Herein I will get my thoughts on past readings out of the way. If anyone's interested in reading them, by all means, do so for whatever sort of amusement you derive from them. If you are thinking along the same lines as me, however, I can only express my deepest sympathy. My mind is a strange place.
Up at bat first is Diderot's Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainvile. It's remarkable how my human geography, history, and literature classes overlap. We talk about ethnocentrism and European misconceptions concerning the Indies in human geography, and then we have a reading on that sort of topic in literature. Dr. Brewton talks today about the Spartans flinging non-Spartan-ideal babies off cliffs, and guess what Dr. Makowski was talking about the other day.
I have a confession to make, though. No, I did the reading. It's not that. It's the name Bougainville. I can't get over it. I'm a German person who finds French bewildering/incomprehensible/hysterically nonsensical, take your pick, so I take one look at 'Bougainville' and start laughing. It just had no dignity left once I saw the pronunciation and mentally connected it with 'boogers'. (I have two younger brothers. These things happen.) And so I was reading about the voyages of Boogerville.
Sorry. I'm trying not to snicker audibly as I type this.
Anyway, I think Diderot set up a strawman argument in hiw whole story about Orou and the Almoner. I'm not sure how serious Diderot was with the whole thing, but the way he gave such an elevated diction and an eloquent manner of articulating his ideas to Orou, who is supposed to be nothing more than an uneducated islander, seems to me to indicate that the whole is a bit of an Author Tract. The Almoner barely presents an argument in his own defense and caves in to the girl. Orou goes on and on in a Wall of Text about his 'natural law' (which isn't much like the definition of natural law I know).
It certainly seems to me that Diderot has fallen prey to the idea of the 'Noble Savage', possibly influenced by Rosseau, who believed that people are naturally good and if left to their own devices, away from the corrupting influences of society, religion, etc., will do good things. This is in contrast to philosophers such as Hobbes and Schopenhauer, who believed people are irredeemably wicked.
This is why I love Christianity. It doesn't just settle for a lukewarm medium, it takes both and runs with it, achieving the crazy balance described in G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. Christianity believes that people are very good creations that have been terribly warped. We will more easily do bad things than we will ever do good things.
It reminds me of a line from the Narn i Hin Hurin, 'The Tale of the Children of Hurin', by J. R. R. Tolkien, where the old lame guy (whose name I cannot recall at the moment, thought I want to say it began with an s) tells Turin, "They have learned far more quickly from the orcs than we have learned from the elves."
It's sad, isn't it? But it's true. Clothing it in sweet words does not help any matters, as Soren says in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. However, at least I haven't lost all faith in people. I don't have unshakeable optimism, though.
I'd also like to add to what I touched on in my previous post about the quest for home. I think the quest theme is so prevalent in world literature since the beginning of time since we are all on little quests of our own. We are all searching for a meaning and a purpose to our lives and to all life in general. Also, we are searching for our home, a home that we miss without knowing clearly why or how- our very own Paradise Lost, our original state of innocence that we have lost and which we cannot fully regain on our own.
And we go on searching, nevertheless, even in the worst places of society. We search for meaning and completeness in drugs, in alcohol, in various other vices, and yet we never find it there. You cannot gain happiness by seeking it directly. If you do, it eludes your grasp and turns into the deepest bitterness and unhappiness. If you forget yourself, however, and aim for the good, then happiness will be added unto you...
Oh, and I have to add this about the Basho stuff. This is all I know of Zen Buddhism, and (any actual Buddhists out there are probably actually rolling in their graves):
"There is a knocking without!"
"A knocking without what?"
"A knocking without the door, stupid!"
"A knocking without a door? Is this some kind of Zen?"
It's from Wyrd Sisters, by Terry Pratchett. The quote continues, but I can't remember the rest and can't seem to find it on the Internet at the moment, either...
Today, however, we covered Gulliver's Travels. I find it amusing that Gulliver's first name is 'Lemuel', because, as far as I can remember, it is King LemENuel who is referenced in the Bible. (Knowing about 17th and 18th century Protestants' love of giving Old Testament names to their children).
Anyway, you may dissect the levels of satire in Jonathan Swift's works all you like, but I still don't care for him. I do believe he was misanthropic, and I submit as my evidence this quote in the book itself, page 231: "But principally I hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth."
I find it curious that he loves individuals but hates the race. The race is an abstract concept, which would seem easier to love than individuals. At least, I see it that way. The exact opposite of Swift is Dr. Weston from Out of the Silent Planet, by C. S. Lewis. Weston has lost all the rules of natural law except one, the love of his race. As the Oyarsa (angelic ruler) of Malacandra (Mars) points out, that one rule has been exalted in Weston's mind to the detriment and loss of everything else, becoming "a little blind Oyarsa" ordering Weston to do insane things for the propagation of mankind across the stars.
It's a good thing Ransom stopped him. I like Ransom, at least in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. (I don't know what happened in between Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, but I don't advocate reading the latter. I just don't. It's bewildering and not even interesting, save for one good chapter, 'The Descent of the Gods', and the bit where the villains get killed in various horrible ways.) I like Ransom's name- Elwin Ransom. The fact that a lot of people think he was based off of J. R. R. Tolkien doesn't hurt (and I subscribe to this theory myself).
Well. I think I have the majority of my thoughts out of the way, in no cohesive or logical order. Anyway. Apologies for rambling.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
1st Official Blog Post
According to what I learned in my speech class last semester, a speaker should never end a speech with an apology (e.g., for not having enough time to say everything, for not giving a good speech, and so forth). However, I think it is perfectly permissible to still start a speech (or a blog post) with an apology for its quality, or lack thereof.
Therefore, I am apologizing for the quality, or rather the lack thereof, in this blog post. I'm not really sure what exactly this post should be like, so I am going to try one thing and see if it works. If not... well, at the very least I shall attempt to curb some of my random tangents.
Well.
So far in literature, we have covered The Nutcracker, by E. T. A. Hoffman, The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry, and some selections from Pu-Song Ling (a Chinese guy) and Basho (the penname of a Japanese guy).
I must confess that I didn't get much out of the latter two authors. The fable by Ling wasn't hard to understand, but let's just say stories involving lust make me cringe and move on. Let Us Never Speak Of This Again. As for the poetry (mainly haikus) and prose by Basho... hmm... I agree with Dr. Brewton. I found the simple elegance of the prose a lot more involving than the haikus. I just don't understand poetry at the best of times (unless it tells a story, and then I may like it), and haikus wrack my poor brain.
It also doesn't help that whenever I think of haikus my brain jumps to The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan- third in the Percy Jackson series- where Apollo keeps spouting off horrible haikus. (They go something like this: "Sun breaks through the clouds/ Artemis pleads for my help/ I am so awesome.") And then I think of the funny line: "Let's go see if we roasted anyone important," and I am officially no longer concentrating.
I did try!
Now that my very extended apology is over, I shall forge ahead into the body of my blog post. (Blog posts aren't too much like letters, but I think some similarities should exist.)
The theme that struck me the most through our various reading selections so far was the theme of a quest, of going on a life-changing search for something or someone. In The Nutcracker, the astrologer and the clock-maker (a.k.a. Drosselmeier) go on a search for the special golden nut and the special boy who hasn't shaved or worn boots to crack it and offer it to the disfigured princess in a suitably dramatic fashion. The question of how the astrologer is able to learn all that from studying the stars aside, the end result is the two go on a quest through many foreign countries and cities. Ironically, they find both the boy and the nut in a city close to home (Leipzig springs to mind, but I could be wrong).
As I admitted in my normal blog, reading The Nutcracker reminded me greatly of the anime Princess Tutu. This was primarily because there was also a character named Drosselmeyer who told stories, even if PT's Drosselmeyer was far more sinister. PT also involved a quest. Duck (the main character, who transforms into the eponymous Princess Tutu) is on a quest to find all the heart shards lost by Prince Mytho so his feelings will be restored. As the anime goes on, finding the shards involves greater and greater effort, until at the end Duck must give up everything, becoming just an ordinary duck once more instead of a human girl, in order to complete her quest and free the prince from his nigh-soulless existence.
(Dr. Brewton said to make our blog interactive. Therefore, I am posting this video again, in hopes that I will convert someone to Princess Tutu.)
To continue with the theme of going on a quest, there is also my latest fixation: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. If you know anything at all about the movie or the book, you know that the 13 Dwarves in The Hobbit are on a quest to their lost homeland of Erebor (a.k.a the Lonely Mountain), which was invaded and taken from them by the malicious dragon, Smaug. In the book, the Dwarves seem more concerned with getting their gold back, while in the movie their desire to have their home back is emphasized more. I like the change, since it makes the Dwarves more relatable. Also, it emphasizes the fact that in Dwarf culture they value their homelands (Moria, Erebor) in ways that non-Dwarves find hard to empathize with.
It isn't the Dwarves' fault that returning to their homelands tends to involve waking up nasty beasties that would have been better left asleep...
Ironically, The Lord of the Rings is not a quest in the true sense. The Fellowship does not set out to find some object that will save Middle-earth. Instead, they have set out to destroy the Ring, and thereby save Middle-earth. It is almost an anti-quest.
The quest theme was not so prevalent in The Gift of the Magi, however. One could say that Della is questing for a suitable gift for Jim, and the story details her sacrifices in order to attain the end result of her quest. Off-screen, Jim has a quest to find a gift for Della, and also sacrifices his most valued possession in order to get one for her.
However, quests can go awry. In Ling's story The Mural, Chu falls in love with a painting and somehow gets sucked into it. (We're a Genre Savvy class. We knew the instant it said Chu lost his self-control that bad things would happen.) He is on a twisted sort of a quest himself, in order to get the maiden from the painting, but since the object of his quest is a selfish desire, the quest itself and also its end result end only in fear, frustration, and suffering for him.
Lesson, class: quests are bad when their objects are bad, and when the method of questing is bad.
The travel narrative of Basho was also a quest of a sort, however, and a much less selfish one, related to the self though it may be. According to my limited understanding of Buddhism (I have never clearly understood what exactly meditation is supposed to be), he is going on a quest for enlightenment, wherein he can lose his desires and self-consciousness in the emotion of the moment. This 'moment' can come about from various instances of beautiful scenary, national or religious landmarks, and various other inspirations. Since his method of questing is good and his desire to lose himself is good, his quest is good.
You might even say that he had one of the noblest quests of all, since he was searching for self-sanctification.
I wanted to say that his losing himself in the moment might be an example of ek-stasis, a 'standing outside of yourself', a Greek term that has led to our modern word 'ecstasy'. However, most of the class might have connoted that with a type of drug- not the connotation I wanted at all- and I would have had to explain Greek and a good deal of philosophy behind it. Did not feel like regurgitating several books' worth of Peter Kreeft, so I kept my mouth shut.
That's why I have this blog, after all.
I find it interesting that the theme of a quest speaks so strongly to me. What is, after all, the most moving form of a quest? The quest to right a wrong... to return what has been stolen (a.k.a., the Arkenstone)... to reclaim a long-lost homeland.
Reclaiming a homeland. Isn't that what we are all trying to do? We're all looking for our little Paradises Lost. Paradise Losts? Scratch that. We're all looking for Paradise Lost. Mankind has lost the innocence and the freedom he once enjoyed, and yet he still seeks for it everywhere on this side of the Angel of Death, though he will not find it here.
He is still seeking. He is still like the Magi, mentioned at the end of O. Henry's story, questing across the world, priceless gifts in their hands, searching for the King of Kings. Man searches, often in the most unlikely of places, and he who seeks honestly will find. It was promised so.
Do I often get this philosophical about literature? Um, yeah. Make me talk about a theme, and sooner or later I'm off into my Lebensschauung and my Weltansschauung. And dissecting exactly how and why the literature I just read did not (or, rarely, how it did) line up with said views and beliefs of mine.
I'm at once a nice critic and a harsh critic of literature. I'm willing to accept plenty of things. It's just I don't take stupidity very well.
I'm going to have a hard time in life.
And this is the moment where I break the rule I learned in speech and apologize at the end of this blog post. (I almost typed 'plog bost', XD.) I have tried my best at addressing all of our reading selections so far with a unifying theme, but it is not up to me to decide if I succeeded or not.
I tried. Do I get a gold star?
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Therefore, I am apologizing for the quality, or rather the lack thereof, in this blog post. I'm not really sure what exactly this post should be like, so I am going to try one thing and see if it works. If not... well, at the very least I shall attempt to curb some of my random tangents.
Well.
So far in literature, we have covered The Nutcracker, by E. T. A. Hoffman, The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry, and some selections from Pu-Song Ling (a Chinese guy) and Basho (the penname of a Japanese guy).
I must confess that I didn't get much out of the latter two authors. The fable by Ling wasn't hard to understand, but let's just say stories involving lust make me cringe and move on. Let Us Never Speak Of This Again. As for the poetry (mainly haikus) and prose by Basho... hmm... I agree with Dr. Brewton. I found the simple elegance of the prose a lot more involving than the haikus. I just don't understand poetry at the best of times (unless it tells a story, and then I may like it), and haikus wrack my poor brain.
It also doesn't help that whenever I think of haikus my brain jumps to The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan- third in the Percy Jackson series- where Apollo keeps spouting off horrible haikus. (They go something like this: "Sun breaks through the clouds/ Artemis pleads for my help/ I am so awesome.") And then I think of the funny line: "Let's go see if we roasted anyone important," and I am officially no longer concentrating.
I did try!
Now that my very extended apology is over, I shall forge ahead into the body of my blog post. (Blog posts aren't too much like letters, but I think some similarities should exist.)
The theme that struck me the most through our various reading selections so far was the theme of a quest, of going on a life-changing search for something or someone. In The Nutcracker, the astrologer and the clock-maker (a.k.a. Drosselmeier) go on a search for the special golden nut and the special boy who hasn't shaved or worn boots to crack it and offer it to the disfigured princess in a suitably dramatic fashion. The question of how the astrologer is able to learn all that from studying the stars aside, the end result is the two go on a quest through many foreign countries and cities. Ironically, they find both the boy and the nut in a city close to home (Leipzig springs to mind, but I could be wrong).
As I admitted in my normal blog, reading The Nutcracker reminded me greatly of the anime Princess Tutu. This was primarily because there was also a character named Drosselmeyer who told stories, even if PT's Drosselmeyer was far more sinister. PT also involved a quest. Duck (the main character, who transforms into the eponymous Princess Tutu) is on a quest to find all the heart shards lost by Prince Mytho so his feelings will be restored. As the anime goes on, finding the shards involves greater and greater effort, until at the end Duck must give up everything, becoming just an ordinary duck once more instead of a human girl, in order to complete her quest and free the prince from his nigh-soulless existence.
(Dr. Brewton said to make our blog interactive. Therefore, I am posting this video again, in hopes that I will convert someone to Princess Tutu.)
To continue with the theme of going on a quest, there is also my latest fixation: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. If you know anything at all about the movie or the book, you know that the 13 Dwarves in The Hobbit are on a quest to their lost homeland of Erebor (a.k.a the Lonely Mountain), which was invaded and taken from them by the malicious dragon, Smaug. In the book, the Dwarves seem more concerned with getting their gold back, while in the movie their desire to have their home back is emphasized more. I like the change, since it makes the Dwarves more relatable. Also, it emphasizes the fact that in Dwarf culture they value their homelands (Moria, Erebor) in ways that non-Dwarves find hard to empathize with.
It isn't the Dwarves' fault that returning to their homelands tends to involve waking up nasty beasties that would have been better left asleep...
Ironically, The Lord of the Rings is not a quest in the true sense. The Fellowship does not set out to find some object that will save Middle-earth. Instead, they have set out to destroy the Ring, and thereby save Middle-earth. It is almost an anti-quest.
The quest theme was not so prevalent in The Gift of the Magi, however. One could say that Della is questing for a suitable gift for Jim, and the story details her sacrifices in order to attain the end result of her quest. Off-screen, Jim has a quest to find a gift for Della, and also sacrifices his most valued possession in order to get one for her.
However, quests can go awry. In Ling's story The Mural, Chu falls in love with a painting and somehow gets sucked into it. (We're a Genre Savvy class. We knew the instant it said Chu lost his self-control that bad things would happen.) He is on a twisted sort of a quest himself, in order to get the maiden from the painting, but since the object of his quest is a selfish desire, the quest itself and also its end result end only in fear, frustration, and suffering for him.
Lesson, class: quests are bad when their objects are bad, and when the method of questing is bad.
The travel narrative of Basho was also a quest of a sort, however, and a much less selfish one, related to the self though it may be. According to my limited understanding of Buddhism (I have never clearly understood what exactly meditation is supposed to be), he is going on a quest for enlightenment, wherein he can lose his desires and self-consciousness in the emotion of the moment. This 'moment' can come about from various instances of beautiful scenary, national or religious landmarks, and various other inspirations. Since his method of questing is good and his desire to lose himself is good, his quest is good.
You might even say that he had one of the noblest quests of all, since he was searching for self-sanctification.
I wanted to say that his losing himself in the moment might be an example of ek-stasis, a 'standing outside of yourself', a Greek term that has led to our modern word 'ecstasy'. However, most of the class might have connoted that with a type of drug- not the connotation I wanted at all- and I would have had to explain Greek and a good deal of philosophy behind it. Did not feel like regurgitating several books' worth of Peter Kreeft, so I kept my mouth shut.
That's why I have this blog, after all.
I find it interesting that the theme of a quest speaks so strongly to me. What is, after all, the most moving form of a quest? The quest to right a wrong... to return what has been stolen (a.k.a., the Arkenstone)... to reclaim a long-lost homeland.
Reclaiming a homeland. Isn't that what we are all trying to do? We're all looking for our little Paradises Lost. Paradise Losts? Scratch that. We're all looking for Paradise Lost. Mankind has lost the innocence and the freedom he once enjoyed, and yet he still seeks for it everywhere on this side of the Angel of Death, though he will not find it here.
He is still seeking. He is still like the Magi, mentioned at the end of O. Henry's story, questing across the world, priceless gifts in their hands, searching for the King of Kings. Man searches, often in the most unlikely of places, and he who seeks honestly will find. It was promised so.
Do I often get this philosophical about literature? Um, yeah. Make me talk about a theme, and sooner or later I'm off into my Lebensschauung and my Weltansschauung. And dissecting exactly how and why the literature I just read did not (or, rarely, how it did) line up with said views and beliefs of mine.
I'm at once a nice critic and a harsh critic of literature. I'm willing to accept plenty of things. It's just I don't take stupidity very well.
I'm going to have a hard time in life.
And this is the moment where I break the rule I learned in speech and apologize at the end of this blog post. (I almost typed 'plog bost', XD.) I have tried my best at addressing all of our reading selections so far with a unifying theme, but it is not up to me to decide if I succeeded or not.
I tried. Do I get a gold star?
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Thursday, January 10, 2013
I Just Don't Get It
WHY WILL BLOGGER LET ME PUT PICTURES ON THIS BLOG, BUT NOT ON MY NORMAL ONE????
I SHALL KILL GOOGLE! I SWEAR! I SHALL KILL IT!
...Oh, and by the way, that is a fanart (not mine) of Thorin with young Fili and Kili. And that's Bofur with the amazing hat.
I want his hat.
I will steal his hat.
After I kill Google.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
Sooooooo. Second Blog.
HEY, WORLD, HERE I AM!!
...What? Dr. Brewton said to post something along those lines.
The other thing I should answer is what you are probably thinking, "What the heck did she name her blog?"
Well, I felt the need to get nerdy and turned to German. Therefore, the name of my blog is Der Schreibblock Einer Leseratte, which translated means, "The Writing Tablet of a Bookworm." So there you go. It's apt enough, I think.
The question is... will it let me post pictures now???
So I am going to send Dr. Brewton a link to this, and it will go on the syllabus. It would make me very happy if it got the top of the list, but someone's probably already got it by now. Oh, well.
Peoples! If you are just now stumbling across this blog and wondering exactly what kind of a nutcase am I (and if you are brave enough to try to find out), my other blog is Clueless Freshman. Reading it will explain perfectly what kind of person I am. Yes, it was my freshman honors blog, which I kept for my sophomore year with a disclaimer under the title.
It's all Dr. Brewton's fault! I was told to keep a blog and now I love blogging and I can't stop!
So I will probably have NO PROBLEM with the blogging aspect of this literature course.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
P. S. I always sign off that way, for you newbies. It means, 'In the Peace of Christ.' It's Latin. I love Latin. I will take any excuse to work Latin and German into my life.
...What? Dr. Brewton said to post something along those lines.
The other thing I should answer is what you are probably thinking, "What the heck did she name her blog?"
Well, I felt the need to get nerdy and turned to German. Therefore, the name of my blog is Der Schreibblock Einer Leseratte, which translated means, "The Writing Tablet of a Bookworm." So there you go. It's apt enough, I think.
The question is... will it let me post pictures now???
So I am going to send Dr. Brewton a link to this, and it will go on the syllabus. It would make me very happy if it got the top of the list, but someone's probably already got it by now. Oh, well.
Peoples! If you are just now stumbling across this blog and wondering exactly what kind of a nutcase am I (and if you are brave enough to try to find out), my other blog is Clueless Freshman. Reading it will explain perfectly what kind of person I am. Yes, it was my freshman honors blog, which I kept for my sophomore year with a disclaimer under the title.
It's all Dr. Brewton's fault! I was told to keep a blog and now I love blogging and I can't stop!
So I will probably have NO PROBLEM with the blogging aspect of this literature course.
In Pace Christi,
Elyse
P. S. I always sign off that way, for you newbies. It means, 'In the Peace of Christ.' It's Latin. I love Latin. I will take any excuse to work Latin and German into my life.
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