Auden on Shakespeare — Part One

As I mentioned in a post at the beginning of this year, 2024 has been the year of Shakespeare, and I have been reading all of his works — the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. My friend Brenda is on the journey with me.

We're getting close to the end. Ten plays left as of this writing. I'd like to say that it has all been fantastic, enjoyable, amazing, but I can't. Some of it has been painful to read. The plots can be thin and overused. The characters can be flat.

But, there is also brilliance. Words and phrases and characters and descriptions. Jealousy, outrage, revenge, love, infatuation. I have favorites — The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, probably at the top of my list. More on that once the project is complete.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share some brilliance from one of the supplemental works we've been reading to bring clarity and perspective to Will's works. It's WH Auden's Lectures on Shakespeare. Below are a few excerpts:

Regarding Richard III, Auden says that the play concentrates on an individual character: the character of a villain. He goes on to say, "There is a difference between a villain and one who simply commits a crime. The villain is an extremely conscious person and commits a crime consciously, for its own sake." Auden makes a lot of distinctions, and I always find that they make me pause and reflect. 

In his lecture about The Two Gentlemen of Verona, he closes with a provocative comment: 

"It is harder for the guilty to admit guilt and accept forgiveness than for the innocent to forgive. Many promising reconciliations have been wrecked because both sides were ready to forgive, but neither side was ready to be forgiven."

Love's Labour's Lost is a play he thinks is "not the greatest of Shakespeare's plays," and I agree. One of the fascinating asides in his lecture is about sight:

"Sight is the most intellectual of the senses: you can see possibilities, your sight is under the control of your will, it is the organ of choice. Eve saw the apple was good to eat. The lower senses are innocent — guilt and love are conveyed by the eye. Sight is active, hearing obedient. Iconographically, the Virgin Mary in the Annunciation is represented as conceiving through the ear."

When discussing A Midsummer Night's Dream, Auden said the following about myth:

"Myths present an analogous fusion of accident and substance. The use of myths. A myth must have universal applicability, otherwise it becomes a private symbol, and the universal experience must be one to which the individual is related in a unique way — either intermittently, or happily or unhappily. There is no need for a myth on the law of gravity, since we all behave under its influence in the same way, but there is a need for a myth on the experience of falling in love, because its effects are unique."

About the Sonnets, he asks: "Why should so much poetry be written about sexual love and so little about eating — which is just as pleasurable and never lets you down — or about family affection, or about the love of mathematics?" Well...

He goes on to say, "Falling in love is the discovery of what "I exist" means."

It's not uncommon for Auden to go in a very unexpected direction. When discussing Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V, he decides to talk about fat...

"Why do people get fat? — because they eat humble pie as their food and swallow their pride as their drink. What does drink do? It destroys the sense of time and makes one childlike and able to return to the innocence one enjoyed before one had sex. Why do people get fat? "Getting the wind up": men imitate pregnancy in fatness, which is a symbol for the young child and a pregnant mother. The Greeks thought of Narcissus as a slender youth, but I think they were wrong. I see him as a middle-aged man with a corporation, for, however ashamed he may be of displaying it in pubic, in private a man with a belly loves it dearly — it may be an unprepossessing child to look at, but he's borne it all by himself."

So many nuggets like that one. Sometimes I just laugh out loud.

For Julius Caesar, Auden embarks on a discussion of groups:

"Julius Caesar begins with a crowd scene. First things in Shakespeare are always important. There are three types of groups of people: societies, communities, and crowds. A society is something I can belong to, a community is something I can join, a crowd is something I add to."

In his lecture on As You Like It, he quotes Goethe — "Es bidet tin Talent such in Der Still, / Sich pin Character in dem Strom Der Welt," talent builds itself in quietness, character in the stream of the world.

To read Shakespeare and have Auden in your ear is a wonderful experience. We've also been reading Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare, which is more historical but also very illuminating.

Perhaps some of these quotes don't have the same effect unless you're engrossed as we are on this project of reading Shakespeare. But hopefully you'll find something here to make you stop and think. Auden does that to me over and over again.

More insights from reading Auden in an upcoming post.

Who was Ellis Bell and what was ‘his’ connection to Emily Brontë

On this day, 30 July 1818, Emily Jane Brontë was born. 

Today we celebrate her achievements – one everlasting novel and hundreds of poems.

When she began her writing career, like her sisters and many other women, she wrote under a male pseudonym – Ellis Bell. She and her two sisters, Charlotte and Anne, published a book of poetry under their respected male names (Currer and Acton, for her sisters). Download a free copy here (their book of poetry is in the public domain).

 

In 1847, Emily’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published. It is considered to have “haunting beauty and psychological depth,” and it remains a classic of English literature. Learn more about the novel here. Download a free copy here (public domain).

 

Like her sisters and other members of her family, Emily died of tuberculosis in 1848. The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë were published posthumously in 1923. Available here (public domain).

 

Modern Odyssey Books recently published a literature-inspired puzzle book titled In Search of the Brontë Sisters. Discover Emily, her novel, and her poems (and her sisters) and have fun with word search and cryptograms. The books are currently available across all Amazon global marketplaces (for US: here; UK: here).

 

"Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy."

 

Below is one of Emily’s poems, titled A Daydream. Take a moment to read and enjoy and celebrate this inventive young woman from another time.

 

A Daydream

By Emily Brontë

 

 On a sunny brae alone I lay

 One summer afternoon;

 It was the marriage-time of May,

 With her young lover, June.

 

 From her mother's heart seemed loath to part

 That queen of bridal charms,

 But her father smiled on the fairest child

 He ever held in his arms.

 

 The trees did wave their plumy crests,

 The glad birds carolled clear;

 And I, of all the wedding guests,

 Was only sullen there!

 

 There was not one, but wished to shun

 My aspect void of cheer;

 The very gray rocks, looking on,

 Asked, "What do you here?"

 

 And I could utter no reply;

 In sooth, I did not know

 Why I had brought a clouded eye

 To greet the general glow.

 

 So, resting on a heathy bank,

 I took my heart to me;

 And we together sadly sank

 Into a reverie.

 

 We thought, "When winter comes again,

 Where will these bright things be?

 All vanished, like a vision vain,

 An unreal mockery!

 

 "The birds that now so blithely sing,

 Through deserts, frozen dry,

 Poor spectres of the perished spring,

 In famished troops will fly.

 

 "And why should we be glad at all?

 The leaf is hardly green,

 Before a token of its fall

 Is on the surface seen!"

 

 Now, whether it were really so,

 I never could be sure;

 But as in fit of peevish woe,

 I stretched me on the moor,

 

 A thousand thousand gleaming fires

 Seemed kindling in the air;

 A thousand thousand silvery lyres

 Resounded far and near:

 

 Methought, the very breath I breathed

 Was full of sparks divine,

 And all my heather-couch was wreathed

 By that celestial shine!

 

 And, while the wide earth echoing rung

 To that strange minstrelsy

 The little glittering spirits sung,

 Or seemed to sing, to me:

 

 "O mortal! mortal! let them die;

 Let time and tears destroy,

 That we may overflow the sky

 With universal joy!

 

 "Let grief distract the sufferer's breast,

 And night obscure his way;

 They hasten him to endless rest,

 And everlasting day.

 

 "To thee the world is like a tomb,

 A desert's naked shore;

 To us, in unimagined bloom,

 It brightens more and more!

 

 "And, could we lift the veil, and give

 One brief glimpse to thine eye,

 Thou wouldst rejoice for those that live,

 BECAUSE they live to die."

 

 The music ceased; the noonday dream,

 Like dream of night, withdrew;

 But Fancy, still, will sometimes deem

 Her fond creation true.

Latest Pages of April 1st on July 4th

Below are a few recent pages out of the April 1st Project.

But first an excerpt of the description of Woolf Works — a ballet about Virginia Woolf that focuses on Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves — and the inspiration behind it.

For one thing, Woolf herself was fascinated by dance and absorbed aspects of its language into her own creative process to generate writing that was rooted in feeling and the body, as much as in the brain. She famously wrote parts of The Waves while listening to Beethoven on the gramophone and, writing to Vita Sackville-West in 1922, she argues that literary style is ‘all rhythm… Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far far deeper than words’. 

Then, of course, there is the way that her fiction shifts the focus from the outer details of life to the rich inner narrative unfolding continuously within the mind; she plunges us into a world in which events are strung together thematically rather than chronologically, and the fabric of emotion and sensation appears denser than the brittle world of objects. All of this might be seen as the natural territory of dance. ‘The “book itself”’, Woolf argued, ‘is not form which you see, but emotion which you feel’ – and it is certainly true that no other writer’s work reads, sounds or feels like hers.

Woolf’s modernism, moreover, was founded on a deep engagement with other art forms. Apart from dance, she drew on painting, photography, music, film, even astronomy – and it is partly this multi-dimensionality that lends her writing its apparently limitless virtuosity, and makes her world so heightened, vivid and all-encompassing.

Now for the pages:

 

Keeping Things Whole

A lovely poem for this day:

Keeping Things Whole

by Mark Strand

In a field

I am the absence

of field.

This is

always the case.

Wherever I am

I am what is missing.

When I walk

I part the air

and always

the air moves in   

to fill the spaces

where my body’s been.

We all have reasons

for moving.

I move

to keep things whole.

Yesterday's Sunset

 

Holes

I recently read the Young Adult (YA) novel titled Holes. What a delight! It's the story of a wrongly convicted boy who must attend a camp as part of his sentence. It's a fast read with a tightly written plot and a great sense of humor. I found that the past was hidden in the present, what seems obvious isn't, and what isn't obvious really is. There is much to love -- friendship, determination -- and much to make you cringe -- cruelty, adversity. But ultimately it will leave you with a smile.

The Eagle Has Landed

 It was 1969. 

Here's the transcript:

- + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + - + 

The Eagle Has Landed – 1969

Ed Aldrin: Contact light. Okay. Engine stop. ACA – out of detent. Mode control – both auto. Descent engine command override – off. Engine alarm – off. 413 is in.

Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM): We copy you down Eagle.

Neil Armstrong: Houston. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

CAPCOM: Roger Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.

CAPCOM: We’re getting a picture on the TV. There’s a great deal of contrast in it, and currently it’s upside-down on our monitor, but we can make out a fair amount of detail. Okay. Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.

Narrator: Sunday, July 20, 1969. Around the world, nearly a billion people watched this moment on television as the first man from Earth prepared to set foot upon the Moon.

Neil Armstrong: I’m at the foot of ladder. The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine grained as you get close to it. It’s almost like a powder. Down there, it’s very fine. I’m going to step off the LM now. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

John F. Kennedy: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

Lyndon Johnson: All that we have accomplished in space, all that we may accomplish in days and years to come, we stand ready to share for the benefit of all mankind.

Richard Nixon: As we explore the reaches of space let us go to the new worlds together, not as new worlds to be conquered but as a new adventure to be shared.

Narrator: Since the earliest time, man has imagined this moment, the moment when his fellow man would make the first journey to the Moon. Now the time had come. In the sixth decade of the twentieth century the ancient dream was to become a reality.

The flight of Apollo 11 was the culmination of many years of planning, working, building, and testing. Thousands of people had contributed toward this day of accomplishment. The great Saturn V rocket and the complex Apollo spacecraft had been assembled together and moved to the launch pad. The equipment and techniques and personnel had been proved in earlier missions and now they were ready. The astronauts chosen for this mission had flown it many times in ground-based simulators. They had all been in space before. They had trained carefully and well and now they too were ready.

Astronaut Michael Collins would pilot the Apollo Command Module. Astronaut Edwin Aldrin, Jr. would pilot the Lunar Module. And astronaut Neil Armstrong would serve as Mission Commander. Armstrong would be the first man to step upon the Moon.

July 16. The day had come, the Moon awaited. The men rose early, ate breakfast, and dressed in their spacesuits.

[Clapping]
Other astronauts had made this journey to the launch pad but never with such anticipation. 9:32 AM, July 16. [Apollo Launches]

Three hours later the Apollo Command Module moves forward to extract the Lunar Module from the third stage of the launch vehicle. Both are moving at more than 17,000 miles an hour. Docked together, they will sail a quarter-million miles across the sea of space and into orbit around the Earth’s nearest neighbor.

Michael Collins: That was Neil. How are you reading Mike?

CAPCOM: Loud and clear now, Mike, and we understand that you are docked.

Narrator: During the three day journey to the Moon the astronauts kept busy: checklists, navigation and observation, housekeeping.

They must work in a weightless environment, keeping their spacecraft and themselves in good condition. Data must be collected and reported. Experiments must be performed, including photography both inside and outside the spacecraft. Because of the film speed these actions appear faster than they actually were.

July 19. Apollo 11 slows down and goes into orbit around the Moon. The bright blue planet of Earth now lies 238,000 miles beyond the lunar horizon. Astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin, now in the Lunar Module, separate from the Command Module. [Music]

Astronaut Collins remains behind. Preparation for the Lunar Module descent to the Moon now begins. [Music]

The Command Module assumes the new name Columbia. [Music]

The Lunar Module will be called the Eagle. From Columbia Michael Collins’ camera sees bright rays of the sun reflecting patterns of color from the surface of the Eagle. In this strange metallic bird rides the ancient and endless dream of all mankind. The Command pilot can see detail which his camera cannot record. The four landing pads of the Lunar Module are fully-extended and locked in place. The Eagle is poised and prepared for its descent to the lunar surface. [Music]

The Moon landing craft rocket engine fires to slow it down, and to place it on the pathway to the landing site in the Sea of Tranquility. There is tension and caution as the Eagle flies lower. Warning lights blink on as the computer tries to keep up with the demand for control data, but the status remains “Go!”

CAPCOM: Eagle, we've got you now. It's looking good. Over. Ed Aldrin: Roger. Copy.

CAPCOM: Eagle, Houston. After yaw around, angles: S-band pitch, minus 9, yaw plus 18. Roger. You’re a Go to continue – Go to continue powered descent. You’re a Go to continue powered descent.

Ed Aldrin: Altitude now 21,000 feet. Still looking very good. Velocity down now to 1200 feet per second.

CAPCOM: You’re looking great to us Eagle.

Neil Armstrong: Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm.

CAPCOM: Roger we got – we’re a Go on that alarm.

Ed Aldrin: Good radar data. We’re now in the approach phase. Everything looking good. Altitude 4,200...

CAPCOM: [interrupts] Houston. You’re Go for landing. Over.

Ed Aldrin: Roger. Understand. Go for landing. 3,000 feet. Program alarm. Altitude 1,600. 1,400 feet. Still looking very good. 700 feet, 21 down, 33 degrees ... 600 feet down at 19. 1201.

Neil Armstrong: 1201.

CAPCOM: Roger. 1201 alarm. We're Go. Same type. We're Go.

Ed Aldrin: Altitude- velocity light ... 3 1⁄2 down, 220 feet, 13 forward ... 11 forward. Coming down nicely ... 200 feet, 4 1⁄2 down ... 5 1⁄2 down ...

CAPCOM: 60 seconds.

Ed Aldrin: Lights on ... Down 2 1⁄2 ... Forward, forward ... 40 feet, down 2 1⁄2. Kicking up some dust... 4 forward, 4 forward ... Drifting to the right a little ... Contact light. Okay. Engine stop.

CAPCOM: We copy you down Eagle.

Neil Armstrong: Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

Narrator: Through the window of the Eagle, Armstrong and Aldrin see what no human eyes have ever seen before. Their spacecraft casts a long shadow across the undisturbed dust of centuries. [Music]

Seven hours after landing, after careful preparations for later ascent were completed, Armstrong opens the Eagle hatch and begins his climb down to the surface. [Music]

The first footsteps on this strange new world must be taken cautiously. The Moon has only one- sixth the gravity of earth. The nature of its surface was still unknown.

Neil Armstrong: Okay. I’m going to step off the LM now. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. [Music]

Narrator: Once on the surface, Armstrong scoops up a small sample of lunar dust and rock, precaution against the possibility of an emergency takeoff. [Music]

According to plan, astronaut Aldrin now descends from the Eagle. He and his equipment would weigh 383 pounds on Earth. Here, they weigh about 66 pounds. [Music]

For a brief moment, the first men on the Moon stand and look at the stark, lonely landscape around them, an experience which no one before them can share. But there is much to be done in the limited time which they can stay on this airless, cloudless satellite of Earth. This sheet of metal foil traps and holds particles from the sun, the so-called solar wind or barrage of solar energy which constantly strikes the Moon’s surface. Results of this experiment will be taken back to Earth to reveal new secrets to anxious scientists.

An American flag is left behind on the Moon together with medals honoring American and Soviet spacemen who lost their lives in earlier space tests and a small disc carrying messages of goodwill from 73 nations on Earth.

A plaque on the Lunar Module reads “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

Through a specially made television camera, viewers in many nations on Earth were able to watch the astronauts as they walked and worked on the Moon. Despite the bulky spacesuits and the backpacks containing oxygen, temperature control, and communications equipment, the Apollo 11 crew found they could move easily about the surface. [Music]

Because there is no wind or rain on the Moon, these footprints will remain for centuries. [Music]

In addition to collecting rock and soil samples, the explorers leave behind a seismometer. This highly sensitive device would send back valuable information on external meteoroid impacts as well as internal lunar movements. [Music]

A 100 prism laser reflector would help man to measure the exact distance from Earth to Moon to an accuracy of six inches. These were the first of many experiments which would be taken to the Moon to provide man with continuing and increasing knowledge about the Moon and the vastness of space beyond. After 2 hours and 31 minutes the first lunar explorers had completed their research on the Moon. A night of rest in the Lunar Module, countdown preparations, and they were ready to come home.

CAPCOM: Tranquility Base, Houston. Guidance recommendation is PGNS and you’re cleared for takeoff.

Neil Armstrong: Roger. Understand. We’re number one on the runway.

Ed Aldrin: 7, 6, 5, abort stage, engine arm ascent... Beautiful. Very smooth. Very quiet ride. There’s that one crater down there. 1000 feet high, 80 feet per second vertical rise.

CAPCOM: Eagle, Houston. You’re looking good at 2. PGNS, AGS, and MSFN all agree. 

Neil Armstrong: We’re going right down U.S. 1.

CAPCOM: Eagle, Houston. Going right down the track. Everything’s great.

Ed Aldrin: Horizontal velocity approaching 2,500 feet per second.

CAPCOM: Roger.

Ed Aldrin: Some 120 miles to go until insertion.

Narrator: July 21. The Eagle and its two man crew lifted off the Moon perfectly and climbed slowly to rendezvous and dock with the mother ship, Columbia. [Music]

While Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Moon, astronaut Collins had kept a long and lonely vigil in the Columbia. The approaching Eagle was a welcome sight. Later the three men would share their reflections on this adventure with the world.

Ed Aldrin: I believe that from the early space flights we demonstrated a potential to carry out this type of a mission. And again it was a question of time until this would be accomplished.

Michael Collins: I think it is a technical triumph for this country to have said what it was going to do a number of years ago and then by golly do it.

Ed Aldrin: The relative ease with which we were able to carry out our mission, which of course came after a very efficient and logical sequence of flights, I think that this demonstrated that we were certainly on the right track when we took this commitment to go to the Moon.

Neil Armstrong: I just see it as a beginning, a beginning of a new age. [Music]

Narrator: Once again the bright blue planet of Earth rises over the lunar horizon. For those who had witnessed man’s landing in the Sea of Tranquility, the Moon would never again appear quite the same. [Music]

July 24. Dawn in the Pacific. Apollo blazes across the heavens coming back to Earth at 25,000 miles an hour. President Richard Nixon, who had talked with the astronauts by telephone while they were on the Moon, was waiting aboard the recovery carrier to welcome the returning voyagers.

The President later expressed the nation’s response to this historic mission.

President Nixon: Some way, when those two Americans stepped on the Moon the people of this world were bought closer together. That it is that spirit, the spirit of Apollo, that America can now help to bring to our relations with other nations. The spirit of Apollo transcends geographical barriers and political differences; it can bring the people of the world together in peace.

Narrator: To protect against any possible lunar contamination, the astronauts put on air-tight special garments before coming aboard the rescue ship.

[Cheers]

They transferred directly from the helicopter to a mobile quarantine van, in which they would be flown back to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas.

July 27. The journey was ended; they were home again. Ahead lay three weeks of isolation, medical tests, and mission debriefings, then visits to major cities of America and abroad. The details of their unique mission would be relived and remembered so that others might learn what they had learned, and that future travelers in space might build upon their experience.

The rock and soil samples brought back would be examined and analyzed by scientists in many lands. They would reveal new insights into the origin and the age and the composition of the Moon and perhaps new knowledge of the Earth as well. Already experiments left on the Moon were sending back revealing new information. [Music]

The mission was successfully completed. The Eagle had landed the first men on the Moon and Columbia had returned them safely to Earth. Wherever man journeys tomorrow across the ocean of our universe, history will remind him that Apollo 11 was mankind’s first encounter with a new world.

Source: The National Archives and Records Administration www.archives.gov

Video Transcript for Archival Research Catalog (ARC) Identifier 45017

Video can be viewed on YouTube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYElQpV_Uwg