Classical Bookworm

Daniel Deronda: Openness

His nature was too large, too ready to conceive regions beyond his own experience, to rest at once in the easy explanation, 'madness,' whenever a consciousness showed some fullness and conviction where his own was blank. It accorded with his habitual disposition that he should meet rather than resist any claim on him in the shape of another's need...

The more exquisite quality of Deronda's nature—that keenly perceptive sympathetic emotiveness which ran along with his speculative tendency—was never more thoroughly tested. He felt nothing that could be called belief in the validity of Mordecai's impessions concerning him or in the probability of any greatly effective issue: what he felt was a profound sensibility to a cry from the depths of another soul; and accompanying that, the summons to be receptive instead of superciliously prejudging. Receptiveness is a rare and massive power, like fortitude; and this state of mind now gave Deronda's face its utmost expression of calm beningnant force—an expression which nourished Mordecai's confidence and made an open way before him. He began to speak.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

I just can't get over Eliot's ability to put words to such subtle and ineffable human qualities, qualities which I think are quite out of fashion these days. Condescending charity is certainly popular enough, but that is not what is going on here. Deronda is putting himself at the service of a near total stranger, about whom he knows little, and who even repels him slightly. He doesn't give hand-outs; he gives his hand, open.

Daniel Deronda: Poetry in Common Things

The fact was, notwithstanding all his sense of poetry in common things, Deronda, where a keen personal interest was aroused, could not, more than the rest of us, continously escape suffering from the pressure of that hard unaccommodating Actual, which has never consulted our taste and is entirely unselect. Enthusiasm, we know, dwells at ease among ideas, tolerates garlic breathed in the middle ages, and sees no shabbiness in the official trappings of classic processions: it gets squesmish when ideals press upon it as something warmly incarnate, and can hardly face them without fainting....But the fervour of sympathy with which we contemplate grandiose martyrdom is feeble compared with the enthusiasm that keeps unslacked where there is no danger, no challenge—nothing but impartial mid-day falling on commonplace, perhaps half-repulsive, objects which are really the beloved ideas made flesh. Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy:—in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda: "I will wait till after Christmas"

What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worth while to set about anything we are disinclined to.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Daniel Deronda: On Beauty

Outsiders might have been more apt to think that Klesmer's position was dangerous for himself if Miss Arrowpoint had been an acknowledged beauty; not taking into account that the most powerful of all beauty is that which reveals itself after sympathy and not before it. There is a charm of eye and lip which comes with every little phrase that certifies delicate perception or fine judgment, with every unostentatious word or smile that shows a heart awake to others; and no sweep of garment or turn of figure is more satisfying than that which enters as a restoration of confidence that one person is present on whom no intention will be lost. What dignity of meaning goes on gathering in frowns and laughs which are never observed in the wrong place; what suffused adorableness in a human frame where there is a mind that can flash out comprehension and hands that can execute finely! The more obvious beauty, also adorable sometimes—one may say it without blasphemy—begins by being an apology for folly, and ends like other apologies in becoming tiresome by iteration; and that Klesmer, though very susceptible to it, should have a passionate attachment to Miss Arrowpoint, was no more a paradox than any other triumph of manifold sympathy over a monotonous attraction.

—George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Score one for the girls with nice personalities!

Neruda: Ode to the Dictionary

I happened into a book store today and the spirit of Chilean literature led me to a copy of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. When I got the book home, it opened to this (apologies in advance for any typos):

Odo al Diccionario Lomo de buey, pesado cargador, sistemático libro espeso: de joven te ignoré, me visitió la suficiencia y me creí repleto, y orondo como un melancólico sapo dictaminé: "Recibo las palabras directamente del Sinaí bramante. Reduciré las formas a la alquimia. Soy mago." El gran mago callaba.

Ode to the Dictionary Back like an ox, beast of burden, orderly thick book: as a youth I ignored you, wrapped in my smugness, I though I knew it all, and as puffed up as a melancholy toad I proclaimed: "I receive my words in a loud, clear voice directly from Mt. Sinai. I shall convert forms to alchemy. I am the Magus" The Great Magus said nothing.

A Bibliophile's Epitaph

The Body of B. Franklin, Printer;
Like the Cover of an old Book,
Its Contents torn out,
And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding,
Lies here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be wholly lost:
For it will, as he believ'd, appear once more,
In a new and more perfect Edition,
Corrected and amended By the Author.

—Benjamin Franklin, age 28 [from The Smithsonian Book of Books]

Book Rich, Cash Poor

Many thanks to the Northwoods Contemplative for sending me this great quote.

The fidelity of Benedictines to the practice of reading has been of great service to mankind.  It had been to secure suitable reading materials for the monks that monastic libraries were established and the skills of literacy preserved.  Although Benedict did not envisage his monks as custodians of culture...nevertheless the devotion to reading which he infused into his followers was sufficiently strong to ensure that much was accomplished in securing the accumulated wisdom of the Greco-Roman World and of western Christianity from the erosion which accompanied the collapse of the western Roman Empire.

Nor should the communal sacrifice demanded by such fidelity be underestimated.  The buiding up of even a small library was an expensive project and the copying of manuscripts kept many workers away from more lucrative employments.  When we consider that Clairvaux, during the forty years of Bernard's abbacy, acquired several hundred tomes, only some of which were gifts, we can form some idea of how many hours some of his monks spent at scriptorium tasks.  To provide a library, an educational system and scope for personal reading demands the outlay of considerable resources and the corresponding acceptance of a lower standard of living and less capital-based influence than would otherwise have been possible.  Dedication to reading is a guaranteed means of staying poor!

—Michael Casey, An Undivided Heart: The Western Monastic Approach to Contemplation

Fond of History?

"...I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?"

"Yes, I am fond of history."

"I wish I were too. I read a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome..."

...

"You are fond of history! And so are Mr Allen and my father; and I have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances within my small circle of friends is remarkable! At this rate, I shall not pity the writers of history any longer. If people like to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right and necessary, I have often wondered at the person's courage that could sit down on purpose to do it."

"That little boys and girls should be tormented," said Henry, "is what no one at all acquainted with human nature in a civilised state can deny; but on behalf of our most distinguished historians, I must observe that they might well be offended at being supposed to have no higher aim, and that by their method and style, they are perfectly well qualified to torment readers of the most advanced reason and mature time of life...."

—Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Reading Advice for Hypochondriacs

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

—P.J. O'Rourke

After reading this it also occurred to me that after we die everyone will assume that we read everything on our shelves, so we should definitely keep buying all those books we want to read "some day"!

via Book Chase

Archaeology: It's Not for Everyone

Nearly three thousand years old that palace was, it appeared. I wondered what sort of palaces they had in those days, and if it would be like the pictures I'd seen of Tutankahmen's tomb furniture. But would you believe it, there was nothing to see but mud! Dirty mud walls about two feet high—and that's all there was to it. Mr. Carey took me here and there telling me things—how this was the great court, and there were some chambers here and an upper storey and various other rooms that opened off the central court. And all I thought was, 'But how does he know?' though, of course, I was too polite to say so. I can tell you it was a disappointment! The whole excavation looked like nothing but mud to me—no marble or gold or anything handsome—my aunt's house in Cricklewood would have made a much more imposing ruin! And those old Assyrians, or whatever they were, called themselves kings.

—Nurse Leatheran in Agatha Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia

I thought this book would be a fun adjunct to my Mesopotamian studies, but I found it rather annoying. The narrator, Nurse Leatheran, was far too judgemental and xenophobic for my liking. She kept going on about how catty the other women were (a classic case of the the pot calling the kettle black) and she kept referring to Poirot and the Tunisian priest as "foreigners" with repulsive "foreign" manners, as if she, an Englishwoman in Iraq, were not a foreigner herself. Perhaps Christie wanted to expose the attitude of (post)Victorian colonialism. The book is interesting because Christie herself was a nurse and married an archaeologist, whom she accompanied to digs in the Middle East. The mystery itself is good, though it could have been cleared up sooner if the police had found the murder weapon. I suppose there always has to be some error to make it a mystery.