A dream I had a few nights ago:

Every day, twice a day, I had to call the PGCE people to report on my doings and assure them that I was following their directives — as if I were on parole. I went through my spiel wearily, and the nameless person who was interrogating me sounded anxious, even a little desperate, as if he knew that there was an ocean between us, and there wasn't much they could do to me if I suddenly decided to tell the truth, or not to call at all. But we still went through the charade twice daily.

Then I was in a nearly empty airport, pushing a huge suitcase. On an escalator the suitcase — which was bigger than me — tipped over and tumbled down, down, down. I ran after it. When I got to the bottom of the escalator I saw that it had popped open, and its contents — a dead body — had fallen out. It was then that I remembered that I was a mortuary's courier, charged with bringing home the war dead — all the dead of all the world's wars: even those killed in their own homes had to be dragged through this limbo by me or one of my colleagues.

In retrospect this dream looks like a nightmare. But then and there I took everything in stride: without fear or squeamishness I packed the body back into its case, and continued lugging my burden through the deserted airport.

Mastro-Don Gesualdo: Good, but not as good as I Malavoglia. It was relentless, unrelievedly grim; there was some respite in I Malavoglia. Not that Verga is brutal: he seems acutely aware of the suffering he inflicts on his characters, of the bleak lovelessness to which he condemns them. But this was too much.
Still, there was some breathtaking writing. The best description was of the two old brothers, Don Diego and Don Ferdinando, the last of the Trao line, doddering around their terrace, passing in review the plants. The flowers and leaves nod in the breeze like the old men, who wobble on feeble limbs, their heads unsteady with age, wisps of white hair floating. Except, of course, that the plants are growing, while the brothers are the living dead, and no one is taking care of them. Verga likes to compare his characters to animals — in fact for this novel he kept a list of characters, and next to each name a series of adjectives and the animal the character resembles. It seems a blunt way of saying: suffering makes you an animal, inarticulate as an animal. But the Trao brothers, who die slowly through hundreds of pages and hardly ever speak, seem to have sunk to the level of vegetables:

Da gran tempo, ogni giorno, alla stessa ora, donna Giuseppina Alòsi che stava al balcone facendo la calza per aspettare la passata di Peperito, don Filippo Margarone mentre rivoltava la conserva di pomidoro posta ad asciugare sul terrazzo , l'arciprete Burno nell'appendere al fresco la gabbia del canerino, fin coloro che stavano a sbadigliare nella farmacia di Bomma, se volgevano gli occhi in su, verso il Castello, al di sopra de' tetti, solevano vedere don Diego e don Ferdinando Trao, un dopo l'altro, che facevano capolino a una finestra, guardinghi, volgevano poi un'occhiata a destra, un'altra a sinistra, guardavano in aria, e ritiravano il capo come la lumaca. Dopo qualche minuto infine aprivasi il balcone grande, stridendo, tentennando, a spinte e a riprese, e compariva don Diego, curvo, macilento, col berretto di di cotone calcato sino alle orecchie, tossendo, sputando, tenendosi, all'inferriata con una mano; e dietro di lui don Ferdinando che portava l'annaffiatoio, giallo, allampanato, un vero fantasma. Don Diego annaffiava, nettava, rimondava i fiori di Bianca; si chinava a raccattare i seccumi e le foglie vizze; rimescolava la terra con un coccio; passava in rivista i bocciuoli nuovi, e li covava cogli occhi. Don Ferdinando lo seguiva passo passo, attentissimo; accostava anche lui il viso scialbo a ciascuna pianta, aguzzando il muso, aggrottando le sopracciglia. Poscia appoggiavano i gomiti alla ringhiera, e rimanevano come due galline appollaiate sul medesimo bastone, voltando il capo ora di qua e ora di là, a seconda che giungeva la mula di massaro Fortunato Burgio carica di grano, o saliva dal Rosario la ragazza che vendeva ova, oppure la moglie del sagrestano attraversava la piazzetta per andare a suonare l'avemaria. Don Ferdinando stava intento a contare quante persone si vedevano passare attraverso quel pezzetto di strada che intravvedevasi laggiù, fra i tetti delle case che scendevano a frotte per la china del poggio; don Diego dal canto suo seguiva cogli occhi gli ultimi raggi di sole che salivano lentamente verso le alture del Paradiso e di Monte Lauro, e rallegravasi al vederlo scintillare improvvisamente sulle finestre delle casipole che si perdevano già fra i campi, simili a macchie biancastre. Allora sorrideva e appuntava il dito scarno e tremante, spingendo col gomito il fratello, il quale accennava di sì col capo e sorrideva lui pure come un fanciullo. Poi raccontava quello che aveva visto lui: — Oggi ventisette!… ne sono passati ventisette… L'arciprete Bugno era insieme col cugino Limòli!…
Per un po' di giorni, verso i primi d'agosto, era venuto soltanto don Ferdinando ad annaffiare i fiori, strascinandosi a stento, coi capelli grigi svolazzanti, sbrodolandosi tutto a ogni passo. Allorché ricomparve don Diego, parve di vedere Lazzaro risuscitato: tutto naso, colle occhiaie nere, seppellito vivo in una vecchia palandrana, tossendo l'anima a ogni passo: una tosse fioca che non si udiva quasi più, e scuoteva dalla testa ai piedi lui e il fratello che gli dava il braccio, come andasse facendo la riverenza a ogni fiore. E fu l'ultima volta.

~to be translated~

And I learned some new words:

arrabattarsi__ to make a great effort in vain, often in pursuit of some worthless goal. From the Arabic "ribat," "attack on, attempt to convert, the infidels."

gattamorta__ person who, under a calm and innocent demeanor, hides a bitter and aggressive or malevolent character. Literally, "dead cat."

biascicare__ 1. to keep food in one's mouth for a long time, drooling and not chewing; 2. to mumble

It calls to mind strascicare, "to drag along."

Verga reminds me a lot of Hardy — the bitter grimness, the tragedy too dry for tears. In both authors the beauty of the prose owes a lot to everyday (country) speech

Books:

August
The Bull from the Sea (Renault)
The Children (Wharton)
The Wild Palms (Faulkner)
Grandi Donne del Rinascimento Italiano (Vannucci)
For the Time Being (Dillard)

September
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution 1763-1789 (Middlekauf)
A Season for the Dead (Hewson)
Indecision (Kunkel)
Selected Critical Writings (George Eliot)

October
The Other Side of Truth (Naidoo)
The Borrowers (Norton)
The Borrowers Afield (Norton)
The Borrowers Afloat (Norton)
The Borrowers Aloft (Norton)
The Borrowers Avenged (Norton)
Campo Santo (Sebald)

November
Storia degli Italiani I (Procacci)
Small World (Lodge)

December
Mastro-don Gesualdo (Verga)
Over Sea, Under Stone (Cooper)
The Dark Is Rising (Cooper)

Throughout October and November I listened to Reynaldo Hahn's "À Chloris." It's stunning, in obvious ways — its beauty is patient and quiet but not subtle — lush, lush late Romantic, clear, pure, flowing (voice), and at the same time rich, weighed down (piano). It combines extreme tenderness with a sense of plodding toward the gallows — plodding but with little syncopations and grace notes. The left hand plays a melody of Bach's, which has a bracing effect on the melting lushness. But I try not to listen to the left hand — I like to hear its line as a vague tugging, an unplaceable magnet, rather than as an explicit melody.

Associations it sparks:

1. Bach

2. Hahn was Proust's lifelong companion. But I still haven't read Proust, so this doesn't mean much to me.

3. The words are by Théophile de Viau, whom Thomas Stanley translated and Andrew Marvell read. It may be that the names of shepherds and shepherdesses in pastoral poetry mean little (though I'm sure there are exceptions, like Thestylis in "Upon Appleton House"), but I can't help thinking of Marvell's "Damon and Chlorinda."


Here are the words:

S’il est vrai, Chloris, que tu m’aimes,
Mais j’entends, que tu m’aimes bien,
Je ne crois point que les rois mêmes
Aient un bonheur pareil au mien.
Que la mort serait importune
De venir changer ma fortune
A la félicité des cieux!
Tout ce qu’on dit de l’ambroisie
Ne touche point ma fantaisie
Au prix des grâces de tes yeux.

Jan Swafford's wonderful biography of Brahms had a lot on Brahms's debt to baroque and rococo.
Here's Hazlitt quoting Beaumont & Fletcher:

Or there are passages that seem as if we might brood over them all our lives, and not exhaust the sentiments of love and admiration they excite: they become favorites, and we are fond of them to a sort of dotage. Here is one:

'—Sitting in my window
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a God,
I thought (but it was you), enter our gates;
My blood flew out and back again, as fast
As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in
Like breath; then was I called away in haste
To entertain you: never was a man
Thrust from a sheepcote to a scepter, raised
So high in thoughts as I; you left a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you for ever. I did hear you talk
Far above singing!'

A passage like this indeed leaves a taste on the palate like nectar, and we seem in reading it to sit with the Gods at their golden tables: but if we repeat it often in ordinary moods, it loses its flavour, becomes vapid, 'the wine of poetry is drank, and but the lees remain.'

-from 'On the Pleasure Hating'

I overheard Sueun, (a fifth grader) say to a new student: "Ms — went to Yale. It's an honor to be taught by her."

I was subbing for Steven, and when I walked into the classroom of sixteen-year-olds Timothy introduced me (unnecessarily, since I'd already taught six of those eight students) as "the smartest lady in the world!" "Tell everybody where you went to graduate school!" I was feeling shy, and didn't answer, so he said encouragingly (teasingly), "…dramatic pause…"

Today Patrick asked (out of the blue, before class) if Alcibiades was really a traitor, and as bad as people say, or have historians given him short shrift.

During break I heard Richard (ever the provoker) say to Patrick, "You lied?!  I thought you were a good boy!"  Patrick (ironically): "Robert is trying to taint my reputation because he's jealous."  Robert didn't catch the irony: "I'm not jealous!  Why would I be jealous?"

Yvonne, another seventh-grader, commented to Steven, "Patrick is so smart, and so humble too. I don't think I could be like that."

(I wrote this back in September; I don't know why I didn't post it then.)

All the students in my fifth grade class are new to me. As soon as I walked in Samuel begged to be moved: "I want to concentrate, and I can't concentrate if I sit next to John!" I saw the glint in his eyes and thought, "'I want to concentrate' — a likely tale!" Besides, John looked pretty stolid and undistracting. Samuel giggled and waved his arms around in a manner that did not inspire confidence in his determination to concentrate. I was going to say no, but then I noticed that there were too many people in his row anyway, so I gave in. And it soon became clear that he had meant it: he really did want to concentrate. The whole class did. I stepped out for a few minutes to go to the office, and when I came back their little heads were bent over their desks, tongues sticking out in effort. No one even looked up.

(Actually, no one's tongue was sticking out. But that's how cute they are, and how serious.)

In case anyone has noticed my long silence: I apologize. I had three halfdays off between the end of October and Thanksgiving in total, and things have hardly been less hectic since then. Now, finally, I can look forward to two weeks of semi-vacation.

Today two great New York bookstores bite the dust: Ivy's Books & Curiosities/Murder Ink, and Coliseum Books. I'll miss them.

This blog has migrated to http://gentilelett.blogspot.com

Unfortunately gentlereader was taken already. I couldn't decide between gentilelettrice or gentilelettore (after all, everyone's welcome), so that's how I ended up with gentilelett. I know it's clumsy. Sorry.