismissing the idea. "It is easily the most empty cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion—because hatred is involved in it, too. I thought if I removed the word from nearly every other place in the manuscript, it could become an earned word. If I could give the word, in my very modest way, its girth and its meaning and its terrible price and its clarity at the moment when that is all there is time for, then the title does work for me."

And this is a quote from the book.

“I’ve come to believe every family has a Dark and needs one. All over the world, traitors help progress. It’s like being exposed to tuberculosis. After it fills the cemetery, it strengthens whoever survices; helps them know the difference between a strong mind and a healthy one; between the righteous and the right- which is,after all, progress. The problem for those left alive is what to do about revenge- how to escape the sweetness of its rot.” (139)

Margaret Reynold's Sappho Companion

Margaret Reynold's Sappho Companion
Begin: 03/14/07
End: 03/21/07
Quality: Eight Out of Ten.
Reason: Unread.
Genre: Literary History.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2002
Fog Index:13/50% are harded.
Flesch Index: 57/61% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 10.7/47% are harder.
Complex Words: 11%/68% have more.
Number: First.

I didn’t really know what to expect on receiving this book. I had assumed that it would have more to do with Sappho’s actually poetry. It’s not to say that I did not enjoy it. It’s not to say that I didn’t learn quite a bit. It’s just that I was expecting more about Sappho and her work and the book seemed to me to be primarily concerned with the influence of Sappho down throughout the years. I also found that many times Reynolds writing about different pieces of literature was far more interesting than my actually going ahead and reading them I. She has a way of making some of the more boring works to be fascinating.

And this book really just makes me want to read Sappho more. I don’t really have any works by Sappho other than what was found in this volume as well as stuff in a few anthologies.

Sarah Bradford's Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy

Sarah Bradford’s Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy.

Begin: 03/7/07

End: 03/14/07

Quality: Seven Out of Ten.

Reason: Unread.

Genre: Historical Biography.

Original Language: English.

Date of Publication: 2005

Fog Index:21.3/2% are harded.

Flesch Index: 31.8/20% are harder.

Flesch-Kincaid Index: 17.4/3% are harder.

Complex Words: 19%/31% have more.

Number: First.


I randomly bought this a few weeks ago at Harvard Book Store. It was a completely random purchase. I won’t say that I am disappointed but in hindsight, it probably wasn’t a good purchase. I really should try and restrict the books that I buy to stuff I am going to want to read again and again.

That being said, I enjoyed it. It was hard to get into at first but it eventually picked up. The main problem is that I felt that Bradford had much too high a expectation of her readers. I had an extremely difficult time keeping up with the vast array of characters which she introduced us to at an astonishing rate. She did have a few genealogical tables in the beginning as well as a list of characters, but even with all those helpful guides, it was pretty tough.

I really grew to like Lucrezia. I never got the sense that this book really gave me any full understanding of her but it certainly made for an interesting read and did flesh her out a little bit for me. It really was a fascinating look at early renaissance society and the culture of the Vatican at the time. I would like to read more about this period and about people in the biography.

A couple of others things which I would like to point out.

I was a little shocked at the amount of esteem Lucrezia was held in by the men in her lives, powerful men.
I am okay with Popes being hypocrites. I am okay with Popes having sex. I am even okay with Popes acting more like a despot than a religious leader. I draw the line at Popes with venereal diseases.
The relationship between Lucrezia and Alfonso D’Este is almost sweet. They really loved each other in a time when that didn’t really happen. I mean they both had their other affairs but they really had almost a modern relationship.
The Catholic Church is just fucked up!

Harold Bloom's How to read and why?

Harold Bloom’s How to read and why.
Begin: 03/5/07
End: 03/07/07
Quality: Ten Out of Ten.
Reason: Random
Genre: Literary Theory.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 2000
Fog Index:15.7/26% are harded.
Flesch Index: 44.5/39% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 13/24% are harder.
Complex Words: 15%/48% have more.
Number: Fourth?


I always enjoy Bloom. I think a lot of my enjoyment comes from just contemplating the sheer size of his intellect. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person but then you come across someone look Bloom and you feel so small and puny in comparison. I digress.

How to read and why.

I actually didn’t finish it this time. I only really read and preface and the introduction. The rest of the book is Bloom talking about various novels, short stories, poems, ect. And I wanted to again get a handle on how he felt about reading since I have been doing this book blog lately. I sometimes feel inadequate in writing about literature. This is probably silly considering that I read more than anyone I know and that I am more well-read than anyone I know. Yet, I have this idea in my head of the ideal reader and I have yet to fit the mold. I often feel intellectual inadequate, like I am missing something. Although, Socrates did say that “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” So maybe that somehow means that I am wise?
I digress.

Bloom has a lot of good things to say in this work, a lot. I jotted down some notes and quotes and they are below. I probably should organize them a little but I am not sure that’s going to happen tonight.

There is no single way to read well.
Reading is the most healing of solitary pleasures.
“We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.”
Literary criticism should be experiential and pragmatic, never theoretical.
Individuals should read for themselves so they can retain capacity to form their own judgments and opinions.
Reading prepares us for change, especially the final change.
It should be a solitary praxis and not a educational enterprise.
The prime concern should be what comes near to ourselves, what we can put to use.
Sir Francis Bacon “Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weight and consider.”
Read to strengthen the self and learn its authentic interests.
Reading is selfish activity, not social.
Bloom’s Reading Rules….
1.) Clear your head of cant.
2.) Do not attempt to improve your neighbor nor your neighborhood.
3.) A scholar is a candle which the lover and desire of all men will light.
4.) One must be an inventor to read well.

“We read, frequently if unknowingly, in a quest of a mind more original than our own”
Recovery of the ironic is a necessity, if we are to read well.
Reading is a difficult pleasure.

I would like to write a little on my own at some point about the reasons why I read but that will be sometime in the future. I guess I will leave it off here for now.

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

Begin: 03/5/07
End: 03/05/07
Quality: Ten Out of Ten.
Reason: Modern Drama
Genre: Modern Drama. Farce. Comedy.

Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1899.
Protagonists: Jack. Algernon.
Antagonists: Lady Bracknell.

Setting: London and Hertfordshire. 1890's.

Fog Index: 9.8/76% are harder.

Flesch Index: 64.5/73% are harder.

Flesch-Kincaid Index: 7.1/79% are harder.

Complex Words: 13%/59% have more.

Number: Ninth?

Oscar Wilde; why are you so good to me?

I mean really? This man is amazing. This play is simply hysterical. And it is so quotable.

"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain."

He's amazing.

I don't really have anything substantial to say about this play because it's so frivolous and mainly because my shift at work is over in ten minutes. Needless to say, I love it and it's gay little subtleties. I mean bunburying? Cucumber sandwiches? Oscar, I love you!!

Monique Wittig's The Lesbian Body

Monique Wittig’s The Lesbian Body

Begin: 03/2/07

End: 03/05/07

Quality: Ten Out of Ten.

Reason: Love It!!!

Genre: Fiction. Women’s Literature. Queer Literature.

Original Language: French.

Date of Publication: 1973.

Protagonists: Unnamed.

Antagonists: Unnamed.

Setting: Lesbos? A utopist lesbian island community.
Fog Index: N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words: N/A
Number: Fifth?

Where do I even begin? How do I even begin to talk about this text? I mean it’s just so rich and astonishing and shockingly erotic.

It doesn’t really have a plot. I would even hesitate to call it a work of fiction. It’s an extended prose-poem or possibly a lesbian erotic fable. Wittig is saying, “here I am” and I love her for that. She writes in her author’s note, “Our fiction validates us.” Which is one of the reasons why I connect so much to this work, well that and the eroticism but I will get to that later.

I often feel like a strange in a strange world. I have often been an outcast. It is not so easy to just blame it all on my sexuality, although that is very much a part of it. The important part to note is that I can relate to Wittig wanting to create a world of her own, to create this theoretical island of Lesbos where Sappho is worshipped as the supreme deity. Wittig writes, again in the author’s note, “The desire to bring the real body violently to life in the words of the book (everything that is written exists), the desire to do violence by writing to the language which I (j/e) can enter only by force.”

The other way in which I related to this book is the sheer and unabashed eroticism of it. I realize that most people will not find it erotic or romantic or passionate. Here is an example,” Under m/y frantic pressure your head becomes detached at the level of the cervical vertebrae."
Yes, it is violent. I understand that on a purely realistic and logical level, talking about detaching your lover’s head is not exactly most people’s idea of romantic. Wittig though is not at all advocating any sort of violence. She is celebrating, albeit in a experimental way, the female body. She is celebrating her love and her desire for this woman. And I, despite being a huge fag, love every visceral minute of it.
I guess I should probably talk about the pronoun thing. It is odd for the first couple of pages but I adjusting very quickly to it. And I think that Wittig makes a very valid point about revolting against the “mark of gender” as she refers to it. Wittig says, “But the ‘I’ [Je] who writes is driven back to her specific experience as subject. The ‘I’ [Je] who writes is alien to her own writing at every word because this ‘I’ [Je] uses a language alien to her.”

And now on to some of the quotes that I enjoyed.

“You gaze at m/e with your ten thousand eyes, you do so and it is I, I do not stir, m/y feet are completely embedded in the ground, I allow m/yself to be reached by your ten thousand glances or if you prefer by the single glances of your ten thousand eyes but it is not the same, such an immense gaze touches m/e everywhere.” (18)

“You are the tallest, Ishtar goddess of goddesses you are the powerful one, blessed be your name over centuries of centuries. You are the possessor of all power, you are strong impassive while you abide in the green in the violet of the heavens while they all await you, head erect you shine in the black nights, you are blinding days of summer, desire for you overwhelms m/e once for all together with terrors as befits all your adorers, the earth the trees the waters the rivers the torrents the seas the stars of the sky do they not tremble at the mere utterance the mere vibration of your formidable name.” (93)

“Your hand followed by your arm have entered into m/y throat, you traverse m/y larynx, you arrive at m/y lungs, you itemize m/y organs, you make m/e die ten thousands deaths while I smile, you rip out m/y stomach, you tear m/y intestines, you project the uttermost fury into m/y body, I cry out but not from pain, I am overtaken seized hold of, I go over to you entirely, I explode the small units of my ego, I am threatened, I am desired by you. A tree shoots in m/y body, it moves it branches with extreme violence with extreme gentleness, or else it is a bush of burning thorns it tears the other side of m/u exposed muscles m/y insides m/y interiors, I am inhabited, I am not dreaming, I am penetrated by you, now I must struggle against bursting to retain m/y overall perception, I reassemble you in all m/y organs, I burst”

August Strindberg's Miss Julie

August Strindberg’s Miss Julie
Begin: 03/4/07
End: 03/04/07
Quality: Ten Out of Ten.
Reason: Modern Drama Anthology
Genre: Modern Drama. Naturalistic Tragedy.
Original Language: Swedish.
Date of Publication: 1888, originally banned in Sweden.
Protagonists: Julie.
Antagonists: Jean.
Setting: The Count’s Manor House, Sweden on Midsummer Eve, 1880’s.
Number: Third?

Good stuff to be found in Modern Drama. Damn good stuff.

Okay. Here’s the plot in a nut shell. Julie is the count’s daughter. Jean is the count’s valet. The entire play takes place in one night, midsummer night at a manor house in Sweden. Julie dances at the servant’s party and is attracted to a senior servant, Jean. They eventually sleep together and afterwards most of the drama occurs of what to do next.

The play is very much concerned with power and class struggles. Julie has power over Jean in the beginning of the play because she is upper class but once they have their encounter, the power shifts completely.

I really liked it. I have read it before, a few years ago, for a class that I took. I have never gotten rid of the anthology because it contains so many damn good plays.

Let me list off some of the good quotations.

1.) Julie: Perhaps! But so are you!- For that matter, everything is strange. Life, people, everything. Like floating scum, drifting on and on across the water, until it sinks down and down! That reminds me of a dream I have now and then. I’ve climbed up on top of a pillar. I sit there and see no way of getting down. I get dizzy when I look down, but I don’t have the courage to jump. I can’t hold on firmly, and I long to be able to fall, but I don’t fall. And yet I’ll have no peace until I get down, no rest unless I get down, down on the ground, I’d want to be under the earth. Have you ever felt anything like that?”
Jean: No. I dream that I’m lying under a high tree in a dark forest. I want to get up, up on top, and look out over the bright landscape, where the sun is shining, and plunder the bird’s nest up there, where the golden eggs lies. And I climb and climb but the trunk’s so thick and smooth, and it’s so far to the first branch. But I know if I just reached that first branch, I’d go right to the top, like up a ladder. I haven’t reached it yet, but I will, even if it’s only a dream.
2.) Jean: Love is game we play when we get time off from work, but we don’t have all day and night, like you. I think you’re sick. Your mother was crazy, and her ideas have poisoned your life.
3.) Oh, I'd love to see the whole of your sex swimming in a sea of blood just like that. I think I could drink out of your skull! I’d like to bathe my feet in your open chest and eat your heart roasted whole! You think I’m weak. You think I loved you because my womb hungered for your seed Bear your child and take your name!—Come to think of it, what is your name anyway? I've never heard your last name. You probably don't even have one. I'd be Mrs. Doorkeeper or Madame Floorsweeper. You dog with my name on your collar—you lackey with my initials on your buttons!

So much goes on in this play that is powerful and though-provoking. We have class struggle and power struggles, rampant sexuality and misogyny. It’s amazing that it can say so very much in so few scenes and with so few characters.


So I guess I’ll talk first about the misogyny. The general reading of the play is that Julie is a grotesque and tragic aristocrat who seduces Jean and then creates a whirlwind of terror and misadventure.
Strindberg wrote that Julie has a “weak and degenerate brain.” Strindberg seems to blame Julie’s problems on her upbringing. Her mother not wanting to get married, wanting her to learn “boyish” things and believing in the equality of the sexes.

And yet, I really liked Julie. She was vilified for wanting to have sex with a “lower class” man. But is that really all that much of a crime? And I really liked what she said towards the end of the play, “You think I’m weak. You think I loved you because my womb hungered for your seed”. I love that statement. The idea that sexual desire makes us weak, that wanting to be plowed is a sign of inferiority and weakness. It’s like she taking a stand for straight women and gay bottoms everywhere.
Here are some more examples of Jean’s cruelty towards Julie post-coitus.

Julie: And now you’ve seen the hawk’s back
Jean: Not exactly it’s back…

Jean: And a whore is a whore.

Jean: Menial’s strumpet lackey’s whore! shut up and get out of here! Who are you to lecture me on coarseness? None of my kind is ever as coarse as you were tonight. Do you think one of your maids would throw herself at a man the way you did? Have you ever seen any girl on my class offer herself like that? I’ve only seen it among animals and streetwalkers.”

I think the most evident theme in the play dealt with class and power struggle. Miss Julie is very much in control and in power in the beginning of the play, even though both Jean and Kristine seem to look down on her. The play opens up with jean saying, “Miss Julie’s crazy again tonight; absolutely crazy!”
There is this whole theme running through the play of how Jean is a better man than the aristocrats. How he has better taste, more moral decency, ect. than does Miss Julie. Yet, when she is in the room with Jean and Kristine, she is the undisputed master. And it is interesting to watch the shift in power take place from Julie to Jean. It, of course, revolves around the sex. Once that single act occurs, it’s like Julie has become a powerless leper and Jean takes over and shows his true side.

Henrick Ibsen's A Doll House

Henrick Ibsen's A Doll House
Begin: 03/3/07
End: 03/03/07
Quality: Ten Out of Ten.
Reason: Random
Genre: Drama. Women's Literature.
Number: Third?
Thoughts:

Wow. No matter how many times I read this play, it just keeps moving me. It always has something new in it, something brilliant and thought provoking.

Nora, our protagonist, is seemingly happily married to Torvald Helmer. We learn however that a few years ago she secretly borrowed money in order to go to Italy for her husband’s life. She is blackmailed in the beginning of the play because she forged her father’s handwriting.

Her husband discovers the truth eventually. He freaks out and is paranoid over the effect this will have on his reputation and standing in the community. The blackmailer recants but Nora’s whole world has changed at this point and she decides to leave her husband.

It’s so crazy to my mind that this play was written in 1879 by a man. I mean, this is a serious slap in the face to a lot of the marriage conventions of that time period. I realize that to someone raised in today’s culture, it’s really nothing but we live in a completely different world. The Victorians took marriage very seriously. It was so shocking that the lead actress in Germany refused to play the part of Nora, unless Ibsen changed the ending.

Here are some juicy quotes that I pulled out of the text.

“I’d gladly work nights and days for you, Nora-endure sorrow and want for your sake. But nobody endures sacrifices his honor for his love.” Helmer, Act III, 41

“Nora!-No, I must read it again-Yes,yes; it is so! I’m saved! Nora, I’m saved!” When he receives the letter from Krogstad recanting the blackmail. Helmer. Act III, 39

"I don't believe that any more. I believe I am first of all a human being, just as much as you-or at any rate that I must try to become one. Oh, I know very well that most people agree with you, Torvald, and that it says something like that in all the books. But what people say and what teh books say is no longer enough for me. I have to think about these things myself and see if I can't find the answers." Nora, Act III

One day I might, yes. Many years from now, when I’ve lost my looks a little. Don’t laugh. I mean, of course, a time will come when Torvald is not as devoted to me, not quite so happy when I dance for him, and dress for him, and play with him. Nora. Act I, 17

Free. To be free, absolutely free. To spend time playing with the children. To have a clean, beautiful house, the way Torvald likes it. Nora. Act I, 18.

From now on, forget happiness. Now it’s just about saving the remains, the wreckage, the appearance. Helmer, Act III, 39.

I have been performing tricks for you, Torvald. That’s how I’ve survived. You wanted it like that. You and Papa have done me a great wrong. It’s because of you I’ve made nothing of my life. Nora. Act III, 40.








Damn! It’s such a well crafted play. Nora really is nothing more than a doll to her husband. He refers to her always as some little pet name…”my squirrel” , “my wastrel” or “my litte songbird”.
Even her friend Mrs. Linde says to her, “Nora, Nora, when are you going to be sensible?”
Her husband only seems to value her as a trophy of his. He says at one point, “Am I not to look at my most precious possession? All that loveliness that is mine, nobody’s but mine, all of it mine.”
He never really takes her seriously. He doesn’t see her as a fellow human being, as a partner. In fact, all of their dialogue is very paternal. He treats her as you would expect a doting father to treat a spoiled daughter.

This play is viewed as the first feminist play and although Ibsen denied this, one can easily see the feminist overtones in this play. A woman leaves her husband because he treats her as a piece of property. Yet, I also see a more universal message in the play.

Here we have a woman who was locked into her role as trophy to her husband. Her husband didn’t care about her expect as a trinket, as a possession. She thought that they loved each other and when her “reality” was shattered by the truth, she left.

I think a lot of us get locked into roles. We get stuck in ruts in relationships, in our jobs, in our friendships. I see human beings as constantly evolving, changing, growing but sometimes its hard to get that across to people who have know you for long periods of time. How do you explain to your family that you’re not that boy of fourteen who put olives on their fingers? How do you get across that you are a constantly evolving person whose interests and concerns and very personality are not to be pinned down.

And I am very concerned about the way in which work changes us all. Mrs. Linde says, “One has to live, Doctor” but I think that sometimes we distract ourselves with all of these things, these expenses that we don’t really need and we force ourselves to work all of these hours and do all of these things which we do not want to do, and for what?

I would also like to talk for a minute about the character of Mrs. Linde as well. She is worlds apart from Nora. Mrs. Linde is much more aware of the world. She is aware of hard choices. She had made them. She broke it off with Krogstad because she had a sick mother and two younger brothers to support. She works for a living now. She ends up marrying Krogstad. She is tells him “give me someone and something to work for.” I think there is a contrast here between the relationship of Helmer and Nora and the future relationship of Korgstaad and Mrs. Linde. They are going to have a mutual partnership. She tells him “Two on one wreck are better off than each on his own.”

Okay. I think I have talked about this play far too long. I will leave it off here. But damn, it’s fucking good.

Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons

Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons
Begin: 02/22/07
End: 03/02/07
Quality: Eight Out of Ten.
Reason: Unread. Newbery.
Genre: Fiction; Children's Literature.
Number: First.
Thoughts:

It was a little slow at first but I ended up really liking it quite a lot.

Their are really two plot lines that are co-joined. We have the story of 13 year old Salamanca Tree Hilda while she takes a roadtrip with her grandparents to Lewiston, Idaho. This is the town where her mother did not return. Along the way, Salamanca tells her grandparents all about Phoebe, her friend. Phoebe has certain parells to her story.

They had some great quotes too.