What I Demand of Life by Frank Swinnerton

My Deal-Me-In Challenge has been going the way of my other challenges this year, but I thought with a few months left in the year, I might try to resurrect it and at least finish well.  We'll see .... In any case, I drew the queen of Spades, which gave me an essay entitled, What I Demand of Life by Frank Swinnerton.

At the age of 40, Swinnerton is evaluating his life: what he has experienced and musing on the years to come.  While men can be failures in a number of ways, few fail from aiming too high, yet many aim amiss or do not aim at all and are like parasites on others.  These men should be pitied.  Swinnerton then lists things he does not want:

1. money
2. fame
3. a life of gaiety
4. possessions
5. innumerable acquaintances
6. contentment
7. people to sing "for he's a jolly good fellow"

Wealth has no value and breeds insincere friends.  Fame lacks privacy, brings judgement and breeds pomposity and tyrants.  Poverty gave Swinnerton a good spirit and he was able to land a job with a publish company, J.M Dent and Co., a job which honed his insights into human character.  He realized his dreams about living in a cottage, writing "goodish" novels and marrying for love.  He has good friends, the best, in fact, a good nature and because he is not labelled among the popular authors, is able to write what he wants.

Now we get to the title.  What does Swinnerton demand of life?

1. health
2. privacy
3. moderate security
4. affections of those dear to him
5. some leisure

Swinnerton is advocating a life of modest means.  

"That is the whole point.  No man can be satisfied with his attainment, although he may be satisfied with his circumstances ...... I have been returning thanks to good fortune.  I have been betraying perhaps, a readiness to be pleased with small results."

Swinnerton does not have lofty ambitions but only wishes to live the remainder of his life in enjoyment, immune from hardship.  

"I do not demand to be happy, because I expect --- on a basis of experience --- to be happy.  Is not happiness the most satisfactory of all possessions? .... when I come to die I shall be able --- in spirit at least --- to repeat the memorable last words of William Hazlitt ..... 'Well, I've had a happy life.'  Which of us --- uncertain travellers as we are upon uncharted ways --- can ask to say more?  Not I."

While I found Swinnerton's modest desires and thoughtful life philosophy interesting, I cannot say his expectations were particularly realistic.  Could he really be happy simply on expectation?  Could he avoid hardship because he had already experienced it and was therefore immune to it?  Could his moderate philosophy really bring happiness?

I supposed the fewer expectations we have, the less chance of being disappointed. There is something to be said for appreciating our lives as they are.  However, I'm not certain if I am in complete agreement with Swinnerton's approach to life.  What about you?  Is it better to accept mediocrity and be happy or to strive for higher ideals and perhaps encounter more dissatisfaction and strife but also maybe experience more intense joy and satisfaction?

Deal Me In Challenge 2018 #2 ~ Queen of Spades

January 2018 and My Reading Challenges

Christmas at the Town Hall
© Cleo @ Classical Carousel

I've decided to include my reading challenges in this post because I've been doing so little reading lately that I'd have little to say otherwise.  Isn't that pathetic?  Oh well, a new year is here and with it new resolutions, so here goes ........

December went by so quickly.  My grandmother ended up passing away 4 days before Christmas.  It wasn't unexpected but still it was sad to see her go.  We'll certainly miss her but it was fun to remember her stories and the spunk she showed until the end. She had a long life, well lived.

Otherwise, I spent lots of time on the food blog and was so pleased with our 4 months of success.  You can read our 2017 Year in Review, if you want some stats, highlights, bloopers, funny tasting stories and if you want to see what I've been up to.  It was actually alot of fun to write.  I also was able to make it cross-country skiing once.  It was lots of fun, although I can tell I need some practice and my healing-once-broken-thumb does not have the power it used to yet, so I was feeling somewhat lopsided.  In any case, I plan to do much more skiing as the year progresses.  I also went bowling between Christmas and New Years and really enjoyed it so I think I might try to do it more regularly as well.  Too exciting, I know ...... , lol!

A View from Nordic Skiing
© Cleo @ Classical Carousel

As for reading, I did finish off The Pickwick Papers from O's long read-along and almost in time too!!  I also managed to read The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm and I was SOOOO impressed by it. Fromm examines the very rare art of loving and explains that our society does NOT practice any disciplines that will help us love better.  He also gives examples of various views we hold about love that impede our ability to love.  While reading these views, I kept recognizing people I knew ..... it was rather unsettling but very insightful.  I highly recommend Fromm's book!

An Unexpected Local Ice Storm
very beautiful but the poor trees!
© Cleo @ Classical Carousel

January is usually the time to start our yearly challenges and while I originally was so disappointed with my 2017 reading that I was going to do NO challenges this year, O managed to change my mind (although perhaps she doesn't know this! ;-) )  So I am joining the following challenges with little hope of completing them but knowing they will at least focus me and I will read SOMETHING by having them.  Okay, here goes:

Back to the Classics Challenge:

Karen at Books and Chocolate hosts this great challenge again and here are my choices:

A 19th century classic: Moby Dick by Herman Melville
A 20th century classic: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
A classic by a woman author: Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
A classic in translation: Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor’s Son by Sholem Aleichem
A children's classic: Teddy’s Button by Amy Lefeuvre
A classic crime story, fiction or non-fiction: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
A classic travel or journey narrative, fiction or non-fiction: Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, or Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson
A classic with a single-word title: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius or, Shirley by Charlotte Brontë or, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin or, Pensées by Blaise Pascal
A classic with a colour in the title: The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
A classic by an author that's new to you: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides by Samuel Johnson and James Boswell or, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
A classic that scares you: The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe or, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Re-read a favourite classic: The Iliad by Homer

TBR Pile Challenge:

Adam at Roof Beam Reader is hosting this challenge to get those books on our shelves read!  My list is here:

1. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
2. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
3. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides by Samuel Johnson and James Boswell
4. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
5. Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor’s Son by Sholem Aleichem
6. Lives by Plutarch
7. City of God by Saint Augustine
8. Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
9. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
10. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
11. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
12. Le Rêve by Émile Zola

Alternates:

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Victorian Challenge:

This is my first year doing this challenge.  Becky at Becky's Books and Reviews has a number of options.  I have no idea which I'm going to choose at the moment.  I'd love to do the A-Z challenge but I would be delusional to take on that one.  So I will probably just read and fill in some categories.  You can click on the link to look at the categories.

Deal Me In Challenge:

Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts this challenge and has been very patient with my stumbling attempts to get through it.  I have no illusions that I'll finish it this year but what I love about this challenge is that it gets me reading wonderful stories, poems and essays which I would normally never pick up.  So I can be happy with my incompletedness each year ..... kind of .....

I took what I didn't finish from last year and simply chose new books to fill in the spots where I did read the stories/poem/essay.  Rather boring, but easy.  I need easy this year.

Clubs – Short Stories

A –  Cabbages and Kings - O’Henry

2 –  Excellent People - Anton Chekhov

3 –  The Queen of Spades – Alexander Pushkin

4 –  The Story of A Farm Girl - Guy Maupassant

5 –  The Hammer of God (Father Brown) - G.K. Chesterton

6 –  Doubtful Happiness - Guy Maupassant

7 –  The Honest Thief – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

8 –  The Unpresentable Appearance of Colonel Crane - G.K. Chesterton

9 –  The Diary of a Madman - Guy Maupassant

10 – The Birds - Anton Chekhov

J –  The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Gilman
Q -  Love - Leo Tolstoy 

K -  Signs and Symbols - Vladimir Nabakov

Spades – Essays

A – Milton - Charles Williams

2 – England, Your England - George Orwell

3 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream - G.K. Chesterton

4 – On A Faithful Friend – Virginia Woolf

5 – A Note on Jane Austen - C.S. Lewis

6 –  In Defence of Literacy - Wendell Berry

7 –  The Tyranny of Bad Journalism - G.K. Chesterton

8 –  The Hotel of the Total Stranger - E.B. White

9 –  An Apology for Idlers - Robert Louis Stevenson

10 – Sense - C.S. Lewis

J – Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community - Wendell Berry

Q – What I Demand of Life - Frank Swinnerton

K – Death of a Pig - E.B. White

Diamonds – Poetry

A – A Sea Dirge - Lewis Carroll

2 –  Gesang Der Geister Über Den Wassern - Johann Wolfgang

               von Goethe

3 – Nothing But Death - Pablo Neruda (from Poetry Soup)

4 – Sonnett XXIII - Garcilaso de la Vega

5 – Love Sonnet XIII - Pablo Neruda

6 – Resolution and Independence – William Wordsworth

7 – Ode III – Fray Luis de León

8 – Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas

9 – To A Mouse – Robert Burns

10 – From Milton [Jerusalem] - William Blake

J –  Easter Wings – George Hebert

Q – On His Blindness - John Milton

K – Phoenix and the Turtle - William Shakespeare

Hearts – Children’s Classic

A – A Triumph for Flavius – Caroline Dale Snedeker

2 – Three Greek Children - Alfred Church

3 –  The Story of the Treasure Seekers – E. Nesbit

4 – Detectives in Togas – Henry Winterfeld

5 – The Spartan - Caroline Dale Snedeker

6 – Shadow Hawk  Andre Norton

7 – City of the Golden House - Madeleine Polland

8 – Red Sails to Capri – Ann Weil

9 – Sprig of Broom - Barbara Willard

10 – Teddy’s Button - Amy LeFeuvre

J –  Call It Courage – Armstrong Sperry

Q – Just David - Eleanor H. Porter

K – Beyond the Desert Gate – Mary Ray 

What is that saying about a wing and a prayer, lol?!

© Cleo @ Classical Carousel

As for other less bookish things planned for January, I am going to, of course, keep working on and building our food blog, Journey to the Garden.  It's something I enjoy (although not quite as much as book blogging) and if I could make some income from it I would be very pleased.  Skiing, of course, is planned and I'm starting a few lessons that I was able to join inexpensively with some homeschoolers, so that will be fun.  I also REALLY need to get back into some sort of exercise regime.  I've been doing some brief aerobics regularly, but I want to incorporate walking, and of course, I'd love to get back into yoga.  On the distasteful side, tax prep should be started now, so I'm not scrambling last minute to do it, and with the added blog for (hopefully someday) profit, I have many more expenses to track.  I wish it could be magically done, but I'm the only magician around here so it's up to me.  Sad but true.  But honestly, my main wish for January is to get back to being organized.  Prayers and wishes for this miracle are gratefully accepted, lol!

In any case, hoping for a wonderful start to the year for everyone!

© Cleo @ Classical Carousel

Tears, Idle Tears by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Well, I have proven very predictable.  Following my usual pattern for the Deal Me In Challenge of getting off to a great and very consistent start, I then quickly fell behind schedule.  Do I care?  Yes!  I'm usually a very consistent person --- a loyal friend, a hard worker, a steady blogger (yes, this is important too!) ---- so it really bothers me when I don't stick to a challenge.  However, I have some very consistent blogger friends whom I won't mention, whose dedication to challenges continually convicts me (oh okay, I will mention them ---- O, I'm referring to you!), so with their gentle reminders, I've decided to pick up where I left off and hopefully get some momentum to finish this challenge well.

Finally, oh finally! I drew a poem, my first poem of the challenge so far in 11 choices. What are the odds of that?  Perhaps I should buy a lottery ticket!

Written in 1847 as a song from one of his longer poems The Princess, Tears, Idle Tears, a lyric poem, was composed in blank verse and is said to be one of the few poems where Tennyson conveys his personal sentiments in his works.  Tennyson claims he wrote it after a visit to Tintern Abbey, which was abandoned in 1536 and for him held "the passion of the past, abiding in the transient."  He said, it was "full for me of its bygone memories ......"

Tintern Abbey
courtesy of Saffron Blaze
Source

Tears, Idle Tears by Alfred Lord Tennyson

     Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.

      Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,

That brings our friends up from the underworld,

Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

      Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

      Dear as remember'd kisses after death,

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

On lips that are for others; deep as love,

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;

O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

Wow! I remember really liking this poem when I was younger but now it seems all melancholy and sad and depressing.  But really, should have I expected more from Tennyson based on my familiarity with one of this other poems (and one of my absolute favourites!), The Lady of Shallot? ---- lots of crying out and isolation and cracking and curses ...... no, why am I at all surprised?

Tinturn Abbey (inside)
source Wikipedia

So, now for my rather amateur analysis ....... the first aspect of the poem that stood out for me was his initial confusion.  He doesn't recognize the tears or connect them with anything at first.  They come from deep within him.  Does that highlight man's propensity to live a rather shallow life?  --- to live in the moment without ever doing any deeper self-examination?  And does it also highlight how capricious time is; that it slips away without us even noticing?

The autumn setting gives the poem a melancholy feel as summer has passed, and the passing of summer means less sunshine and happy times, and the death of leaves and greenery as the scenery turns from bright colours and greens to a burnished and faded scene.

Regret is an obvious theme and Tennyson takes us to the underworld, which I assume is really the memories of the dead whom he loved, yet these memories bring him sadness. He is not focusing on the happiness experienced during those times, but the loss of them.

These memories now seem very far away to him, so much so that the very experiences he participated in now appear strange to him.  The casement is shrinking in his vision, perhaps the approach of death?

At least, he feels the memories are dear and sweet, but he acknowledges the death of those times, a death that has happened before he himself has died.  There is nothing uplifting in his remembrance.

Farringford, Tennyson's residence of the Isle of Wright
source Wikipedia

Good heavens!  Yes, lots of tears and despair and sinking and sadness and strangeness and dying.  It would be fascinating to travel back in time and find out just what was going on in Tennyson's life and head when he wrote it.

Next up for my Deal Me In Challenge is a children's classic called Teddy's Button by Amy LeFeuvre.

Doodles in the Dictionary by Aldous Huxley

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec
source Wikimedia Commons

Ah, my first essay by Aldous Huxley and I didn't know what style to expect.  He first begins by lamenting the insufferable boredom experienced by having to learn Greek and Latin in school.  Even the mention of these subjects he still finds tedious and can only find one benefit of having been forced through hours of searching for words in his Lexicon:

"I hate to think of all that wasted time.  And yet, in view of the fact that most human beings are destined to pass most of their lives at jobs in which it is impossible for them to take the slightest interest, this old-fashioned training with the dictionary may have been extremely salutary.  At least it taught one to know and expect the worst of life.  Whereas the pupil in a progressive school, where everything is made to seem entertaining and significant, lives in a fool's paradise." 

When his bookseller friend requested his presence to view an item that he was extremely thrilled to purchase, Huxley was dismayed to find that it was a Latin dictionary. However, when he found it wasn't just any Latin dictionary, but the one owned by the famous painter, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, his interest was piqued.

source Wikipedia

Toulouse-Lautrec created these "doodles in the dictionary" when he was sixteen years old, a mere two years after two accidents which would change his life forever.  First, he broke one leg, and then the other, and neither leg grew again, therefore upon adulthood, he had the legs of a fourteen year old and the body of a man.  Having to live as a "dwarfish monster", Lautrec immersed himself in his drawing and painting.

Aristide Bruant on His Bicycle (1892)
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec
source Wikiart

Huxley muses that up to the age of ten, the muse of genius is within every child, but with instruction that muse disintegrates until only one in four thousand people have any talent for art.  He calls this fact an "unsolved riddle" and hopes one day to learn the answer, whereupon education will be able to be transformed into a "social and individual reconstruction".  Hmmm .......  who would decide what needed to be reconstructed and why?  Who would be doing the reconstructing and under what premise?  It's all very vague and rather disturbing.

Artilleryman Saddling His Horse (1879)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
source Wikiart

In any case, early on it was evident that Toulouse-Lautrec had rare talent for drawing and he was also proficient in Latin, earning prizes for translation and composition.  While his drawings at sixteen showed a maturity and flair that was unsurpassed for his age, his first master Bonnat was lukewarm with his praise.  In a letter to his Uncle Charles, Toulouse-Lautrec communicated his teacher's comments:  "Your painting isn't bad; it's clever, but still it isn't bad.  But your drawing is simply atrocious."  Judging from a comment from another student, Huxley believes Toulouse-Lautrec had a propensity to exaggerate his subjects, to "prettify" them in a way that was perhaps not pleasing.  Yet Huxley believes that facts are perhaps not so immutable as we perceive them, and that everyone can view each reality differently.  And facts can also cover a variety of disciplines: for example, he says, the H-bomb can at once be involved in physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, genetics, psychology, politics, economics, ethics and even be an aesthetic fact, as the cloud it makes is quite beautiful.  Toulouse-Lautrec simply chose to communicate in his art the aspects that preoccupied him and "found no incompatibility between truth to nature and distortion." His exaggeration perhaps brought life to his art, which would align with Hsieh Ho, the fourth dynasty Chinese artist who stated that the First Principle of Chinese Painting ".... is that, through a vitalizing spirit, a painting should possess the movement of life," and the sinologist, Osvald Siren agreed, "that the First Principle refers to something beyond the material form, call it character, soul, or expression. It depends on the operation of the spirit, or the myserious breath of life, by which the figures may become as though they were moving or breathing."

Fishing Boat (1880)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
source Wikiart

Huxley brings the subject of the horse into his essay, lamenting its passing into the history of transport and surmising that it was heading towards extinction.  It embodied the expression of life from its splendid grace, from the thoroughbred down to the old hack; in modern times we are only left with man who is a graceless uninteresting creature.  The advent of the automobile, and in fact all technology, detracts from life and therefore from our enjoyment of it.  Lautrec's father had advocated for the health of the outdoors but sadly, Lautrec was not destined for such a life because of his accident and became, instead, fascinated by the race-track, Montmartre known for its public dancing and cabarets, alcohol and prostitutes.

"The drunks and tarts, the lecherous gentlemen in top hats, the sensation-hunting ladies in feather boas, the stable boys, the lesbians, the bearded surgeons performing operations with a horrifying disregard of the first principles of asepsis ....... these became the subject matter of most of Lautrec's pictures, the environment in which he liked to live.  He portrayed them simply as curiosities, passing no moral judgment, but simply rendering the intrinsic oddity of what he saw around him."

His interest in the theatre grew, of which sketches can be seen in the dictionary of jesters, actors and actresses.  He did not portray women in a sexual way nor with any discrimination, only executing them as he would any other subject, "from memory and with appropriate distortions, rendered their life-movement, now graceful, now grotesque, and the underlying rhythm of the mysterious spirit that manifests itself within that movement."

And so concludes an essay that I thought would be an educational treatise and ended up being about the creation of art, and secondary the sad demise of a creative talent. Huxley did not reveal that Lautrec died from the effects of alcoholism and syphilis at the age of 36 years old.

Next up is classic children's book, The Finn Family Moomintroll.  I absolutely love this book; it is tied for my all-time favourite children's classic.  I can't wait to read it again and share some unique Moomintroll adventures!

Week 9 - Deal Me In Challenge - Two of Spades

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

(Warning:  There are spoilers galore in this review, but the story itself is quite obvious, not to mention the title, so I spoiled away!)

A few decades ago, I read this short story as an elementary school student.  From what I can remember from a fuzzy recollection is that the tale creeped me completely out and the image of a beating heart under the floorboards thumped around in my consciousness for weeks after.  However, for some reason I remembered the heart being in a box, which is not in the story.  Why, I wonder?  Was it some illustration I'd seen that had left that impression or simply my mind supplying details?

The Tell Tale Heart (1919)
Harry Clarke
source Wikipedia

In any case, The Tell Tale Heart was first published in the literary journal, The Pioneer, in 1843.  It is told in a first person narrative, with the narrator describing a helpless old man whose rheumy blue eye drives him to contemplate the murder of this vulnerable creature.  Although he claims to love the man and have nothing personal against him, the filmy eye is his main focus.  Each night at midnight, he attempts to shine a light on the eye, but each night it does not open and therefore, he claims, he cannot complete his homicidal deed.  Every day, he is kinder to the old man, but on the eighth night, the man calls out before the narrator is able to shine the light, however with patience our murder awaits our terrified victim and when he is able light up the eye, a sense of rage grows within him and he snuffs out the man's life.  Dismembering him, he hides the body parts beneath the floorboards.  Soon after, a knocking is heard and the narrator opens the door to the police who have heard reports of a shriek and have come to investigate.  Elated with his perceived clever deed, the narrator invites them in and they converse right in the room where the murder occurred, the evildoer supposing the police will never discover his crime.  However ....... ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump ...... a noise begins ..... a noise that comes from directly under the floorboards.  The tell tale heart .......  The pounding echoes the pounding in the murder's head until he is convinced that the police now know all, and bleats out a wild cry:  "Villains!  Dissemble no more!  I admit the deed! ---- tear up the planks!  ---- here, here! --- it is the beating of his hideous heart!"

The Veiled Heart (1932)
Salvador Dali
source Wikiart

Well, well!  And so I reveal the whole story.  Why?  Well, because at first, honestly, it was a huge disappointment.  It's an interesting story, certainly, but a classic?  Bah!  It's simply an implied scary story that is mildly shivery, and then soon forgotten.  What a disappointment! But not trusting my own judgement, I looked around to see what others had made of it.  It seemed like no one could draw any sort of deeper meaning from the tale.  There is talk of the unreliable narrator, who is obviously paranoid and psychotic right from the beginning. There is no explanation of the relationship of the narrator to the old man, or really even why he loves him but hates his eye.  So I let the story sit with me a day or two.  When I returned, I had a vague idea ........... in the beginning the narrator is fixated on the eye of the man; we never are told why but it absorbs all his thoughts until it becomes an obsession.  He murders the old man because he's convinced that he hates it.  Yet in the end, it is the heart of the man that gives the murderer away.  Could it be a commentary on the outside appearance of a person vs. their inner nature, the eye versus the heart?  We see and react to what is seen on the surface, yet is the heart of a person that is their true character, what will eventually "give them away" so to speak.

My conclusion still seems rather elusive and I'm grasping at a possible meaning that is still out of my reach.  Does anyone else have any thoughts on this or any other interpretations that you've discovered?  If so I'd love to hear them!

There is also the theme of the psychosis of the murder, which is rather fascinating.  He continually emphasizes the fact he is NOT crazy, and incessantly accentuates his clever machinations.  And notice in his final words, he calls the police, "villains". Everything is backwards in his twisted mind.

My next Deal Me In Challenge choice will be the essay, Doodles in the Dictionary by Aldous Huxley.

Week 9 - Deal Me In Challenge - Five of Clubs

A Haunted House by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is both predictable and unpredictable.  First, with any of her works she is not a writer that is easily deciphered or labelled, and conversely, one never knows when reading her works, precisely what one is going to discover.  In the short story, A Haunted House, Woolf delivers a narrative that is only 10 paragraphs long, yet manages not only to convey a story, but make it perplexingly obscure and delightfully poetic.

The story begins, "Whatever hour you woke, there was a door shutting."  A rather conventional beginning for a ghost story, but Woolf soon begins to weave other nebulous possibilities into its framework.  Two old ghosts appear to be moving through this house, searching for something.  Hundreds of years ago, the woman had died and the husband had left the house only to return to it later.  A young couple sleeps while they hunt always for the treasure that appears either to be lost or just out of their grasp. The ghosts visit the narrator and her husband sleeping in their room and appear to find the treasure in their quiet repose, in their love, and all is "Safe, Safe, Safe." ........

The Haunted House
source ArtUK

Most analyses of this short story categorize it as juxtaposition between the dead and living couple, the dead couples' loss of the "treasure" and their apparent finding of it again in the living couple, as the reader finally realizes the theme of love threaded throughout the story.  Well, yes, I'm certain that's an accurate analysis, but I had another less discernible thought flit through my mind while I was reading:  some of the descriptions and tone reminded me of an author's search for words or meaning to imbue their writing with a sense of life.  The ghostly couple could have represented the writer and the rooms of the house compartments in the mind.  Here's an example:

"..... “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass."

The allusions to reading, pencil, margin, and book, and the references to the house being empty and the doors open and the search, reminded me of a writer struggling to find the precise words to bring his/her story to vivid life, to make something living from something dead.  Am I crazy?  Perhaps, but with Woolf, the very act of writing always seems to be a part of the writing itself, so closely incorporated that it is difficult to separate the two.  In any case, it was an interesting story, as only Woolf could make a story a page long.  The complete text of the story can be found HERE.

Next week, I've drawn a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart.  I remember reading this one in elementary school and being quite scared by it.  We'll see how effective it remains from an adult reading.

Week 8 - Deal Me In Challenge - Nine of Clubs

The Life You Save May Just Be Your Own by Flannery O'Connor

Farmhouse and Car (1933)
Prudence Hayward
source Wikiart

Imagine a small town in the southern United States on a hot day.  An old woman and her daughter sit on the front porch of their house, the woman suddenly alert while the daughter plays vacantly with her fingers. Down the road, a man materializes, a young man but by his appearance obviously a drifter.  He has "a look of composed dissatisfaction as if he understood life thoroughly." The woman and man greet each other, each eyeing the other with a hesitant speculation and a mutually concealed distrust.  After an introduction, the woman tries to find out more about Mr. Shiftlet but the man adeptly avoids answering, speaking of cars, hearts, lying and the definition of man. With more talk, it becomes clearer that the man is interested in the old car in the yard that had belonged to the woman's deceased husband, and the woman is interested in a suitor for her mentally disabled daughter. Agreeing to stay on for board and food, the man begins to spruce the place up and soon it looks much improved.

As time passes, the woman continues to subtly bargain for a husband for her daughter, as Shiftlet counters, bargaining for the car.  Finally a deal is struck, the two marry and the car becomes his. Yet the material desire of his heart is at war with the obligation to his new unwanted wife.  Shiftlet finds himself with a choice and the struggle within himself is powerfully displayed.

This story was perplexing, and although I haven't read any of O'Connor's other works, I have a feeling that she regularly creates confusion with readers.  While reading The Life You Save May Just Be Your Own, I was struck with impressions rather than feelings, as if I was following an incohesive story.  The story is there, but O'Connor inserts so many phrases that are pregnant with meaning, that you simply can't help analyzing them, wondering if there is some sort of secondary communication.  Let's see what I can make of it.

The Farmer's Daughter (1945)
Prudence Heward
source Wikiart

First of all, does Mr. Shiftlet's name imply that he is a "shifty" character, or does it indicate a possibility of shift or change within him?  Or both?  Initially, he is presented swinging "both his whole and his short arm up slowly so that they indicated an expanse of sky and his figure formed a crooked cross."  There is definitely religious connotations here, but notice the "crooked cross."  There is certainly something very imperfect about this man.  He is also a carpenter, which was the profession of Jesus --- does that mean anything or not?  When the woman tells him that he must sleep in the car, Shiftlet answers, "Lady, the monks of old slept in their coffins."  Here is another allusion to religion and death (although monks slept in their coffins so they would get used to not fearing death, but that's another story).

O'Connor also employs colour imagery in profusion, from the bright colours around Lucynell, the daughter, indicating innocence, purity and happiness, to the black, brown and grey colours worn by the man and woman, from the sun shining forth at the beginning of the story, only to be covered by a cloud at the end.

Portrait of a Man (1911)
Albert Bloch
source Wikiart

There is much speculation as to what O'Connor wanted to convey with this story, and there certainly appears to be deeply imbedded layered meaning.  When writing, O'Connor applied a type of analogical technique that allowed to reader "to see different levels of reality in one image or situation ..... (having) to do with the Divine life and our participation in it ..... was also an attitude towards all creation, and a way of reading nature which included most possibilities and I think that it is this enlarged view of the human scene that the fiction writer has to cultivate if he is every going to write stories that have any chance of becoming a permanent part of our literature."

For me, the impression that stood out was the subtle change in the man.  Initially, he is a tramp, someone who is disconnected to the material, content to wander and take odd jobs.  His exchange with the woman borders on the philosophical on his side and he is likened to a Christ-like figure.  Yet as soon as he espies the car, a possessive desire begins to simmer inside him, causing him to abandon his ideals, and he is satisfied to barter with the mother for Lucynell as if she were an animal or possession.  Because his attention is fixed on a worldly goal, Shiftlet becomes blind to simple pleasures and human empathy.

Portrait of a Boy
Albert Bloch
source Wikiart

If nothing else, O'Connor gives the reader a multitude of possibilities and honestly, this short story was a compelling and intriguing experience.

Next week, for my Deal Me In Challenge, I'll be reading the short story by Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House.

Week 7 - Deal Me In Challenge - Six of Clubs