Creators: A Love Story

Yeah, that last "Current Reading" list? Gave up on all three books shortly after. Just wasn't in the mood for any of them...

But I love what I picked up instead!

Creators: From Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney - Paul Johnson

In this book, Johnson -- a historian of virtually everything that has ever happened in the world, and possibly some things that happened on Mars and Neptune -- profiles the creative lives of seventeen revolutionary artistic-type people (authors, composers, visual artists). His writing style is elegant and readable, neither stiffly academic nor overly casual, which was a huge asset in and of itself. (He does occasionally demonstrate symptoms of Crankyoldmanitis, but the positive outweighs that negative.) However, the book's true delight lay in the creators whom he chose to cover; it's like The Big Book of Jacquelyn's Intellectual Crushes. To wit:


1. William Shakespeare. Okay, yes, that little virtual excursion to Stratford-upon-Avon led to some ranting about the man's personal choices, but as a playwright and poet...

2. J.S. Bach. If, for some very odd reason, I could listen to only one piece of classical music ever again, it would be Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 in G. Or the Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme cantata. Or the Sonata for Cello and Continuo in G minor. I like Bach, is what I'm saying, and I'm terribly inarticulate when discussing art music, so...there you go.

3. Louis Comfort Tiffany. Let the pretty picture distract you from the insubstantiality of my comments!


Ooh! Aah! Yes, I think the museum in which it's housed can say a bit more about this particular work than I can, as my initial thoughts in regard to Tiffany's work are "Art nouveau! Color! Stylized natural designs! Pretty!"

4. T.S. Eliot. Well, a glance at that "Favorite Poems" list off to the right side of this page pretty well says it all, but in case that's insufficient:

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years--
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres--
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate--but there is no competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

(from "East Coker," Canto V)

That had nothing to do with anything, by the way; I just think it's brilliant.

5. Cristóbal Balenciaga. Actually, it's a little disingenuous of me to put him on this list, as my interest resulted from reading Johnson's book. But anyone who is responsible for this:


is okay with me. (Pic is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's excellent thematic essay on Balenciaga.)

Jane Austen is also profiled; as established, I'm not exactly a Janeite, but Johnson wisely heaps praise on Mansfield Park and the Juvenilia, both of which I do love, so good for him on that count as well.

I've moved on to Modris Eksteins' Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age; if I'm going to claim to know anything about modernism in Western Europe when declaring my academic interests to grad schools, it's probably best to make sure that I actually do. And the book, happily, is so far terrific. Perhaps it, too, may result in a graphics-enriched blog entry two weeks from now.

Beginning the World: Episode 3 - Coventry and Stratford-upon-Avon

This week’s irrational tourism motivation? Connie Willis’ delightful time travel mystery/historical novel/romantic comedy/comedy of manners, To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which the curious disappearance of a hideous Victorian artifact from Coventry Cathedral plays a central role. This novel turned me on to a number of things – Pre-Raphaelite art, Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott,” the idea that swans are vicious, vengeful birds – and Coventry is just one more example. So it’s fitting to begin our tour with a stop in at this very same cathedral.

First – may I kindly ask the person who felt this was important enough to include on the cathedral’s Wikipedia page to marry me? Thank you. Now, for the actual visit. We’ll be stopping in on a Monday – the promise of a free (well, donation recommended, but that’s still preferable to a fixed ticket price) classical organ concert is too much for me to pass up. Even without that, though, the cathedral itself is certainly worth the trip. The ruins of St. Michael’s Cathedral – destroyed during the Blitz in November 1940 – remain as hallowed ground, with the new cathedral standing beside them. Images, of course, can say more than I can about the site and its history. This is particularly true given that, fascinated as I am by this period in English history, and much as I love historic places of worship, I know with a certainty that I’d spend at least a third of my time there attempting to determine the approximate former location of the bishop’s bird-stump.

After our visit to the Cathedral....it occurs to me that there’s not actually anything else in Coventry that I particularly care to see. I did, however, just learn that Coventry has a basketball team, and that England has a basketball league. This information is very exciting to me, as is the fact that there used to be a team called the Kings Lynn Fury (now the College of West Anglia Fury, which just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it). Given that I have never actually heard of any English basketball players, however, and wasn’t aware that they, um, even existed, I am rather dubious as to how well these teams would stack up against those of continental Europe. But, hey, I was beginning to wonder if Britain would have to rely solely upon the combined efforts of Luol Deng and Ben Gordon in the 2012 Olympics, so, this is good to hear.

Back to travel. Coventry may not be a booming tourist destination, but it is in close proximity to one slightly more popular location: Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of a man of great importance – John Harvard, he for whom the university was named. His house is open to the public, and—what's that you say? Him? But that’s such a cliche.

*sigh* Fine: Shakespeare’s home. Look at his birthplace! And his mom’s childhood home! And his daughter’s house! And his home from 1597-1616! Oh, but Anne Hathaway’s cottage is a special case for me; I’ve always been a defender of hers for some reason (I think I blame Shakespeare in Love, actually – ooh, Shakespeare finds real love with Gwyneth Paltrow, who’s way more interesting than his wife back home could ever be! Maybe she was busy raising your children, Will. Gee, perhaps you could have, say, not impregnated her when you were 18! Yeah, yeah, write your little tragedies bemoaning the marital state and your snotty wills bequeathing your “second-best bed.” I’m sure it was no picnic for her either, dude.)

Ahem. Anyway, it's lovely property:


In spite of my feelings regarding Shakespeare the husband and father, I am quite fond of Shakespeare the author, and to that end a visit to the Shakespeare Centre Library is in order. May as well take in a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company, too -- Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet are both forthcoming, and A Midsummer Night's Dream is currently running! Three of my favorites! If they'd throw in Macbeth, we'd be golden.

And a trip to the theatre might be a good note on which to end our tour. Next time: some other random place in the United Kingdom!

Current Reading

I actually have read other books between April and now, several! Just...didn't have much to say about them, apparently.

1. 1603: The Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft, and the Birth of the Stuart Era - Christopher Lee

Well! The subtitle pretty well says it all, doesn't it? So far things are progressing rather less excitingly than one might expect from a book that promises talk of the Plague, piracy, and witchcraft. The first two chapters function primarily to set the stage by recounting the historical events and circumstances necessary to an understanding of 1603's significance, while the third chapter is a social and economic history of late Elizabethan England. I have, however, learned a great deal about the process of molding sea-coal balls, which has most certainly been a longheld source of fascination for me.

There's hope, though; Lee's writing style is lively enough to have actually kept me mildly interested through the sloggier passages, and chapter four focuses on James VI/I of Scotland/England, who's typically a reasonably interesting character (though never moreso than in one of my summer books, John MacLeod's Dynasty: The Stuarts 1560-1807. James had some issues, I think). Too, subsequent chapters bear titles like "Bonfires," "Coronation," "Plague," "Witchcraft," "The Coroner's Tale," and "Poets," so things can only get better.

2. A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein - Palle Yourgrau

I am Arts and Humanities chick. The theories of Einstein and Gödel discussed here are just a little beyond my purview. And yet, I'm enjoying the read so far, primarily because I like Yourgrau's style:

Worse, the world of general relativity, much to Einstein's displeasure, was actually 'expanding,' that is, expanding over time. (God, apparently, had for once failed to consult first with Einstein.) (18-9)

...and a little dry wit and a poetic turn of phrase ("Time itself must have been smiling over the puzzle it had created" [19]) will get a person very far with me.

3. The Fall - Albert Camus

Been on something of an absurdist/existentialist kick of late; read and loved Kafka's The Metamorphosis and The Trial in July, and followed those up with Camus' The Plague and The Stranger. The Plague, I loved as well, but the style of this particular translation of The Stranger -- and I only specify this because the translator himself made a big to-do in the Translator's Note about how special his "American" translation (versus the earlier "British" translation, apparently) was -- didn't really grab me until the last few chapters; too choppy and abrupt, which, yes, is meant to underline Meursault's shallow and amoral approach to life (and death), but it didn't make for a particularly smooth read.

Anyway. I only mention the above in order to say that The Fall has more in common with The Stranger than it does The Plague, which might limit my appreciation of it a bit. The Plague was wonderful for the claustrophobic, populous world it presented, with multiple characters expressing conflicting views and motivations. The Fall, though, is a single man's monologue (presented as one side of a conversation; the listener's response is never indicated, probably because we're expected to fill in the blanks ourselves), and on that note it reminds me not only of The Stranger, but also just a bit of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, a novel that I read and kind of hated in my junior year Russian Literature class. There's just something about the process of vacationing in an unstable person's mind that doesn't entirely thrill me. Perhaps because I spend enough time in my own unstable mind. HA! MWA-HA! Ha!

I shouldn't do this late at night *sigh*

Ode to Joy

As I work through the shockingly hard process of writing the Statement of Academic Interests/Intent/Stuff You Like to Study that every reputable graduate program demands of its applicants, I've found my mind wandering to more and more abstract places. Which is where it generally likes to reside anyway, but this is something of an impediment to writing an essay that satisfactorily explains why I would prove an asset to a particular graduate school. Because, really? There is never a 'good', concrete reason to spend money that one doesn't even have extensively studying Modernist British Literature. Never.

And this is what brings me to the abstract thing. Pondering questions like "Why do you want to pursue a graduate degree in English? What is your area of interest? Why do you want to study that?" has only served to bring to mind a concept on which C.S. Lewis focused in his 1955 spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy: his definition of joy itself. Inspired by the German concept of Sehnsucht, which literally means "longing" but refers more to the relationship between longing and addiction (thanks, Wikipedia!), Lewis used the word 'joy' to refer to the longing for some distant, totally other place, a longing inspired by some odd thing: a line of poetry, a piece of music, something in nature, to cite a few examples. This intense longing, which Lewis perceived to be a longing for God and Heaven, is more desirable than achievement of any earthly desire.

Well, that was wordy. But the point to which I've been trying to get is that I know joy. It's what I felt as a child upon looking at fairy tale illustrations of castles and forests; in 7th grade, opening my first book about the British monarchy; in 11th grade, reading T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" and, a few years later, his "Little Gidding." It's the very experience of listening to anything J.S. Bach composed for cello, or (to take the music thing in a whole different direction) to a good percentage of the B&S catalogue (but especially the outro to "Like Dylan in the Movies" and "Ease Your Feet in the Sea," if you want to get specific). This pursuit of joy is the primary reason that I want to devote the next year-and-a-half of my life to the literature, history, and theological/philosophical thought of England in the 1920s through '40s.

And that is an unnervingly nonsensical reason to offer to a graduate admissions office.

Beginning the World: Episode 2 - York

Let’s hit the road, dear friend of mine
Wave goodbye to our thankless jobs
We’ll drive for miles, maybe never turn off
We’ll find a cathedral city
You can be handsome, I’ll be pretty

- “Let’s Get Out of This Country,” Camera Obscura


There’s no actual reason to identify the “cathedral city” in this song with York, but that won’t stop me from taking Tracyanne Campbell’s lyrics out of context and using them to preface this week’s trip!

Why York? Weird reason, actually; when I was 12 and getting very much into anything and everything British, the aspiring television writer in me conceived of an England-set, character-based drama. Randomly, I decided to call it York, probably because it sounded catchier than Manchester or Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and also because I had probably just opened up one of my books on the kings and queens and happened upon a reference to one of the myriad Dukes of York. Deep. But that random titling inspired me to care a great deal more than I really should have about this city, and even years after that little creative endeavor, I still have a soft spot for it. What’s more, York is, in and of itself, quite worth visiting: European Cities Marketing selected it as the top European Tourism City of the Year in 2007, which is...maybe not a terribly prestigious honor yet, as the award was first given out in 2007. But, still.

To return to that whole cathedral city thing, we’ll start things off with a visit to York Minster, second-largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe and home to Britain’s largest collection of medieval stained glass. A truly lovely collection it is, too, as these examples attest:



Unfortunately, I haven’t much more of interest to say, but perhaps this virtual tour might compensate for my present lack of wit.


Now this next destination, this excites me. I do love a nice historically significant cathedral, but museums are my truest travel love. And when said museum features displays of household objects of centuries and decades past, and incredibly detailed recreations of Victorian streets, and a new exhibition on Britain in the ‘60s, and, oh, marry me, York Castle Museum. How could one not want to visit this place?! Just watch the advert! (I really, really suspect I may soon begin to inadvertently adopt British terms and spelling. It used to happen when I was 13.)



The fake Victorian street has its own website! It has shops you can visit! It’s not as though I haven’t been to Colonial Williamsburg and Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, so I’m not exactly sure why this sends me so, but it does, probably because it’s in England and that makes it special! Someone please help me to stop italicizing things and using a surfeit of exclamation points!

Even better, a visit to the page for said ‘60s exhibit brings us to this. (Do use this link, by the way, and not that found on the YCM '60s exhibition site – whoever created the page decided to toss in an extra “http” and I had a devil of a time attempting to figure out why I kept being sent to a site bearing a “The page ‘HTTP’ does not exist!” message from my local server.) In any event, this site is fascinating. A little overmuch with the (admittedly understandable) hyping of the York Castle Museum and York Minster (though, also a website quite worth visiting), but fascinating nonetheless. The article about Radio 270 -- on the '60s site, of course -- is a highlight.


Our next destination, the Antiques Centre York, has, incidentally, decided to latch onto the apparent popularity of the ‘60s exhibit:

Various Retro Objects that the Exhibit Will Totally Make You Want to Buy! Really!


This is all well and good; I’m rather more partial to merchandise a good few decades older, but really, how much time can I afford to while away at the Antiques Centre when this is awaiting? I mean, really. Ken Spelman Booksellers are “always keen to purchase” pre-1850 manuscripts and journals! That’s so...well, upon perusing the list of recently sold items, not entirely thrilling, but still cool in theory. And in addition to all the books, they offer house concerts by musicians of whom I've never heard, but who I'm sure are excellent, and art exhibitions, the website for which has apparently vanished, so there’s fun to be had for all! Seems we’ve narrowly missed out on the York National Bookfair, though...

...which might be a sufficient reason to conclude our stay in York and start planning our next journey. The destination? You'll just have to wait and see.

(But you wouldn't, um, be totally off-base in guessing that it might be somewhere in Great Britain.)