Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Essay: "Blindness." Jorge Luis Borges (1).



Review: Blind in one eye, mostly blind in the other, Gorges believes that his blindness is a gift—something to be used. He learns Anglo-Saxon, for example, as others read it to him. Being blind, as with so many other talented people, is a blessing. Homer. James Joyce. “It is one more instrument among so many—all of them so strange—that fate or chance provide.”

Quote: “I had replaced the visible world with the aural world of the Anglo-Saxon language.”

Quote: “I did not allow blindness to intimidate me.”

Quote: “Being blind has its advantages. I owe to the darkness some gifts: …so many lines of poetry, so many poems….”

Quote: “In general, writers try to make what they say seem profound; Wilde was a profound man who tried to seem frivolous.”

Quote: On being appointed director of the library: “Little by little I came to realize the strange irony of events. I had always imagined Paradise as a kind of library.”

Quote: On James Joyce: “We have those two vast and—why not say it?—unreadable novels, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.”

Quote: “We may believe that Homer never existed, but that the Greeks imagined him as blind in order to insist on the fact that poetry is above all, music; that poetry is, above all, the lyre; that the visual can or cannot exist in a poet.”

Rating of the essay: ***** out of *****. 

To be continued.

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Essay: "Hashish in Marseilles." Walter Benjamin.



Review: Memories of the intoxication after taking Hashish as he walks around Marseilles. The description is often disjointed.

Quote: “Versailles, for one who has taken hashish, is not too large, or eternity too long. Against the background of these immense dimensions of inner experience, of absolute duration and immeasurable space….”

Quote: “I strolled along the quay and read one after another the names of the boats tied up there. As I did so, an incomprehensible gaiety came over me, and I smiled in turn at all the Christian names of France.”

Quote: “To begin to solve the riddle of the ecstasy of trance, one ought to meditate on Ariadne’s thread.”

Quote: “In the night the trance cuts itself off from everyday reality with fine prismatic edges; it forms a kind of figure and is more easily memorable. I should like to say: it shrinks and takes on the form of a flower.”

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Essay: "Unpacking My Library." Walter Benjamin.



Review: Thoughts while unpacking his books by a book collector, with memories of where he acquired the books, where he lived with them and where he read them.

Quote: “Not that they [the books] came alive in him; it is he who lives in them.”

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Essay: "In Praise of Shadows." Junichiro Tanizaki (2)


Review: Trying to construct a traditional Japanese home while hiding the modern appliances fueled by electricity and plumbing. The world of shadows is a natural world. We are losing the world of shadows. A tribute to the old ways of doing things in Japan. A tribute to traditional Japanese culture.

Quote: “It has been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is to be meditated upon, a kind of silent muse evoked by the combination of lacquer ware and the light of a candle flickering in the dark.”

Quote: “And so it has come to be that the beauty of a Japanese room depends on a variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows—it has nothing else.”

Quote: “But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light—his quest for a brighter light never ceases,, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.”

Quote: “So benumbed are we nowadays to electric lights that we have become utterly insensitive to the evils of excessive illumination…. Tea houses, restaurants, inns, and hotels are sure to be lit far too extravagantly.”

Quote: “Light is used not for reading or writing or for sewing but for dispelling the shadows in the farthest corners, and this runs against the basic idea of the Japanese room.”

Quote: “Of this I am convinced, that the conveniences of modern culture cater exclusively to youth, and that the times grow increasingly inconsiderate of old people.”

Quote: “…to snatch away from us even the darkness beneath trees that stand deep in the forest is the most heartless of crimes.”

Quote: “I am aware of and most grateful for the benefits of the age. No matter what complaints we may have, Japan has chosen to follow the West, and there is nothing for her to do but bravely move ahead and leave us old ones behind.”

Quote: “This world of shadows we are losing.”

Rating of this Essay: ***** of *****.

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Essay: "In Praise of Shadows." Junichiro Tanizaki (1).



Review: Trying to construct a traditional Japanese home while hiding the modern appliances fueled by electricity and plumbing. The world of shadows is a natural world. We are losing the world of shadows. A tribute to the old ways of doing things in Japan. A tribute to traditional Japanese culture.

Quote: “What incredible pains the fancier of traditional architecture must take when he sets out to build a house in pure Japanese style, striving somehow to make electric wires, gas pipes, and water lines harmonize with the austerity of Japanese rooms.”

Quote: “No stove worthy of the name will ever look right in a Japanese room.”

Quote: “The recent vogue for electric lamps in the style of the old standing lanterns comes, I think, from a new awareness of the softness and warmth of paper, qualities which for a time we had forgotten; it stands as evidence of our recognition that this material is far better suited than glass to the Japanese house.”

Quote: “Paper, I understand, was invented by the Chinese; but Western paper is to us no more than something to be used, while the texture of Chinese paper and Japanese paper gives us a certain feeling of warmth, of calm and repose.”

Quote: “Of course, this ‘sheen of antiquity’ of which we hear so much is in fact the glow of grime.” 

Rating of Essay:  ***** of *****

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

To be continued.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Essay: "Death." Lu Hsun



Review: Thoughts on death, the belief in ghosts (‘souls’ r ‘spirits’) and the transmigration of souls. The wealthy prefer to be ghosts, the poor to be born again as babies because they have no fine clothes to cut a good figure after death. The wealthy? “Just as in life they expect to be a privileged class. Round about the age of fifty, they look for a burial place, buy a coffin, and burn paper money to open a bank account in the nether regions, expecting their sons and grandsons to sacrifice to them every year.” The author has some
Practical thoughts on dying, death, and living:

.Don’t accept a cent from anyone for the funeral.
.Get the whole thing over quickly, have me buried and be done with it.
.Do nothing in the way of commemoration.
.Forget me and live your own lives.
.Don’t take other people’s promises seriously.
.Have nothing to do with people who injure others but who oppose revenge and advocate tolerance.
.If this is dying, it isn’t really painful. It may not be quite like this at the end, of course; but still, since this happens only once in a lifetime, I can take it….”

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Essay: "This Too Is Life." Lu Hsun.



Review: Random thoughts while ill.

Quotes: The narrator is very sick. “Give me some water and put the light on so that I can have a look around.”
“ ‘What for?’ She sounded rather alarmed, doubtless thinking I was raving.”
“Because I want to live. Understand that? This, too, is life. I want to take a look round.”

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Essay: "The Execution of Tropmann." Ivan Turgenev.



Review: Like Hazlitt’s description of the bare knuckles fight, this essay is a detailed description of an execution by guillotine of a heartless murderer, who maintains his composure and his determined claim of innocence until his death—attended by a large, excited crowd, a few notables, and, of course, the executioners. The narrator does not want to attend but he is worried that people will think of him as a coward. So he becomes a voyeur to an execution.

Construction of the scaffold, the narrator’s thoughts during the final minute of the execution, his tortured, guilty thoughts that he is witnessing another murder, and his purpose in revealing these details because he wants to supply people who are opposed to capital punishment and public executions with evidence in excruciating detail.

Quote: “But not one of us, absolutely no one looked like a man who realized that he had been present at the performance of an act of social justice. Everyone tried to turn away in spirit and, as it were, shake off the responsibility for this murder.”

Quote: “But at the sight of that composure…all the feelings in me—the feelings of disgust for a ;pitiless murderer, a monster who cut the throats of little children while they were crying ‘Maman! Maman!’—the  feeling of compassion, finally for a man whom death was about to swallow up, disappeared and dissolved in—a feeling of astonishment. What was sustaining Tropmann?”

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Essay: "Such, Such Were the Joys..." George Orwell.



Review: Memories of childhood at an English boarding school, Crossgates, in which the author describes the fears, oppression and depression that were part of sensitive  children’s growing up in that environment. From being beaten for bed-wetting to being beaten for translating a Latin sentence inaccurately, the life of the school boy was at the mercy of tyrants. The results? “But I did know that the future was dark. Failure, failure, failure—failure behind me, failure ahead of me—that was by far the deepest conviction that I carried away from Crossgates.”

Orwell [Eric Blair] concludes this chain of childhood memories: “…I think I should only feel what one invariably feels in revisiting any scene of childhood: how small everything has grown,, and how terrible is the deterioration in myself!”

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Essay: "The Death of the Moth." Virginia Woolf.



Review: Reminds me of Robert Frost’s poem about the insignificant insect that crossed his page. The moth is insignificant. We pay little attention to it, but it is life. The essayist, however, is an observer of its struggle to live and it relaxes into death. I can never look again at a moth as insignificant because of this essay.

Quotes:
“They [moths] are hybrid creatures, neither gay like butterflies….”

“Nevertheless, the present specimen…seemed to be content with life.”

“Nothing, I knew, had any chance against death.”

“One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely.”

“O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.”

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Essay: "STreet Haunting." Virginia Woolf.



Review: She needs to have something to do. She can’t just go out. She needs to have a purpose. She decides to buy a pencil—on a cold winter evening. She moves down the street, encounters people and tries to enter their lives for just a few moments. She lets her imagination run free into the houses of leaders of state. She builds and furnishes beautiful houses. She lets her mind wander in the stream of consciousness. The book shop becomes the personalities of the people who have written travel books. Finally, she returns home to her familiar surroundings with her treasure—the pencil.

Quotes:
In the book shop: “There are travelers, too, row upon row of them, still testifying, indomitable spinsters that they were, to the discomforts that they endured and the sunsets they admired in Greece….”

“One must, one always must, do something or other; it is not allowed one simply to enjoy oneself.”

“It is always an adventure to enter a new room; for the lives and characters of its owners have distilled their atmosphere into it, and directly we enter it we breast some new wave of emotion.”

“Into each of these lives one could penetrate a little way, far enough to give oneself the illusion that one is not tethered to a single mind, but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and minds of others.”

“…escape is the greatest of pleasures; street haunting in winter the greatest of adventures.”

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Essay: "A Piece of Chalk." G.K. Chesterton.



Review: He wants to draw pictures on brown paper. He has several pieces of colored chalk.. He goes out along the landscape where he sits in isolation—not to draw the landscape but to draw spiritual objects like the soul of a cow. Like the great men who wrote about spiritual things, the real soul of the universe.

But he has forgotten to bring white chalk. Here follows a dissertation about the color white, which is a positive color, not the mere absence of color. And then he remembers that he is sitting on white chalk, the White Cliffs: “The landscape was made entirely out of white chalk…. I stooped and broke a piece of the rock I sat on.” So now he can complete his pictures of spiritual things.

Comment: I have never quite understood why G.K. Chesterton is so popular. I guess I’m just not smart enough to understand his ideas. He almost seems as if he is talking to himself—the kinds of things you would never say to another rational human being. RayS.

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Essay: "Laughter." Max Beerbohm.



Review: Mr. Beerbohm begins his essay on laughter with the following statement: “Mr. Bergson, in his well-known essay on this theme, says…well, he says many things, but none of these, though I have just read them, do I clearly remember, nor am I sure that in the act of reading, I understood any of them.” That’s how I feel after reading Mr. Beerbohm’s rambling essay on laughter.

He makes several statements that seem to be true: “I will wager that nine-tenths of the world’s best laughter is laughter at, not with.” And, he notes that no one has ever died of laughter. Then he goes on to touch on Lord Byron, Falstaff and Sam Johnson, the latter of whom seemed to generate laughter as he did his sociability to avoid the melancholy that depressed his life. Finally, Beerbohm concludes with a man he calls Comus who was unable to laugh. Smile, yes, to show that he understood the point of a funny story, but never laugh with his body. As I said, the essay rambles.

The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. Ed. Phillip Lopate. New York: Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. 1995.