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.