AARDVARKS, CONIFERS & PALM-TREES, PLUS A TOLKIEN REFERENCE

Heard Marc Lynch featured on On the Media this morning, discussing the public fear of ISIS and the media narrative of same. Liked what he said, and the fact that he snickered when Gladstone quoted certain semi-contradictory poll results. Googling him revealed that he is indeed of a Choplogic disposition. Look no further than his blog title: Abu Aardvark.

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1024. I've wanted to include some German poetry in my memorization effort, figured the best starting-point's a little scrap of Heinrich Heine:

     Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam,
     Im Norden auf kahler Höh.
     Er schläfert, mit weißer Decke
     Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.

     Er träumt von einer Palme,
     Die, Fern im Morgenland,
     Einsam und schweigend trauert
     Auf brennender Felsenwand.

Two Trees of Valinor

Stupid simple, but so evocative. Rather like Telperion and Laurelin, except w/ an added double-edge of grassisalwaysgreener and Einsamkeit. I just love the word Morningland. The compounds just make German so much more visual than English: Orient ... what is that? What three kings'd ever journey across an Orient? Not to mention the Near East or the Middle East. Asia's a bit better. But Orient? Too mathy and navigational. But Morgenland is different. It's both Morrowland and Dawnland. It's almost Neverland. You can see the sun start to peek over the hills before it rolls over the desert, only to lose itself again in an endless swell of twinkling stars and forevertwilight. Just that one word. The way it evokes sunshine and time and weather and space and stars and dawning and dying. I suppose this isn't nearly as apparent to a native speaker, so praise Thoth I can see it from the outside. I read somewhere that the nights aren't as clear in the Middle East as we think.

This was so short it barely felt like memorization, though. May look into some Rilke next. Or Goethe. I'd like to memorize a Shakesonnet or four but I couldn't decide which five to go with. Chi troppo vuole nulla stringe.

Comsplutterment: Sam Watkin's "Company Aytch: or, a Side Show of the Big Show"

"Comsplutterment" neatly encapsulates most of the qualities of Sam Watkin's memoir-cum-proto-creative-nonfiction Company Aytch: or, A Side Show of the Big Show. Watkins uses the word to describe the effect of "minnie balls" on a line of Federal troops at Rocky Face Ridge.  "Comsplutterment," of course, perfectly conveys the notion, but lends it a creepily humorous, light-hearted tone that makes the reader stop short and cringe at his own chuckle. This is the entire book (at least up to page 118 where I currently am) in an nutshell.

Die Leiden Des Jungen Werthers & Blakeathon Wrap-up

Read Die Leiden Des Jungen Werthers. Better late than never. Writing drips with romantic pathos -- to the point where Werther can even say "Mein Gott, mein Gott, warum has dust mich verlassen?" and "o Schicksal! o Menschheit!" in a mostly non-ironic way. Interesting read just to see the changes in taste since the 1780s. Although it's actually rather modern come to think of it -- Werther's obsessive, unbalanced personality is very 20th century. Haven't decided how ironically I want to read it, yet. Goethe evidently despised the book later in life (and, predictably, it was his most popular work during his lifetime) becuase of it's romantic/sentimental nature, which suggests that Goethe would have it read unironically. The writing itself is as flawless as one would expect.

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Rounding off my Blakeathon by reading Frye's Fearful Symmetry. Has yet to disappoint. Frye's usual erudition and wit.

Langsdorff's Voyages & Travels

Langsdorff's Voyages and Travels, a report written on the Russian circumnavigation 1803-06. Best anecdote to date: a "crossing the line" ceremony in which a Russian sailor donned a fur-lined custom of Neptune, complete with harpoon-trident, and raced around deck for hours sprinkling people with water.

A Whale of a Book

Rereading Moby Dick for the first time in years. I had forgotten both the bizarreness (contrary to its reputation as highschool death-by-boredom, Doby Mick is hee-lair-ee-us), as well as the beauty in certain passages. Ahab's soliloquy to the whale's head in Chapter 70 is a particularly fine example of this mixture of madness and beauty, i.e. "where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home," and "O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!" Diva.

The cook Fleece's sermon to his "congregation," a swarm of sharks which he addresses as "belubed fellow-critters, concludes with the benediction "Cussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill your dam' bellies 'till dey bust -- and den die."

Chapter 55 features a rant on "Monstrous Pictures of Whales," lamenting the woefully inaccurate representations of whales in art. Depicted Science compiled most of Melville's references here.

Also mentions the memoirs of Grigory Heinrich von Langsdorff (1774-1852), a naturalist who participated in the Russian circumnavigation expedition of Adam Johann Ritter von Krusenstern (Ива́н Фёдорович Крузенште́рн). Von Krusenstern wrote a detailed Reise um die Welt... (Erster Theil, Zweiter, Dritter), while von Langsdorff wrote his own Voyages and travels in various parts of the world... (here).