Selasa, 15 Maret 2011

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana III -- chapter 2: I AM A BURNING LOG

Cornell's copy of the "First Folio"
Regardless of the edition you have of the book, you should have something pop-culturish to look at on its cover. This ties into the title of the book, which we'll go into a little deeper a little later.  However, I can't let a title like this of a book like this go without at least some minor examination.  "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" is an episode title of an old, American adventure comic called, Tim Tyler's Luck, which was translated into Italian.  With this, as well as any flipping-through you might have done (and which, in this rare case, I encourage), I'd like to preface a secondary "big question" for this book: what does pop culture have to do with the formation of our memory--our memory as it applies to our definition of self, inasmuch as Yambo has lost his (memory/self)?  As it turns out, and if I remember rightly, there's a lot more pop culture affecting this highly-learned man's personal history than stuff so highbrow as Shakespeare's First Folio.

  1. Yambo's discourse about jumping reminds me of Life of Pi: (approximately) You run as far as the legs of reason will carry you and then leap.
  2. I wonder (insubstantially; inconsequentially): If we know our own smells and the smell of our home and car so well that we don't even notice them, would Yambo "notice" his own smell, or that of home, car, wife, kids, etcetera?
  3. Considering the other novels mentioned (The Betrothed, Orlando Furioso, and Le Pere Goriot), what do supposed is Eco's position on Catcher in the Rye?  (Having read a lot of Eco's literary criticism and philosophy, Rye doesn't seem like typical reading for study by Eco.  Salinger is a different kind of brilliant (though, in my opinion, certainly no less, and, well, perhaps even greater) than Proust and Joyce, whom he definitely admires and even loves.
  4. The languages from which Yambo quotes a few verses are also Eco's second languages: German, French, and English.
  5. Interesting that Yambo documented fog even before the amnesia.  Any connection, or just coincidence (as author, certainly Eco did it intentionally, but is there anything to this within the confines of the novel)?  Regardless, fog, if I remember correctly, will be a lasting motif and even theme of the book.  How might one be born into a fog?
  6. Yambo's life was fractious before the amnesia.  Does this lower the significance of the amnesia, or mean that anyone who's life is split like Yambo's undergoes his own kind of amnesia?  Or something else?
  7. As alluded to earlier, Eco doesn't do anything by accident.  What of the mention of the Garden of Eden (despite the shtick of the "tree of good and evil")?
  8. Compare the predictions by the tolling clock to the running start before the leap.
  9. ....like Tom Sawyer ... or Luke Skywalker!
  10. Interesting the automatic response (and the Eco thought of it!) of Yambo's old and best friend, who, in the face of him with whom he's experienced nearly everything and with whom the past doesn't need to be discussed, as it's always been present between them, he can't help--and you get the impression the he can't help finally--reliving all those old events.
  11. Such dividing lines are always marked with turmoil--or tumult.  What we were before the event is very different from the person after the event, though, as far as I've observed and experienced, the change after the fault is usually linked directly to the tumultuous event itself, like changing religions, giving up drugs/alcohol, vowing an honest life.  In this case, Yambo, of course, is entirely innocent of the cause of the divide.  Will he change? Certainly he's different now, but will he remain so--changed, for better or worse--once his self has been returned to him or reclaimed?  For instance, he's discovering that he was quite a playboy.  Does he regret it?  Will it cause change?  (There more's substance for discussing this in the next chapter.)
  12. Finally, keep your eyes open for treasure.  For bibliophiles like us (and I'm assuming, I doubt foolishly or presumptuously, that anyone who actually reads this blog must consider themselves, to one advanced degree or another, bibliophilic), Yambo deals daily in treasure; it's his job.  We will come across the "First Folio" soon (-ish?), as well as other treasures, which will offer substance for discussion.

Senin, 14 Maret 2011

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana II -- chapter 1: OF THE MEMORY and SOUL

I am not a skeptical reader.  Where so many people are mistrusting by nature, I'm, well, even gullible.  This applies as much to reading as it does to locking doors and triple-checking the curling iron or stove top.  When I read Steinbeck or Carroll, or even Joyce, I feel justified in my level of trust, as their writing so closely reflects the issues, weaknesses, and prejudices of their lives--not so much when I read Eco.  There's never a sense of autobiography when you read his books, except, perhaps for Mysterious Flame (more on that in a minute).  There's rarely that sense that his Freudian psyche rests just between the lines.  His craft is opaque, and it makes sense, in a literalist's kind of way: his writing is incredibly, even--and so it would seem if he didn't provide proof against it--impossibly, dense.  The problem with such authorial opacity for a trusting, gullible kinda guy like me, is that I believe there's indeed nothing on the other side of the glass.  Well, this isn't the case.  While Eco mostly leaves himself out of the book, as far as we can see or intuit or study out via the generally available biographical information, there is a lot here.  Surprisingly (at least to me), and at perhaps the level most literarily profound and snobby, there's a deeply Joycean philosophy at work here, which I will try, despite my amateurism, to point out (as it relates essentially to the most fundamental pieces of Modernism); at a less intimidating level (you know--without all the literary labels that otherwise identify and describe), there is a underlining, beautiful metaphor--even allegory--at work in this book which may even pose as a window, no matter how small or filmy, into Eco himself.  If there is a book of Eco's with anything autobiographical, this is it.  We just have to press through all the incredibly abundant intellectual bread crumbs to get there--not that I mind.
  1. Where later we get visual mementos (flip or scroll through your copy of the book), when Yambo (this is a nickname: his real name is Giambattista Bodoni) first awakes, they come via literary quotations.  What is the thematic line running through these literary--poetic very visual, at least for words--references, and how are they so appropriate to the situation (you can get this without knowing the sources for all these quotations)?
  2. Note the juxtaposition of technology looking quantitatively into Yambo's brain (barely mentioned) and the series of recollections--literary, historical, etcetera--which accord us a qualitative purview.  
  3. I'm positing an idea that may work out to be nothing, but the context here offers possibility:  If the experience of Yambo's amnesia (the world that begins when he wakes up and ends, presumably, when he regains his memory) is a microcosm for mortal existence, what do you make of his standing up from his hospital bed?  While we're at it, what other parallels do you see between newborns and this 60-year-old (nearly) man?
  4. Interesting the notion of the mirror's reflection (and this apart from Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass): with the exception of those few individuals with perfectly symmetrical faces, the face one sees in the mirror is not the same face that another sees.  The effect is less significant with both faces simultaneously before you, like Eco's double-portrait (above), but if you take it as truth (the difference between reflection and the "real"), how does it apply here?
  5. "...from now on I think I will brush my teeth every day, it feels nice" (emphasis added).
  6. There's an irony here: "...if we had to record and store all the stimuli we encounter, our memory would be a bedlam."
  7. Also, a line shortly after that of 6 gives indication of the type of our allegory: "Where the brain stores memories, however, is still a matter of debate, and more than one area is certainly involved."  Have you already spotted it, especially while flipping/scrolling through the pages?
  8. the Collegno amnesiac
  9. Big question: Are we our memories?  In tandem with this, memories are nearly as "plastic," as says Yambo's doctor, as the mind.  How we perceive our own memories is practically never how they exactly happened.  Thoughts?
  10. What if his wife were ugly?  I can't help but wonder--and it's impossible to prove one way or the other, but this is the romantic side of me--if there's some essence of his love reaching through the fog and affecting his impression of her.  Is she really so objectively pretty, or is the subjectivity of long love acting as, well, goggles for Yambo?
  11. (By the way, Eco is a decided atheist.  This may affect some of your thoughts regarding the metaphors of the book and memory.  For instance, while reading I couldn't help thinking about what I believe, personally, about our "pre-existence," and how, as we don't remember living with God before birth, this might tie in somehow to Yambo's memory selectively excluding memories tied to emotion.)
  12. I'd love to say that the fog of Northern Italy is legendary, but I don't know the legends.  What I do know is that my own experience with fog in Northern Italy would easily qualify as the stuff of legend!  Pea soup, even, is a modest modifier--more like damp, wool curtain, only ghostly....  Sorry.  I'll stop.
  13. Metaphorically or not (just forget the diagnosis for a minute), why the lack of emotion, especially when seeing his kids and grandkids?  Does he feel remorse for not feelings nostalgic?  Is such really a source of connection to the soul?
  14. "Remembering is a labor, not a luxury," and "Some one said that it acts like a convergent lens in a camera obscura: it focuses everything, and the image that results from it is much more beautiful than the original" (see number 9).

Minggu, 13 Maret 2011

Sunday Poetry XIX -- PRIMO LEVI and SE QUESTO E' UN UOMO

Primo Levi’s introductory poem, or invocation, to his “memoir” (a difficult label, inasmuch as he takes some liberties generally afforded only to novelists, though everything in its essence in the book is true and speaks of his 11 months in Auschwitz), If This Is a Man (Se questo e’ un uomo in its original Italian) has a handful of English translations, none of which really satisfies me (which could break us into a great discussion of translation philosophy, but I don’t want to be the one doing the talking in this case—not yet, anyway).  I have far less problem with a memoirist taking liberties with characterizations and weather details of his own story than I do of another writer jabbing his stamp at and into another’s words.  For some reason it’s different with something like Dante’s L’Inferno, of which I enjoy three or four different English translations as much as I do the original.  In this case—and this much more modern than anything of Dante's—I’ll try and let you be the judge.  I find the original Italian just so much more powerful.  

Here is Levi’s prefatory poem first in Italian, then as translated by Stuart Woolf (who was supervised by Levi), then in an anonymous translation, and finally by my own deliberately hyper-literal “translation,” with very nearly google-translater obtuseness (meant solely as a utility for comparing the translations to the original):

Italian, original

Voi che vivete sicuri
nelle vostre tiepide case,
voi che trovate tornando a sera
il cibo caldo e visi amici:
Considerate se questo è un uomo
che lavora nel fango
che non conosce pace
che lotta per mezzo pane
che muore per un si o per un no.
Considerate se questa è una donna,
senza capelli e senza nome
senza più forza di ricordare
vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo
come una rana d'inverno.
Meditate che questo è stato:
vi comando queste parole.
Scolpitele nel vostro cuore
stando in casa andando per via,
coricandovi, alzandovi.
Ripetetele ai vostri figli.
O vi si sfaccia la casa,
la malattia vi impedisca,
i vostri nati torcano il viso da voi.

English, Woolf
In your warm houses,
You who find warm food
And friendly faces when you return home.
                Consider if this is a man
                Who works in mud
                Who knows no peace,
                Who fights for a crust of bread,
                Who dies by a yes or a no.
                Consider if this is a woman
                Without hair, without name,
                Without the strength to remember,
                Empty are her eyes, cold her womb,
                Like a frog in winter.
Never forget that this has happened.
Remember these words.
Engrave them in your hearts,
When at home or in the street,
When lying down, when getting up.
Repeat them to your children.
                Or may your houses be destroyed,
                May illness strike you down,
                May your offspring turn their faces from you.

English, Anonymous
You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.
Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

English, Me (again, not intended as a real translation)
You all who live secure
In your warm houses,
You all who find returning at evening
Food hot and faces friendly:
Consider if this is a man
                Who works in the mud
                Who doesn’t know peace
                Who fights for half bread
                Who dies for a yes or a no.
                Consider if this is a woman,
                Without hair and without name
                Without more strength to remember
                Empty the eyes and cold the womb
                Like a frog of winter.
Meditate/Contemplate that this has happened:
I command you these words.
Engrave them in your heart
Standing in house going by street,
lying down getting up;
Repeat them to your children.
                Or your house be ruined for you,
                The sickness get in your way,
                your babies turn their face from you.

Jumat, 11 Maret 2011

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana I -- CRITICAL RESPONSE and RESOURCES

Not sure if Mysterious Flame is worth effort?  Check out some bits and pieces about the book and its author at the following links:
Some of these reviews I collected via literarywiki.org's list.  They also have a list of annotations for the book, which I don't intend to follow, at least not closely.

I have also found the entire book online.  You can find it here.

Yambo, protagonist and amnesiac,
and by request of his doctor, draws
his impression of Napoleon.

Rabu, 09 Maret 2011

THE MYSTERIOUS FLAME OF QUEEN LOANA, by Umberto Eco

Interested in a good read with good discussion? 

We're starting Umberto Eco's 
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana 
this coming Monday, March 14.

Come and join us!

It's amazing what you can get done at the leisurely pace of one chapter a day.


Wednesday's for Kids XVI -- THE LITTLE PRINCE

The last time I read The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was in my high school French class.  I can't say that I particularly appreciated it then; I hated French class, and, if I'm being honest, I hated English class more.  Worse, I considered myself an elite artist at the time--was a bit of a snob, in fact (which self judgment is likely generous) --and snubbed the pathetic attempts at "art" by the self-deprecating author/illustrator.


Thankfully, I've matured a bit since then, in both literary taste and humility.  Over the last two days, I've finally re-read most of it and look forward to finishing it this afternoon.  It is absolutely splendid--fun, light, philosophical, perfect for kids, perfect for adults--well, perfect for adults who "get it."  While not in the least the same book (except for the similarity of a general denouncing of "adults"), if you like the Alice books, you will like The Little Prince.


You can read it in its entirety, illustrations and all, right here.  I highly recommend that you give up an hour or two of your day or night and get just that much more well-read.


Highlights from this fantastic piece of classic literature--quotable quotes and illustrations:
  • "Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people."
  • "When you've finished getting yourself ready in the morning, you must go get the planet ready."
  • "One should never listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance."
  • "It is truly useful since it is beautiful."
  • "'Where are the people?' resumed the little prince at last. 'It's a little lonely in the desert...' / 'It is lonely when you're among people, too,' said the snake."
  • "You're beautiful, but you're empty.... No one could die for you."
  • "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
  • "What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."
(click to enlarge)


Special thanks to my old high school friend, Veronica, for reminding me of the existence of The Little Prince when she saw the enigmatic picture (current "brick") drawn by my daughter.  I hope I will never be so grown up that I miss the elephant.

Senin, 07 Maret 2011

DUBLINERS, by James Joyce: "Two Gallants"

I almost didn't read this story.  If it weren't for this blog, and the duty I feel to follow through on what I say I'll do, I likely would have put this back on the shelf and let it go for a long time.  But I read it.  And I'm glad I did!

Sundays are parties on the streets not only in the cities of Italy but, apparently, Dublin, too!

Of all the things I miss about Italy, the weekend extravagance might be the biggest.  Not that I'm a partier--quite the contrary, in fact; I hate crowds! --but there was always something quintessentially satisfying about taking a spot on a bench on the sideline of an especially buzzy piazza (maybe with a street band and some sidewalk artists), grabbing a slice of pizza, cup of hot chocolate, or an aranciata and watching.  Not even busy airports can compete with an Italian Saturday or Sunday night for the avid people-watcher.  This--this conflux of bodies, noise, music, and foggy effluvia (human and city) --was my first impression of "Two Gallants."  (I wonder if my objectivity has been tainted--and after just the first paragraph!)

Further, the description of the two young men (so not gallant!), beginning in just the second paragraph,  reminds me uncannily of a man I regularly saw while out and about the city of Modena--one Pimp-Daddy Man, immortalized here (sorry--no picture), and a pillar of slouch humanity.

As I mentioned just a second ago, I'm concerned for the sake of my objectivity.  And I wouldn't be so concerned if the last story I'd read of Joyce's weren't "After the Race," and if I didn't like this story so much.  It is my favorite of the Joyce stories so far.

At the technical level, "The Gallants" is very much alike the others up to this point in the collection.  "The Gallants" is complexly layered, heavily Irish, and fraught with Ugly.  We even get back to a taste of Joyce's old penchant for lasciviousness.  While it's not as complicated or layered as "Araby," there's yet a great deal of metaphor and allusion here and all as brilliant as usual; but I'm not going to take the time and space to set them all up for discussion.  As I said, most are typically Joycian, and why waste space discussing the same thing over and over again?

When all is said and done, this is a story about the young men of Dublin: lost, aimless, mooching, and impotent.  As Joyce sees it.  And he doesn't pull any punches.  He has very little good to say about his people, no matter the potentially positive outlook to be presumed by the colorful, though muted, first paragraph and the momentary hope we (I) feel for Lenehan.

Here are a few things I picked out that happened to help pull the whole thing together for me (in no particular order):
  • gallant:  I'm curious about whether Joyce was aware of the etymology of this or not.  While the immediate impression of "gallant's" usage here is ironic, look instead at the "probab[le]" background of "gallivant."
  • the lamps:  In the first paragraph of the story, the lamps through the city are described as "illumined pearls" atop their posts.  Pearls have intrinsic value, and these, all the more so by way of with their brightness so stark against the city's gray, are treasures beyond the common reach of Dublin's citizenry.
  • age:  In each story, the protagonists get a little older.  Young boys, pre-teens, a teenage boy, a late teenage girl, collegiate young men, and now a couple of early thirty-somethings.
  • women:  If ever a story (or its characters) were misogynistic, this is it!  From the general objectivization of the female characters to that of the sex in general, to the specific treatment of the "slavey" at Corley's direct hand to the more passive "handling" by Lenehan: notice the girly carving of the harp's base and column, and the suggestive state of its clothing.  The notes--musical--of the harp seem to chase after Lenehan, who ends up tapping them out with hands and feet, sweeping his fingers along the railings as if the metal were a harp and he the musician at her back.  It suggests a parallel to Lenehan's general impotence; it's not really a harp, he not making any music, and that harp isn't even a real girl anyway.
  • Lenehan walking:  Speaking of Lenehan's impotence, notice the position of his feet as he walks with his so-called friend.  He is regularly shoved from the sidewalk to the street--one foot on, one foot off.  If there is a "true path," which may be the direction of his ambition for comfortable hearth and home, then he is equally afoot the other, less savory road.
  • peas and ginger beer:  As with other characters through the first five stories, Lenehan and Corley (more the former, as far as I can tell) are types for their countrymen in general.  The colors of Lenehan's meal are the colors of his flag, and worth no more than the most meager of pocket change.
While I appreciate all these fine and nuanced details (of which, like I said, there's a lot more!) --as powerful and ingenious as those of any other story thus far--they are not the reason I love this story.  Finally, and much more so than even for dear Evaline, I have a character I am rooting for.  Again, it's possible that this is derivative of my misplaced nostalgia within the context of the gray, late-summer evening, but I don't think that's all of it.  The reader--if I may so speak--wants Lenehan to make something of himself.  His end is not predestined here.  He is capable of making the change!  You can feel that--sense it--somewhere, no matter how deep, within him.  He does have one foot on The Path.  The most powerful device of this effect is that of Corley and Lenehan's secret and despicable plan, which we don't fully get until the very last sentence (such timing!).  We know it's probably not very nice, we know that Lenehan thinks he wants the plan to succeed, but you, Reader, get the inkling that some part of him wants it to fail, as if he's aware of his reputation and he wants an out--like the shoplifter who wants to get caught, or the closet alcoholic who wants his bottles to be discovered.  Unfortunately, this is Joyce, and as far as he, as the author, is concerned, these stories have all already been written, and they are nothing if not tragedies.  Right along those lines, this story would only require one additional sentence (which, by the way, I'm infinitely glad is not there) to concretely reveal what we already suspect: Lenehan, though relieved, is also--even equally--disappointed that the plan succeeded.  

You want proof that there is spark, finally, to a Dubliners story (and maybe--though I hope not--it really is just me, so I'll favor the change of you/we to I)?  I was disappointed.  I was sad (not surprised) that Lenehan didn't stand up, didn't push Corley out of the way and walk firmly on the sidewalk, and far from the edge.  I am empathizing with a Joycean character!  Maybe it's the optimist in me, but I honestly thought that maybe--just maybe--Joyce was going to give us something positive and even happy.  

Well, no.  He didn't.  But he gave us--me--a spark of hope, as well as evidence that there might yet be a spark of hope--a spark of life--somewhere in Dublin--and in Dubliners.

And with that--with "Two Gallants," that is--I'm no longer turned off this book.  

*

Please excuse the zealous use of italics in this entry.  Consider it typographical affect of my enthusiasm for this story.