The (almost) Complete Truth

Emma 

by Jane Austen

“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.”   ― Jane Austen, Emma

I most recently read Emma as the April book for my local Great Books reading group. I had previously read it as the introductory novel in a class at the Newberry Library. The class was entitled "Jane Austen's Heirs" and included novels by such "heirs" of hers as Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bowen, Barbara Pym, and Anita Brookner. Rereading this delightful novel is something I will undoubtedly do again.

Before she began the novel, Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." In the very first sentence she introduces the title character as "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich." Emma, however, is also rather spoiled; she greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities; and she is blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives and is often mistaken about the meanings of others' actions.

While Emma differs strikingly from Austen's other heroines in some respects, she resembles Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliot, among others, in another way: she is an intelligent young woman with too little to do and no ability to change her location or everyday routine. Though her family is loving and her economic status secure, the quotidian details of Emma's everyday life seem a bit dul; she has few companions her own age when the novel begins. Her determined though inept matchmaking may represent a muted protest against the narrow scope of a wealthy woman's life, especially that of a woman who is single and childless.
And of course there is the classical balance of the novel's structure that, combined with the beauty of Austen's writing style, makes this novel a favorite of readers and writers, particularly those mentioned above, ever since it was published.

Lost in Africa

Scoop 

by Evelyn Waugh

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read.”   ― Evelyn Waugh, Scoop








Scoop (London, 1938) by Evelyn Waugh is a satire on journalism. It is based on Waugh's 1935 assignment to cover the conflict between Abyssinia and Italy while working as a war correspondent for the London Daily Mail in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). Waugh acknowledged that he was not very good at covering wars, but he did keep a close eye on what his fellow reporters were doing. The outcome was a comedic and satirical novel that mocks the newspaper industry and the journalism profession with a playful yet decidedly deadly tone.

The story centers upon a few humorous turns of events. Lord Copper, the conceited and uneducated proprietor of the Daily Beast, inadvertently dispatches William Boot, a naive nature columnist, to cover the conflict in the made-up nation of Ishmaelia in East Africa. At least geographically speaking, Ishmaelia and Abyssinia are identical. William learns a few fast lessons on the crafty methods used by journalists, who are constantly attempting to outsmart their peers and break a story. William returns to London as a well-known reporter after receiving many significant scoops on his own thanks to a string of fortunate events. However, all of it is meaningless to him, and he is glad to be going back to his remote and run-down country house, Boot Magna Hall, where his numerous eccentric relatives reside. Overall this is still an entertaining comedic read.

A Lesson Learned

Captains Courageous 

by Rudyard Kipling

"Over and above the darkness and the mystery of the procession, Harvey could feel the land close around him once more, with all its thousands of people asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and the familiar noise of a switching-engine coughing to herself in a freight yard; and all those things made his heart beat and his throat dry up as he stood by the foresheet. . . somebody waked with a grunt, threw them a role, and they made fast to a silent wharf flanked with great iron-roofed sheds full of warm emptiness, and lay there without a sound."

Although Captains Courageous is not a particularly complex story, it is nevertheless rife with concepts that serve as a foundation. It reflects the author's moral philosophy as well as his way of thinking about life. The relatively short novel focuses on 15-year-old Harvey Cheyne, the sole child of an American business magnate, as he grows up. Harvey, a once-pampered youth, learns what the American dream is via his interactions with unspoiled nature, hard work, and common guys, and he prepares himself to achieve it.

The book illustrates enduring American values while being on one level a sea adventure with a joyful ending. Harvey gains respect for hard effort, honesty, and social equality via his exploits. He also develops a sense of adventure, self-reliance, and pride in a task well done. As a result, he is ready to participate in the developing American drama. This is a great work to read as a young boy, but also warrants rereading when you are no longer quite so young. It bears the telltale signs of the great novelist who would go on to write Kim. one of my favorites.

Tomorrow is Another Day

Gone with the Wind 

by Margaret Mitchell

“I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.”   ― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind




Gone with the Wind is a novel by Margaret Mitchell in which Scarlett O'Hara struggles to maintain her family's plantation, which has fallen into disrepair since Atlanta was burned in the Civil War. Scarlett is crushed when her childhood love marries another woman. Scarlett marries Charles Hamilton, who dies in the Civil War. After the Civil War, Scarlett struggles to support herself. She marries three more times in search of financial stability.

Mitchell's narrative, set against the historical background of the American Civil War is a somewhat engrossing read. I say somewhat because I was not impressed with the central character of Scarlett O'Hara and, although the author was able to introduce many characters and much historical detail, I was not engaged as the novel droned on. The selfishness of the priveleged character of Scarlett was disappointing and deterred me from enjoying some of the colorful detail in this long novel. Her struggles, particularly with Rhett Butler, dimmed as the novel wound onward to its inevitable ending.

Losing a Family in History

Leopoldstadt 

by Tom Stoppard

Here’s a couple waving goodbye from the train, but who are they? No idea! That’s why they’re waving goodbye. It’s like a second death, to lose your name in a family album.”   ― Tom Stoppard, Leopoldstadt

This play is both a historical and philosophical drama as well as a highly personal challenge from Stoppard, who didn't discover that he was Jewish until his 50s when a distant cousin got in touch with him. The author appears to make up for lost time with Leopoldstadt, a first-rate, epic, and impassioned declaration of his own origins. He asserts that forgetting one's forefathers is tragic in and of itself. To lose your name in a family album, as one character puts it, "is like a second death."

It is yet another play by Tom Stoppard that impressed me with its erudition and singular structure. But there was an undercurrent of emotion that built over the length of reading the play that overwhelmed me by the final scene. So many of the family members had succumbed to tragic ends over the course of the family history that there was a  nostalgia of lives lived that was was dressed in the end with widows' weeds of death.

Divine Inspiration

Saint Joan 

by George Bernard Shaw

"The most inevitable dramatic conception, then, of the nineteenth century is that of a perfectly naive hero upsetting religion, law and order in all directions, and establishing in their palce the unfettered action of Humanity . . ." (GBS writing in The Perfect Wagnerite)





In Saint Joan Shaw attempted, and perhaps achieved, a masterpiece based on this conception. The play is a perfect example of the hero as victim transformed into savior. Shaw has developed his most enduring representation of the Life Force in Saint Joan, a protagonist who aspires to lead the common people by being a person of outstanding character and vision. Shaw's Saint Joan is witty and self-assured; she follows reason and common sense but does not conform to the stereotype of a religious martyr. Saint Joan is regarded as Shaw's only tragedy, although having many funny passages. However, it has also been described as a comedy with one tragic scene.

In the first scene the Robert de Baudricourt ridicules Joan, but his servant feels inspired by her words. Eventually de Baudricourt begins to feel the same sense of inspiration, and gives his consent to Joan. The servant enters at the end of the scene to exclaim that the hens, who had been unable to lay eggs, have begun to lay eggs again. De Baudricourt interprets this as a sign from God of Joan's divine inspiration. It is with this simple beginning that the spirited spirituality of the seemingly innocent young Joan begins to take over the play to the point where she is leading the French troops against the British. Her voice exhibits a lively purity that is augmented by an unlimited imagination.

Several values clash in Saint Joan's universe. The church is envious of its ability to rule the world. Although Joan's deed is mostly individualistic or Protestant in nature, England (Warwick) and France (Charles) are envious of their patriotic might. She supports the individual's right to define God whatever they see fit. In this historical incident, France is the fortunate beneficiary of Joan's whim and her military prowess. The play's underlying message is that there is no room for love or charity in Joan's world. The Catholic Church and English and French politicians, at best, are about shaky ideals like morality and patriotism and posture. I would visit the Inquisitor replies, "I would go to the stake myself. . . .”

Shaw's play features Joan as an outsider who seems lonely only when she is among those who voiced the common opinions of the day. Her multi-faceted personality is hidden behind her single-minded pursuit of a vision of god's design for her life. Saint Joan is a tragedy without villains. The tragedy exists in a view of human nature where the incredulity of intolerance of both religious and secular forces battle each other. It is made even more interesting by Shaw's epilogue that brings the play into the current time and provides an opportunity for Shaw to discuss the play with the audience. Whether this play is truly great or almost great it is definitely Shaw at his dramatic best.

Ghosts in Massachusetts

Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales 

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Nathaniel in his turn would walk the ways of Salem, town and village, and ghosts would keep him company, never quite visible , lurking always just beyond the corner of his eye.  But he would pin them down on paper and when he had them there he would inspect them with a kind of literary credulity.  For it was with him somewhat as it was with Cotton Mather; useless to preach to the artist against the existence of witches; the very breath of the artist is witchery and magic."  (Marion Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, p 277)



The ghosts of Salem and Nathaniel Hawthorne's past are represented in many of the tales in this collection. None do it as well as in his magnificent short story, "Young Goodman Brown".

In this story Hawthorne describes the titular young man on a journey one evening that would change his life. As the story begins he comes "forth at sunset" after "crossing the threshold" of his house and his life, leaving his wife, Faith, who talks of "dreams" and is, he believes, "a blessed angel". His journey turns into one of his own dreams or visions where one after another of the people in his life are unmasked by the devil. He gradually discovers that his own corruptibility which he fears his embodied in his fellow townspeople, and ultimately in his own wife Faith. Young Goodman starts the evening journey with "excellent resolve", but he also has doubts which are fueled by comments from the stranger he meets. He grows more concerned and conceals himself even as his spectral visions (not unlike the evidence of witches in old Salem) show the deacon and elders of the town laid bare in their consorting with the devil. The evening has led to Young Goodman's loss of moral virginity. It is a loss that will haunt him the rest of his life.

This is the classic American short story of the guilty conscience. The question Brown confronts is whether his heritage of Original Sin incapacitates him for resisting personal sin. In this profoundly ambiguous story, Brown wavers between the desperate cynicism of the corrupt soul and the hopefulness of the believer. Hawthorne mirrors the communion of the church with that of Satan's altar. Contrasts abound with Faith, the angel of Young Goodman, joining the fallen angel in his mind. His tale is a blend of simplicity and seriousness. But more importantly he portrays experiences, fears, and feelings that, at least in part, his readers share in the sense they may experience similar doubts and wonder about the nature of their own morality and mortality. Melville would say of Hawthorne that his writing was "as deep as Dante".

At the beginning of the story, he has already made his bargain with the Devil—hardly a token that he is among God’s elect but not necessarily a sign of damnation, either, if he can reject the consummation in the form of the perverted communion service in the woods. Whether by act of will or by divine grace, Brown appears to have resisted the power of evil at the climactic moment and given evidence of at least the possibility of salvation for his wife and himself. There is abundant evidence in this and the best of his early stories that Hawthorne has much magic in his prose.

Misunderstood Young Man

Pudd'nhead Wilson 

and Those Extraordinary Twins 

by Mark Twain

“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”   ― Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

This is an unusual novel with more than one story interpolated within the overall account of the fall and rise of David "Pudd'nhead" Wilson. His story is that of a would be lawyer who has a clever remark of his misunderstood, which causes locals to brand him a "pudd'nhead" (nitwit). His hobby of collecting fingerprints does not raise his standing in the eyes of the townsfolk, who consider him to be eccentric and do not frequent his law practice in Dawson's Landing. How he overcomes this distinction holds the novel together.

There are at least two other stories that are interposed with his. In the first, A slave named Roxy who is one-sixteenth black and majority white, while her son Valet de Chambre (referred to as Chambers) is 1/32 black. Roxy is principally charged with caring for her wealthy and inattentive master's infant son Tom Driscoll, who is the same age as her own son. After fellow slaves are caught stealing and are nearly sold "down the river" to a master in the Deep South, Roxy fears for her son and herself. She considers killing her boy and herself, but decides to switch Chambers and Tom in their cribs to give her son a life of freedom and privilege.

In the other thread, twin Italian noblemen visit Dawson's Landing. Tom quarrels with one. Tom robs and murders his wealthy uncle, and the blame falls wrongly on one of the Italians. From that point, the novel proceeds as a crime novel. In a courtroom scene, the whole mystery is solved when Wilson demonstrates, through fingerprints, both that Tom is the murderer and not the true Driscoll heir.

Character and perception are important themes in Pudd'nhead Wilson. This is emphasized as Twain's narrative builds on the importance of character. In the maxim from Pudd'nhead Wilson's calendar about character, Twain underscores how the good and sensible character of a person may be completely destroyed or misconstrued by ridicule or false assumptions. Twain also elaborates on this with the arrival of David Wilson in the town of Dawson's Landing. Because of Wilson's clever remark about owning half a dog, the simple townspeople completely misjudged him as being an idiot, or "pudd'nhead". Through his character of Pudd'nhead Wilson, Twain explores how people's motives, character, and personality can be misjudged and misunderstood.

While this is not the best of Twain's works, it has redeeming features and is notably one of the first novels to use the evidence of fingerprints in solving a judicial case.

Let Food be thy Medicine

On Ancient Medicine 

by Hippocrates

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”   ― Hippocrates

Hippocrates is best known for his famous Oath for physicians, however he also wrote many books of which this is the first - a sort of introductory text. Rather than presenting theory or philosophy he provides practical advice about what medicine works and what doesn't work. It is primarily about knowledge, both of the body and the diseases of the body.

Hippocrates focuses on common diseases, their causes and origins, and specifically mentions the common people as those in whom he is interested. Surprisingly, he highlights the importance of diet, the need to cook meat, and, especially, the use of soups in the diet to moderate the extremes of certain foods.

He compares physicians to pilots who are trying to set a course for health. In doing this there is a discussion of changes in temperature, heat and cold, and the effects on the body of changes in temperature. He also  points out that heat is often a symptom of something else. Most importantly he emphasizes the connection between man and nature:
"Wherefore it appears to me necessary to every physician to skilled in nature, and strive to know, if he would wish to perform his duties, what man is in relation to the articles of food and drink, and to his other occupations, and what are the effects of each of them to every one."(sec. 20)

This relatively short book contains practical recommendations for those practicing medicine in Ancient Greece. In spite of the ancient setting of this text it sounds quite modern in its varied concerns regarding man, nature, diet, and the use of a holistic empirical method when dealing with the art of medicine.

Tribute to Melville

White Buildings: Poems 

by Hart Crane

Take this Sea, whose diapason knells

On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,

The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends

As her demeanors motion well or ill,

All but the pieties of lovers’ hands.  -  from "Voyages", Hart Crane

Hart Crane loved Melville and read Moby-Dick several times along with his other tales of the sea. This was in the early decades of the twentieth century before Melville was renowned as one of America's greatest authors. Crane had a difficult time getting his trbute, "At Melville's Tomb", published. Harriet Monroe rejected it when he submitted it to her Poetry Magazine and Marianne Moore wanted to change it before publication in the Dial, which she edited. Crane withdrew it, but it was included in White Buildings, his first collection of poetry to be published. When Eugene O'Neill agreed to write a foreward to the collection Boni & Liveright chose to publish it. Ultimately O'Neill backed out, but Allen Tate provided a foreward and Crane's first collection of poetry was printed in book form.

At Melville’s Tomb

BY HART CRANE

Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge

The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath

An embassy. Their numbers as he watched,

Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.

And wrecks passed without sound of bells,

The calyx of death’s bounty giving back

A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph,

The portent wound in corridors of shells.

Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil,

Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled,

Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars;

And silent answers crept across the stars.

Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive

No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps

Monody shall not wake the mariner.

This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

A Woman at the Top

Top Girls 

by Caryl Churchill

"MARLENE: We’ve all come a long way. To our courage and the way we changed our lives and our extraordinary achievements. (They laugh and drink a toast.)"  -  Caryl Churchill, Top Girls








Churchill's play is a mix of drama and comedy, with elements of fantasy and Freud thrown in for good effect. I enjoyed seeing a performance of the play more than I enjoyed reading it. This was primarily because the acting and the direction of the play brought out its best moments.


Top Girls is the story of one woman’s rise to success and of the other women in her life (as well as those in history) whose experiences call hers into question. Its all-female cast speaks from a wide variety of cultural and political positions in dialogue that is orchestrated on the page almost like musical lines and themes, with numerous interruptions, dual conversations, and simultaneous speeches which undercut or highlight one another. The resulting development of the play shows success for the assertive Marlene who has reached the top of the hierarchy at an employment agency, along with the price that she had to pay to achieve that success. The darker side of the play portrays her sister and niece who are living a more proletarian lifestyle.

The mixture of the two with the addition of a lengthy fantastic dinner scene to open the play provides more questions than answers about what the message of the drama is. Since it was first produced in 1982, the play may be a little dated, but much of the drama seems timely enough. It is the somewhat confusing delivery of that drama over the space of two acts and five scenes that left this reader slightly less than satisfied.


Top Girls by Caryl Churchill.  Samuel French, 1982.

Honoring Christmas

A Christmas Carol 

by Charles Dickens

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”  ― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol




The Book of Proverbs includes this admonition: " The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding." (Proverbs 4:7)
By the final page of A Christmas Carol Ebenezer Scrooge has arrived at that place in his life with the help of the ghost of his former partner Marley and several spirits. These spirits take Scrooge on tours of his past to show him where he went wrong, of the present to introduce him to the joy of the holiday season, and of the future to warn him of what may happen unless he changes. Scrooge learns his lesson well and is transformed into a man with a conscience.

You probably know the story that begins on Christmas Eve: When Scrooge terrorizes his clerk, angrily dismisses two gentlemen collecting for the poor and repulses his nephew, Fred, who invites him to Christmas dinner. At home that evening, Scrooge is confronted by the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley, who warns him against purely materialistic pursuits and tells him that he will be visited in the night by three spirits.

The first spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Past, gives Scrooge a series of visions of his childhood and early manhood. Scrooge sees himself as a neglected child at school, then as an apprentice of Mr. Fezziwig, enjoying warm festivities on Christmas Eve, and finally as a prospering entrepreneur whose fiancée breaks their engagement because Scrooge loves money more than he loves her. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge out onto the streets on Christmas morning to see many happy families and, in particular, the love and warmth of Bob Cratchit’s home. Scrooge is concerned about their crippled child, Tiny Tim, and is informed that Tim will not live to see another Christmas unless circumstances change. Finally, the spirit deposits Scrooge into Fred’s home, where Scrooge sees good friends enjoying one another’s company and is reluctant to depart when the ghost tells him it is time to move on.

The final spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is shrouded in black, with only a hand showing. It first takes Scrooge to the stock exchange, he then witnesses a scene in a junk shop as two women and a man bring in objects plundered from the dead man’s house, even from the death bed, while his body was still there. The spirit then shows Scrooge his stripped bed, with his own body upon it, in his empty house. Upon asking whether anyone will feel emotion at his death, he sees a couple who owe him money; they are relieved and hope that their debt will be transferred to a less relentless creditor. Scrooge has another glimpse of the future: It is the Cratchit home, with Bob Cratchit as a broken man because of the death of Tiny Tim. As Scrooge has one final glimpse of the future—that of his own grave—he pleads with the ghost to assure him that the visions are of what may be, not what will be. It is a new Scrooge who appears to the world upon awakening from this final visit.

Although it was published in 1843, A Christmas Carol remains popular. Although the character of Scrooge is Victorian, his story highlights the importance of being kind, compassionate, and generous to others. These traits are timeless. No matter what era you live in, transforming your character to become a better person is just as important today as it was then. It remains relevant today because readers can identify with its portrayal of Christmas. Being surrounded by family and food, as we see in the Cratchits' celebration of Christmas in Stave Three, is very similar to how the holiday is celebrated today. Very little has changed, making it possible for modern audiences to relate to Dickens' portrayal of Christmas.

Ripples of Memory

Absalom, Absalom! 

by William Faulkner

“Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilical water-cord to the next pool which the first pool feeds, has fed, did feed, let this second pool contain a different temperature of water, a different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered, reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it doesn’t matter: that pebble’s watery echo whose fall it did not even see moves across its surface too at the original ripple-space, to the old ineradicable rhythm”  ― William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!



Memory. That is remembering the past, your family, the culture of family and place. That is in and of the essence of this memorable novel. We find it in the wisteria:

"Do you mark how the wistaria, sun-impacted on this wall here, distills and penetrates this room as though (light-unimpeded) by secret and attritive progress from mote to mote of obscurity's myriad components? That is the substance of remembering---sense, sight, and smell" (p 115)

This is a story of a man, Thomas Sutpen, and other men and women whose lives formed the history of a place and a time--a sometimes dynasty, as told by several narrators including Miss Rosa Coldfield and Quentin Compson (whom you may remember from The Sound and the Fury).
The memory of the events surrounding the ferociousness of Thomas Sutpen is told through fabulous stories, conjecture, discussions, and arguments. It encompasses the history of generations, the strength of women to survive, and the impact of slavery on their way of being.

Told with the poetic beauty of Faulkner's magnificent prose this is a novel to be read and reread; savored as you meditate on the meaning of these people and events and how they resemble those you may remember from Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. Above all it is about Faulkner's idea of the South and that of his characters, especially Quentin, the young Harvard student who proclaims:

"'I don't hate it,' he said. I don't hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I don't. I don't! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!" (p 303)

Aristophanes, Women, and Peace

Lysistrata and The Acharnians 

by Aristophanes

“What matters that I was born a woman, if I can cure your misfortunes? I pay my share of tolls and taxes, by giving men to the State. But you, you miserable greybeards, you contribute nothing to the public charges; on the contrary, you have wasted the treasure of our forefathers, as it was called, the treasure amassed in the days of the Persian Wars. You pay nothing at all in return; and into the bargain you endanger our lives and liberties by your mistakes. Have you one word to say for yourselves?... Ah! don't irritate me, you there, or I'll lay my slipper across your jaws; and it's pretty heavy.”  ― Aristophanes, Lysistrata

Peace is a major theme of these plays. The Acharnians focuses on arguments against war among the men, while Lysistrata is a bawdy and demented fest of diatribes between women and men. When the women, led by the titular character, withhold their sex in their demand for peace the men seem to be at a significant disadvantage.

The Acharnians is set during the Peloponnesian War during the sixth year of conflict between Athens and Sparta. In Aristophanes play the protagonist is a farmer named Dikaiopolis who has suffered as the war has progressed. The Athenian military faces pressure to escalate the conflict for revenge against Sparta, while Dikaiopolis wishes to negotiate peace for his family alone. Throughout the play, Dikaipolis must use his wit to thwart his militaristic opponents. Democracy is presented as a vehicle for militarism and it allows many of the Athenian politicians to rally supporters under the guise of cooperation. A buffoonish and arrogant general, Lamachus, is held up as an example of the militaristic attitude that Greek democracy often produced.

The play is filled with outrageous puns and wonderful wit that skewers the military and the Athenian aristocracy as peace is sought. There is even a brief section that pokes fun at the then successful tragic dramatist Euripides. However, this play is definitely one about the men who are in charge whether in Athens or Sparta; thus it is easy to contrast it with the approach taken in Lysistrata.

The name Lysistrata can be loosely translated as "she who disbands armies". That is behind both her mission and her leadership of the women of Athens who she encourages to withhold their sex from the men until peace can be brokered with Sparta. The play was produced more than a decade after The Acharnians and Athens had suffered a major blow when defeated in Syracuse with the loss of her navy. While they were recovering from that disaster the war continued with no end in sight (did I mention that these plays address very contemporary issues for those of us living in twenty-first century America?).

The play is famous for the roles given to women, particularly noteworthy since there is no evidence for women attending Athenian theater, and since it entailed the somewhat comic difficulty of having men, already in their phallic-oriented costumes, play the roles of the women. It is much more bawdy and extreme in its humor than The Archanians with the focus on the "battle of the sexes" centered at the Acropolis as a means used by the women, led by Lysistrata, to bring the men to their senses. The humor is magnified in the opening sections as the men who oppose them are old and perhaps a bit senile since the young men are all at war.
The pride of the old men is deeply wounded when Lysistrata declares that the women have assumed all civil authority and will henceforth provide for the safety and welfare of Athens. The magistrate cannot believe his ears when he hears Lysistrata say that the women have grown impatient with the incompetence of their husbands in matters that concern the commonweal. For rebuking the women, the magistrate receives potfuls of water poured on his head. When the ineffectual old men declare that they will never submit, the women answer that the old men are worthless and that all they have been able to do is legislate the city into trouble.

The women do have difficulties maintaining order within their ranks, but that just adds to the comedy. The result of this and further comic moments, including a riot surrounding the birth of a baby to one of the women, is a delight that transcends the centuries and overcomes many of the difficulties of translation. This has become my favorite play by Aristophanes.

Humane Literature

The Periodic Table 

by Primo Levi

“If it is true that there is no greater sorrow than to remember a happy time in a state of misery, it is just as true that calling up a moment of anguish in a tranquil mood, seated quietly at one's desk, is a source of profound satisfaction.”   ― Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

The following is a review of a rereading of The Periodic Table:

Thomas Mann began his tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers, with this sentence: "Very deep is the well of the past." Primo Levi's memoir demonstrates this metaphor in a much smaller, compact space. The lives of Levi and his Piedmont ancestors are explored through stories that illuminate the nature of the past and the source of those people's and our own humanity. This is done through vignettes that demonstrate Levi's love of chemistry and literature, his relations and relationships, while exploring his own attitude and thoughts.

Some of his thoughts are about reading and its meaning for his life. This is a topic that I especially love to explore and learn about; I will take it up in this introductory commentary on his memoir. His reading is based on his love for great literature particularly his appreciation for the writings of Thomas Mann, whom he holds in the highest esteem.
Early in the narrative during his sojourn as a chemistry student he meets Rita, a fellow student, and is attracted to her although, due to his shyness, he does not know how to approach her. He reaches a point where "I thought myself condemned to a perpetual masculine solitude, denied a woman's smile forever". Yet one day he found beside her, peeking out of her bag, a book. It was The Magic Mountain. He relates, "it was my sustenance during those months, the timeless story of Hans Castorp in enchanted exile on the magic mountain. I asked Rita about it, on tenterhooks to hear her opinion, as if I had written the book: and soon enough I had to realize that she was reading the novel in an entirely different way. As a novel, in fact: she was very interested in finding out exactly how far Hans would go with Madame Chauchat, and mercilessly skipped the fascinating (for me) political, theological, and metaphysical discussions between the humanist Settembrini and the Jewish Jesuit Naphtha." (p 38)
We all may have had a similar experience more than once: finding someone (whether drawn to them by Eros or not) reading a book we love, but not reading the same book.

Levi's love for Mann's writing also provided him solace while working on a demanding project during the war. He was sequestered in a laboratory next to a nickel mine and forced to work long hours. He dared not venture far from the mine, so "Sometimes I stayed in the lab past quitting time or went back there after dinner to study, or to meditate on the problem of nickel. At other times I shut myself in to read Mann's Joseph stories in my monastic cell in the submarine. On nights when the moon was up I often took long solitary walks through the wild countryside around the mine". (p 79)
One can picture Levi pondering while walking by the light of the Tuscan moon finding comfort as did Jacob in Mann's novel when he walked in the moonlight. It is the moonlight with its "magically ambiguous precision" that mirrored for Jacob the way the traditions of the children and grandchildren of Abraham are "spun out over generations and solidified as a chronicle only much later--". ("The Tales of Jacob")

Each chapter of the memoir is named for a chemical element, explores Levi’s work in the laboratory, and relates that work to his personal, social, and political experience. It is a cliché to speak of human chemistry when discussing human nature. The virtue of Levi’s book is that he refreshes the cliché and shows the profound connections between chemical elements and the elements of human behavior. The chapters can be read as a discrete piece of work, concentrating on some episode or period in Levi’s life. Nevertheless, the chapters are also unified by the author’s growth in perception. As he learns more about specific chemical elements and about the procedures required to study those elements, so he also discovers life in more depth, encountering unusual characters who teach him about the meaning of their lives and about existence as a whole. The form of The Periodic Table can be roughly characterized as a chronology; however there are chapters which are difficult to date and some that are fictions in part or in whole. While his experience in Auschwitz is almost entirely avoided (he had written a separate book about this, If This is a Man), he does include a brief episode in the chapter "Cerium" that highlights his friendship with a young man named Alberto who buoyed his spirits.

By titling his memoir The Periodic Table, Levi suggests that there is a structure to his writing about experience that is analogous to the way elements are analyzed in chemistry. Like the various substances the chemist tests in his laboratory, the author’s experiences have different degrees of purity, different weights, and different reactions, depending on what he uses to stimulate them. Human character in the memoir, in other words, has certain properties from the beginning, but it can be transformed in a number of ways given the changing nature of environments.

Throughout his memoir Primo Levi shares other literature and experiences as he narrates the lives of his friends, family, and ancestors. Just as he is inspired by reading Thomas Mann and the moonlight that inspired Jacob so many centuries ago he is imbued with the life of the people around him. Yes, The Periodic Table is deep, and one wonders at the lives narrated by this brilliant Jewish Italian chemist and humanist.

There are lessons to be learned in the humanity of people, but also in their frailties and foibles. Ultimately this is one of the most humane works of literature that this reader has encountered. With a unique style and appreciation for the importance of both science and literature for humanity The Periodic Table stands as a twentieth-century classic that I would recommend to all readers.

A Terrible Wisdom

Oedipus the King 

by Sophocles

“Alas, how terrible is wisdom
when it brings no profit to the man that's wise!
This I knew well, but had forgotten it,
else I would not have come here.” 

― Sophocles, Oedipus the King

The oral traditions of Greece included the mythos of the life of Oedipus long before the first performance of this play, and the audience knew exactly what would happen before the gears of the plot begin turning. But the relentless, clockwork motion of the play kept theatergoers rapt then, as it does now, because watching fate unfold when it is known to you but not to the people who are its prisoners is a privilege borrowed from the gods.

Oedipus is portrayed bold, mighty, and just, as the Priest claims him "greatest in all men's eyes".(l 40)  Yet he also has human foibles and it is soon clear he has a destiny that, in spite of his actions, cannot be avoided. One theme of Oedipus the King is based on his hubris, but there is also the importance of his search for knowledge, the truth of his own being. Before the action of this play begins, Oedipus has already attempted to outrun fate, marking himself early for destruction. By attempting to escape a prophecy that he would kill his father, and leaving the palace at Corinth where he was raised, he sets the machinery of doom in motion.

Traveling along the highways, he soon enough meets and murders a man he thinks is merely an overly aggressive stranger. Years later, he discovers that the dead man is his natural father, Laius, and that he has unwittingly performed the act he was trying to avoid. The play begins with Oedipus again attempting to reshape the arc of his life that was described by prophecy. The hints of his coming failure are numerous.

In the Priest’s first long speech, when he begs Oedipus to save the city, he appeals to the king’s long experience—as a statesman, as a wanderer, as a ruler and as a vagrant. Unknown to the Priest and to Oedipus—but known to the audience—is that this king’s experience also includes killing his father and marrying his mother. The very experience to which the Priest appeals is moving Oedipus step by step to destruction. This exchange between the Priest and Oedipus is an example of how Sophocles builds dramatic tension into his play by including multiple levels of meaning in a single statement.

The technique will be repeated throughout the play. It reappears just a few lines later, when Oedipus tells the Priest that he has asked for help from the Oracle at Delphi and will follow its advice or consider himself a traitor. With the borrowed omniscience of the gods, the audience knows that Oedipus is already a traitor for having killed Laius, and that he will be faced with pronouncing the judgment he has pronounced upon himself. It remains only to witness what happens.

In another exchange weighted with similarly complex levels of meaning, Creon tells Oedipus what he has learned from the Oracle. Creon begins with the murder of Laius as background, and Oedipus says that he knows of the previous king, but has never seen him. Creon continues, delivering the Oracle’s instructions, and Oedipus vows to find and punish the murderer of Laius.

While the Oracle’s wishes are being delivered by Creon and while Oedipus reacts to them, the audience knows, as before, what Oedipus does not—that he murdered Laius, that he is the dead king’s son and that the widowed queen Oedipus married is his mother. Once again, there is something transfixing, tragic and doomed about watching Oedipus, in his ignorance, attempting to follow the Oracle’s orders but all the time preparing for the revelation of his crime and his subsequent doom.

The first hint of the truth is revealed to Oedipus by the blind prophet, Tiresias, and the king answers the seemingly unbelievable charge with rage, insults and threats. Raised in Corinth by the royal house as if he were the natural son of his adoptive parents, Oedipus rejects what Tiresias says as errant nonsense, saying "Had you eyes I would have said alone you murdered him [Laius]."(ls. 348-9) The blind prophet, who taunts Oedipus as being the one who is unable to see the truth, claiming "you are the land's pollution."(l 353) He challenges the king to reconsider everything about himself and the challenge is met with rage - Oedipus is unable to see the truth or to hear well-intentioned advice.

Pride and faith in his own abilities moves Oedipus ever onward toward doom, failure to honor the gods results in the very destruction they foretell, and humanity is unable to escape what is predicted for it. His wife, Jocasta, is a flawed individual. Her arrogant dismissal of the gods and her proclamations of victory over fate foretell her undoing. As much as Oedipus, she is unable to see until it is too late that her life fulfilled the very prophecy she sought vainly and pridefully to undo. Oedipus begins to see, in brief glimpses, how blind he has been to the central facts of his own life.

Thinking that he is doing a good deed, a Messenger tells Oedipus that it’s fine for Oedipus to come back to Corinth any time—he’s in no danger of fulfilling the prophecy there, the Messenger says. By telling Oedipus that the queen who raised him is not his natural mother, the Messenger has unknowingly revealed enough of the truth to make Oedipus tragically curious and to push Jocasta toward despair. Motivated by a simple desire to ease worry, the Messenger has released the machinations of fate that will produce the full revelation of the truth and all its awful effects. When the Messenger speaks, he is as blindly ignorant of his fatal role in serving destiny as Oedipus and Jocasta are of theirs. He speaks, but he does not see.

In this section, the theme is hammered home time and again that people go through their lives thinking they are fulfilling one purpose when they are actually lurching toward the completion of several others. The gods know this and watch events unfold from above. The first audiences of this play knew the histories of its characters before the first lines were spoken, and the drama unfolded for viewers who watched with the borrowed omniscience of the gods. Modern readers are left to decide for themselves what they think about fate, prophecy and human attempts to outrun destiny.

The climax of the play is both pitiful and tragic. Yet, it also yields knowledge for Oedipus of who he really is, even as he goes forth as a blind man. The chorus intones the message that "Time who sees all has found you out / against your will;" (ls. 1213-14). As Aristotle put it in his Poetics, Sophocles has organized his story so as to emphasize the elements of ignorance, irony, and the unexpected recognition of the truth. The magnificence of this drama has allowed it to endure and challenge readers ever since.

Passionate Drama from Euripides

Euripides I: 

Alcestis, Medea, The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus 

by Euripides

“I understand too well the dreadful act
I'm going to commit, but my judgement
can't check my anger, and that incites
the greatest evils human beings do.”

― Euripides, Medea

This is great drama with passion, gods, plot complications, and difficult family relationships. But what else would you expect from Euripides, whose dramas have lasted for thousands of years and have inspired great dramatists well into our current times.

This classic volume of four plays, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, includes Medea, Hippolytus, Alcestis, and The Children of Heracles. There are few dramas that demonstrate passion in the way that Medea does. When her husband Jason leaves her for adventure and other women Medea plots to exact a revenge that raises the question whether she is exacting justice or merely mad.

In Hippolytus it is the relationships among the characters that stood out for me amidst a complicated plot influenced by rivalry among the gods (Aphrodite and Artemis). The drama highlights the relationship between Hippolytus and his father Theseus, but also brings in to play the importance of the Nurse and her relationship with Phaedra. This is notable because Euripides, unlike his predecessor Aeschylus, included characters that were lower-class working people.

Throughout these plays the influence of the gods is important in determining the fate of the characters leading to questions about the nature of fate and destiny. Just as important are large questions about justice and honor as when Athens protects the children of Heracles when they seek asylum. This example also demonstrates how relevant these plays are to our life today and explains, in part, why they have been so influential over the centuries. We are indebted to Euripides for his examination of the nature of humanity with both its flaws and greatness. I would recommend these plays to all who want to understand what it means to be human.

Gift of the god

Aeschylus I: Prometheus Bound 

by Aeschylus

translated by David Grene

“Prometheus: Yes, I stopped mortals from foreseeing their doom.
Chorus: What cure did you discover for that sickness?

Prometheus: I sowed in them blind hopes.”   ― David Grene, Greek Tragedies, Vol. 1: Aeschylus:  Prometheus Bound






Some have compared Prometheus to Jesus Christ. Certainly the opening scene of Aeschylus's play, with Prometheus splayed upon a rock as he is bound by Hephaestus, invites the comparison. I would not go so far and see the interplay between the Greek gods to be the relevant context for this scene. Played out at the "world's limit" in a bleak setting the drama portrays Prometheus suffering punishment for making humans "intelligent and masters of their minds". (line 444)

Prometheus' crime is not the only reason for his punishment for the chorus tells us that there is a war going on between the "Old" gods (Olympians) and the new generation of Gods. Zeus is seeking to maintain his primacy while Prometheus and his brothers are the dangerous new gods on the block. Atlas is suffering as well carrying the weight of the whole world on his back. The scales are not even - their is nothing like fairness or justice in this world. Prometheus is doomed even as he is visited by Io who is also suffering due to Hera's jealous rage over Zeus's attentions.

Being a god does not seem to lead to a completely pleasant life - there is strife and anger at every turn even for the most powerful. The winners in this play seem to be humans who do not have to relinquish the gifts endowed them by Prometheus. However, even these can be seen as a two-edged sword for our ancestors who had to endure hardships of many kinds in the struggle of living in the world. Prometheus cries out "O sky that circling brings light to all, you see how unjustly I suffer!" (lines 1091-2) Could that be our own cry even today?

Notes on Homer

Homer's The Odyssey


"Recognition"


By Book 17 of The Odyssey, Odysseus has finally returned to Ithaca after ten years at war and ten more years in slow return due to Poseidon's wrath.  He has appeared in disguise as an aged beggar (through the aid of Athena) and has been welcomed by his loyal swinherd, Emaeus.  This aspect of the plot may seem strange as Odysseus appears somewhat cold and calculating. Why doesn't he embrace his son and wife, overcome by emotion, after not seeing them for so many years? Odysseus has been shown to be wily and crafty many times in the epic, and his indirect approach is in keeping with this aspect of his character. Also, the text makes reference several times to Agamemnon and his troubles. As Homer's audience would have known, Agamemnon comes home to a wife who has taken up a lover and stealthily kills him. Things change as time passes, and after 20 years, Odysseus can't be too careful. 
One morning as he is out walking with Emaeus the following touching scene occurs:


"Now, as they talked on, a dog that lay there
lifted up his muzzle, pricked his ears . . .
It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus' dog, 
he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got
since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy.
In the old days young hunters loved to set him
coursing after the wild goats and deer and hares.
But now with his master gone he lay there, castaway,
on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting
out before the gates till Odysseus' serving-men
could cart it off to manure th eking's estates.
Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect, 
here lay the hound, old Argos.
But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped, 
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side
and flicked away a tear. Hiding it from Eumaeus,
diverting his friend in a hasty, offhand way:
'Strange, Eumaeus, look, a dog like this,
lying here on a ding-hill . . .
what handsome lines!'" 

[as the conversation continues they leave]

"With that he entered the well-constructed palace,
strode through the halls and joined the proud suitors.
But the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos' eyes
the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away."

The Odyssey of Homer, trans. by Robert Fagles, Penguin Classics, 1996. pp 363-64, lines 317-360.

Poetic Telos and Cartharsis

Poetics 

by Aristotle

"The most important element is the construction of the plot. Tragedy is a representation not of persons but of action and life, and happiness and unhappiness consist in action."  (1450a, 15ff) 





"What is poetry, how many kinds of it are there, and what are their specific effects?" These are questions that Aristotle’s Poetics, one of his most influential books, attempts to answer. While it has been an important aspect outside philosophical circles it is doubtful that it can be fully appreciated outside Aristotle’s philosophical system as a whole.

A theme common to all Aristotle’s philosophy is the claim that nothing can be understood apart from its end or purpose (telos). This is certainly true for the Poetics which seeks to discover the end or purpose of all the poetic arts, and especially of tragic drama. Aristotle argues that generally, the goal of poetry is to provide pleasure of a particular kind. For comparison the Metaphysics begins, “All men desire to know by nature,” and the Nicomachean Ethics repeatedly says that the satisfaction of natural desires is the greatest source of lasting pleasure. The Poetics combines these two approaches with the idea of imitation. All people by nature enjoy a good imitation (that is, a picture or drama) because they enjoy learning, and imitations help them to learn.

Of particular interest to Aristotle is the pleasure derived from tragic drama, namely, the kind of pleasure that comes from the purging or cleansing (catharsis) of the emotions of fear and pity. Though the emotions of fear and pity are not to be completely eliminated, excessive amounts of these emotions are not characteristic of a flourishing individual. Vicariously experiencing fear and pity in a good tragedy cleanses the soul of ill humors.

Though there are many elements of a good tragedy, the most important, according to Aristotle, is the plot. The centrality of plot once again follows from central doctrines of the Metaphysics and the Nichomachean Ethics. In the former, Aristotle argues that all knowledge is knowledge of universals; in the latter, he states that it is through their own proper activity that humans discover fulfillment.

For a plot to work, it must be both complete and coherent. That means that it must constitute a whole with a beginning, middle, and end, and that the sequence of events must exhibit some sort of necessity. A good dramatic plot is unlike history. History has no beginning, middle, and end, and thus it lacks completeness. Furthermore, it lacks coherence because many events in history happen by accident. In a good dramatic plot, however, everything happens for a reason. This difference makes tragedy philosophically more interesting than history. Tragedy focuses on universal causes and effects and thus provides a kind of knowledge that history, which largely comprises accidental happenings, cannot.

While literary styles have changed over the centuries, the observations of Aristotle still contain value both for writers and readers today.