Word-Hoard…Moveable Feast

The other day I was reading a review in the New York Times of David McCullough’s The Greater Journey Americans in Paris, tales of 19th-century American travelers to Paris. In her conclusion to the review, Stacy Schiff contrasts these with later American visitors when she writes that, “the movable feast came later.” I immediately thought of Hemingway.

His memoir of 1920s Paris, published posthumously in 1964, was given the title A Moveable Feast by his widow who used a remark Hemingway had made to a friend, Aaron Hotchner:  “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast” (from the “Foreword” of the Restored Edition by Patrick Hemingway, 2009). (Both spellings, moveable and movable are accepted. The OED prefers the latter.) According to his son, Patrick, Hemingway used the term in the metaphorical sense similar to the feast of St. Crispin speech of Henry V in Shakespeare: an experience that becomes part of you. It also carries the connotation of things which change over time.

The term’s etymology has religious associations.  In 325 CE, the First Council of Nicaea set the dates for both Easter and Christmas. The latter is not a moveable feast since it always occurs on December 25. Easter, on the other hand, is a moveable feast because it’s always on the same day of the week but the date varies. It is on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox and it is the date used to organize other Christian feasts or fasts (Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday for example). Before 325 CE Easter was associated with Passover, 14 Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. Interestingly, “Easter” is derived from the Old English name for the goddess of spring, Eostre. “Feast” is derived from Latin festa meaning festive, joyful, merry, and is associated with feriae, holiday (holy day) and fanum, temple. It’s connection with food goes even further back to agrarian cultures when food was used as sacrifices to the gods.

I always connect “feast” with Paris where I rented an apartment for a month several years ago and experienced probably the best food in the world—better than the food in New Orleans, which, of course, has a French connection. Even “fast food” is good there.  I remember getting a ham sandwich off of a mobile food truck outside the Grand Palais. The truck had a route up and down the Champs-Elysees. That meal was the best combination of bread, butter and ham that I’ve ever tasted.

All of which brings me nicely back to the moveable feast which is Paris.

“La Belle” Influences (Concluded)

In a letter to his brother George dated April, 1819, Keats wrote: “The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more—it is the one in which he meets with Paulo and Francesca—I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life—I floated about the whirling atmosphere as it is described with a beautiful figure to whose lips mine were joined at it seem’d for an age—and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm—even flowery tree tops sprung up and we rested on them sometimes with the lightness of a cloud till the wind blew us away again….O that I could dream it every night” (The Oxford Authors John Keats, 1990). A few days later he sent a draft of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” to George.

Keats’ dream was probably induced by opium which he took in the form of laudanum, a mixture of wine or brandy and opium. At that time it could be purchased “over-the-counter” and was taken as we take aspirin for pain. (Regulation began with the foundation of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1841 which sponsored the Pharmacy and Poisons Acts of 1868.) At any rate, in his dream Keats completely missed Dante’s point.

For Dante the punishments in his Inferno fit the crime. Thus, though Paulo and Francesca are with one another for eternity, swept in a great whirlwind, they are “shades” rather than bodies and can never touch. Francesca tells Dante that they began their “dalliance” after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. (The lovers were caught by her husband—his brother—who killed them. Canto V, Circle Two The Carnal.)

Since the knight in “La Belle” is not gleeful as Keats was in his dream, I’m wondering if we could read the poem as Keats’ version of an inferno.

Keats’ “La Belle Dame sans Merci”-- Influences

It would be interesting to read the poem as an autobiographical statement. Keats met Fanny Brawne in 1819, the year in which he produced some of his greatest poetry: “La Belle,” “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on Melancholy,” “Ode on Indolence,” “To Autumn.”

In the first of the thirty-seven surviving letters to Fanny from Keats, dated July 1, 1819, he writes: “Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom….I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”  In another letter to Fanny (July 15, 1819), Keats tells of a dream he had after reading an “oriental tale.” The dream is of an enchanting lady in a garden “of Paradise.” After men fall in love with her she makes them close their eyes “and on opening their eyes again [they] find themselves descending to the earth in a magic basket” and are “melancholy ever after.”  Keats tells Fanny that he compared the enchantress with her but “could not bear you should be so” and concludes that, though as beautiful, Fanny is not as “talismanic as that Lady.” (Letters are from The Oxford Authors John Keats, 1990.)

His friend Charles Brown feared that Fanny would entrap Keats and didn’t want a relationship to develop. (Brown’s “protection” of Keats would be another interesting exploration.)  After Keats died, Fanny wore mourning for three years and did not marry until she was thirty-three. All of this, I think, speaks of a strong but doomed love.

There is another influence on the poem, however, that should be explored: Dante’s Inferno.

“La Belle” Artistic Interpretations (4)

The final painting of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” that I want to consider is by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917).

http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/waterhou/p-waterh48.htm

According to Christopher Wood, Waterhouse’s typical enchantress is “not a witch, but a beautiful girl with long hair and a seductive, child-like expression. This was the distinctive femme fatale…the beautiful, wistful nymph who lures men to their doom, almost apologetically, because she simply cannot help it” (Victorian Painting). And that is another possible answer to my question about La Belle’s reason for giving “sweet moan,” weeping and sighing “full sore”: She is the unmerciful seducer because she must be; it is her purpose. She doesn’t want to hurt the knight and feels sympathy for him. However, her very existence necessitates her betrayal of men. Waterhouse’s interpretation of La Belle depicts this haunting dilemma.

The two are in a forest with flowers and brambles surrounding them. She is sitting on the ground and her feet are bare, an image of helplessness. La Belle’s pale face, with its sensitive intensity and bright red lips, is the lightest thing in the painting. She looks at the knight almost as if she were pleading with him. He is trying to get support from the trees and branches around him but they ensnare him just as La Belle does. She has her long, silky straight hair wrapped around his neck and seems to be pulling him toward her. He is in full armor with his visor up and his face dim. His expression and posture show that he is desperately trying to withstand the temptation that La Belle offers. But even as we look, he seems about to fall into her arms.

This was painted in 1893. Wood writes that “from the 1890s onwards, all Waterhouse’s pictures are of women; men only appear as victims.” It was during that decade, according to Peter Trippi, that “a panoply of menacing females [were painted] triggered by the perceived threat of the New Woman” (J.W. Waterhouse).  A very interesting cause and effect that I want to explore further. 

“La Belle” Artistic Interpretations (3)

In Frank Dicksee’s (1853-1928) painted interpretation of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” we definitely see the knight “in thrall.”

http://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=228&size=large

La Belle is on the knight’s horse but seems to be in full control of the situation. She is leaning over toward him with her red hair lush and flowing behind his head—enveloping him.  She is holding the horse’s elaborate reins with one hand. Although she seems to be in control of him as well, the horse is stomping with one foot and has his head thrown down as if in nervous rejection.

The knight, however, sees nothing but La Belle. He is looking directly into her eyes and seems unable to look anywhere else. His arms are thrown out as if to balance against a fall, emphasizing his abandonment to the “lady in the meads.” He’s in full armor except that his helmet is attached to the horse’s harness. There is a long red scarf wound around the helmet, the favor given to the knight by La Belle. The scarf is a metaphor of courtly love: The damsel gives her knight a gift of clothing before he goes into battle. However, what is represented here is not courtly love because the damsel is neither virtuously modest nor in distress. The opposite seems to be in case: The knight looks innocent though ignorant of any distress. (A good book, in part dealing with the stages of courtly love in the Medieval Period, is Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror.)

The landscape around the couple indicates spring, a literary metaphor of awakening. However, the sky off in the distance seems to be of a setting sun which connects to a theme of loss. La Belle is bewitching the knight and the helplessness of the man makes us want to come to his aid . In a sense, Dicksee has forced the viewer into the position of the warning ghosts in the poem.

“La Belle” Artistic Interpretations (2)

Arthur Hughes (1832-1915) is described by Timothy Hilton in The Pre-Raphaelites as a “sentimentalist….a painter of trysts and tristesse, of sweet sadness rather than grief, and rarely of happiness.” His painting of La Belle comes closest to the non-traditional interpretation of her as victim.

http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/hughes/p-hughes19.htm

In this painting it is La Belle who is woebegone. She doesn’t look wistful or sweetly sad. She looks exhausted. Sitting on the horse, her shoulders are slumped; her arms seem to be bound and are hanging uselessly in front of her. The look on her face is intense misery.

The knight is standing, holding onto the horse’s harness. He’s dressed in armor and chain mail covered by a tunic. Flowers and leaves and debris are at his feet. He’s not looking at the woman on the horse but seems to be gazing at the floating ghosts behind her back. There are three phantom figures. The “king” wearing a crown is pointing upwards with one hand. His other hand is on his sheathed sword. If this is the “horrid warning” in the poem, it has not fazed the knight whose expression seems still. There is more motion and emotion in the figures of the ghosts than in either La Belle or the knight. He does not look “in thrall” and it is the woman who looks ill.

According to Christopher Wood, Hughes used “landscape setting to heighten and intensify the emotional situation of the figures” (Victorian Painting). There is a great deal of detail in the setting of flowers, leaves and trees. The trees in silhouette against the sky seem to be blowing while the ghosts hover. The brightly mottled yellow sky is the most intense part of the painting, perhaps contrasting with the tristesse and mysterious mood beneath.

La Belle is the focus of the painting. She is in the center and light seems to illuminate her body. She does not appear to be a woman without mercy. It is she whom I pity.

“La Belle” Artistic Interpretations

Frank Cowper (1877-1958) was a Pre-Raphaelite painter (considered one of the last). His “La Belle” is probably my favorite.

http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=p&ID=75

We see La Belle apparently while the knight is sleeping and dreaming. The image is one that is not in Keats’ poem. She has accomplished her goal and is preparing to leave. Her arms are raised as she puts her hair back up, having taken it down to help in her seduction of the knight. (In the poem, “Her hair was long.” The notion of a woman letting down her hair as a sexual signal has always seemed to me to be a male fantasy but it is a metaphor found in literature and art going back centuries.) Her arms form the shape of a “V” for victory.

In his book Victorian Painting, Christopher Wood uses this painting as an example of  Cowper’s “lush, highly romantic Arthurian subjects, with a strong emphasis on richly coloured materials.” It is Pre-Raphaelite in its combination of a theatrical Romanticism with intricate realism. La Belle’s gown echoes the flowers in the field surrounding her—possibly poppies. It has the “touch” of velvet, that most seductive of materials. Her flowing shawl seems to represent the ease that she feels. The red could, of course, symbolize blood or the color of the siren.

The knight is lying helpless at her feet. (I always question how he could walk at all given the shape of the “shoes” that he’s wearing.) He is in full armor but that proved to be no protection against the power of La Belle. I don’t believe that she is looking at him. Her gaze is off to the side and she seems to be concentrating on her hair. Her entire air is one of self-congratulatory nonchalance. This is the traditional femme fatale who enthralls men and shows no mercy.

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" Non-Traditional Reading

In this reading La Belle is the victim and the knight is an unreliable narrator rather than being authoritative, the way we normally think of a narrator. The "questioner" describes him as loitering. The word is probably derived from Old English lutian which means "lurk." That can carry the connotation of ambush. In any case, loitering is not the activity that we usually associate with a knight. The poem, of course, "begins" at the "end" and we have only the knight's interpretation of events. However, as a fallible narrator his views are flawed and his tale is distorted.

In the fifth stanza La Belle is described as moaning which the knight claims is "sweet." He tells us that it is because she is in love with him. Could she be moaning out of fear or pain? The sixth stanza could be describing a kidnapping and, if "steed" is read as a double entendre, a rape. The knight quotes La Belle as saying "I love thee true" in the next stanza. That is his perspective of her "language strange" which could be translated as "no" instead. We only have his word for it. To him her "elfin grot" is her home. Perhaps she's trying to get away from him. She is crying and sighing "full sore." The knight is using the term in the sense of sorrow but doesn't question what is causing her sorrow. "Sore" could be interpreted as pain, physical or mental.

He next tells of her lulling him to sleep. Perhaps she is able to drug him with what he sees as "roots of relish sweet,/ And honey wild, and manna dew" in the seventh stanza. Then she escapes. His dream is part of his delusion and his portrayal of himself as deserted victim. Somehow the seasons have changed very quickly from spring to winter. He is still "loitering." A Medieval case of He Says, She Says?

Next we'll look at the interpretations of the artists.

"La Belle Dame sans Merci" Traditional Reading

The Beautiful Woman without Mercy is a ballad--a short narrative poem. Some read it as a Medieval love story in which La Belle is dominant and demonic in the tradition of Morgan le Fay (Morgana the Magician).  Some readers think that the first three stanzas are spoken by another character--the questioner--who comes upon the knight in the wilderness. The remaining stanzas in that reading are the knight's answer.

It is important to note that the season in the first three stanzas is autumn or winter: the sedge has withered, no birds sing, the squirrel has food stored and the harvest is in.  The knight is obviously ill: he's pale--there is a lilly on his brow--and feverish; he's withering as is the color on his cheeks; he's haggard and sad. He's also alone and interestingly he's "loitering." (I'll get back to that word in the non-traditional analysis of the poem.)

In the fourth stanza the knight is speaking in first person and answering the question posed: "What can ail thee?" He describes La Belle as a sylph, a beautiful young woman who is free and mysterious--perhaps the personification of young love. It is spring time and he gives her gifts of flowered "jewelry." She seems to be in love with him. He takes her up onto his horse and she is singing and filled with happiness. She feeds him and tells him that she loves him--in language strange since she seems other-worldly. La Belle is now the temptress. She takes him to her home--her "elfin grot"--and he kisses away her tears without questioning their cause. She lulls him to sleep and he dreams.

Stanzas ten and eleven describe his dream about previous victims who warn him that he is "in thrall" to La Belle. In other words, her spell has worked and he is enslaved and helpless. The dream seems to turn into a nightmare. These death-pale kings, princes and warriors caution him that La Belle is, in fact, a femme fatale. She deliberately leads men to their own destruction. Are they the ghosts of men who also found her irresistible? Is the same thing going to happen to this knight? When he awakens he is in a type of wasteland alone. Has this knight's quest failed through no fault of his own? Is the poem his warning to other potential targets of La Belle? Or was he searching for something unattainable?


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173740

Mother

Standing by the window with the bright sun shining into the room, mother was in silhouette, the wisps of hair straying around her head mingled, in my vision, with the straying mists of the curtains. She held them apart with her right hand and her long delicate fingers played with the folds of gossamer. Her left had touched the pendant that lay upon her chest, its lace framework of white contrasting with the dark cotton bodice of her dress. The gold band on her finger caught the light as she felt the sculpted cameo, and knobs of gold bounced off the ceiling and far wall with every movement of her fingers. She did this unconsciously, touching the cameo. She often did it. The design of its bas relief was of a girl standing on a shore, her hair blowing behind her and becoming entwined with the beams of a silver moon.

Mother was gazing out the window but her thoughts were not on the summer scene outside. Her eyes reflected the green lawn and large trees and the yellow swaying field beyond. But these reflections were not on her mind. She was thinking of me…and that the eggs gathered that morning were still in her basket in the hall, covered with the red checkered cloth…that the front fence really needed another whitewash…that she must make sure Amelia had the silver polished for the dinner guests. These things flitted in and out of her mind as the gold knob moved back and forth from ceiling to floor, ceiling to floor, in a gliding motion synchronized to the motion of her fingers slowly swinging the pendant on its gold chain. And the breeze moved the curtains and in the same rhythm the wisps of hair blew around her neck. I knew one strand would blow across her cheek soon and that she would take her hand from the curtains and turn back to me where I lay on my bed on top of the pink chintz cover that matched the valance above the gauze curtains she held. She was thinking of me and wondering what she could do to help; what she could say to ease my pain and confusion. I couldn’t hold the tears back and they fell down my face onto the pink coverlet; they made the knob of gold blur into a soft yellow and the woman in silhouette become even softer, iridescent, as the gauze curtains.

Outside the window insects were buzzing. In the distance a train groaned out its long lonely whistle. It was the sound I listened to at night and woke up to in the mornings. The sound of peace, a part of my world, like the woman standing in front of the window. They all belonged together. Outside the oak leaves rattled and the curtains again billowed, as a wisp of hair slipped onto her cheek and into her gray eyes. I heard her sigh. The fingers let go of the curtains and went to her face to catch the escaped strand. The fragile and capable fingers fastened it again into place. In the next movement she turned and came toward me. The long folds of her dress flowed against her legs and the rustle of petticoats underneath replaced the echoes of the whistling train. She bent down and placed a cool hand on my forehead. She was smiling and her hair looked like spun sugar around her face. “Now you’re as much of a woman as I am.” She lifted the pendant in her left hand and with the right pulled the chain over her head. Then she put it around my neck and laid the lace frame carefully on the yellow muslin of my blouse. She cocked her head to one side as an artist critically gazing before her easel. Then her eyes looked into mine. “There, I think it’s time you had this.” She smiled at me for a long moment and I smiled back as I touched the gold chain, the ivory, and the lace. And my shattered world was mended.
　

Keats' "La Belle Dame sans Merci"

After Wordsworth, Keats is my favorite English Romantic Poet. I like to use this poem to show students that one text can be interpreted in opposite ways. I think it's important to learn different sides of an issue especially for the current "millennial generation" of students who prefer to think things are black or white. Life, of course, is not that simple and a belief in absolutes can lead to intolerance. I also use pieces of artwork which give "painted" interpretations of the poem. It's interesting to note the variety of these "translations."

Keats was born in London, England in 1795. His father was the manager of a pub and died in a riding accident when Keats was eight. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was fourteen, as did one of his brothers, Thomas, eight years later. Keats had nursed them both. Keats himself died of the disease in 1821, eight months before his twenty-sixth birthday.  He accomplished a great deal in his short life, though his poetry was not universally appreciated during his lifetime. One critic writing for Blackwoods Magazine coined the term "Cockney School" of poetry for his work. The real criticism of course was aimed at the fact that he was not "upper class." The movie Bright Star that came out a few years ago based on his love affair with Fanny Brawne is a good introduction to Keats. At the end of the film, during the credits, Ben Whishaw, who plays Keats, recites "Ode to a Nightingale." Sitting in the audience I felt that Keats was speaking the words of that very lovely poem.

Here is the link to "La Belle": http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173740


And here are links to four Nineteenth Century paintings which interpret the poem:

Cowper:  http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=p&ID=75


Arthur Hughes:  http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/hughes/p-hughes19.htm


Waterhouse:  http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/waterhou/p-waterh48.htm


Frank Dicksee:  http://cgfa.acropolisinc.com/d/p-dicksee1.htm

Word-Hoard...Insidious (Facebook)

A few days ago I was having lunch with a friend when she told me that she has a Facebook account but hardly ever uses it because Facebook is so "insidious."

Let's see. According to Random House Dictionary, insidious means something "intended to entrap or beguile; stealthily treacherous or deceitful; operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect." Synonyms are corrupting, artful, cunning, wily, subtle crafty. I suppose one grave effect is the amount of time one can spend on Facebook. However, I find it a nice way to talk with friends without having to dress for the occasion.

"Insidious" is derived from the Latin insidiosus which means deceitful or treacherous. Interestingly that is a form of insido which means to sit, settle or perch upon. Curious. I suppose "to sit on it" can mean to hide something which can be deceitful...or just  private...or when one is pondering.

I know that there have been complaints about Facebook making information available to advertisers. I never pay attention to the advertisements on my "Wall." They aren't as irritating as some of the advertisements in the New York Times online newspaper. I usually keep the computer screen on minimum when reading the Times so as to avoid all of those flashing, moving, bouncing messages. I sometimes accidently "roll over" a portion of the screen and get a pulsing advertisement for iPhone4 or tickets to a MOMA exhibit. But I like looking at some of the slide shows and listening to some of the podcasts, so I'll put up with those inconvenient ads.  At least Facebook ads don't move. As for Facebook making my information available....They can only give information that I put in my profile and minimal is a choice.

Perhaps I'm missing some dire threat. Then again, I like the idea of being beguiled.

Icarus Unbound

While doing research on Brueghel, I read John Canaday’s thoughtful and articulate summary biography of Brueghel in his The Lives of the Painters. He calls Brueghel an “extraordinarily complex painter-philosopher” who believed that man was one part of an organically connected universe. He writes that Brueghel’s paintings are “reflections upon the nature of man, his relationship to himself and his small world and to the cosmos as his world turned through its seasons.” Unlike the Romantic poets, Brueghel did not personify nature or endow it with emotions. In other words, Brueghel painted the harmony between working man and living nature.

Canaday goes on to state that Brueghel has shown in his paintings that “when man breaks from nature, he becomes the victim of his own frailties.” Unlike the ancient Greeks who believed that man is noble but fated with a tragic flaw, for Brueghel “the flaw is no longer tragic but contemptible because remediable.” I see a connection between this philosophy and Brueghel’s “treatment” of Daedalus in leaving him out of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. It is the landscape that gets top billing and Daedalus who gets none. What Daedalus did in making wings was not in harmony with nature as Ovid pointed out. It gets more complicated, however, when we consider that Brueghel was living during the Reformation--a time of great social, political and religious upheaval.

Specifically it was a time when Brueghel’s Netherlands were being devastated by the Spanish military force of Phillip II. (Husband of “Bloody” Mary, Queen of England until her death in 1558; the king who sent the Spanish Armada to England in 1588 to overthrow Elizabeth I and her Protestant regime; that Phillip II.) He sent one of his generals, the Duke of Alba to the Netherlands for the purpose of seeking out heretics. Alba had unlimited power and set up the Council of Troubles which condemned without trial those suspected of heresy and rebellion. Calvinists called it the Council of Blood. This occurred in 1567, two years before Brueghel’s death but the atmosphere of intolerance had been brewing for decades (probably since Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses perhaps on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. Interestingly that is the Wittenberg where Hamlet and his friend Horatio attended university; but I digress.)

In such an atmosphere, it seems to me, the mythical manipulations of Daedalus could be associated with those of Alba. Thus, as Auden contends, the death of Icarus is “not an important failure” since there were worse failures closer to home. And when we consider that Auden writes his poem in 1938, in an atmosphere of the impending catastrophe that was World War II, we can’t blame him for feeling empathy at the indifference Brueghel’s painting shows toward Icarus’s tragedy.