Purgatorio- Dante (1321)
Somewhat to my surprise, I got a lot further than I had in any previous month since I started, and actually finished the book up this month: something I hadn’t thought would happen until the end of May.
Canto 26
The seventh level: lust cont.
The canto continues with Dante, Virgil and Statius moving along the edge carefully in single file. They are now later in the afternoon, and Dante’s shadow gives the shades that see him the impetus to speak and ask how it is that he doesn’t seem to have a shade body. They draw closer to him, though carefully not to leave the fire where they are being burned, and one asks Dante to explain how he can be there and have a body that would seem to mean he is still alive. Dante starts to explain but his attention is drawn to a group of penitents coming along. They greet, with a very brief kiss on the cheeks, the ones that are traveling along Dante’s way. They don’t even stop, but continue on, however as soon as they are passed, the group traveling the other way screams “Sodom and Gomorrah”, while the group traveling Dante’s way screams “Pasiphae enters the cow so the bull may run to her lust”. This last phrase refers to Pasiphae, wife of Minos, who was in love with a bull. So she had Daedelus construct a wooden cow, which she would enter into, and receive the bull’s sexual intercourse in her.
Dante then mentions a group of Cranes in flight, who divide into two groups one flying to the south, the other to the frigid north. Cranes would not do this, but it symbolizes doing what is completely against their nature.
Then the same ones that asked Dante before to explain himself, ask him again, so Dante explains that he is indeed still alive, and that one above (Beatrice) obtained grace for him to travel through these realms so he would no longer walk blind. Then Dante asks the crowd to tell him who they are, and who the other group were. At first they remain stupified, like a wild and coarse mountaineer who arrives in the city is left speechless and dumbstruck, but then one answers that the group that passed were those that committed the same sin Julius Caesar was accused of when they called him ‘Queen’- homosexuality; while they themselves were heterosexual, but didn’t submit to human standards, but followed their lust about like beasts. So in rebuke of each group, the homosexuals call out Sodom, while the heterosexuals call out Pasiphae. But they have no more time to tell who they are except the speaker, who identifies himself as the poet Guido Guinizelli, and claims that he is here so quickly after his death because he repented of his sins earlier.
Dante, uses the example of the sons of Lycurgus, who leapt to the defense of their mother, as what he wanted to do himself in greeting Guinizzelli, but the fire of course prevents him. So he just stops and stares at the shade for a while until Dante promises to serve Guinizzelli in whatever way possible.
Guinizzelli asks what this is about, and Dante explains that his poetry has inspired many, including himself. Guinizzelli dismisses this with an indication that there is another close by that is a far better craftsman of his mother tongue: Arnaut Daniel, the Provençal poet. While many thing that Giraut de Bornelh was better, it was merely because he was more famous, and most people’s opinions just follow the crowd. In the previous generation, this was done with Guittone d’Arezzo, but eventually the truth won out.
Guinizzelli asks Dant to say an ‘Our Father’ for him if he gets to Paradise, except the last part of the prayer won’t be necessary (lead us not into temptation) since he can no longer sin in purgatory. Then he disappears and Arnaut draws near. Dante asks him to tell his name, and Arnaut responds in Provençal, then hides himself in the fire. Here the canto ends.
Canto 27
The ascent to the mountain top
The canto starts at the end of the day with Virgil, Dante and Statius needing to pass through a fire before they can move up to the next level. Dante, having seen people burned at the stake, isn’t about to go in. But Virgil promises that while he may be tormented, he will not die, nor suffer any damage. Virgil reminds Dante that he led him safely down on Geryon in hell, how much more would be careful of Dante here so close to God! Dante still isn’t having any of it, so Virgil tries to convince him to test it with the edge of his robes, but Dante remains where he is. Finally, Virgil invokes Beatrice by telling Dante that she is on the other side. That gets Dante’s attention and he is ready to commit. Virgil goes first, then tells Statius to follow Dante. Dante describes the feeling inside as wanting to throw himself into boiling glass in order to refresh himself. Virgil keeps up some encouraging pitter-patter by saying he believes he can see Beatrice’s eyes. A voice guides them through the flames and they come out the other side. The sun is going down so they are encouraged to get moving up the steps, but sundown comes while they are climbing. Since they can’t, nor do they want to, move while its dark, they hunker down, each on a step. Dante looks up and can barely see the sky, being enclosed by high walls, but notes the stars are particularly clear, and numerous. At that he falls into sleep. He imagines it towards early morning, but he has a dream of Leah and Rachel, the wives of Jacob in the Bible. Leah is collecting flowers and represents the active life of works. She says she wants to adorn herself so she can be pleased with herself in the mirror. The mirror is symbolic of her conscience. Rachel, symbolic of the contemplative life, never leaves considering herself in front of the mirror.
But then morning comes and Dante wakes up. Virgil and Statius are already up and Virgil tells Dante that today will be the day when his happiness will be satisfied. At this they all launch up the steps until they arrive at the top. Virgil then tells Dante that they’ve come to the point where Virgil can no longer lead. Virgil took Dante as far as he could go through intellect and skill, but now, with Dante’s will being cleansed and set right, Dante must let his pleasure guide him, since his pleasure now will be to seek the good and true. He tells Dante that he can either sit, or wander around. Only Dante must no longer wait for instructions or signals from Virgil, because his will is free, straightened and healthy, and so it would be a sin not to follow it. Virgil proclaims that Dante is ruler of himself.
Here the canto ends.
Canto 28
Earthly paradise
Dante decides to have a look around inside the divine forest. He feels a light breeze striking his forehead, and notices a low droning sound coming from the movement of the leaves in the trees. He then comes across a small stream, of exceptionally clear, yet dark, water. His progress halted by the stream, he looks across to the other side and notices a beautiful young woman singing and picking flowers. He greets her with a line I love: “Deh, bella donna, che a’ raggi d’amore ti scaldi…”. Hello, beautiful girl, who warms herself in rays of love. He then asks her to come forward so that he might understand what she is singing. This woman, whose name we learn only in the latter part of the last canto of purgatorio, is Matelda, and she is figurative of the innocence lost to man when he sinned. Her name is from a poem, In un boschetto trovai pastorella (I met a shepherdess in the woods), of Dante’s friend and fellow poet, Guido Cavalcanti. Several of Dante’s descriptions match up with Cavalcanti’s poem. In Dante’s greeting, he tells Matelda that she makes him recall Proserpina. Proserpina was a young maiden who was happily and innocently collecting flowers in the forest, which state Dante references here. But symbolically, the story of Proserpina is that she was taken and ravished by Pluto, god of the underworld, the reference is to man’s innocence and happiness in the garden that would be lost to sin.
But back to the story. Matelda draws near and Dante is utterly smitten by her beauty. He believes that even the goddess Venus, in love with Adonis when struck accidentally by one of Cupid’s arrows, would not have shown more love in her eyes than he saw in the eyes of Matelda as she looked up at him. Dante notes that while he was separated the distance of only three steps by the river, he probably hated that short distance more than Leandro hated the Hellespont, which he swam across nightly to be with Hero, the priestess he was in love with.
Matelda smiles at them (Virgil and Statius were there too) and says she can see they are new here, but for Dante to go ahead and ask whatever he wants. Dante doesn’t hesitate, but asks about the weather. He notes that the presence of a river, and the wind, doesn’t seem to correlate with what he had been told by Statius earlier- meteorological events didn’t occur above the gates to Purgatory proper.
Matelda answers that God indeed made this place for man to dwell, but that didn’t last too long because of human sin. The winds below on the earth occur because water evaporates and rises up. It doesn’t, in fact, rise up to this height because it is barred by God from doing so, but… all the atmosphere moves in a circuit because of the outer sphere. The outer sphere is an object from medieval cosmology, where it was believed that there were a series of concentric spheres. When God started the first one moving, that caused the atmosphere to move too, and it is only this movement of the air that Dante has experienced. Matelda drops a little more knowledge than he had asked for by explaining that the breeze hits the trees here, which in turn, scatter their seeds all over the earth, which would explain how trees that apparently had no origin locally could come into being.
The waters Dante sees aren’t due to the normal meteorological events of evaporation into clouds, rain, water collecting in rivers which gradually get bigger until they flatten out close to the sea; no, these streams spring up by the will of God and pour out in two directions. The stream Dante sees currently is the Lethe, which has the power to remove every memory of sin, and the other is the Eunoe, which restores the memory of every good deed. The waters of the Eunoe won’t work unless one first bathes in the Lethe, but the waters of the Eunoe are the sweetest of all waters.
Then Matelda drops one more unasked-for tidbit of knowledge: the poets of old spoke of a golden age, an idyllic time of peace and harmony with nature and the gods. It was a veiled allusion to this paradise that they were inspired to speak of.
At this, Dante turns to check what the poets thought of this, sees their smiles, and then turns back to Matelda, and here the canto ends.
Canto 29
Earthly paradise cont.
The canto begins with Matelda adding “Blessed are those whose sins are covered” to the end of her speech. At this point she moves along the edge of the river, and Dante matches her pace on the other side. She then points out that a procession is coming. Suddenly, the woods light up and an air of righteous zeal strikes Dante so that he rebukes the audacity of Eve in disobeying the commands of God, which result in everyone, himself included, not being able to enjoy such delights.
As the procession comes into view, Dante implores the Muses to pour out on him every gift of inspiration on him so that he can accurately depict the things he saw, which are hard to even imagine, much less put into verse.
He first sees seven golden candelabras, which he mistakes for trees from a distance, but recognizes as they get closer. These represent the seven-fold spirit of God that the book of Revelation speaks of. Their luminance shines brightly in the sky and Dante turns to Virgil, who is nonetheless stupified. Matelda then reprimands Dante for spending too much time noting the candelabras, and not noticing what comes afterward. A group of people dressed in the brightest white are approaching behind the seven candelabras. Dante notes that from each candelabra, there is a flame, which leaves behind it a colored streak of light that remains. These form the colors of the rainbow, and remain looking like ribbons over the procession. The first group of people, dressed in white, are the 24 elders described in Revelation, and they represent the Hebrew Bible divided into 24 books. They are crowned with a garland of white lilies, the color symbolizing faith. These sing a blessing to Mary, who gave birth to the Redeemer.
Then come the four living creatures described in Revelation, each crowned with green, the color symbolizing hope, which the four gospels carried to the world. They each have six wings, filled with eyes. Dante says he won’t spare time describing them, the reader can check out the prophecy of Ezekiel too.
Between the four living creatures is a chariot, symbolizing the Church, which is pulled by a Griffin, symbolizing Christ. The Griffin is a creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. These represent the two natures of Christ- divine and human. The head and wings are gold (the divine) while the body is white, mixed with red, symbolizing faith mixed with the blood of Jesus.
Three women dance to the right of the chariot. These represent the theological virtues. The red woman is love, the highest of the three virtues; the green woman is hope, and the pure white woman is faith. Sometimes faith leads the dance, and sometimes love leads the dance, but love always sets the timing of the dance.
On the left, four women dressed in purple represent the infused cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude. These wear the purple clothes, whereas the other three women are their colors through and through. Prudence is described as having three eyes: symbolizing that she sees past, present, and future.
Then come two men paired together. The first is a physician, representing Luke, the writer of Acts, and the second is Paul, carrying a sharp sword, signifying the word of God.
After them come four more dressed humbly, symbolizing the smaller epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude.
Finally a sleeping man with an anguished face comes, symbolizing the old apostle John while in a trance receiving Revelation.
The seven behind the four living creatures had bright red flowered garlands, symbolizing love.
The procession stops when the chariot is opposite Dante and here the canto ends.
Canto 30
Earthly paradise cont.
The procession comes to a stop and one of the elders calls out for ‘the bride to come forth’. A veiled woman comes to the edge of the chariot, and while Dante can’t see her face for the veil, his spirit is overcome and he feels the same kind of power coming over him that he did in Beatrice’s presence. Then when he finally sees her, he turns to tell Virgil that every drop of blood in his veins is trembling, but notices that Virgil has left them. At this moment, despite the glory of paradise, Dante is overwhelmed with sadness. The lady tells him not to weep right now, for there is another sword that will make him cry, by which she means, she has some words of rebuke that will bring him to tears.
Beatrice greets Dante clearly but asks how he could have thought he was worthy to come here. Dante looks away in shame, because he, like all of us, can’t consider ourselves worthy to come to salvation apart from the grace of God. In this case, even the glimpse into this place came because Beatrice had intervened to bring Dante here.
At this the surrounding angels sing “in You, Lord, I trusted” as a reminder to Beatrice that everyone has to come to this place through grace and faith. Then Dante, grasping that the angels are interceding for him, breaks down in tears and sobbing.
But Beatrice addresses the angels by noting that while they live in an eternal day outside of time, Dante is caught up in time and moments are precious. She wants Dante to have a repentance equal to his sin. The celestial spheres turn and produce life in its turn, but divine grace also rains down from such a place and height that humans can’t discern how or what it is up to. Dante himself was blessed with such gifts that had he cultivated righteous habits, he would have been a proof of divine righteousness. But when a field is given such natural gifts, and yet has bad seed and remains uncultivated, it produces wildly and malignantly at the level it could have produced good.
Beatrice notes that while she was with him, she knew he was attracted to her, so she tried to guide him along a good path. But as soon as she died, Dante gave himself to another woman. Even as Beatrice was becoming more beautiful and virtuous, she was therefore less pleasing to him. He turned off the true path and sought fulfillment in gods that never produce what they promise.
She tried importuning God for inspiration, and she would call to him in dreams and other ways, but Dante would not respond. He’d fallen so low that the only thing that would reach him was to show him Hell. So she went to Virgil in limbo and asked Virgil to bring Dante through Hell, and up through purgatory. Now, though the angels would want her to back off a bit, she argues that the decrees of God would be broken if Dante were allowed to enter the Lethe, and taste of its food, which is the forgetting of past sins, without serious tears being shed as a payment for his backsliding.
The canto ends with this.
Canto 31
Earthly paradise cont.
The last canto finished with Beatrice explaining to the angels why she was being harsh with Dante. This one starts with her now turning her attention directly to Dante, where she continues ripping him a new one… in love… always in love.
After having declared Dante’s sin to the angels who had attempted to mitigate her harshness, she demands Dante declare himself if these things are true, and add his confession to the accusation. He can’t even speak in her presence, which she waits for a moment, before telling him that he has not yet lost his memory of sin, so answer her! Dante breaks down in sobs at this point and confesses that it is all true. She continues questioning him by noting that if her desires had lifted him to the highest good, what would have expected to find elsewhere? What would cause him to break from that and turn to lesser things. Dante again confesses that he was turned by false pleasures as soon as she was away.
She adds that it is good to have confessed it since God knows It all anyway, but when confessed willingly, it lessens the consequences in the eyes of God. But she adds that next time he hears the Siren, be stronger. Plant the seed of weeping and listen to what she says, because she’s going to explain why her death should have moved him in the correct direction, not where he went.
Nothing was ever so beautiful to Dante as Beatrice. So what else could bring him fulfillment? After the first disappointment chasing after sin, he should have reverted immediately back to following what she was following, rather than waiting for a second or third disappointment, some other girl, or any other novelty that brought momentary joy.
Baby birds learn to avoid the snares after 2-3 mishaps. Adult birds never fall for the traps. Dante is listening to her ashamed when she says if this pains you, raise your beard (meaning he is by now olde enough, and should be wise enough not to fall for such nonsense) and it’ll be more painful seeing.
At this, Dante lifts his face and sees the angels are resting, but Beatrice turned towards the Griffin, which symbolizes Jesus. Dante notes that even across the river, her beauty has surpassed even her unmatched beauty from earth. Dante is so stung to repentance that he says all those desires that had perverted him as the most hateful things now. This is so strong on him that he loses consciousness. What happened there, Dante says only Beatrice, the cause of it, would know.
But he comes to with Matelda standing over him. She tells him to hold tight to her and she leads him into the waters of the Lethe river up to his neck. Then she embraces him and holds him down until he has swallowed the waters. When she pulls him back up, he is led among the four dancing woman that were at the left of the chariot in the procession. These women represented the four cardinal virtues: fortitude, temperance, justice and prudence. They promise to lead Dante to Beatrice’s eyes, but the other three women will have to sharpen his sight so that he can be in heaven, otherwise the light would be too much for him there.
They lead Dante to Beatrice who is gazing intently at the Griffin. Dante sees the dual nature, both divine and human, reflected in Beatrice’s eyes, and gains understanding as the natures alternately reveal themselves to him. He gets this wisdom, but is thirsty for more, when the three women representing the theological virtues come up and tell Beatrice to unveil her mouth, the second beauty to Dante.
Dante again notes that such heavenly splendor is difficult to express in words. And the canto ends here.
Canto 32
Earthly paradise cont.
The canto begins with Dante intently staring at Beatrice in an attempt, he tells us, to make up for ten years lost time. One of the women representing the virtues mentions that he is staring, and that breaks him away. The last canto detailed a procession that symbolized the progressive revelation of God in the Bible. This canto will symbolically show the history of the church through time.
As Dante turns back to what’s happening around him, he sees the procession wheel around and head back where it came from. Matelda, Statius, and Dante are watching all this, and following along with the chariot as some angels pound out a song that their steps march to. Dante notes that they had gone about three times the distance of an arrow shot, when Beatrice descends from the chariot. There is a murmur of the word Adam, and they stop and encircle a dead tree. It has the same shape as the trees on the level of gluttony: an inverted cone that spreads out more as the height increases. This is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Those around laud the Griffin (Jesus) that he never sinned by taking from this tree like Adam did, and in so doing, preserved the seed of righteousness: meaning he maintained that perfect righteousness that allowed him to take the sin of the world on his shoulders, and so provide righteousness for all that would believe in him afterward.
He takes the pole of the chariot, which is the shaft that connects the body of the chariot to the horses that would pull it, and ties it to the tree as a stake. The pole symbolizes the cross. Very quickly then, the tree begins to have life again. Dante then falls asleep, which may symbolize the peace and happiness after reconciliation with God. When is called to wake up, he sees Matelda, but immediately asks where Beatrice is. She is close by sitting on the roots of the revived tree. The griffin has returned with the rest of the company, symbolizing that the church has been left on the earth while Jesus has returned back to heaven. The seven nymphs representing the virtues have remained with her however.
Then there is a picture of seven calamities that have befallen the church through its history.
The first is the persecution of the Roman empire; depicted as an eagle that tears through the tree and strips it, and smashes into the chariot, rocking it back and forth.
The second calamity is a ravenous she-fox, representing heresy, that jumps into the very cradle of the chariot, until it is chased out by Beatrice, depicted as emaciated and stripped of meat.
The third calamity is what’s known as the donation of Constantine. After converting to Christianity, Constantine gave lands to the church. The canto portrays this as the same eagle as before (Rome) coming down to the chariot and leaving her feathers all over. We hear a voice of regret from the heavens saying: “My little ship, how badly you are loaded”.
The fourth calamity is a hole opening up between the chariot wheels and a dragon coming up, fixing it’s barbed tail on the bottom of the chariot, and ripping it off. This may represent the great schism, but likely represents the rise of Islam.
The fifth calamity is that the feathers that remained in the chariot body grew like weeds, covered itself, then covered everything else. This represents the growth of the church’s worldly possessions. Even if this was done with good intentions, it was corrosive all the same.
The sixth calamity shows three heads sprouting from the pole, and another four heads, one in each corner of the chariot. The three on the pole each have two horns like oxen, the other four have only one- ten total. This picture is taken from Revelation, but the intended interpretation is unclear. The seven heads together are said to be a beast unlike any seen before.
The seventh is that of a loosely dressed harlot sitting on top the beast. There is a giant watching over the harlot, the giant supposedly representing Philip the Fair, or maybe more broadly, the intrusion of the French monarchy into Papal affairs. The harlot and the giant occasionally kiss, but at one point, the harlot eyes Dante, and the giant, in a rage, beats the harlot, cuts the monster loose, and takes the harlot so deeply into the woods they can’t be seen anymore. This seventh picture is also obviously drawn from Revelation, but beyond the fact that the church has now been completely corrupted and distorted beyond all recognition, it’s hard to know what other interpretations might be intended.
Here the canto ends.
Canto 33
Earthly paradise cont.
The seven maidens sing and weep with the opening lines of Psalm 79: “Oh God, the nations have invaded your inheritance” , in response to the vision seen in the prior canto. Beatrice herself is extremely saddened but then stands up and repeats the words of Jesus at the last supper: I’ll disappear, and then you’ll see me again. At this point she stands up and sends the maidens off, and signals that Dante, Statius, and Matelda will all now follow her and the seven maidens as they travel. While they travel, Beatrice calls Dante up to make sure he can understand anything she wants to communicate. She asks Dante why he doesn’t have any questions, and he responds that she already knows what he needs, and therefore, anything she’d like to address to him will undoubtedly be exactly what he needs.
She lets him know that he should put away all bashfulness and speak out. She then begins to explain the vision he saw and says that the chariot (the church) that the serpent broke was, and is no more. By which she means that the institution of the Roman catholic leadership is now so corrupted that it no longer functions as the body of Christ. But those guilty, the Popes and the Kings of France, should know that God’s vengeance fears nothing. For the Holy Roman Empire that was meant to rule over Italy and the church therein, while it had become first a monster, then prey, it would not be like this forever.
Dante give a number: 515 that we are told signifies one sent by God who will kill the thief, the whore (the Popes) that sat on the beast (The Papacy of the Roman church) and commits crimes with the giant (the French throne).
While this prophecy may be obscure to Dante now, Beatrice notes that the facts themselves will soon reveal the enigma and solve the problem without damage to the flock or fields- presumably referring to the wider church flock, and the various places where the church had its dominion. So the corrupt leadership would be dealt with, but the lay church would be left intact. The reference of who the 515 means is unknown, but since the prophecy didn’t come true, we won’t worry about who Dante might have been referring to.
Beatrice tells Dante to relate these events as he has seen and heard them, and to particularly relate the stripping of the tree, so that whoever has robbed or committed violence against the Tree, will understand that he has blasphemed against God himself through his deeds, even if not in words.
Adam himself was the first to commit a crime against the tree, and he had waited over 5000 years to see Christ atone for sin- having waited in Limbo until Jesus descended into Hell and led captivity captive up from the grave. Beatrice says Dante’s own genius would be asleep if he can’t see the cause of the shape of the tree- thin at the bottom and large at the top. The shape represents the barrenness brought by sin down low, and the restoration of life by the redemption of Christ as it goes higher.
But because Dante’s mind has been crusted over and stained, he doesn’t get the justice of God in it.
She tells him to faithfully recount the words, at least the gist of them, so that people would understand where he has been, as a pilgrim to the holy land wraps his staff with palms as evidence he’s been there.
Dante promises to faithfully recount all he has heard, but wonders why he has such a difficulty understanding? Beatrice notes that he has filled his mind with human philosophy, but that it can’t compare with divine wisdom which is as far from him as the highest heaven is from earth.
Dante responds that he doesn’t remember any divergence in his philosophy from hers. She notes that he doesn’t remember it because he drank from the Lethe, which is clear evidence that his leaving her was sinful, but now his will is inclined to the good.
It’s midday now and they come to an opening in the woods where Dante sees the source of the Tigris and Euphrates bubbling up. Dante asks what this is that is so far from the rivers themselves, and Beatrice tells Matelda to explain it to him. Matelda lets Beatrice know that she has already explained it to him, at which point Beatrice notes that he probably forgot it in all the other events. Beatrice herself explains it’s the Eunoe, the river that restores memory of all the good deeds, and has Matelda lead him to it. Dante drinks and, having been renewed, is now ready to ascend to Paradise.
The Republic and the Laws- Cicero (51 BC)
This collection is actually two books: De re publica and De legibus.
The republic is a fictional Socratic dialogue among several eminent men explaining the Roman constitution.
Not all the work is known to us, and there are frequent holes in the arguments due to missing pages of manuscript. Republic is comprised of 6 books covering the political situation of the time, an outline of Roman history and development of their political system, justice, education, and citizenship. The laws is a second simulated discussion which just so happens to define an ideal system of laws exactly as the Roman’s had at the time. There is some interesting discussion about why these laws are nothing but the conclusion of nature and logic. Not all of it is convincing, but it is interesting.
A History of Civilizations- Fernand Braudel (1962)
French historian that emphasized a multi-disciplinary approach to writing history. This is the first of a series of anthropology books that I saw recommended. I’m going to add this in to my usual history and political theory reading per month. The book starts with an overview of the history and how the author proceeds.
The second section considers civilizations outside Europe: Islam and the Muslim world, Black Africa, and the Far East- China, India, Japan, southeast Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Korea
The third section covers European civilizations: Europe, America- both Latin and the US, and finally the ‘other’ Europe- Russia and the USSR.
Zuleika Dobson- Max Beerbohm (1911)
“You have never dipped into the Greek pastoral poets, nor sampled the Elizabethan sonneteers?
No, never. You will think me lamentably crude: my experience of life has been drawn from life itself.”
Zuleika Dobson is a young beautiful and enchanting woman. Men throw themselves at her wherever she goes, and she, while reveling in their admiration, can never love them because: one cannot be in love with one’s slave. She is invited by her grandfather, the warden at Oxford, to come visit. While there the first night, she meets the Duke, a Bonafide bachelor and dandy, who, though he is enchanted with Zuleika’s looks, he shrinks in horror from the notion that he should be in love- meaning he should care about any one else more than himself. So he acts indifferently towards her, until later in the evening he decides he had better leave.
Zuleika herself is enchanted by this distance, and falls in love with him precisely because he isn’t in awe of her.
The next morning, the Duke awakens and decides that lots of people fall in love, why not him. When Zuleika arrives to pay him a visit, he declares his love to her, which instantly causes her to regard him as the same as all the others, and she loses all respect.
He attempts to talk her into marrying him, but she’ll have none of it. That night, the Duke decides the only worthy thing is to kill himself as a show of his love. When he tells her in the morning of his plan (and, understanding she doesn’t love him, he is not so obsequious), she once again falls in love with him and convinces him to wait until tomorrow to kill himself.
That evening, she asks him to join her for dinner but he puts her off since he had another engagement with his Oxford club. At the club, the others declare they too love Zuleika. The Duke explains that she won’t love anyone who loves her, and reveals his plan to kill himself tomorrow. They all commit to the same course of action. Pretty soon, the entire college has followed suit, and is ready to kill themselves. But now, the Duke begins to feel that while he can sacrifice his own life, he can’t allow others to be sacrificed only because of his example.
Zuleika is charmed by this display of sacrifice in her honor and decides to give them all a treat….. a magic show.
She’s a terrible conjurer but the men watching are enchanted because it’s her and give her an ovation at the end. She is walked home by the Duke, who declares he will live for her instead. She calls him a coward and marches up to bed. He calls her from the window, and she dumps water all over him.
In the morning the Duke decides he wants to live, and goes through the campus trying to convince the undergraduates not to commit suicide over Zuleika, but they won’t listen. Finally he decides he will follow through with his death, but not for Zuleika. Upon learning this, Zuleika is once again completely in love with the Duke. The next day he proceeds to the river, and as a nasty rain storm is approaching he throws himself in the river, followed by the entirety of the Oxford underclass, and they all drown.
That evening, at a dinner, the faculty of the college proceed as if everything is ok, while Zuleika sits, unsatisfied that there are none left to adore her, wondering ‘to what end?’ had all this been done?
The Moviegoer- Walker Percy (1961)
The main character does in fact love to go the movies, and there are lots of references to movies, but it isn’t a novel about the main character….at the movies. Jack Bolling is a stock broker in New Orleans, feeling alienated in his life. He struggles to find a sense of direction for his life in his relationships, but fails to find much.
Death Comes to the Archbishop- Willa Cather (1927)
The story narrates the lives of two French Catholic seminarians who come to New Mexico and minister there in the second half of the 1800s. It’s a time of great change as the territory has just changed hands from Mexico to the US. Some of the characters, like Kit Carson, are historical, and the places and historical settings are real. The book is really a series of anecdotes about the priests’ lives and work among the Indians and Mexicans, with some Americans included.
The Wapshot Chronicle- John Cheever (1957)
The story of an eccentric New England family in the fishing town of St. Botolph’s. The story traces the lives of the Wapshot family. Leander and Sarah are the parents of Moses and Coverly Wapshot. The two sons, now of age, are sent away to make their ways in the world. The chapters are largely anecdotes of the lives of all four characters, but they also interact with some other members of the family, and both boys get married, so there are also developments in their lives as well.
Of Human Bondage- W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
The title is drawn from a work of philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s titled: Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions. The discussion is about how a nature dominated by emotions is unable to think rationally.
The main character is Philip Carey, an orphan with a club-foot, who is intelligent and sensitive, but has a difficult time fitting in.
He’s a bright student at school, but throws away a chance for a scholarship at Oxford because he has trouble fitting in, and decides he wants to go to Heidelberg, Germany.
He goes to Germany but decides after a while he has nothing there and comes back to London to learn business accounting. He has a fling with an older woman, who he doesn’t really love but can’t seem to leave, when he decides he has no head for business and wants to become an artist in Paris.
In Paris he studies for several years but realizes he won’t ever make it, and comes back to England to study medicine. While there he falls in love with a waitress who shows him no affection and dates him only for what she can get from him. He realizes she’s crude but can’t break away from her. She, however, finally leaves him for someone else. Heartbroken, he strikes up a relationship with another girl who he doesn’t love, but who is a great companion and who loves him. But then later, the waitress returns, pregnant and disavowed, at which point he breaks off the affair he was having with the second girl and returns to the first. Again she leaves him, this time with a good friend of his, and he thinks he is done. He meets her again some years later, she is in dire poverty, his friend having ditched her, and he invites her back to live with him, but only as a friend. She immediately takes up the offer, thinking she can wind him around her finger like always, but this time he is physically repulsed by her. After a few years, she leaves, but destroys his house and all his belongings on the way out. He falls on hard times and is befriended by a family, and falls in love with the oldest daughter. Finally he makes peace with life, and decides to do the smart thing and marry her, rather than chasing after ideals.