Our Sweetest Songs

Tragedies usually make good reading – classical tragedies, at any rate. You know where you are with those, and you know that even if everyone dies in the end there will usually be some point to it. Hamlet had vengeance, Achilles had everlasting fame, Oedipus… well, at least Oedipus had the satisfaction of no longer having to keep running from his doom.

And, of course, there is the advantage that by the time you get to reading classical tragedy you’re old enough to either revel in the glory or not care about it, and at any rate it won’t depress you.

The Little Match Girl, on the other hand… That was probably the first story I read with the protagonist catching it at the end. I have nothing against Andersen. I like Andersen. All the same, I am forced to ask: is it necessary, or even wise, to tell children of impressionable years a story that effectively comes down to a poor, abused little girl freezing to death one winter night?

Children young enough to be reading it for the first time are quite likely to be unaware of even the concept of mortality yet, and what makes it worse is that it is all so pointless. What did the girl gain from her death other than a paradise that, it must be admitted, she could equally easily have attained at a ripe old age like her grandmother?

In this I approve, like Horatio, antique Roman tendencies. Literature and philosophy are entirely different things, and they need not always find their perfection in their union. Philosophy demands reason. Most of the greatest poets and writers of history are too busy rousing your blood and stirring your soul to waste time on logic. Were Orestes and Electra right or wrong to kill Clytemnestra? Does it really matter, anyway? If the playwright can make you sympathize, the playwright’s job is done.

Not even the greatest writers can keep their political and philosophical views entirely out of their works, nor should they even try. But stating views and then getting on with it is one thing. Those who set out to prove points are usually forced to chase logic with such assiduity that there is little possibility of blood-rousing and soul-stirring – much as Homer would have been, had he stopped every few paragraphs for a commentary, however neatly inserted and beautifully written, about the relative merits of desires of the flesh and excellence of the soul.

Perhaps, in this as in most things, greatness is in knowing what not to do.

Being Cassandra

I was reading Mary Renault's chronicles of Alexander a few days ago, and she very specifically mentions the fact that kings should feel sorry for Hecabe.

This is all very well, and I feel Hecabe's grief as strongly as the next person, but what strikes me is that nobody ever wastes any sympathy on Cassandra. On Hector, yes, on Priam, plenty. And even though Paris generally comes in for a good number of "served him right" comments, at least he comes in for something.

Part of the problem is that Cassandra is such an insufferable know-it-all. If you had been the king who had his curtain drawn in the dead of night to be told half his Troy was burned, would you have been thrilled to have a daughter raising her hands and eyes to heaven as though to ask Apollo what he would have done if surrounded by such idiots? (Or, worse, turning back to shout, "I told you so!" as she was dragged in chains to the enemy ship?)

Cassandra's real tragic flaw is that she doesn't have one. She was the Seer fated to be disbelieved; had this been because of some girlish crime you could have winked slyly and said, "Ah, the girl's one of us!" But this was because she was so good and pure and virtuous that she refused even Apollo's advances, and commendable though this might be, it does give you the feeling that her shade is watching you from Hades with an air of pious disapproval. You can't really feel sorry for someone like that.

That, I think, is why so many people have a bit of sneaking sympathy for Clytemnestra. If your husband brought home a younger wife and she flaunted her nubile charms in the face of your mature but true affection (I'll do Clyemnestra a kindness and forget Aegisthus for the moment) you could at least have the satisfaction of calling her names. If she looked at you with large sorrowful eyes that saw every frivolity and transgression you had committed (here we bring Aegisthus back) while her city was being reduced to smoking ruins, and in all likelihood saw all the frivolities and transgressions you would commit in all the rest of your life, it would probably infuriate you even more than the bare fact of her existence.

The moral of the story? If you do know what's inside that nice big horse that the Greeks just happen to have left on the beach, don't tell people about it. They won't believe you, and when the warriors burst out of it and attack they'll only be annoyed with you for having been right.

Tolkien: Book to Screen

Not to be a Tolkien Nazi (I did spring for the Extended Edition DVDs!), but there are legitimate simplifications of the plot that are necessary to take an epic to the screen, and then there are baffling alterations that leave you thinking that either the director foresaw some insurmountable wrangle that you cannot imagine or he simply wanted to play in the sandbox. My top half-dozen from Fellowship:

1. Bilbo Baggins Whining: The Bilbo in the book is a cheerful Hobbit who doesn’t snivel and who seems remarkably capable for his age and valiant after his own fashion. The Bilbo in the movie switches from senility to fecklessness to, sometimes, a combination of both. He snivels in Bag End and he snivels in Rivendell and you see in him not the slightest vestige of the happy-go-lucky protagonist of The Hobbit.

2. Aragorn Whining: The role is reasonably well scripted on the whole, but there are times when you wonder – especially after watching Bilbo snuffling over the harm the Ring has caused – why it is necessary for everyone to whine. The man is eighty-seven. He’s just a little too old for teenage angst. He knows that he is going to be King of Gondor and Arnor, and if sixty-seven years haven’t been enough for him to get over moping about something that happened three millennia ago then it’s hard to see how he’s fit to lead even a village with a population of two.

3. “If you want him, come and claim him.”: I can accept Liv Tyler as Arwen – after all, casting Arwen and Galadriel is like casting Helen of Sparta; you’re never going to please everybody. But need she ride around on Asfaloth brandishing her sword at the Nazgûl like a female Horatio Hornblower? You could, just possibly, take Galadriel riding to the rescue. Not Arwen, especially when it means no Glorfindel.

4. No Quest for the Sun: This is undeniably a bit demanding of me, but I loved that scene in the book. You can just see a disgruntled Dwarf muttering imprecations under his breath when Legolas runs off, leaving him beard-deep in snow, “to find the Sun.” What do you get instead in the movie? Twelve seconds of Elven shoes on the white stuff and a completely redundant scene about how the Ring is starting to claim Boromir.

5. Seventeen Missing Years: We know that it is the One Ring to Rule Them All and so on. All the same, the effect it had on Frodo was because he had possessed it for seventeen years; in the movie you’re left thinking it was more like seventeen days. The point about its insidious evil is that it is insidious; it doesn’t ambush you like a panther on a jungle trail.

6. Rivendell and the Hall of Fire: Yes, it’s a movie. Yes, it has to be short because if people are expected to sit in the theatre through five intermissions, they’ll probably discover more interesting things to do. All the same, a few minutes to establish that the Last Homely House was in fact home to somebody other than Elrond and Arwen would have caused no crisis. Besides, it’s all very well to create a general-purpose characterization for all Elves involving being aloof and cryptic and staring enigmatically into the distance, but without some music or art or poetry they are not really Elves.

New Hobby

I’m going to start collecting old books.

Of course it sounds very cool to say – you imagine a large air-conditioned room filled with glass cases bearing a first-edition Gutenberg Bible, the very same copy of Romeo and Juliet that Shakespeare used to learn his lines, and possibly the lost plays of Sophocles.

Right. What I’m likely to end up with, if I am extremely lucky, is a couple of worm-eaten first editions from the nineteen twenties and a scrap of paper that looks aged enough for me to claim that it once belonged to Keats.

But how, when you get right down to it, do you start? Going to Crossword and asking the salesperson for an original copy of the First Folio is clearly a bad idea (especially if, as is no doubt the case, some enterprising person in this latter day has written a novel entitled First Folio about how reading the twenty-third line of each play in reverse chronological order will prove that the Dark Lady of the Sonnets was really Cleopatra in disguise).

The ideal – and Calvin-esque – way to begin, naturally, would be to print TIME MACHINE on the side of a large cardboard box, sit inside it, mutter strangely, and emerge an hour later with Cardenio under your arm.

Unfortunately that only works in comic strips.

I could go to Christie’s or Sotheby’s and buy whatever was coming up for auction. I could also have myself declared Empress of the Universe, and appropriate all old books everywhere on earth in the name of intergalactic peace or defending ourselves against the Bonga-Bongas planning to attack from Dimension X or something.

Yup. I think that would be best.

You Are Young, Foolish Trader

With apologies, once more, to Mr. Dodgson:

“You are young, foolish Trader,” the shrewd sage said,

“And you clearly have mountains to learn;

You speak about Ratios, Values and Spread –

Do you plan by this money to earn?”

“I was told,” then the Trader replied to the sage,

“By a teacher both clever and wise

That when you’ve no knowledge the Markets to gauge,

These numbers can bolster your lies!”

“You are young,” said the sage, “and have not yet been trained,

So that first folly I will forgive –

Yet you think all this chaos in books is explained!

Will your job your psychosis outlive?”

“In my college they taught us,” the Trader replied,

“That the answers in books are but few,

But you cannot go wrong with a book as your guide –

For this secret is known just to you.”

“You are young,” said the sage, “and in ignorance speak,

And your brain little learning does hold;

Yet you forecast the state of the Markets each week –

Don’t you think that is fearfully bold?”

“You can learn in each B-School that merits the name

There’s a price for refusing to guess,

And as long as you’ve thought of a scapegoat to blame,

The price of an error is less.”

“You are young,” said the sage, “and I venture to say

There are things even you do not know;

Yet you rival a scholar whose temples are grey

In conceit; tell me, how is this so?”

“I have answered three questions; I’ll answer no more,”

Said the Trader, “I will not partake

Of this half-witted dialogue. There is the door –

Be off! I’ve Excel sheets to make.”

Sparkie and the Vertically Different Brotherhood: Part III

The Vertically Different Brothers returned from their day’s labour to find Sparkie spread-eagled on the floor. Try as they might, they could not wake her.

Vertically Different Brother Grumpy (who had never been fond of Sparkie and had strongly resisted all her attempts to make him change his name to Temperamentally Different) said, “Well, what now? Anyone fancy running like the wind to the fairy godmother’s cottage and asking her to sort it out?”

The Brothers stood in uncomfortable silence. None of them wanted to be the first to point out that running like the wind through ten miles of thick forest shrubbery was the kind of thing meant for people who were Vertically Different in the opposite direction.

“I propose,” Vertically Different Brother Doc said at last, “that we start a campaign. It’s what Sparkie would have done. The Queen is responsible for this, and the Queen must find a way to wake her.”

The Brothers built a plinth outside their house and laid Sparkie on it, and then stood around it brandishing boards demanding that the Queen send for the most experienced fairy godmothers in the realm to cure Sparkie. Along with them were two deer, a brown dog, a parrot, three cats and a duck, all of whom stood to have hard-won rights revoked if Sparkie were not there to plead their cause.

However, since gold does not mine itself, the Vertically Different Brothers had to abandon their vigil after a couple of days and return to their shovels and pickaxes. They were swiftly followed by the three cats, who decided that in any case dozing on warm rugs with saucers of cream was more important than having the right to their own law board.

By the time the lone figure on the proud black stallion approached the glade, it was empty except for Sparkie’s prone form and the parrot.

As the horse neared, it was possible to see that the rider was the kind of man who would never have appealed to Sparkie at all. He was probably the most different creature in all humanity. He had an imposing figure and noble bearing, and the wisdom gleaming in his sculpted face would have put Socrates to shame.

He leapt lightly from his horse.

“What fair maid is this?” he asked.

“Equal rights for feathered friends,” said the parrot, which had never been taught to say anything else.

Whither Freedom?

I was reading an obit of Bobby Fischer the other day. It was a couple of pages long; after the initial mandatory homage to his phenonmenal chess-playing ability, it spent most of the two pages discussing whether his lack of friends and a wife was a sign of some form of social dysfunction.

It is an odd fact that our society, which claims to be freer and more understanding of individual desires and impulses than any has ever been before, has a name for every state that is even marginally removed from what we are conditioned to think of as normal. The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, did not even have a word for homosexuality. Why, if we have no word for people who have different preferences in the best way to cook liverwurst or enjoy the poetry of Walt Whitman, should we have a word for people who have different preferences in this?

Some of the greatest geniuses of the world were so far removed from traditional marital bliss that they wouldn't have been able to see it with the Hubble Telescope; in Byron's day the general public may have considered him eccentric, but by all accounts nobody went around after him with a notepad trying to decide in which chromosome the deficiency lay. If he had tried to curb his instincts he may never have been Byron; whether he would have been happier that way is debatable, and Romanticism would have lost one of its most exalted votaries.

The bloodletting over Alexander's empire after his death was, they say, caused because he was not sensible. If he'd been sensible he would have married before he left Macedon, or at least as soon as he entered Babylon the first time, and failing everything else he would have left his empire to someone other than kratistos. If he'd been sensible he probably would have done all those things, and he would not have tried to conquer Persia by doing battle on Darius's terrain with less than a tenth as many men as his enemy. If he'd been sensible there may have been no bloodletting over his empire simply because there may have been no empire.

Scott Adams has written a succint blog piece on the subject of what the chaps at the cutting-table would probably call being socially challenged; when the wheel really does come full circle, perhaps this will go back to being the kind of eccentricity that is good for a laugh at the local pub but otherwise harmless.

Homecoming

Home to girlhood’s sweetest moments, let me now your grace implore:
From a world of gaudy glory I return to you once more,
Seeking in remembered splendours faith and courage, strength and skill.
Down the paths that I have trodden do my footsteps echo still?
Where my voice was raised in laughter, does the nymph return my glee?
Home to girlhood’s sweetest moments, are you yet a home to me?