The Megrim of King Richard the Third

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

— Act One, Scene One The Life and Death of Richard the Third
by William Shakespeare

"The winter of our discontent" is an ornament of Shakespeare's language that has perhaps slipped into a cliché, since it is also a label for an incident in modern British history. (Public sector strikes, inclement weather, and annoyance with the Labour government in 1978 and early 1979, which may — in their sum — have gifted us with Margaret Thatcher.)*

In itself, it is an apt label when 'everything' — public matters, private life, or anything similar — is in a difficult frame of affairs.

N.B.: Laurence Olivier's recitation of the lines is well worth finding on YouTube.

Physiologus's Salamander

THIS time the literary text discussed on this 'Alexandrian' site does, in fact, come from Alexandria. Last year in university, the teacher of a Byzantinian folk literature course started his semester by presenting three tales from Physiologus.

One fable reminded me particularly of end of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the healing sun berries that are carried to the old star by the firebird) and C.S. Lewis's other Narnia books, and in retrospect the Wikipedia article clarifies that Physiologus, written apparently before the final downfall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D., is in fact the origin of Christian beast myths which are present throughout Europe even in these centuries.

Little Bear's Visit

One of the staples of early childhood literature in the English tongue, which perseveres into the current generation and across country borders as my experience in a Berliner bookshop proves, is the Little Bear series by the American, Else Holmelund Minarik.

"Top of Zürich on Uetliberg Uto Kulm (Switzerland)",
January 10, 2010
By Roland zh
A random yet atmospheric picture of bears which is meant to invoke topical beariness whilst not clashing with our mental recollection  of Sendakian beariness. The cover of Little Bear's Visit, with Sendak's bear, can be found at Google Books.
Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Accompanied by the illustrations of Maurice Sendak, it has a gentility, a warmth and serenity which are heartening. In the sparing use of colour in the illustrations and of verbiage in the text, it is an endorsing example of the modernist tendency to pare away fuss and feathers. In this case it achieves, in the end, a truthful-feeling simplicity.

***

Holly and Ivy

[A little out of season, but atmospheric, from the English folklore, and presented without further comment:]

From Book of Hours of Anne of Brittany,

Queen of France,

by Jean Bourdichon

(Painted 1503-1508)

From Wikimedia Commons

Holly stands in the hall, fair to behold:
Ivy stands without the door, she is full sore a cold.
Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;
Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Holly and his merry men, they dance and they sing,
Ivy and her maidens, they weep and they wring.
Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;
Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Ivy hath chapped fingers, she caught them from the cold,
So might they all have, aye, that with ivy hold.
Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;
Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Holly hath berries red as any rose,
The forester, the hunter, keep them from the does.
Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;
Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Ivy hath berries black as any sloe;
There come the owl and eat him as she go.
Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;
Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Holly hath birds a fair full flock,
The nightingale, the popinjay, the gentle laverock.
Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;
Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Good ivy, what birds hast thou?
None but the owlet that cries how, how.
Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;
Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is. 

*

Recorded by Cecil Sharp in Gloucestershire, UK
From "The Holly and the Ivy" on Wikipedia.

Enemy Books: The Scottish Chiefs

Part of a series of thus far fairly one-sided discourse on the merits and demerits of certain books which have the ill fortune to fall afoul of me.

My relationship to this novel is fairly ambiguous in that when I first read it, I was fairly taken by it though I had the uneasy feeling that it was a wee bit trashy in its melodrama.

*

Imperfectly Remembered Synopsis:

Surprisingly, it is set with the same characters and in the same time as the film that led Mel Gibson to prominence in his role as a roughly clad 13th century barbarian with powder-blue strips across his cheekbones — by which of course I mean Braveheart.

But the William Wallace of the author Jane Porter's imagination is rather an overgrown extrapolation (with extra muscles) of the ideal 18th-century hero, the pure and magnanimous enthusiast of the clear and civilized passions and no discernibly individual character.

Her plot and treatment of history still tip her into Romantic territory in my view. The literary nationalism, interest in medieval history and the fact that her hero is at home in the outdoors and the rough-and-tumble of military campaigning help position it. At the risk of perpetrating humbug, her book fits the age of the young Kosciuszko and George Washington but makes itself even more at home in the age of Byron and the French Revolution. The book was first published in 1810, so there is really not much need to estimate this chronology. Sir Walter Scott she is not, and still I for one am glad that her simpler ambitions steer her clear of the unfortunate proclivities of Scott's, e.g. prologues.

At the centrepoint of the book, the chief heroine is Helen of Mar. She is a noblewoman who meets the Scottish hero by way of being rescued by him from the clutches of the dastardly foe. Had Helen been born six hundred years later, on a continent across the seas, she would surely have been plucked off the railroad tracks of the Wild West, still struggling in a coil of restrictive rope in which the villain has fettered her, by some doughty cowboy or Army officer. She comes to idolize William Wallace as a freedom fighter — all the inglorious deeds of the historical William Wallace are expunged from the novel with a Victorian-esque disregard for truth when it impedes a good moral lecture — and then comes Love. Her beloved is pretty busy with the English and must besides possess some grain of Inscrutability to impress the reader, so his sentiments are unknown even though his chivalrous esteem for the fair damozel is indubitable.

Then, of course, the English are uncharacteristically successful. They manage to capture the Scottish hero, and I probably needn't reveal the ending and its squicky martyr-fest. The author's comfort is that Robert the Bruce still became King of Scotland and so The Cause prevailed, or so I remember.

As a yarn the tale isn't half bad, but it hits on archetypes (like a wicked stepmother, too) so well that one is tempted to call them clichés. Its world and in particular its characterization are not healthy or natural.

The reason for determining The Scottish Chiefs to be an Enemy Book is, however, its indigestible — dyspepsia-provoking, if you prefer — freight of sentiment, sugar and sap.

Completeness of Ordeal: Read at least 2 times, entirely.
Birthdate of Enmity: ca. 2003. Previous reading perhaps 3 or 4 years earlier.
Likelihood That Enmity Is Justified: 90%

***

Evidence for the Prosecution:

when at the age of twenty-two the enraptured lover was allowed to pledge that faith publicly at the altar, which he had so often vowed in secret to his Marion, he clasped her to his heart, and softly whispered: "Dearer than life! part of my being! blessed is this union, that mingles thy soul with mine, now, and forever!"

Edward's invasion of Scotland broke in upon their innocent joys. Wallace threw aside the wedding garment for the cuirass and the sword. But he was not permitted long to use either—Scotland submitted to her enemies; and he had no alternative but to bow to her oppressors, or to become an exile from man, amid the deep glens of his country.

The tower of Ellerslie was henceforth the lonely abode of himself and his bride.

Source: The Scottish Chiefs, Jane Porter [Gutenberg.org]

***

Illustration: "Die Schicksahlskönigin erscheint Prinz Arthur," (c. 1769), Johann Heinrich Füssli
(1741-1825)
Ink and aquarell on card, 38.2 × 50 cm; via Wikimedia Commons

Enemy Books: Her Father's Daughter

Part of a series: "I thought it would be nice to begin featuring books which I cannot stand for whichever reason. (...) But the main point of an Enemy Books series is to invite readers to leave a comment to describe the beauties which they find in the work. (Even if the Enemy Book blog post in question is months old.)" — "suggestions for a next enemy book" are also welcome. But while the idea is generally for kinder readers to point out the good sides of the book in the comments beneath, perhaps that is not possible this time! Edit: What is the most awful book you have encountered?

This time the 'enemy book' is not a notably familiar one, but Her Father's Daughter (by Gene Stratton-Porter) is sensationally awful and bears the distinction of instantly coming to mind when I think about the worst book I have ever read.

Its young heroes cast in an early gung-ho, conventional Hardy Boys/Bobbsey Twins tradition, its plot outrageous, its events absurd, the most distinctively horrid element in it is still its author's hatred of the Japanese.

Set in California, it is about a fatherless young American woman, Linda Strong, who realizes that there is Something Wrong about a Japanese pupil in her friend Donald Whiting's high school senior class. The classmate is, in fact, a middle-aged man pretending to be an 18-year-old so that he may spy on his country of residence. I was going to write more about her racial theory but it's so upsetting that I'd rather not. Aside from these semipolitical threads in her work, the author's ideas on human psychology and nouveau riches and other phenomena are generally strange, so there is a great deal of bemusement to go around.

***

Completeness of Ordeal: Could not finish, at first. But I skimmed through all of it for this post, and it's corking reading if done ironically.
Birthdate of Enmity: ca. 2008.
Likelihood That Enmity Is Justified: on sociopolitical grounds, 100%

***

Evidence, Pro-Enmity:

[Linda:] "There is nothing in California I am afraid of except a Jap, and I am afraid of them, not potentially, not on account of what all of us know they are planning in the backs of their heads for the future, but right here and now, personally and physically. Don't antagonize Oka Sayye. Don't be too precipitate about what you're trying to do. Try to make it appear that you're developing ideas for the interest and edification of the whole class. Don't incur his personal enmity. Use tact."

[Donald:] "You think I am afraid of that little jiu-jitsu?" he scoffed. "I can lick him with one hand."

*

Master Drawings VI — Landscape With An Obelisk

The Master Drawings series of pictures paired with poems, essays, etc. — drawing from the works in the Ashmolean Museum's present exhibition in Oxford — continues. The next painting was supposed to be one of William Blake's of a scene from Dante's Divine Comedy, but being whelmed beneath the depths of Dante's argle-bargle I threw in the metaphorical towel today.

Preliminary note: Caspar David Friedrich's Landscape with an Obelisk is not on Wikimedia Commons, so here it is (if the link fails us not) at the Ashmolean Museum and in the Guardian's digital pages. Second note: Unfortunately I have forgotten everything about dynasties and time periods and archaeological sites I have ever learned, so this is not written with a solid background on Ancient Egypt. The reader beware, and all that.

***

It would be remiss not to bring up Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" in connection with Caspar David Friedrich's "Landscape with an Obelisk." They are both charming works in their way, both possessing an Ancient Egyptian element, and both — dare I allege it — art-historically speaking, a trifle inauthentic.

Imbued with a fascination with Ancient Egypt, by grace of school, films and Agatha Christie TV adaptations, and weekends at one's grandfather's and great aunt's homes (they were subscribers to National Geographic, and my grandfather was highly interested in Ancient Egypt himself), one might find "Ozymandias" catchy when one first came across it in school; but one could not fail to consider it a shock to the system.

It was impossible to meld mental images of Ramses, Amenhotep, Nefertiti and cohort together with the fantasy landscape of the poem. From a very personal perspective, and also because I have no idea what Assyrian sounds like and if 'Ozymandias' is intelligible in it, it has always seemed to me more Assyrian than Egyptian. Partly, the poem makes me think of grey stone, whereas somehow the engrained tan and roast-red colours of the Egyptian landscape and ancient art, and the steely sun, are so remarkable that I think the poem should have made reference to them. Edward Lear's delightful series of watercolours from modern Egypt in 1867 (and 1847) certainly does.

By coincidence or design, the sepia-like colours of Caspar David Friedrich's drawing (which incidentally seems to hail from 1803, so before the peak of his production) in my view really does do justice to the Egyptian link. In the meantime the landscape itself seems a tame and indubitably European one — the possible likeness to the agriculture-patched plains of the Egyptian valley being fairly shallow — but it isn't clear at all that Friedrich even meant to portray a southerly setting. (A good researcher would doubtless find this out.)

What I also like about the painting is its coincidentally reflecting the arbitrary way in which obelisks are dispersed around the world these days: near the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, in front of St. Peter's Cathedral with a crucifix on the tip, in joyous Paris, in an Istanbul hippodrome, or of course in modern Egypt; and, as an artificial recreation inspired by the real thing, even in front of the dome in a strangely pluriedificed square in Potsdam. (Whether this cosmopolitan placement has become a monument to pirating tendencies or to the ego of the imperially-minded person like Napoleon or to a western love for Egyptian history and art, as much as to whoever originally had it built thousands of years earlier, may well be inquired.)

In Friedrich' setting of the monument, it also seems to have a pleasing modesty about it. Someone thought an obelisk would be pretty, he put it out on a grassy little knoll or what-have-you, and the cows will continue to graze and the lapwings will continue to fly past with scarcely any care of this addition to their haunts.

Illustration: Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840): Der Sommer (Landschaft mit Liebespaar), 1807 71.4 cm x 103.6 cm; oil on canvas; in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich
[via Wikimedia Commons]