Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 2nd, 2018 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Story of Avis, which picks up considerably once Avis embarks on her courtship and eventual marriage, which are a slow-motion trainwreck. They both go into it genuinely intending that Avis should continue her work as a painter, and yet housekeeping and then childcare tie her up so entirely that she can’t.
Women understand — only women altogether — what a dreary will-o-the-wisp is this old, common, I had almost said common place, experience, “When the fall sewing is done,” “When the baby can walk,” “When house-cleaning is over,” “When the company has gone,” “ When we have got through with the whooping-cough,” “When I am a little stronger,” then I will write the poem, or learn the language, or study the great charity, or master the symphony; then I will act, dare, dream, become. Merciful is the fate that hides from any soul the prophecy of its still-born aspirations. (187)
And then - does anyone care about spoilers for a book that’s 150 years old? - Avis’s husband dies, which one might imagine would free her up to work again, but she finds that the fashion has moved on from her style of painting, and in any case she’s out of practice, and her hands are stiff with sorrow. What hope she has, she has in her child: “It would be easier for her daughter to be alive, and be a woman, than it had been for her” (309). If her daughter feels that her destiny does not lie solely in the home, then Avis’s struggles have helped clear a path for her.
There’s a definite theme in the book about the importance of heritage - of women being able to place themselves in history, as part of a lineage of women artists (Phelps is writing about artists but this could be applicable to scientists or judges or what have you), rather than having the bushwack their way entire on their own. Avis’s Road to Damascus moment, when she knows she must be an artist, comes when she reads Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, and Phelps references Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot as well.
This is something I’ve been thinking about somewhat inchoately, especially with regard to my women film director’s project, because I’ve been continually surprised by just how many women film directors there are, in so many different countries, and stretching back almost to the dawn of movies.
Now, the overall numbers are pretty abysmal: women make up about 15% of the directors in Hollywood (and that’s an improvement over the years when Dorothy Arzner was the only female director in Hollywood - a torch she then passed to Ida Lupino). And female directors tend to get smaller budgets and less prestigious projects. But nonetheless if I had decided that I wanted to watch movies only by women directors this year, there are enough movies available that I could have done it and ended the year with movies left that I wanted to see.
What I’m Reading Now
The Story of Avis occupied most of my reading time at the library this week, but I have made a little progress on Savrola too.Winston Churchill Savrola is writing a speech in the most heroic manner imaginable. “His ideas began to take the form of words, to group themselves into sentences; he murmured to himself ; the rhythm of his own language swayed him; instinctively he alliterated” (89); and of the end result, Churchill notes, “Antonio Molara, President of the Republic of Laurania, would have feared a bombshell less.”
E. M. Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady, which started slowly but is becoming more and more enjoyable as I go along. There’s a running gag about an exhibit of Italian pictures that the heroine (who remains unnamed) really must go see (of course she misses it) and the modern novels she simply has to read - and I realized that I recognized exactly that hunted feeling. Only nowadays it’s about big event movie releases like Star Wars & Marvel rather than Italian art exhibitions - they fill the same role of giving people something agreeable to talk about in light conversation.
I had not previously contemplated the heroine’s occasional tactic of flat-out pretending to have ingested cultural objects that she hasn’t. Must consider the possibilities of social subterfuge.
What I Plan to Read Next
It’s a new month! And therefore a new reading challenge! May’s challenge is “a book of poetry, or play, or an essay collection,” and I have decided that it is at last time to tackle the Iliad. Does anyone have thoughts about the translation I should use?
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Story of Avis, which picks up considerably once Avis embarks on her courtship and eventual marriage, which are a slow-motion trainwreck. They both go into it genuinely intending that Avis should continue her work as a painter, and yet housekeeping and then childcare tie her up so entirely that she can’t.
Women understand — only women altogether — what a dreary will-o-the-wisp is this old, common, I had almost said common place, experience, “When the fall sewing is done,” “When the baby can walk,” “When house-cleaning is over,” “When the company has gone,” “ When we have got through with the whooping-cough,” “When I am a little stronger,” then I will write the poem, or learn the language, or study the great charity, or master the symphony; then I will act, dare, dream, become. Merciful is the fate that hides from any soul the prophecy of its still-born aspirations. (187)
And then - does anyone care about spoilers for a book that’s 150 years old? - Avis’s husband dies, which one might imagine would free her up to work again, but she finds that the fashion has moved on from her style of painting, and in any case she’s out of practice, and her hands are stiff with sorrow. What hope she has, she has in her child: “It would be easier for her daughter to be alive, and be a woman, than it had been for her” (309). If her daughter feels that her destiny does not lie solely in the home, then Avis’s struggles have helped clear a path for her.
There’s a definite theme in the book about the importance of heritage - of women being able to place themselves in history, as part of a lineage of women artists (Phelps is writing about artists but this could be applicable to scientists or judges or what have you), rather than having the bushwack their way entire on their own. Avis’s Road to Damascus moment, when she knows she must be an artist, comes when she reads Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, and Phelps references Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot as well.
This is something I’ve been thinking about somewhat inchoately, especially with regard to my women film director’s project, because I’ve been continually surprised by just how many women film directors there are, in so many different countries, and stretching back almost to the dawn of movies.
Now, the overall numbers are pretty abysmal: women make up about 15% of the directors in Hollywood (and that’s an improvement over the years when Dorothy Arzner was the only female director in Hollywood - a torch she then passed to Ida Lupino). And female directors tend to get smaller budgets and less prestigious projects. But nonetheless if I had decided that I wanted to watch movies only by women directors this year, there are enough movies available that I could have done it and ended the year with movies left that I wanted to see.
What I’m Reading Now
The Story of Avis occupied most of my reading time at the library this week, but I have made a little progress on Savrola too.
E. M. Delafield’s The Diary of a Provincial Lady, which started slowly but is becoming more and more enjoyable as I go along. There’s a running gag about an exhibit of Italian pictures that the heroine (who remains unnamed) really must go see (of course she misses it) and the modern novels she simply has to read - and I realized that I recognized exactly that hunted feeling. Only nowadays it’s about big event movie releases like Star Wars & Marvel rather than Italian art exhibitions - they fill the same role of giving people something agreeable to talk about in light conversation.
I had not previously contemplated the heroine’s occasional tactic of flat-out pretending to have ingested cultural objects that she hasn’t. Must consider the possibilities of social subterfuge.
What I Plan to Read Next
It’s a new month! And therefore a new reading challenge! May’s challenge is “a book of poetry, or play, or an essay collection,” and I have decided that it is at last time to tackle the Iliad. Does anyone have thoughts about the translation I should use?
no subject
Date: 2018-05-02 03:18 pm (UTC)Re the Iliad -- wow that depends. Lattimore was the gold standard once, but he's kind of literal and choppy. Fitzgerald is more fluid, but also puts stuff in that isn't in the original. Fagles is maybe the new standard, but he's trying more to be poetic in English and I kind of bounced off it. Stanley Lombardo is better at that kind of thing I think, but for a first-time reader (for me) it's a tie between Fagles and Lattimore. Fagles is easier to read and comprehend. BUT he also leaves out or mutes the epithets (Akhilleus is always swift-footed, POH-das AW-kus Ah-kee-LEH-ohs we learned to say, sounding out the lines; he could be sitting in his tent sulking twanging the lyre and he's still swift-footed). Some people think this is fine, as they loathe the epithets or think the bards would have switched them up in performance or think they're too emphasized when read not heard, or whatever. It did shock me a little.
The most accurate English translation I've seen is the Penguin prose version, but you can't really read the Iliad in prose. Stephen Mitchell did a translation, but I hate his translations in general. There is ONE translation by a woman, Caroline Alexander, but I haven't read it yet -- ditto ones by Peter Green and Barry Powell and Anthony Verity, all newer. Samuel Butler and George Chapman (yes, Keats's Chapman) both did translations I like, but those are kinda made for people who like Victorian and Greek lit together, hah.
Daniel Mendelsohn wrote a New Yorker bit where he plumps for POPE, but I have to believe he's taking the piss. https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/englishing-the-iliad-grading-four-rival-translations
If you want to check out various translations before deciding, there's a book called Homer in English you could get from the library that has a lot of comparisons IIRC.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-03 02:13 pm (UTC)ETA: It turns out the library has at least two different versions on CD. I could listen to it aloud and make like I was listening to the bards of old!
no subject
Date: 2018-05-03 03:38 pm (UTC)3 comparisons and Pope
Date: 2018-05-02 03:50 pm (UTC)and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls
of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting
of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished
since that time when first there stood in division of conflict
Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus.
-- Lattimore, 1951
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.41
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove.
-- Alexander Pope, 1715
Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus’ anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men — carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Begin it when the two men first contending
broke with one another —
the Lord Marshal
Agamémnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus.
-- Fitzgerald, 1974
Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
-- Fagles, 1990
no subject
Date: 2018-05-02 04:15 pm (UTC)Indeed. I once read a book on the history of housework, and the use of electricity was encouraged and champion by a female group who immediately saw how it could benefit women. And without some means of making up a fair division of the housework, before that, someone had to do it and it took all the time to do. :-/
The Churchill one continues to sound amazing, although I'm not sure in what way...
no subject
Date: 2018-05-03 01:38 am (UTC)The Churchill one is amazing possibly because it's rare for a world leader to also be a novelist who writes a hero who is blatantly a self-insert. Sometimes the narrative just stops dead for Savrola to speechify, like the scene where he woos his ladylove by explaining about entropy and how the world is all going to die someday and basically nothing we do matters, okay Churchill, you do you I guess.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-03 07:56 am (UTC)The Churchill one is amazing possibly because it's rare for a world leader to also be a novelist who writes a hero who is blatantly a self-insert.
And it would be Churchill... There's Disraeli, of course, but I don't know if he ran to self-inserts or not. He may have done!
no subject
Date: 2018-05-03 02:11 pm (UTC)