Greer Gilman's Blog, page 39

Ploughshares

Small Beer on publishing.  "You have to be on fire to make other people fall in love with it."

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Winter sky

Saw just one spectacular Quadrantid, sliding down the sky like a raindrop.  Didn't think I'd see any, as the east is awash with light pollution, not only from the city but from the new Law School building over the way--the Leni Riefenstahl Memorial, I call it--which is always lit up like the Titanic.  I turned my back on it and saw my shooting star at Orion's elbow.

Jupiter is full round, so bright that you can see it as a world.

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January

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Janus

I fear the frost has come too late:  my beloved trees are budding, and I worry they may die.

Let’s not talk about the planet or the unreasoning, angry people on it.

Despite the cold, and the clambering, and the cancellations, I did admire last winter’s snow, unsurpassed for sheer indifferent magnificence.  Take that, mortals!

I wish we weren’t mortal.  It was a hard year for passings:  for the loss of our bearish bardic gyzki ; for the long-drawn dying of a poet friend, intensely brilliant.

Going into its sixth year, Jarndyce and Jarndyce (don't ask) festers on.

Yet turning to my calendar, I am amazed how lovely so much of this past year has been.  Above all, it was wonderful for meetings with friends:  often at Burdick’s, or at tea in my sitting-room, beneath the blue-and-white.  There were walks in Mount Auburn with my friend the Jonsonian; a chance meeting with mrissa in the Yard; a gathering of Old Carolingians over retrograde Chinese; a dish of porcini in Somerville; and some memorably dazzling conversations in the Radcliffe Garden: with rushthatspeaks , and with a scholarly new friend and her learned mother, who turned out to be Delany’s childhood friend.  Six degrees of separation as Moebius strip!

There were rituals and rites of passage:  a 25th anniversary; a first encounter with Tosci’s by some ecstatic small grandchildren; a birthday tea at the Ritz, looking out at l’heure bleue.  As ever, I did May Day and souling; Halloween and Hanukah parties; Christmas eve and day.  (I so love finding perfect gifts:  this was a good year for giving.)

What there isn’t this year (for the first time since 1978) is a Buttery New Year’s.  They’ve had an alien invasion—by bedbugs.

And speaking of bedbugs, I’ve spent far too much time arguing with Shakespeare denialists.  The research (one needs an armament) has been fascinating.

I’ve bought far too many books, especially from the HBS warehouse sales and the new expanded Raven (it’s like a dream of the old Cambridge, like MacIntyre & Moore redux).  Fortunately, derspatchel gave me some magnificent help with reorganizing and reshelving my library:  we made a northwest passage round my desk, so that most books are accessible, most sorted into categories, and the fiction (at least) alphabetized!

Another friend helped excavate my kitchen.

2015 in the Arts

On stage and live, I saw:  a delicious little Mousetrap, like an envenomed syllabub ( derspatchel played Mr Paravicini); a dazzling Kiss Me, Kate in Hartford; King Lear on Boston Common.  From the Actor’s Shakespeare Project:  Measure for Measure; Othello; an open rehearsal and performance of an amazingly good 2 Henry VI; and just now, with negothick , an intricately double-cast The Winter’s Tale, like a paper fortune-teller.  Flick! Antigonus.  Flick! Autolycus.

In broadcast live theatre, I saw three shows from NT Live:  Simon Russell Beale’s King Lear (which cancelled the sublimity); a disapointing new play by Tom Stoppard, The Hard Problem; and an irrepressible Beaux’ Stratagem. From the Globe, there was an effervescent Ephesian Comedy of Errors—you have to love a production that brings on a great big explosive device labelled “ακμε.”

In the course of auditing Marjory Garber’s magisterial Shakespeare lectures, I got to sit in on the 1935 Midsummer Night’s Dream—half German Expresionism and half kitsch—which inspired Wise Children; Joss Whedon’s Much Ado (a good Dogberry); and Orson Welles’s idiosyncratic, brilliant Chimes at Midnight.

I think the only first-run film I turned out for was Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner.  Astonishing feat of immersive world-building, at once gorgeous and rebarbative.

For a few years now, I’ve been going to a seminar on Women & Culture in the Early Modern World.  This year I heard papers on:  Marlowe and the Sibyl’s Scattered Leaves; Cressida's Will: Volition and Desire in Troilus and Cressida (by an acolyte of my old Cambridge supervisor); Twice-Told Tales: Approaches to Gender in Shakespeare’s Histories and Transformative Works (by lareinenoire —on fanfic!); and the jawdroppingly gender-bending Vexed Rulership: Ambiguous Valois Bodies (1494-1589)

At the MFA, I’ve seen three major exhibitions:  Goya, Hokusai (curated by an old friend, who gave me a personal tour:  stunning), and the fabulous Dutch Golden Age, which I just saw all over again with negothick .  Not to be missed if you’re anywhere in reach.  It’s running until January 18th.  And it’s lovely to have the Fogg open, just to  drop by.

In music:

an evening of French music, with Pamela Dellal (mezzo-soprano)—who perfectly inhabits what she sings, a cricket, swan, or peacock—and Michael Manning (piano);

the Georgian Zedashe Ensemble (dance and polyphonic song);

the Jazz Composers Alliance, with settings of my late friend’s poetry by her husband;

Burns Night;

Martin and Eliza Carthy—twice!

And best of all, negothick and I spent a blissful week doing music at Pinewoods camp, with Eliza and a gang of great tradition-bearers.

In literature:

I appeared at Arisia; at as much of the blizzard Boskone as I could (Boston shut down on the Sunday); at Vericon; and at Readercon, where I was on and saw some of the most intensely crunchy panels ever.  “Art is my spatula!”

Outside of cons, I heard Kelly Link read twice:  from Get in Trouble at the Brookline Booksmith (packed, despite four feet of snow); and from the anniversary edtion of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber at the Harvard Book Store.  I heard a fabulous polyphony of poets at the Sloane Merrill gallery.  In celebration of our two books (the paperback of Cloud & Ashes and the astonishing Ghost Signs), I did a double reading with Sonya Taaffe at Porter Square Books.

A new Cloudish vignette, “Hieros Gamos,” will be published in the forthcoming anthology, An Alphabet of Embers (Rose Lemberg, Stone Bird Press)

I’ve been privileged to read just a little of rushthatspeaks ’ work in progress, which is utterly unlike anything else I’ve read, and brilliant.  I’m holding my breath.

My own work in progress is suspended in ice, despite Small Beer’s encouragement.  Something broke in that series of funerals.

So it comes full circle.  My beloved trees were budding, and I worry they may die.

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Dead spit

I may half forgive Julian Fellowes for hydrolizing and reconstituting Shakespeare, as he's evidently docu-dramatized the Earl of Oxford's slaughter of the undercook:  how he ran him through the thigh with an unbated rapier.  No one, it seems, was willing to call it an accident or self-defense, so Burghley had the poor fellow convicted of his own murder:  damned eternally, whatever goods he had forfeit, his pregnant wife and toddler turned out on the road.  Haven't watched it, but I ran across Oxfordians bewailing.

(It seems there was snark about the Earl's Italian choirboy:  maybe I should get PBS to offer Cry Murder! as a membership prize?)

What I'd like to know is how a would-be suicide might hurl himself on someone else's sword, without that other person taking care to hold it steady.  A slash in the leg might be an accident, but this was described as a stab wound, an inch wide and six inches deep.  And why his leg if he meant to kill himself?  Why not his heart or his throat?

The cook was said to be drunk.  My theory is that he was disinhibited enough to jeer at his young lordship's swordplay.  Oxford struck him with intent to hurt, and killed him.  Why he was fencing with an unbated blade is another matter....

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Mortlake Revisited

Whee!  John Dee's decoder ring!  Not to mention his pop-up polyhedrons, and the Progresse of a Worm.

Thank you, nightspore !

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It longeth to a scollar to speke latyn

Along my meandering way, I’ve stumbled on Vulgaria Stanbrigiana (1519), a little primer of conversational Latin for small boys*:

Septemnis sum. I am seuen yere olde.

Since children were supposed to speak Latin all day long at school (and were beaten for lapses), there is a fairly comprehensive range of things that a small boy might want to say—and a few that one might hope he wouldn’t.

The first lesson, at any rate, could not be plainer:

Good morowe. Good nyght. Good speed. How fares thou. I fare well thanked be god.  Whyder gooest thou. I go to syege [the privy].

Later colloquia arranged their sentences in little dialogues or playlets, which boys were directed to speak vehementer (feelingly). Acting was thought to be a crucial part of learning: Latin merely parroted was empty words. John Brinsley writes, in his Ludus literarius [The Game of Learning] (1612):

“Cause them to vtter euery dialogue liuely, as if they themselues were the persons which did speake in that dialogue, & so in euery other speech, to imagine themselues to haue occasion to vtter the very same things.”

I imagine that the boy Will Shakespeare would have enjoyed those lessons.

But this earlier text is a jumble of sentences, out of which a child could pick story-lines.

Being seven:

Goo hens. Come hyther. Stande styll. Leue thy chattynge. Speke out. Brusshe thy gowne. Tye thy poyntes. Wype thy nose. Snuffe the candell.

At school:

Syt awaye or I shall gyue the a blowe. Thou stoppest my lyght. He hath taken my boke fro me. Thou stynkest. Lende me the copy of thy latyn and I shall gyue it the[e] agayne by and by. The latyn is full of fautes. I haue blotted my book. The chyldren be sterynge about in the maisters absence. Thou pynchest me. Let me alone or I shall complayne on the[e]. Thou art a blabbe. It is euyll with vs whan the mayster apposeth vs. I remembre not my lesson. I am fallen in the maysters conceyte. I was beten this morning. The mayster hath bete me. The mayster gaue me a blowe on the cheke. I fere the mayster. I am wery of study. Wolde god we myght go to playe.

Out of school:

Bend thy bowe. I shall matche the[e] at all games. Thou arte a false knave. Thou lyes. Thou byleues me not. I shall make good that I sayd. Stande out of my waye. He is redy to fyght. If thou wrastle with me I shall laye the[e] on thy backe. Sayst thou this in ernest or in game. Thou mockes me. I am sure thou louest me not. All my felowes hate thy company. He is the veriest cowherde [coward] that euer pyst. Tourde in thy tethe.

Tomorrow:

I haue a sharpe wytte. I had leuer go to my boke than be bete. I shall begyn my grammer on mundaye.

Too little:

I haue dronke a ferthynge worthe of ale. My be[a]rde is not growen.

Between the acres of the rye:

I loue the[e] as my lyfe. Thou shalte haue ony thynge that I haue. Drynke fyrst and I wyll nexte. What part synges thou. Be mery and flee care.

The pangs of love:

Tary me at home tyll I come. I haue taryed for the[e] an hole houre. I am mased in my mynde.

Maidservant:

Wyll thou commaunde me ony servyce. Drawe water. It is almost ten of the clocke. Stoupe down. Tourne the spytte. The meet is rawe. The flesshe is rosted ynough. Laye the table. Set salte and spones. Gyue me breed. Reche me breed. I ete brown brede. He rynseth the pottes. Herken. Fetche me water for my hands. It lyth not in my power. This potte wyll hold no water. I am at my wyttes ende.

Country life:

What countre man arte thou. I am an englysshe man. My fader dwelleth in the countre. I was born in the see cost. I was born in the feldes. I was born in the marres [marsh] countree. I was born in the wodes. The hen sytteth on the egges. The corne rypeth fast. The tree hangeth full of apples. The way renneth full of shepe. The hors trottes. The ayere is full of cloudes.

Pride:

He craketh of his noble actes. My fader is a grete man of landes. He hath all the maners of a gentyl man. My purse is heuy with monye. I lye in a fedder bedd euery nyght. I sate at the table with the mayre [mayor] and the sheryues [sheriffs]. I haue the maystry.

Idleness:

Iack napes maketh a mowe. Malaperte. Thou plays the foole. It is a c[h]yldysshe thynge. He is euer chattynge. I am the worst of all my felowes. I go my waye. My gowne is the worst in all the scole. I lacke a boke. I haue forgete my lesson. It is out of my mynde. He ranne away without leue. For his folysshenes he may were a ba[u]ble.

Misery:

I haue a grete waye to go. The way is slabby. I am wete shodde. He is sowsed in water. I coughed all nyght. My throte is hoors. My nose bledeth. My heed is full of lyce. I am almost beshytten.

Woe:

I was not borne to a fote of lande. My fader hath had a grete losse in the see. He hath taken shyppe. How doth my fader. His face is meruaylously chaunged. He was at the poynt of deth. He dyed sodeynly. I am sory for the deth of my fader. My clothes be blacke. I am faderles and moderles. He wepeth. I am wery of my lyfe. I haue pyte on the[e]. God be here.

Knavery:

Beggars be regged & baudy. There is one at the dore wyll speke with the[e]. He is croke backed. His nose is lyke a shoynge horne. He is dronke with ale. They make a fraye in the strete. What the deuyll does thou here. Thou arte worthy to be hanged. He smote me with a dager. I shall kyll the[e] with my owne knife.

Naught:

He is a kokolde. Thou playest the knaue. Thou hast begyled me. He lay with a harlot al nyght. Thou lokest on me as thou wolde ete me. I beshrowe suche loue.

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* In the very frank vocabulary of body parts (a mannes yerde, the pype in a mannes yerde, the codde, a stone, the nature of a man, the sede of a man), none are female.

Light side

Downstream is another century:



The river that is glassy in the long view, riffs and dimples:







Turned westward:





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Iron bridge

Near side of the island:







Mirror:





Winter wood, the island:





Far side of the island:



Upstream:



Map.

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Dulce domum

What a lovely weekend! It began scherzando. On Saturday morning, I walked over to the great semi-annual free-for-all at the Harvard Book Store warehouse. Scholarly secondhand books were 70% off--worth waking for!--and as I squeezed sidelong down that long aisle, I kept lighting on works meaningful to me, personally, as if the shelves were a sort of tarot. First came a book on 17th-century science, with a chapter on Robert Hooke by our late magnificent podestà, Sir Patri; then one on Shakespeare by Rosalie Colie, with whom negothick would have studied, had the great comparatist not died; then a third on Victorian poetry, edited and partly written by DWJ's splendid sister Isobel Armstrong (still with us). All reminiscent. All remembrances of what the late departed leave behind, on this shore of the Styx. But the fourth, I hope, is in the future tense: exactly the volume of the variorum John Donne that I need for my work. Nice remainders there as well, including one just on the year 1616.

Then I scurried to the terminal and caught a bus to Northampton. (The Peter Pan line has the endearing habit of naming its fleet Barrie-esquely. Once, unforgettably, I rode the Captain Jas. Hook--which should have been painted black. This coach was the First Laugh.) Westward ho! I was off to see my Sylvie-ish old friend L, who lives along the Connecticut River Valley, a stone's throw from Vermont.

Her new old house there is deeply, resonantly beautiful. So is its setting. As we drew up, I saw Orion rising over wooded mountains, and the Pleiades: not a luminous blur, but a flash and sparkle of particular stars, a perfect fractal constellation. "O!" I said, "You have the Milky Way!" And sometimes, indeed, the Aurora.

It's a central-chimney house, a farthingale of framework round a ziggurat of brick. I think the dendrochronology dates the timbers to 1769: which is very old round here, if new to my European readers. Much of the wood is American chestnut, a vanished species now. Some of the pine floorboards are an ell wide. Most of the house--all but the kitchen and back porch--is 18th-century, from the brick-vaulted cellar to the fine, dry, well-pegged attic. Downstairs is three hearths now. There's an exquisitely prim, Jane-Austenish parlor, in the process of being painted an authentic grey-green. There's a beamed and panelled dining-room, with a salt-cupboard and a plate cupboard, its dark enlivened with the glint of china and the gleam of brass. And at the back, the kitchen, borning room, and buttery have long since been thrown into one great room, worthy of Mr. Badger.

Of course, we talked householding: "how this was planned, and how that was thought out, and how this was got through a windfall from an aunt, and that was a wonderful find and a bargain, and this other thing was bought out of laborious savings and a certain amount of 'going without.'"

On Sunday, we had a very good conversational brunch with an old friend of L's, and went antiquing. All of us found something nice: L, a pair of candle-like oil-lamps with etched cylindrical chimneys, for her parlor; her friend, a 30s bracelet, like massed Pleiades: the sort that goes with backless evening dress and films like diamonds. I found a Delft tile--blue-and-white!--with a couple in a one-wheeled chariot drawn by a five-legged horse through a hummocky landscape; in the middle distance are a fantastical building that looks thumbed out of marzipan, with three weather vanes, and a little man in baggy breeks, chasing a hound.

After that, we "did" L.'s winter garden: having a Novemberish view of greys and browns, she's mad for winterberries (Ilex verticillata), like flickers of fire in the wetlands. All her evergreens were spangled with mist; and with the low clear sun through-lighting them, they dazzled.

On the way back to Northampton, we halted to walk a little of the Norwottuck Rail Trail. O my! This was an old iron bridge over the Connecticut, here dividing round a great unpeopled island, with a dark branch and a light.  A glorious landscape. For winter light, and wood, and water, I have scarcely seen a better.

And even in the last ten minutes before I caught the homeward bus, we ran into Raven Books--which had a terrific selection of books on Shakespeare, and now has a few less.

Sheer felicity.

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