The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars “all the world must . . . graze on Hellebore” The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) by Robert Burton (1577-1640) is an epic, encyclopedic exploration of melancholy that covers, as its subtitle explains, What it is: With All the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of It. In Three Maine Partitions with their Several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up. After a 100+ page introduction in which Burton gives an overview of melancholy and his approach to it, the first “Partition” covers the causes and symptoms of melancholy, the second details the cures of melancholy, and the third explores a particular branch of it, love melancholy, followed by a section on religious melancholy. Burton says that he wrote his book because 1) everyone in the world suffers from melancholy at some point, and 2) he would like to relieve his own melancholy by writing about it. His basic advice is to live with moderation in all things, including eating, drinking, fasting, dancing, exercising, studying, physic taking, love, marriage, venery, and chastity. Why should you read The Anatomy of Melancholy, which runs for fifty-five hours of Elizabethan prose in the Ukemi audiobook? Well, here are five reasons: 1. You’ll learn something of the history of medicine and science, philosophy, and literature etc. 2. You’ll savor the absurd things people have believed for thousands of years and nod at the fundamental, persisting human truths. 3. You’ll confirm the value of moderation. 4. You’ll marvel at the melancholic obsession of Burton, an Oxford university divine who was a voracious reader endowed with a superhuman memory. 5. You’ll enjoy Burton’s Elizabethan writing, his wit, style, digressions, lists, long sentences, and language. Burton is perhaps more of a compiler, summarizer, and assessor than an original thinker, modestly saying of his MANY sources, “I light my candle from their torches.” He writes his book around quotations from and references to the likes of Homer, Euripides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, Apollonius, Herodotus, Ptolemy, Horace, Pliny, Livy, Petrarch, Virgil, Tacitus, Ovid, Suetonius, the Bible, Hercules de Saxonia, Melancthon, Galen, Heraclitus, Paracelsus, Augustine, Avicenna, Boethius, Bacon, Savonarola, St Jerome, Machiavelli, Boccaccio, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Ariosto, Chaucer, More, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, a who's who of scholars, philosophers, historians, astronomers, scientists, church leaders, and writers from ancient till Elizabethan times. Burton was an omnivorous reader, his approach exhaustive: “I had rather repeat things ten times than omit anything of value.” Indeed, because the causes and symptoms of melancholy are often the same, as in fear or sorrow, he does repeat ideas and examples. As he goes about citing ancients, Muslims, various types of Christians, and so on, he seems to believe almost anything he’s read or at least is willing to entertain its possibility. He treats literary, mythological, biblical, legendary, historical, and contemporary figures and examples with equal attention, almost as if they’re all part of the same world with the same ontological status--though he sure often remembers that he’s an Anglican Christian. All that makes his book an interesting window on beliefs and knowledge of the Elizabethan age. Some causes of melancholy (e.g., witches and magicians) and some cures (e.g., anointing your teeth with the earwax of a dog) that he cites are absurd today, but the symptoms he explains and the sympathy he evinces for them, as well as his immersion in the infinite and diverse field and his heroic attempt to categorize it are all impressive and enriching. There is common sense (e.g., “corrupt fantasy” in imagination, fear and sorrow may lead to melancholy) to go with the nonsense (e.g., melancholy may be cured by bleeding with strategically applied cuts or leeches). And much of the nonsense is entertaining, as when he explains the short lives of sparrows by their salacity or gives an instance of a man "that went reeling and staggering all the days of his life . . . because his mother being great with child saw a drunken man reeling in the street." He is prey to many of the prejudices and stereotypes of his era and culture, as when he says that the (native) “Americans” are devil worshipers or that “Germany hath not so many drunkards, England tobacconists, France dancers, Holland mariners, as Italy alone hath jealous husbands.” He has his pet bête noires, like litigious lawyers, mountebank doctors, greedy apothecaries, trencher chaplains, carpet knights, counterfeiting politicians, epicures, atheists, idolaters, popes, monks, spendthrifts, prodigals, ambidexters, cooks, and onions. Although susceptible to the misogynistic bent of his era, he realizes that if women are bad, men are worse. I LOVE Burton’s lists! When he gets rolling and riffing on something, I start by smiling, end by chortling, and marvel at the fecundity of his pen. For example, when he heads off criticism of his book by listing his writerly flaws: “And for those other faults of barbarism, Doric dialect, extemporanean style, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgment, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, fantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry; I confess all ('tis partly affected), thou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself.” Or when he riffs on how melancholic we become if anyone messes with our stuff: “If our pleasures be interrupt, we can tolerate it: our bodies hurt, we can put it up and be reconciled: but touch our commodities, we are most impatient: fair becomes foul, the graces are turned to harpies, friendly salutations to bitter imprecations, mutual feastings to plotting villainies, minings and counterminings; good words to satires and invectives, we revile e contra, nought but his imperfections are in our eyes, he is a base knave, a devil, a monster, a caterpillar, a viper, a hog-rubber, &c.” Or when he rolls on the difficulties of living happily in the world: “In a word, the world itself is a maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, a wilderness, a den of thieves, cheaters, &c., full of filthy puddles, horrid rocks, precipitiums, an ocean of adversity, an heavy yoke, wherein infirmities and calamities overtake, and follow one another, as the sea waves; and if we scape Scylla, we fall foul on Charybdis, and so in perpetual fear, labour, anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to another, duram servientes servitutem, and you may as soon separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moistness from water, brightness from the sun, as misery, discontent, care, calamity, danger, from a man.” I enjoyed Burton's evident pleasure in talking about love. He gets excited while citing seduction scenarios featuring age gaps, incest, beauty, fashion, conversation, nudity, eye-contact, kissing (lip-biting and mouth sucking!), touching (pap caressing!), singing, dancing (the engine of burning lust!), gift giving/promising, lying, crying, etc. He relishes declaiming “farewell!” etc. while channeling lovesick lovers, whether fearful or sorrowful, joyful or tragic, male or female, old or young, mortal or divine, Biblical or classical, historical or contemporary, fictional or real. In addition to being an incredibly well-read bachelor scholar and divine, he was, after all, a man. When he criticizes war and “heroes,” I sense a kindred spirit: "They commonly call the most hair-brain blood-suckers, strongest thieves, the most desperate villains, treacherous rogues, inhuman murderers, rash, cruel and dissolute caitiffs, courageous and generous spirits, heroical and worthy captains, brave men at arms, valiant and renowned soldiers, possessed with a brute persuasion of false honour." Some words about the Ukemi audiobook. First, it’s superbly read by the John Geilgud-esque Peter Wickham, who reads everything with understanding, pleasure, and wit. Second, the audiobook translates into English Burton’s MANY Greek and Latin phrases and quotations, which makes it much easier to “read” what he wrote by listening to the book than by reading it in a physical form. When Burton inserts into an English sentence, “insanum bellum?” the audiobook translates it as “is not war madness?” When he writes, “novices, illiterate, Eunuchi sapientiæ,” the audiobook replaces the Latin with “eunuchs of wisdom.” Experts in Greek or Latin may be irritated by this aid to the average reader, but I appreciate it. Actually, Burton himself often adds an English translation for his Latin phrases (e.g., “Besides, I might not well refrain, for ubi dolor, ibi digitus, one must needs scratch where it itches”). Other times, as when he gains momentum on a list in the “vulgar” English tongue, he tends to insert a Latin element or two, so you can kind of understand what he means from the context. Finally, the audiobook begins with two scholarly introductions about the book and its author. Paul Jordan Smith calls The Anatomy an entertaining masterpiece that influenced writers like Johnson, Milton, Sterne, and Keats, and says, “It's a bit of a cosmos, a compendium of poetry, medicine, philosophy, philology, theology, climatology, old wives tales, politics, utopia, satire, magic, and more. It celebrates all of the earth and all of the human moods as it anatomizes melancholy.” Floyd Dell then describes the book as “an analysis of morbid psychology, with an artistic interest, by a reclusive bookworm” who “grew up in the age of Shakespeare, and … was interested in our eccentricities” and “unreason.” You really should read it! View all my reviews
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Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Titus Groan and Gormenghast in the Modern World Is Gormenghast only the delusion of a “dotty” young man? It appears in no atlas and belongs to a past age of lineage, lords, and castles. After his birth in the vast, decaying castle in Titus Groan (1946), the first novel in Mervyn Peake’s trilogy, and after his desertion of it in Gormenghast (1950), the second novel, in Titus Alone (1959/1992) young Titus finds himself lost in a modern world of cities, cars, airplanes, factories, concentration camps, detectives, and even sentient spy globes (and maybe even clones), ever pursued by mysterious identical twin men in tall helmets. Titus Alone is a strange novel! Picaresque, allegorical, science fictional, and dream-like, it concerns Titus’ struggle to come to terms with Gormenghast, with his desertion and memories of it, and with his tenuous hold on its reality. Forthright and self-centered, Titus moves through the modern world like an unstable Candide, not wanting to become tied down to places, friends, or lovers. Nevertheless, he builds relationships with various people, including the larger than life, rudder-nosed, free-spirited Muzzlehatch, the beautiful, ample, and kind Juno, his three beggar bodyguards from the Under-River (into which the failures of the world descend), and the exquisite spoiled rich girl Cheeta, whose father is a scientist who has built a factory tower with identical faces in the windows and sounds like the smell of death. Simon Vance gives a stellar reading of Titus Alone. His voices for Muzzlehatch and the denizens of the Under-River are engaging and savory, and his reading of Titus’ delirious ravings (in which he channels the people from his past) is inspired. Alas that his Cheeta sounds too petulant and not malevolent enough. The audiobook is the 1959 edition with 109 chapters, not the more recent and restored version from 1992 with 122. The added chapters develop Juno’s character, the factory, and the charade climax, but I think the original version of the audiobook is fine without them. Titus Alone is half as long as the first two novels in the trilogy, has fewer detailed descriptions and shorter chapters, and feels less immersive, coherent, and polished. And I sympathize with readers who feel that, due to his declining health, Peake was not able to write a third novel to equal the first two in bizarre and compelling grandeur, and that it’s better just to read a duology and to ignore the third volume. However, readers who love the first two books will find flashes of their brilliance as well as new moods and modes in Titus Alone, and though it is not a masterpiece on their level, it is interesting and has unforgettable characters, scenes, and lines, for example, the absurd courtroom questioning of Titus about Gormenghast, the pleasurable early love between Titus and Juno, the horrible conversation between former prison camp guard Veil and former prisoner Black Rose, and the sad sunset clouds that look like silently roaring animals to Muzzlehatch. View all my reviews
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A “Supernaturally Outlandish” Masterpiece Gormenghast (1950), the second novel in Mervyn Peake’s classic fantasy trilogy, opens with seven-year-old Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Gormenghast, already conflicted by rebellious desires to escape the meaningless rituals and dry duties of the castle and from his role as its figurehead: “His days were full of meaningless ceremonies whose sacredness appeared to be in inverse ratio to their comprehensibility or usefulness.” The novel depicts Titus’ maturing into a sensitive and self-aware young man scarred by violence, seasoned by loss, and attracted by the world outside. Into that plot Peake weaves the career of the amoral ex-kitchen boy Steerpike, ever scheming his way deeper into the heart of Gormenghast. And for comic relief, Peake spends (almost too) much time with Professor Bellgrove, his bachelor colleagues, and Irma Prunesquallor, who wants a husband. There are many memorable set pieces in the novel, like the moment when Titus and his sister Fuchsia discover that they love each other, the funeral of the bird-tiny Nannie Slag, the “Bachelorette” soiree at the Prunesquallors, the demise of an anile headmaster, the game of marbles in the Lichen Fort, the life or death struggle between an athletic malevolent youth and a septuagenarian crippled dwarf, the tracking of a satanic outlaw, the aborted ceremony of the Bright Carvings, the encounter with the wild Thing in the forest cave, the Biblical flooding of the castle, and the schoolboy game featuring a classroom window 100 feet above the ground, a giant plane tree, a pair of polished floor boards, and a gauntlet of slingshots. Audiobook reader Simon Vance’s narrator is clear, refined, and sympathetic, and his character voices varied and on target (especially Dr. Prunesquallor, Irma, Bellgrove, Barquentine, Steerpike, and Flay). But his Fuchsia needs more raw passion and less nasal whine and his Countess Gertrude more gravitas and less dowager quaver. Gormenghast resembles the first novel in the trilogy, Titus Groan. Both books are set in a vividly realized castle world populated by grotesque denizens. Both intoxicate the reader with rich language, baroque detail, painterly description, and blended humor and pathos. Both leave images etched upon the mind’s eye. Both feature long passages of conversation or description punctuated by unpredictable scenes of suspenseful action. Both express themes about the primacy of passion and imagination over reason and calculation and the comforting and stultifying influence of tradition on human lives. However, although both novels are “fantasies of manners,” Gormenghast is also a romantic comedy, a British school story, a gothic thriller, and a bildungsroman. And it highlights new themes: the conflict between duty and freedom and the transformations, wonders, and absurdities of love and aging. The focus on Titus and his desire to be free shifts the novel away from the more leisurely pace and adult themes of the first one. While the first book covers about a year in the life of the castle and is mainly about the effect of Titus’ birth on other people, this book covers about ten years in the life of Titus and is primarily about his maturing. In a way the titles of the first and second novels should be switched! This book is more funny, moving, and terrible than the first. I kind of prefer the first, though, because I’m uneasy about how much attention Peake gives to the professors and Irma. Gormenghast is a great work full of dense and poetic writing, grotesque and human characters, and humorous, moving, and epic stories set in an exaggerated fantasy world that recalls our own. Finally, Gormenghast, like Titus Groan, is a unique masterpiece that offers a satisfying conclusion to the story arc of the first two novels that almost renders the third book, Titus Alone, unnecessary. View all my reviews
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
My rating: 5 of 5 stars The Pleasures of a Painterly, Baroque Nightmare Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan (1946) is unique. Dense, hermetic, epic, grotesque, and beautiful, it stands alone in the landscape of literature, like the labyrinthine, “umbrageous,” vast, and craggy crumbling castle Gormenghast, in which the Groan family of earls and their servants live, ruled by iron tradition and obscure ritual. The novel begins with the birth of Titus, the unsmiling son of Sepulchrave, the 76th Earl, and with the escape of the amoral and ambitious kitchen boy Steerpike. These events initiate “that most unforgivable of all heresies,” change. Peake writes the stifled life of the decaying castle and its grotesque inhabitants with humor and empathy. And with intense detail, so that it might be difficult for some readers to enter Peake’s world of painterly descriptions and bizarre metaphors. But the persevering reader drawn more to the strange pleasures of a poet-painter’s skewed imagination than to the familiar excitements and moral clarity of Tolkienesque fantasy will discover a strange world unforgettable characters, events, and images. Some of my favorites are: a room full of white cats; a field of flagstones framed by clouds; a poem read out of a window by a wedge-headed poet; a gift ruby red “like a lump of anger”; a room tangled by painted roots; a library refuge of row upon row of priceless—and flammable—books; a sinister equestrian statue; a funeral featuring a headless human skeleton, a calf’s skull, and a blue ribbon; a one-legged, foul-mouthed dwarf walking back and forth over the dishes of a ceremonial breakfast; a deadly duel featuring a two-handed cleaver, a sword, and a room full of spider webs; a pair of voluminous purple dresses floating on a lake; a serious baby making “a tiny, drunken totter” on a sandy beach… The novel depicts the effect on the castle and its denizens of the unexpected birth of a male heir to the Groan line. The main point of view characters are Rottcodd, the ancient Curator of the Hall of Bright Carvings who whiles away his life there, dusting the statues and sleeping in his hammock, introducing and closing the novel; Sepulchrave, the melancholy Earl who lives for ritual and books without realizing that they prevent him from connecting with his children; Gertrude, Sepulchrave’s massive and phlegmatic wife, who ignores her daughter, son, and husband gives all her care to her beloved wild birds and white cats (gathered around her like sea foam around a lighthouse); Fuchsia, Titus’ elder sister, black-haired, red-dressed, full-lipped, strong, vulnerable, imaginative, passionate, full of angry and tender love; Cora and Clarice, Sepulchrave’s expressionless violent-purple clad mirror image twin sisters, who, after suffering a stroke in unison that left their left sides paralyzed, are stunningly stupid, vain, resentful, and power lusting; Flay, the stick-like, taciturn personal servant of Lord Sepulchrave, given to sudden bursts of violence when his or his master’s dignity is insulted; Titus’ Nannie (Slagg), doll-like, desiccated, tremulous, self-pitying, childish, simple, senile, loving; Dr. Prunesquallor, the family doctor, a fop with refined hobbies and a high-pitched hyena laugh; Irma, his repressed, bony spinster sister with perfect white skin and a doomed desire to be a lady; Swelter, the fat, gargantuan Chef who lords it over his debased kitchen boys and men and plots to butcher Flay. AND the prime mover of the plot, Steerpike, the agile, amoral, conscienceless, ambitious, manipulating, clever, cold, and almost deformed youth who, escaping from Swelter’s kitchen early on, spends the rest of the novel (literally and figuratively) climbing up through the castle’s inner workings and insinuating himself into its heart, a noxious, new, alien thing. A summary of characters with hints of the plot fails to convey the most wonderful thing about the book, Peake’s style, which bristles with imaginative conceits and extended metaphors. So much rewards rereading. I first read the trilogy in the Ballantine paperback editions in junior high, then re-read them in graduate school, then listened to the audiobooks ten years ago, and each time I fell under Peake’s spell. In a sense his work is not fantasy because nothing fantastic (in the usual sense of the word) happens: no magic, no supernatural phenomena, etc. On the other hand, because almost nothing in the novel is just like we’d find it in the real world, being exaggerated and more grotesque or more lovely or more ugly or more silly or more philosophical and so on, the castle and its rituals and its denizens become fantastic, something that can only exist in the imagination of a kooky and imaginative painter poet like Peake. A funhouse mirror warping the everyday world into something larger, darker, brighter, lovelier, uglier, funnier, and more tragic than our real world and lives in it can be. On the other hand again, because everything in the novel reveals so much human nature, it is the best kind of fantasy. Simon Vance reads the audiobook with perfect clarity, rhythm, and feeling. I often found myself rewinding to enjoy again his enthusiastic reading of Peake’s rich language and eccentric characters. Although his Fuchsia is too much simper and not enough passion, his other characters are great, especially his Flay (terse gravel), Swelter (flabby unction), Steerpike (cold working class), Nannie Slagg (wrinkled querulousness), Dr. Prunesquallor (trilling “Ha-ha-ha-ha!”), and the twin sisters (vain and venomous monotones). The themes of Titus Groan remain relevant: the conflicts between imagination and ambition, emotion and calculation, and new and old; the detrimental effect on human minds and relationships of tradition, ritual, and class; the pain and wonder of artistic creation; and the difficult but vital need to find our own special place where we can be fulfilled. The last paragraphs of the novel give an indication of its strange pleasures: The castle was breathing, and far below the Hall of the Bright Carvings all that was Gornmengast revolved. After the emptiness, it was like tumult through him, though he had heard no sound. And yet by now there would be doors flung open. There would be echoes in the passageways and quick lights flickering along the walls. Through honeycombs of stone would now be wandering the passions in their clay. There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence, and disenchantment. And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself shall cry for insurrection. For tomorrow is also a day, and Titus has entered his stronghold. View all my reviews
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Comical, Sublime, Poignant, Charming Classic Every second and every word of Anne Flosik's reading of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows were a pure pleasure to listen to. If I wasn't laughing at the incorrigible Toad's absurd, selfish, reckless, and yet somehow heroic antics, I was shutting my eyes to imagine and savor the warm friendship between Rat and Mole and the rich descriptions of the different seasons of the natural world around the River. The novel achieves great poignancy when Mole misses his home and when Rat hears the call of the south, and sublime beauty when the friends see--and forget--the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. I like the ambiguous nature of the animals, who obey the "etiquette" of the changing seasons according to their animal natures, use paws, live in holes, and are aware of their differences from human beings, and yet who also wear clothes, eat human foods, and equip their holes with comfortable human furnishings. And just what is their size? If they are the naturally sized smallish animals (like any rodents or toads) they sometimes seem to be (like the seafaring rat from Constantinople), how could a field mouse go out shopping for Christmas feast supplies and come back laden with a pound of this and a pound of that and how could Toad crash stolen motorcars, disguise himself as a washerwoman, and ride a stolen horse? This blurring of naturalism and fantasy is one of the pleasures of The Wind in the Willows. Is The Wind in the Willows a children's book? Hmmm. I suspect that (as with the Alice books) adults may enjoy it more than children, though the Toad chapters should make every reader laugh. The book may be criticized for its conservative views on class and gender, but I treasure its humor, beauty, wonder, warmth, nature, and art. And Anne Flosik enhances all those virtues perfectly with her husky and measured voice and appealing wit and emotion. View all my reviews
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars “Oh, Ford, Ford Ford, I Wish I Had My Soma!” Brave New World is a bitterly funny and humorously tragic dystopian novel in which Aldous Huxley satirizes modern civilization’s obsession with consumerism, sensual pleasure, popular culture entertainment, mass production, and eugenics. His far future world limits individual freedom in exchange for communal happiness via mass culture arts like “feelies” (movies with sensual immersion), the state-produced feel-good drug soma, sex-hormone gum, popular sports like “obstacle golf,” and the assembly line chemical manipulation of ova and fetuses so as to decant from their bottles babies perfectly suited for their destined castes and jobs, babies who are then mentally conditioned to become satisfied workers and consumers who believe that everyone belongs to everyone. In a way it’s more horrible than the more obviously brutal and violent repression of individuals by totalitarian systems in dystopias like George Orwell’s 1984, because Huxley’s novel implies that people are happy being mindless cogs in the wheels of economic production as long as they get their entertainments and new goods. Michael York does a great job reading the novel, his voice oozing satire for the long opening tour of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and then modifying in timbre and dialect for the various characters, among them the self-centered brooder Bernard Marx, the budding intellectual poet Helmholtz Howard, the sexy, sensitive, and increasingly confused Lenina Crowne, the spookily understanding Resident World Controller of Western Europe Mustapha Mond, and especially the good-natured, sad, and conflicted Shakespearean quoting “savage” John. I had never read this classic of dystopian science fiction, so I’m glad to have listened to this excellent audiobook, because it is entertaining and devastating in its depiction of human nature and modern civilization, especially timely in our own brave new Facebook world. View all my reviews
A Heart Divided by Jin Yong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars "Being a hero can't save your life" Yay! I finally got to finish Jin Yong’s influential and wonderful Legends of the Condor Heroes (1957-59), as the fourth and final volume of the classic wuxia epic, A Heart Divided, capably translated into English for the first time by Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant (2020), recently became available on Audible. The last volume starts where the third left off: the young soulmates Guo Jing and Lotus Huang are escaping from the Iron Palm Gang, when Guo Jing carries his terribly wounded lover into a black swamp, desperate to find help for her. There they find a bizarre woman, Madam Ying the Supreme Reckoner, prematurely aged after ten years in the swamp spent mastering her own Weatherfish Slip kung fu technique and trying to solve abstruse mathematical problems, all in her effort to get revenge. “For more than a decade, Madame Yang had been curdling in shattered dreams of lost love, growing ever more bitter and spiteful.” Thus, when she sees the earnest young lovers, she wavers between helping them and relishing their plight. How should Guo Jing and Lotus interpret her recited poem about love prematurely turning the hair white like the white plumes on mandarin ducks who mate for life? Or her saying things like, “It’s human nature to stand by and do nothing. Any fool can beg.” Should Guo Jing and Lotus believe her assertion that Lotus has but three days to live and that the only person who can save her is three days’ distance? Many other questions are raised in this last volume of the epic: What will Guo Jing and Lotus do about his dilemma, knowing that they are soulmates but that he promised to marry Genghis Kahn’s daughter Khojin? What will happen when Genghis Kahn sets his sights on Guo Jing’s Song Empire in the south? Which martial master will win the twenty-year reunion competition on Mount Hua? Will everyone’s worst nemesis Viper Ouyang ever get his just deserts? Will the love triangle between Soul Light, the Hoary Urchin, and Madam Ying get resolved? Will Guo Jing return his scheming and lying blood brother Yang Kang back to “the path of righteousness”? Will he finally get revenge on the slimy Jin prince Wanyang Honlie for the murder of his parents or reunite with his first martial mentors, the Six Freaks of the South? Will he find a way to live in the world with kung fu when fearing that his pursuit of martial excellence has only brought harm to other people? The way such questions are answered is satisfying but sad, and the tone of this last volume is darker than that of the first three, because the entire epic depicts the maturing of Guo Jing and Lotus Huang from innocent teenagers full of the joy of life into more seasoned twenty-year-olds who have experienced soul damaging personal loss and hardship as well as the suffering that war wreaks on common people. Though it is a darker book than the previous three, it still contains plenty of pleasures. For example, the love between the good, optimistic, and blockheaded Guo Jing and the reckless, brilliant, and scheming Lotus is, as ever, sweet and moving (“I’d rather know no kung fu than see you hurt again”), though it does turn sad (“The more adventures we have together the more memories we'll have to share when we're apart”) and even becomes a little scary (“He wondered at the havoc that love could wreak on the heart”). There are many colorful kung fu repertoires (e.g., Dog Beating Cane, Dragon Subduing Palm, Cascading Peach Blossom Palms, Exploding Toad) and moves (e.g., Crunch Frost as Ice Freezes, Strike Grass Startle Snake, Flip the Mangey Dog Away). Many lines like, “He then let fly with a Dragon in the Field,” “He aimed at the Great Sun pressure point at the temple,” and “He launched a Hearty Laughter, hooking a finger in the corner of Viper’s mouth.” A panoply of weapons, from the expected (hands, feet, swords, spears etc.) to the exotic (metal fans, iron flutes, scribe brushes, exorcist staffs, martial phlegm, etc.). Needless to say, there’s a lot of imaginative, varied, and suspenseful action, from one-on-one kung fu duels to sieges of great cities. There are many beautiful and vivid descriptions, like “it [a finger] was as lithe and agile as a dragonfly dipping its tail into water,” and “Perched on the very brink above the jagged rocks below, she resembled a white camellia shivering in a storm.” There are many memorable aphorisms, such as “Emperors and generals are the bane of the people,” “It is in the nature of cruel and evil men to hate anyone who is their opposite,” “Virtue, loyalty, and integrity are more important than martial or literary prowess,” and “In victory or defeat, to earth we return.” There is plenty of Jin Yong’s entertainingly outrageous “sheer coincidence,” impossible chance meetings that feel perfectly inevitable. The audiobook reader Daniel York Loh reads the lines of the large and varied cast of characters with enthusiasm and distinctive personalities and moods and agendas without over-dramatizing and reads the base narration with perfect understanding, pacing, and emphasizing. His readings of all four volumes enhance and unify the texts of their three different translators. An Appendix: Notes on the Text closes the audiobook, concisely explaining things like lyric poetry, the kingdom of Dali, “rice” paper, jade, a famous translator from Sanskrit into Chinese, spirits in Hinduism and Buddhism, Genghis Kahn, Samarkand, the Confucian canon, and the author Jin Yong (1924-2018) and his works (300 million in legal sales, 1 billion in pirated). A Heart Divided is a complex novel of many genres: bildungsroman, love story, murder mystery, martial arts novel, historical novel, military novel. Perhaps most affectingly it’s an anti-war novel. The romance of Genghis Kahn unifying the Mongols and conquering a vast empire in the first volume is here starkly revealed to be a vast atrocity, as Guo Jing and Lotus travel past abandoned villages on roads lined with human skeletons. Lotus says, “I know what soldiers are like. You feast on common people.” A Heart Divided concludes Legends of the Condor Heroes (which has been called the Chinese Lord of the Rings but which is a very different classic) with a somber poem: Embers in the flames of war, Few homes left in villages poor. No rush to cross the river at dawn, The flawed moon sinks into cold sand. View all my reviews
Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars “Here begins our tale. The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” The mostly historical and partly fantasy novel Three Kingdoms reads like a fusion of The Iliad, Morte d’Arthur, Shakespeare’s history plays, and Walter Scott’s novels, but with a Chinese context and a longer time frame. It begins with the Yellow Turban Rebellion in 184 AD, runs through the disintegration of the Han empire into three rival kingdoms (Wei, Shu, and Wu), and ends with its reunification by the Jin in 280. Its countless councils, diplomacies, alliances, betrayals, reversals, invasions, withdrawals, strategies, battles, and deaths occupy about 800,000 words, 2,177 pages, 120 chapters, and a thousand characters. The reader is encouraged to side with Xuande Liu Bei (Shu) against Sun Qian (Wu) and especially against Cao Cao (Wei). Liu Bei has the most memorable heroic supporters, his sworn brothers Lord Guan and Zhang Fei and his genius strategist Kongming (Reclining Dragon), and he is the least ambitious and most ethical and humane leader in the book, saying things like, “The human factor is the key to any undertaking. How can we abandon those who have committed themselves to us?” But Cao Cao makes a superb antagonist: clever, unethical, scheming, headhunting talent, and laughing after defeats. Except, perhaps, for some notorious eunuchs at either end of the epic, there are no all good or all evil characters: just complex human beings. The long novel demonstrates that anyone, no matter how seemingly wise, may eventually be consumed by revenge or power or make mistakes. Luo Guanzhong wrote Three Kingdoms in the 14th century based on a 3rd-century history book and on later story-cycles. During the 17th century, the father son duo Mao Lun and Mao Zonggang edited Luo Guanzhong’s work, shortening and smoothing it and making Liu Bei look better and Cao Cao worse, resulting in the standard text. Moss Roberts’ excellent 1995 English translation benefits from his 100-page Afterword, which explains things like the background of the author, the sources of his novel, and the ways in which it is a great work of literature. Roberts also provides nearly 200 pages of small-print notes for the epic, telling the reader about changes that the Maos made to Luo Guanzhong’s original work, providing much of their keen analysis of its artistry, and explaining to readers relevant points about Chinese history, culture, and literature, like “Nine is an ideal number and is used to represent the whole,” “Chinese with the same surname, though unrelated, are wont to say that they belonged to the same family five hundred years past,” and “His name is, literally, ‘Water-mirror.’ Water, like the mind, reflects accurately only when calm.” Unfortunately, the version of Roberts’ translation I read published by the Foreign Languages Press Beijing lacks a pronunciation guide, leaving readers to guess how to say the many exotic names. Furthermore, although for the non-Chinese reader some names stand out (like Cao Cao, Xuande, and Lord Guan), many are difficult to distinguish let alone remember (like Liu Zhang or Zhang Lu; Yue Jing or Yu Jing; Yuan Shu or Yuan Shao; Sun Qian or Sun Quan; and Zhang Xiu or Jia Xu). The main flaw in the edition is its myriad typos, whether misspelled words like adn, principels, and pheraps, or correctly spelled wrong words like age (not ago), lost (not lose), seen (not seem), form (not from), filed (not field), wound (not would), and MANY more. Anyway. Three Kingdoms is FULL of compelling action, from diplomatic missions, assassinations, and subornings, to duels, battles, sieges, ambushes, rescues, and tricks. Between the battles appear memorable moments: a poor guy without an animal to butcher killing his wife and serving her to a starving Xuande; Zhang Fei shouting Cao Cao off his horse while holding a bridge against his army; Zhao Zilong fighting through an army while protecting Liu Bei’s baby under his cuirass; Sun Ce executing an immortal miracle healer because he stubbornly believes the guy is a fake; Cao Pi giving his drunken brother a poetry challenge to decide whether to execute or demote him; the wife of a prison guard burning the legendary medical book of a legendary doctor; Kongming playing a zither on the wall above an open city gate to make an enemy army of 100,000 retreat by assuming he is trying to lure it into an ambush when he barely has 5,000 soldiers; two generals putting their armies through elaborate formations and counter-formations to see who’d win if they really fought; and more. There are also some fantastic scenes involving ghosts, weather magic, divinations, and the like. There are many remarkable features in the novel, like the de rigueur duels by commanders in front of their respective armies before battles; the many fake retreats followed by ambushes; the innovations like Kongming’s wooden bulls and ten-bolt crossbows; the vital role played by strategists; the interpretation of and belief in omens; the prizing of virtue, honor, loyalty, and bravery; the chaos and fluidity of the era, with enemy leaders claiming to be loyal to the emperor and accusing their rivals of rebelling, cities switching sides right and left, and no one’s homeland being safe because no sooner do you invade one land than an army belonging to an enemy, friend, or family member will invade yours; and above all the sense of long history, as characters regularly quote from or invoke historical figures predating them by centuries. Not all 2000 pages are riveting! Sometimes I skipped lists of generals’ names or skimmed cursory accounts of later battles similar to earlier ones. It is a man’s world: the main characters are male, and good wives are expected to die rather than survive their husbands. Focusing on negotiation, planning, and action, the novel has little detailed description of scenery, cities, buildings, and characters etc. compared to western historical and epic fantasy novels, but there are fine moments of vivid writing, like these: --The Great River lay slack, like a bolt of white silk unrolled. --Xuande thawed the frozen hairs of the brush with his breath and unrolled the writing paper. --“Thief! Traitor who wrongs our Emperor! Execution would be too light. Murderers of my father and my brothers! We two are ‘enemies who cannot share one sky.’ If I catch you alive, I’ll chew your flesh!” --“Cheap sandal maker!” Another great element in the novel is the frequent insertion of famous classical poems about key scenes and figures, like when Kongming decides to join Liu Bei: Across the realm his words created storms. Juggling stars that held men's fate, he smiled. Dragons ramped, tigers stalked, sky and land stood calmed; Time itself can never waste his name. Or when a traitor gets his just deserts: Thwarter of able men, betrayer of his lord, Hoarder of gold and silver—all for naught! No glory for his house, his death a shame-- A laughingstock for all and for all time. It’s difficult to overestimate the cultural and literary significance of Three Kingdoms. It’s the oldest and most famous and influential novel in Chinese history and is popular in Japan and other Asian countries in translations, manga, movies, and games. Chinese people refer to the names, personalities, and episodes of the novel in daily conversation. Best of all, it’s an entertaining and absorbing work, with cliffhanger chapter endings, exciting action, cultural texture, and thematic depths, as when Kongming is thwarted yet again in his efforts to lead Shu to conquer Wei, and he quotes, “’Men devise, Heaven decides.’” View all my reviews
Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Respect for Artistry Increased by Study The story of Beowulf is well known: the young hero sails from Geatland to Denmark with his retinue to deal with Grendel, a greedy descendant of Cain who for twelve years has been killing and eating anyone who spends the night in the magnificent mead hall of Hrothgar, King of the Danes. Nothing will end this “feud” between monster and men. Enter young Beowulf of the prodigious appetite and strength, eager for hand-to-hand combat ‘cause he’s heard that Grendel wields no weapons. Their grapple shakes the hall and leaves Beowulf gripping a grisly trophy. Then he must face Grendel’s dread dam in her submarine lair. The epic doesn’t stop there, but fast forwards fifty years to when the hero is the old Geatish king and must test wyrd once more to deal with a fire-breathing dragon who, after someone steals a cup from his treasure horde, starts flying around torching the country. In addition to those conflicts between men and monsters, throughout the poem there is plenty of background violence between peoples and kinsmen, highlighting the fleeting nature of life and the power of fate. In that context, we must try to be loyal and brave, for death is better than a life of shame, and sometimes wyrd will help the person who courageously tries, though it can get you even then. The poem builds a grim, grand power that ends with a forecast of sad days for the Geats. If that’s all there were to the 8th-century poem, it would be an exciting legend and an interesting artifact, but something more turns it into an epic worthy of rereading. For one thing, the Beowulf poet works in a large amount of historical and legendary background to create a rich, dark cultural texture: gift giving, lineage listing, speech making, lay singing, and funeral performing, as well as feats, feuds, wars, murders, marriages, betrayals, triumphs, good and bad heroes and kings. Superimposed over the pagan Scandinavian tale is a recently-converted Christian vision referring to God and hell and the like, which endows the poem with a kind of double ethos. I’ve read different translations of the poem. Francis Gummere writes alliterative verse, so if that’s what you like, his version (1910) would be appealing, while if you have a poetry-phobia Talbot Donaldson’s prose version (1966) would be fine. J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1926 version published in 2014 falls in between those two, for, rather than replicating the alliteration and rhythm of the original Old English, he aims at accuracy and readability and writes what reads like prose silently, but which often sounds like poetry when read aloud. Here are three parts to compare: Unhallowed wight, grim and greedy, he grasped betimes, wrathful, reckless, from resting-places, thirty of the thanes, and thence he rushed fain of his fell spoil, faring homeward, laden with slaughter, his lair to seek. (Gummere) The creature of evil, grim and fierce, was quickly ready, savage and cruel, and seized from their rest thirty thanes. From there he turned to go back to his home, proud of his plunder, sought his dwelling with that store of slaughter. (Donaldson) That accursed thing, ravenous and grim, swift was ready; thirty knights he seized upon their couch. Thence back he got him gloating over his prey, faring homeward with his glut of murder to seek his lairs. (Tolkien) I can’t say that Tolkien’s translation is better or worse than the others. Anyway, the best part for me of his version is the detailed Notes and Commentary written decades ago by Tolkien for his classes and edited by his son Christopher. Tolkien paraphrases passages from the poem that I carelessly skimmed, like the exchanges between Beowulf and Hrothgar, and reveals their implied meanings so as to enrich the poem. He also explains the references to older legends and histories, compares the poem to things like Gawain and the Green Knight, speculates on how the monk transcribed the pagan poem not long after his people had converted to Christianity, and so on. Tolkien says about the Beowulf poet, “he was not as has been supposed a mere dragger-in of old tales,” but a master manipulator of a “great nexus of interwoven ‘historical legend’, concerning English origins, and the great royal and noble houses.” He also memorably says, “History has a way of resembling myth: partly because both are ultimately the same stuff. If no man had ever fallen in love at first sight, and found old feuds to lie between him and his love, the god Frey would never have seen Gerthr [daughter of the giant Gymir].” Indeed, the legends and histories woven into the background of Middle-Earth reveal one of the ways in which Tolkien’s loving study of Beowulf influenced his creation of The Hobbit and LOTR. Tolkien also explains “cruces” in the poem, tricky translation points that have challenged scholars. Some of the fine points of grammar and etymology go beyond what I need to know, but often they soar with humor and historical and literary interest, as in the accounts of Old English words like “wyrd,” “ellen,” and especially “ealuscerwen” and “wrecca.” “Ealuscerwen” (ghastly fear) is difficult to translate because it appears only once in all extant Old English writing, in Beowulf. It is made by joining the words “ealu” (ale) and “scerwen” (deprive) and occurs when some warriors are terrified by Grendel, so that, perhaps, the men were as afraid of facing the monster as they were of having their ale (joy in life) taken from them! By contrast, “wrecca” (exile) appears multiple times in Beowulf and other Old English texts, and it leads by a negative line to modern English’s “wretch” (it’s difficult to live as an exile or outlaw like Grendel) and by a positive one to German “Rocke,” or knight/hero (a lone wolf exile can perform heroic feats far from home like Beowulf). After the Notes and Commentary comes “Sellic Spell” (wonder tale), Tolkien’s retelling of the epic playing up the fairy tale elements and playing down the historical ones. Beowulf is Beewulf (having been found as an infant living with honey-loving bears), Unferth Unfriend, and Grendel Grinder. Beewulf is accompanied on his Heorot adventure by a man with super strength gloves and by a man with a super spear. It’s entertaining and amusing. After “Sellic Spell” come two engaging modern English rhyming poems that Tolkien wrote long ago and recited to little boy Christopher: “Beowulf and Grendel” and “Beowulf and the Monsters.” Of this 2014 book by Tolkien and son, then, the epic occupies about 95 pages, the peripheral materials about 270. Finally, although I find Homer’s epics more entertaining, moving, humorous, substantial, and illuminating than Beowulf, the later epic is austerely and grandly appealing. As Tolkien says, “the degree of respect you have for the artistry (or at least for the thoughtful care) with which Beowulf was composed. . . is, I think, increased by study.” Yes! View all my reviews
A Snake Lies Waiting by Jin Yong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars “It’s always good to learn something new” A Snake Lies Waiting (2020), the third entry in Jin Yong’s four-volume martial arts historical fantasy epic Legends of the Condor Heroes (1959), begins in mid-cliffhanger where the second one, A Bond Undone (2019), ended. Young Guo Jing and his martial masters Zhou Botong (AKA the Hoary Urchin) and Count Seven Hong (AKA the Northern Beggar) find themselves bobbing in a shark-infested sea. The trio are “rescued” by the ship of the villainous Western Venom Viper Ouyang and his lecherous nephew Gallant Ouyang. The dastardly duo wants to force Guo Jing to transcribe from memory The Nine Yin Manual, a legendary kung fu holy grail manuscript, the quest for which has caused the deaths of many a martial master. Will Viper Ouyang realize that Guo Jing has sabotaged his transcription? Will Lotus Huang, Guo Jing’s spunky hedgehog chainmail wearing soulmate, be able to rescue her lover yet again? Will Count Seven recover from Viper Ouyang’s underhanded snake and Exploding Toad Fist attacks? Originally serialized in a Chinese newspaper and then turned into a novel selling hundreds of millions of legal Chinese copies and a billion pirated ones, Legends of the Condor Heroes is set in early 13th-century China, when the declining Song Empire and the rising Jin Empire are wooing the Mongols (being unified by Genghis Khan) to fight for them. In that context, Jin Yong tells a suspenseful and humorous Bildungsroman featuring Guo Jing’s education in martial arts, life, and love. Guo Jing and his still platonic lover Lotus Huang are quite affecting, the boy so simple and good-hearted, the girl so clever and reckless. Who can resist lovers who say things like, “As long as you know it [Dog Beating Cane kung fu], isn’t it the same as me knowing it?” Although their wise teachers and perfidious enemies are larger than life, their martial exploits sometimes straining credulity, Jin Yong’s writing (translated into English by Anna Holmwood and Gigi Chang) is so enthusiastic, unpredictable, and imaginative that the story is an entertaining pleasure. While the core of the second volume is the Nine Yin Manual, this third one centers on the quest for a different super book: the military strategies of the martyred Song General Yuefei, purportedly buried with him and granting whoever reads it success in war. Guo Jing’s treacherous blood brother Yan Kang (the snake of the title) is developed as a foil for the hero, seizing any chance to betray Guo Jing and to maintain his hopes of gaining wealth and power with the Jin rather than trying to fight against them for his own Song people. As in the first two volumes, Jin Yong writes creative action scenes, including fights on a burning ship, behind a waterfall, and in a shabby inn with a variety of weapons, from fists, feet, and knives, to a cane, a white python whip, and a boulder. And as ever, many colorful names for kung fu repertoires (e.g., Lightness kung fu, Wayfaring Fist, and Sacred Snake Fist) and moves (e.g., Haughty Dragon Repents, Shin Breaker, Orchid Touch, Cascading Peach Blossom Palm, and Snatch from the Mastiff’s Jaw). Plenty of lines like, “Guo twisted his wrist and slapped Liang’s shoulder with a Dragon in the Field.” Something I noticed more in this third volume is Jin Yong’s habit of setting a stage and then arranging for a host of characters to enter, interact, and depart, as in a martial arts Midsummer Night’s Dream. In one lengthy tour de force sequence, Guo Jing and Lotus Huang hide in a secret room in a derelict inn, intending to stay undisturbed so Lotus can help heal Guo from serious injuries by sitting with their palms touching and a chi (inner strength) circuit flowing between their bodies for seven days and nights, only to have a series of noisy friends and foes come on stage one after the other to provocatively scheme, threaten, confess, fight, lie, betray, fall in love, get married, etc., all while wanting to aid or kill Guo and Lotus without realizing that the pair is observing them via a hidden peephole. Yes, Jin Yong is a master of dramatic irony. Another pleasure of the novel comes from the Chinese cultural touches, from the evocative names of characters (e.g., Iron Palm Water Glider) and places (e.g., Temple of Wintry Jade) to the philosophical poems and monochrome paintings that pop up, not to mention similes like “Rain drops as big as soy beans were soon beating down on them.” Jin Yong even works in some ironic literary criticism. In an inn in the Song capital, Guo Jing and Lotus Huang read a screen poem ending, “drunken we will return.” When a pedantic scholar explains that originally the poem ended “carrying wine we will return,” but that an emperor “improved” it to “drunken,” and that the poet who agreed with the emperor’s coarse alteration received a high court position, the goal of all poets, Lotus and Guo break the screen and demolish the inn. As in the first two volumes, there is much wisdom like, “The way is found not in deeds or brush. Nature’s music comes not from the flute.” At one point Guo Jing quotes General Yue Fei, “’Be the first to bear the hardships of the world and the last to enjoy its comforts,’” and Lotus replies, “Should a hero never enjoy life, never for a moment? I don’t want to live like that. All I know is if you are not by my side, I will never be happy.” Yet Lotus’ father the Heretic of the East scorns conventional wisdom: “The thing I hate most in this world is hypocritical social conventions, especially the words of false sages. They are mere tools for duping idiots.” Although the book ends after resolving a literal cliffhanger, the major plot strands are left unresolved, so I will be impatiently waiting for April 2021, when the concluding volume translated into English by Holmwood and Chang is due to be released as an audiobook. Daniel York Loh reads the audiobook engagingly, and without over-dramatizing he does savory voices for the colorful characters, from the poisonous Viper Ouyang to the child-like Hoary Urchin. Anyone who likes epic fantasy set in the exotic orient instead of in familiar European medieval or Tolkein-esque settings, should give Jin Yong a try, though, to be sure, you must start with the first volume, A Hero Born. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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