Shawn L. Bird

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literary immortality July 6, 2012

Filed under: Grace Beguiling - Petrarch,Literature,Teaching,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:21 am
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I’ve been spending the last few days transcribing my copy of Susanna Dobson’s Life of Petrarch (1777) and as I plug away on the typing I am musing on immortality.

The other day I alluded to and listed Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” and as I read it, I am thinking of the comparison between Will’s unknown inspiration, and Petrarch’s Laure.  Here’s that sonnet again:

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.


The immortality happens in the closing couplet.  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.  “This” is, of course, Will’s poem.  He claims that he has made his beloved immortal by describing her (or him) in this poem.  The immortality has limited value, being as we have no idea of whom he was speaking, but the moment of loving adoration is captured for all time.

Petrarch is a little more specific.  He names his love, and of course, the people of his time knew exactly who she was.  He calls her Laure, and his poetry abounds with symbolism of the laurel.  A crown of laurels was (and still is) a mark of distinction. Petrarch believes she is his crown and his success.  History (particularly the Abbé de Sade in his Mémoires sur la vie de François Pétrarque, 1764) records her as Laure de Noves, wife of Hugues de Sade.  (In English, we call her Laura).

Here is Petrarch’s Canzoniere 6 which shows a play on the laurel at the end:

Now so depraved is my poor fool, desire,
To persecute this lady, turned in flight,
Unloosed of Love’s entrapments, footing light,
Ahead of my slow run he flies. Prior

To my objections, by the roads most dire,
The more I call, the more he takes to flight;
Restraint is weak, nor has the spur its bite
When Love and nature in him do conspire.

And then he grasps the bridle to direct
The way, and takes me for a vassal, hastes
Post-haste, as though to death, my worsened state

To reach at last the laurel and collect
The bitter fruit of others’ plagues, the tastes
That grieve one more, unless they consolate.

(trans.  “Hypocorism” on Yahoo Answers)

This poem is echoing the section that I’m transcribing at the moment.  Laura is being stalked.  Petrarch follows her about Avignon, gazing dreamily at her or trying to talk to her.  She covers her face and takes off in the other direction.  You can almost hear her running steps while Petrarch shouts rhyming verses extolling her beauty.  It’s a wonder her hubby Hugues didn’t call him out and beat him to a pulp!  (Now that’s an interesting scene, isn’t it?  Hmm.  Expect to see something along those lines).

The summary of this vague sort of comparison between Will and Francesco is that  to truly be immortalized, the beloved needs a name, and a personality.  Laure seems far more real than Will’s anonymous beloved.  While Laure is busy running in the opposite direction, pulling her veil over her head, and trying to maintain her virtue against the onslaught of Petrarch’s devotion, Will’s beloved is a static object, simply receiving affection and adoration.  There is no sense of individuality.  Nonetheless, the love does become immortal because it is recorded.  Words are powerful.

Here’s an afterword by poet Jacopo Sannazzaro   (1458–1530).  A hundred years earlier, Petrarch had lived at the spring that is the source of the Sorgue River, writing his canzonieres to Laura beneath the limestone cliffs that echo with the burbling of the river.

Sorgues, the River  Laura de Sade

THE NYMPH by Sorga’s humble murmurings born,

Illustrious now on wings of glory soars;        

Her high renown its awful echo pours           

Wide o’er the earth. Splendors like these adorn        

Her, destined, in her modest beauty’s morn,          5

To charm the eye of Petrarch. Her the doors 

Of fame’s proud dome enshrine; the radiant stores   

Of fancy blaze around her; nor does scorn    

On her low birthplace and obscurer tomb      

Glance a triumphant scowl. What suns illume                    10

With lustre like the Muse? How many dames,          

Wise, chaste, and lovely, of distinguished race,        

Have slept in death forgotten, lost their names,        

While hers from age to age beams with still heightened grace.         

(Trans. Capel Lofft)

Indeed.  The words craft immortality; the love brings fame.

This image is popularly considered to be Laure de Noves de Sade, beloved of Petrarch, though the Musee Petrarque in Fontaine de Vaucluse asserts that there are NO verified pictures of her, most being painted years after her death.

 

RIP Ray! June 18, 2012

Filed under: Literature — Shawn L. Bird @ 8:37 pm
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vocabulary lessons with Diana Gabaldon June 3, 2012

Filed under: Literature,OUTLANDERishness,Reading,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 1:20 pm
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I am an avid reader and an English teacher, so I have a pretty good vocabulary.  However, reading Diana Gabaldon has introduced me to many new words.  This is an ongoing effort to identify words I discovered through her books.  I am noting them as I re-read or as Diana posts Daily Lines of the latest book in progress.  Feel free to add your own additions in the comments!

OUBLIETTE. (Voyager, used metaphorically) a top loading dungeon (a.k.a. a thieves’ hole).  I find it amusing that this word wasn’t used while Claire was actually inside the thieves’ hole in Cranesmuir which is arguably a real oubliette.  Jamie uses the word to refer to being below deck on a ship.  It shows up again in Drums of Autumn, and this time young William is in an ‘oubliette.’  In that instance, it’s particularly funny, because William has, in fact, fallen into the privy.  Note the French root : Oublier (to forget).  As in, they’ll toss you in the dungeon and forget about you…  Luckily, no one forgets William in the privy hole.

 AVUNCULAR. (Drums of Autumn, the postman winks avuncularly) uncle-like. Ian uses the noun form Avunculus when writing to Jamie in Latin. Something like,  “Ian salutas Avunculus Jacobus.”  (I’ll correct that when I come across it during the re-read). s Avunculus Jacobus meaning Uncle James, of course.

ALACRITY (throughout the series).  Claire (and others) frequently do things eagerly or in cheerful readiness, i.e.  ‘with alacrity.’  I suspect this one of DG’s favourite words, actually.  Whenever Davina Porter says it in my audio books, I always grin and repeat solemnly, “with alacrity!” 🙂  When we hosted Diana here at our writers’ conference I gave her a dish towel I’d hand embroidered with “Do it with alacrity!” as a joke.  🙂

SMOOR is always used in Outlander  in the sense of  ‘to smoor the fire.’  It means ‘to smother’ in Scots.  One smothers the fire so it continues to burn slowly throughout the night.   There’s an interesting article about historical usage on the Scots Language Centre website.  Click to listen to it said, the ‘oooo’ is long and the /r/ rolls.  A lovely word spoken!  Smoor can be used to mean killing a person by depriving them of air or to mean snow covering something.  My favorite use is from that link, quoting Robert Louis Stevenson, (Merry Men 1887)  “a mune smoored wi’ mist.”  Isn’t that a romantic image for a moon being smothered by fog!

FRESHET (from Drums of Autumn).  Claire sees  freshets when she gets stranded between the Muellers and Frasers’ Ridge.  It’s a sudden overflowing of a stream due to heavy rains or rapid melting.

BATHYSPHERE.  I kid you not.  This one comes from a daily lines posting (Jun 6, 2012) of book 8 in the series  called Written in My Own Heart’s Blood (aka MOBY).  A bathysphere is a spherical chamber for deep diving.  Claire leaves a tense situation “breathing as if I’d just escaped from a bathysphere.”  This might just be my favourite Gabaldon word yet.

EXCRESCENCE- Claire uses it to describe the mob cap she’s been given by Granny Bacon in The Fiery Cross.  An excrescence is an outgrowth that’s the result of disease or abnormality, or an unattractive or superfluous addition.   I confess, this is a much milder definition than the one I had presumed.

DISQUISITION- This one came from a Facebook posting from Diana, but it’s also a humorous  article on her blog about “Butt-cooties.”  Disquisition is just a long word for ‘essay.’  As an English teacher, I will definitely be able to stick this one into my every day vocabulary!

INIMICAL- From Echo in the Bone.  It means tending to harm.  There was a strange sense of… “something waiting among the trees, not inimical, but not welcoming either.”

Click here to read a blog about CAMSTAIRY COCCYGODYNIANS.  Those are two of my favourite Gabaldon vocabulary words.  They’re from Drums of Autumn.

ABSQUATULATE- 29-01-13 Diana posted a Daily Line from MOBY (aka Written in My Own Heart’s Blood) with the following hashtag: #absquatulatemeansjustwhatyouthinkitdoes  The context is “He and Fraser had absquatulated onto the roof and down a drain-pipe, leaving William, clearly reeling with the shock of revelation, alone in the upstairs hallway.”  This word makes me laugh and shake my head.  It means to leave quickly.  To be honest, I was imagining from the context that it meant climb or clamber.  So, Diana, you were wrong.  It doesn’t mean just what I thought it did!

OLEAGINOUS- 04-04-2014 Diana posted a daily line from MOBY that said the surface of the butter was oleaginous.  i.e. greasy.  I like that this word can also mean obsequious.  I would have thought that was a satisfying enough option, but oleaginous is just so much better.  The butter was literally oleaginous, unlike pandering underlings.  Someday I’m using this word in a story. 🙂

SOUGH 14-07-2016 Daily line from book 9 Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (aka GOBEE): “Together they stood listening, trying to still their pounding hearts and gasping breaths long enough to hear anything above the sough of the forest.”  Sough means moaning, rustling, or murmuring sound.  It rhymes with ‘cough.’

BEDIZENED 08-06-2017 Daily line from book 9 Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (aka GOBEE):“For Angelina, unable or unwilling to bend her bedizened head enough to look down, was about to collide with the little platform on which the sitter’s chair was perched.”  Bedizened means dressed up or decorated gaudily.  Sounds like a lot of grad hair do’s we see this time of year.

FROWARD 2018-07-23 Daily line from book 9 Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (aka GOBEE): “He’s Scottish,” I amended, with a sigh. “Which means stubborn. Also unreasonable, intolerant, contumelious, froward, pig-headed and a few other objectionable things.”  Dictionary says this is someone who is contrary and difficult to deal with.

CONTUMELIOUS 2018-07-23 Daily line from book 9 Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (aka GOBEE): “He’s Scottish,” I amended, with a sigh. “Which means stubborn. Also unreasonable, intolerant, contumelious, froward, pig-headed and a few other objectionable things.”  Dictionary says this refers to someone’s behaviour as being insulting and objectionable.

AMBSACE 2018-07-23 Daily line from book 9 Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone (aka GOBEE): 

“Men don’t like to share a woman. Unless it’s an ambsace.”
“An ambsace?” I was beginning to wonder how I might extricate myself from this conversation with any sort of dignity. I was also beginning to feel rather alarmed.
“That’s just what Madge called it. When two men want to do things to a girl at the same time. It costs more than it would to have two girls, because they often damage her. Mostly just bruises,” she added fairly. “But still.”

By definition, ambsace is the ‘lowest roll in a game of dice: 2 ones’.  See above for the vernacular meaning in the 1700s!

COUNTENANCE Posted by Diana Sept 30, 2023. A daily line from book 10 in progress:

William is pondering life after shaving in Jamie’s room at Fraser’s Ridge. “The thought made him feel more settled in himself. No matter what the future held, he still had both a past and a present, and those must be sufficient to keep him in countenance for what might come.”

The definition I know of countenance is ‘face’ but here Diana uses a less common definition, that of ‘support.’

 

behave well & badly May 29, 2012

Filed under: Literature,Pondering — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:09 pm
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In Fire and Hemlock Diana Wynn Jones says,

For you , the only way to behave well was to behave badly.  For me, the only way to win was to lose.  You weren’t to know me, and I wasn’t to remember you.

The paradox of this captured me, so I copied it down to ponder.   The rest of this quote talks about letting go being the only real way to love someone.

What does it mean to you?

 

love is letting go May 26, 2012

Filed under: Commentary,Literature — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:57 pm
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Diana Wynne Jones writes, in Fire and Hemlock,

To love someone enough to let them go, you had to let them go forever or you did not love them that much.

That’s profound.

Sad, too.

But on second thought- what does ‘let them go forever’ mean, really?  Release them to the universe?  Trust them?  Say good-bye?  Embrace them?

Can you hold someone physically while letting them go emotionally?  or visa versa?

What do you think of this quote?  What do you think Wynne-Jones means?  Is it true?

 

 

mesmerism for the masses February 21, 2012

Filed under: Commentary,Literature,Reading — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:31 am
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Theater, I suppose, is a form of mass mesmerism, and if that’s the case, Shakespeare…was surely one of the greatest hypnotists who ever lived.

(Alan Bradley, I am Half-sick of Shadows.  p.119)

Gotta love the brilliance of Flavia de Luce!

 

Where did it all begin? August 10, 2011

Filed under: Grace Awakening,Literature,Poetry,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:02 am
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I was asked this question yesterday, and I figured you might be interested in the answer.

Short answer: it began with a poem.

Long answer: it’s been a long journey, but it began with a boy, a poem, and some books.

When I was ten, I developed a crush of epic proportions. Since I was an avid reader, I was also a writer. I’d been making up stories and writing poetry since I was in grade three. The unexpected, overwhelming emotions involved in this crush, led to outpourings of poetry. The theme was common: where had this emotion come from? Surely something this intense couldn’t just have happened? Surely such emotion must have been in the universe forever?  The year I was twelve, I wrote this poem, which summarizes this sensation:

When I look at you
I see sunshine in darkness
Passion through naïveté

I think that we were lovers once
In another life
You and I belonged
And that is why we were drawn

That is why I love you so much
And why your name
Brings happiness through sorrow

A wisp of a smile
When day dies
I remember you and I smile

You are my day and my night
Your face is a memory
That time cannot erase,
And someday
In another life
We will be lovers
Once again

It’s the poem Grace’s hand writes in the library. She is shocked and dismayed by what it reveals to her.  I know it isn’t a great poem, and I would tighten it up if I was writing it now, but I wanted it to be here as an authentic voice, flaws and all.

That poem begged to be a novel. There was a need to explore that sense of infinity that comes with a profoundly intense relationship like a first love, and like a lasting love, as well.

I tried to write it a few times over the years, but it didn’t go anywhere. I could get a narrative, but there was no hook to hang the story on. It was boring. If it was boring for me, it’d be boring for readers. Still, that love story wanted out, and it waited.

Then one day, I was reading some questionaires I”d given my students. In answer to the question, “What is the best book you’ve ever read?” About a quarter of my class had answered, “Twilight.” I’d never heard of it. I mentioned this to one of my older students and she told me she had all three of the books that were out, and that I needed to read them. The next day I had Twilight. A few hours later I was dying for the next books. They were delivered, and I read between work, dance classes and way too many Rotary meetings. I adored the story and I adored the characters. I was making connections like crazy- the key to one’s enjoyment of a book- and I had an epiphany.

Myth could be the hook. I started writing the week after Thanksgiving 2008. The characters started introducing themselves. I tried to move them in one direction, they chose to go another. The book was done the week before April. And it was good.

It wasn’t perfect, of course. The first readers picked out weak scenes, slow spots, confusing things, etc, but they loved it. They wanted more.

And that’s where it all began…

.

If you’re visiting from Poetry Potluck 48, please include the link to your poem in any comment you leave!  Thanks and thanks for coming by!

 

recommended reading August 7, 2011

Filed under: Literature,Reading — Shawn L. Bird @ 2:17 am
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I just came across this excellent website that reviews YA fiction. If you’re looking for something good to read, check it out:

http://www.yareads.com/

 

Create your talent July 26, 2011

Filed under: Literature,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:48 pm
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“You don’t believe in natural talent?”

“The premise can be insidious.  If we find something doesn’t come naturally, we might conclude we have no talent for it and abandon the pursuit, even if it’s to our detriment.”

“So what causes success?”

“If you believe in deliberate practice, artfully designed hard work and always stretching beyond your abilities.  It’s not as simple as ‘Practice makes perfect.’  It’s continually focusing on your weakest elements and trying to improve them.  Those who persevere are high achievers.”

“…The key lies in knowing what you deeply want.  The more you want something, the easier it is to sweat through the deliberate practice.”

“So you make your own luck?…”

Kerry Reichs in Leaving Unknown

Kerry seems to be describing Gladwell’s Rule of 10,000.  The concept is quite simple.  If you put 10,000 hours into something–anything–you will be successful.  Whether you begin with ‘natural talent’ or not, those hours (3 hours a day for ten years apparently) will turn you into a master.  If you aren’t willing to put in the time, you’re not going to have the success.

This might explain who so many first time novelists are in their 40s.  If you’ve been raising kids, you probably haven’t been able to get in your hours!!  I tend to think there is something to this.  You have to apply yourself to your passion.  Luckily, passion makes the hours go quickly.

So what do you think?

 

love light June 6, 2011

Filed under: book reviews,Commentary,Literature — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:19 am
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She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.

She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else’s; but timid, introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life.

She saw things. I had not known there was so much to see.

She was forever tugging my arm and saying, “Look!”

(Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl p. 107)

This is the best part of love, isn’t it?  Spinelli is able to articulate so beautifully a special part of the best relationships.  When the world opens up because of the love you share.  When we are able to embrace things that are new to us, particularly if they challenge us, we become better.  We are never able to see things quite the same way when we’ve looked through someone else’s eyes.

The older we grow, if we keep exposing ourselves to experiences that introduce us to new views, we can become large enough to see ourselves as a tiny pinprick on a planet.  We realise our perspective is not the only one, and that there is joy in other places than where we usually find it.  There is pain in new places as well.  Be open to both, and the world expands.