2019年6月30日 星期日

"Epitaph on a Tyrant" by W.H. Auden. Sydney Smith and others


"Epitaph on a Tyrant" by W.H. Auden
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
*






The Selected Writings of Sydney Smith: Edited by W. H. Auden

Synopsis:

'He is a very clever fellow, but he will never be a bishop.' George III

'A more profligate parson I never met.' George IV

'I sat next to Sydney Smith, who was delightful ... I don't remember a more agreeable party.' Benjamin Disraeli

'I wish you would tell Mr Sydney Smith that of all the men I ever heard of and never saw, I have the greatest curiosity to see ... and to know him.' Charles Dickens

How one agrees with Dickens. Without doubt, Sydney Smith was the most famous wit of his generation. But there was more to him than that, he was an outstanding representative of the English liberal tradition.

Starting as an impoverished village curate he went to Edinburgh as a tutor, and co-founded the Edinburgh Review, the first major nineteenth-century periodical. Happily married, he moved in 1803 to London, where he was introduced into the Holland House circle - of which he quickly became an admired and popular member - but at the age of thirty-eight a Tory government banished him to a village parsonage. There he became 'one of the best country vicars of whom there is a record', and after his two chief causes - the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the Reform Bill of 1832 - triumphed, he was rewarded by a canonry of St. Paul's.

This generous selection of his writings gives the full flavour of his mind and intellectual personality. In a characteristically stimulating introduction in which he discusses Sydney Smith both as an individual and as a shining exemplar of the liberal mind, W. H. Auden places him with Jonathan Swift and Bernard Shaw among the few polemic authors 'who must be ranked very high by any literary standard.'

As Macaulay said he was 'The Smith of Smiths'.



"Pease Porridge Hot" , gruel, profligacy


How Mr Hatoyama both motivates bureaucrats and punishes them when they step out of line will make or break the DPJ. The crucial battle comes between now and December, in drawing up the budget for the 2010 fiscal year. Ministries have already submitted their spending plans, including pork for favoured groups, hoping for the usual lack of political oversight. The DPJ promises to rebuild the budget-making process from scratch, going through programmes line by line. That, too, is a chance for the new government to show that it is not as profligate as its opponents have claimed.


Military-Industrial Redux

If there is any hope of reining in Pentagon profligacy, President Obama and his secretary of defense, Robert Gates, will have to show real steel and eternal vigilance.





And if canonical genes are too thin a gruel to explain yourself to yourself, you can always reach for the stalwart of scapegoats. Blame it all on your mother, who surely loved you too much or too little or in all the wrong ways.



這種英文兒歌只重視音律之美


"Pease Porridge Hot"

Pease porridge hot,
Pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot,
Nine days old.

Some like it hot,
Some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot,
Nine days old.

Pease porridge hot
Pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old.
Some like it hot,
Some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days old.

pease

(pēz) pronunciation

n. Archaic., pl. pease or peas·en ('zən).
A pea.
[Middle English. See pea.]
【廢】豌豆


porridge顯示/隱藏例句

KK: []
DJ: []
n. (名詞 noun)
  1. 粥,糊,麥片粥[U]
  2. 一盤燕麥粥


porridge
[POR-ihj] A thick, puddinglike dish made of cereal or grain (usually oatmeal) cooked in water or milk. Porridge is usually eaten hot for breakfast with sugar and milk or cream.





A gruel is much like a thin porridge made with water, but is more often drunk.
Emma I:3
Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own, was all that he could, with thorough self-approbation, recommend, though he might constrain himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer things, to say:

RL版:
經過自己徹底的嘗試,他願意建議客人另外再來一小盤像他自己吃的稀粥;可是,當女士們愉快的吃光那些美食時,他會勉強自己說:



Mr. Woodhouse's Thin Gruel

The gruel came and supplied a great deal to be said -- much praise and many comments -- undoubting decision of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty severe Philippics upon the many houses where it was never met with tolerable; -- but, unfortunately, among the failures which the daughter had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most prominent, was in her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin.
Emma


Of all Jane Austen's hypochrondriacs, perhaps her most endearing is Mr. Woodhouse. Afraid of germs, draughts, too rich food and all manner of nervous complaints brought on by change, he forces himself, and often those around him, to live on a diet of plain foods:
"My poor dear Isabella," said he, fondly taking her hand, and interrupting, for a few moments, her busy labours for some one of her five children -- "How long it is, how terribly long since you were here! And how tired you must be after your journey! You must go to bed early, my dear -- and I recommend a little gruel to you before you go. -- You and I will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear Emma, suppose we all have a little gruel."

Emma could not suppose any such thing, knowing as she did, that both the Mr Knightleys were as unpersuadable on that article as herself; -- and two basins only were ordered.
Gruel was, by nature, a dish reserved for the very poor, who could afford nothing else, and invalids, who could tolerate nothing else. A type of thin porridge, it is made of oats stewed with either milk or water, and is served with salt or sugar and milk.

The first evidence for dishes resembling porridge is prehistoric. Neolithic farmers cultivated oats along with other crops. Various types of grains and grain meals could be stewed in water to form a thick porridge-like dish. Anglo Saxon sources describe "briw" or "brewit" made from rye meal, barley meal or oats served plain or with vegetables in. There are also references to some types of porridges being fermented.

Porridges and gruels were an easy way to cook grains. The grain only had to be cracked, not completely ground into flour. It could be cooked very simply in a pot at the edge of a fire. Bread required an oven to cook in. It formed a basis for many dishes, both sweet and savoury. It was served with meat, stock or fat, as well as with vegetables, fruits, honey or spices. It could be allowed to cool and set in a "porridge drawer", and could then be sliced to be eaten cold or even fried.

Eighteenth Century cookbooks such as Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy, 1747, give recipes for "Water Gruel" made of oatmeal and water, and flavoured with butter and pepper. It might be served with wine sauce, sherry and dried fruits by rich people, whereas the poor ate the dish on its own. It could be served with any meal at any time of the day. Sugar only became widely available in Britain in the Eighteenth Century, so it was probably not used on porridge before then.

Oliver Twist As a inexpensive dish, Gruel or Porridge became the meal of choice served at workhouses around the nation in the early to mid 1800's. In 1837, Charles Dickens sarcastically wrote "...that all poor people should have the alternative of being starved by a gradual process in the [work] house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water, and with a corn-factory (grain processor) to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal, and issued three meals of thin gruel a day...."* Who can forget the image of young Oliver Twist asking, "Please sir, may I have some more?"

This is not to say that all porridges were reserved for the indigent. Oats were a kitchen staple at the time for every household and many richer versions found their way on the tables of the wealthy as well as the working class.These dishes included plumb porridge or barley gruel, made from barley and water, with dried fruit added. Burstin was made by roasting hulled barley grains and then grinding them, it could then be served with milk Frumenty was hulled wheat cooked with milk, cream and eggs and flavoured with spices. SUrely Mr. Woodhouse would have been shocked at such profligacy!





'A more profligate parson I never met.' George IV


prof·li·gate (prŏf'lĭ-gĭt, -gāt') pronunciation
adj.
  1. Given over to dissipation; dissolute.
  2. Recklessly wasteful; wildly extravagant.
n.
A profligate person; a wastrel.

[Latin prōflīgātus, past participle of prōflīgāre, to ruin, cast down : prō-, forward; see pro-1 + -flīgāre, intensive of flīgere, to strike down.]
profligacy prof'li·ga·cy (-gə-sē) n.
profligately prof'li·gate·ly adv.


profligacy
n.[See Profligate, a.]
The quality of state of being profligate; a profligate or very vicious course of life; a state of being abandoned in moral principle and in vice; dissoluteness.

Meaning #1: the trait of spending extravagantly
Synonyms: extravagance, prodigality
Meaning #2: dissolute indulgence in sensual pleasure
Synonyms: dissipation, dissolution, licentiousness

Leviathan By Czeslaw Milosz



In the future, Michael O'Sullivan foresees two types of countries: democratic, market-based "Levellers" and state-managed societies and economies called "Leviathans" #OpenFuture
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ECONOMIST.COM

Globalisation is dead. What comes next?
Good-bye to globalisation

 Leviathan By Czeslaw Milosz

Poetry

So Little

I said so little.
Days were short.

Short days.
Short nights.
Short years.

I said so little.
I couldn't keep up.

My heart grew weary
From joy,
Despair,
Ardor,
Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan
Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores
Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world
Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don't know
What in all that was real.

Berkeley, 1969
By Czeslaw Milosz from "The Collected Poems 1931-1987", 1988
Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee

Definition

leviathanLeviathan
noun [C] LITERARY
something or someone that is extremely large and powerful:
The US is seen as an economic leviathan.






Copyright © Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee

2019年6月27日 星期四

Mansfield Park;Milton Sonnet 16


"There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere." - Jane Austen 'Mansfield Park'
GLOBAL.OUP.COM
At the age of ten, Fanny Price leaves the poverty of her Portsmouth home to be brought up among the family of her wealthy uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, in the chilly grandeur of Mansfield Park. She gradually falls in love with her cousin Edmund, but when the dazzling and sophisticated Crawfords arrive,...



--
Milton Sonnet 16

羅杰罹病後,歷經所有免疫系統崩潰的折騰,白老鼠似的嚐百草試新藥,「用手邊任何東西拼製了一件武器,就像牢獄裡的犯人把一隻湯匙柄磨成一把小匕首。你勇猛地奮戰,你狠毒地奮戰…」

器官逐樣失能和衰竭。失明前,羅杰用破碎的聲音,朗誦密爾頓寫失明的十四行詩:「當我思量我的光是如何消逝時/在我半生之前,在這黑暗的世界而遼闊……」他知道自己掌上的生命線中止於何處。

Sonnet 16


When I consider how my light is spent,
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

2019年6月16日 星期日

A history of “Ulysses”, an “unreadable, unquotable and unreviewable” novel



"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air."
--from ULYSSES (1922)




昔日引言過分簡單,該整句引......The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of ...
https://books.google.com.tw/books?isbn=8027235731


ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art isout of how deep a life does it springThe painting of Gustave Moreau
294 bytes (11,699 words) - 17:01, 2 April 2011





“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”
―from ULYSSES (1922)
“Giacometti’s work helped revitalize sculpture at a time when most attention was focused on painting…his “walking” figures would come to immortalize the artist’s study in human frailty and resilience in the canon of art history.”—Tess Thackara (Artsy). Discover the artist’s tall and slender figures as they come alive on Frank Lloyd Wright’s spiral ramp this summer.


ARTSY.NET
After a wave of early popularity, the artist took a risk that baffled his peers—taking up the age-old subject of the human figure. History has vindicated him.


British war censors became convinced that James Joyce had written it in spy code. It was confiscated and burned, but men and women went to extraordinary lengths to smuggle it into Britain and America


ECONOMIST.COM

A history of “Ulysses”, an “unreadable, unquotable and unreviewable” novel
From the archive


2019年6月11日 星期二

The sun of Rome is set! Our day is gone; Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done!


TITINIUS
No, this was he, Messala,
But Cassius is no more. O setting sun,
As in thy red rays thou dost sink to-night,
So in his red blood Cassius' day is set;
The sun of Rome is set! Our day is gone;
Clouds, dews, and dangers come; our deeds are done!
Mistrust of my success hath done this deed.



Once you rely on agents, you create conflicts of interest
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羅馬的太陽已經沉沒,

我們的白晝已經過去,

黑雲、夜露和危險正在

襲來,我們的事業已成
灰燼

Get an answer for 'In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act 5, scene 3, Titinius ... extends the comparison stating that Cassius is the sun of Rome, and it has set.

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

2019年6月8日 星期六

"I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day" by Gerald Manley Hopkins

Poet Gerald Manley Hopkins died in Dublin, Ireland on this day in 1889 (aged 44).

"I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day" by Gerald Manley Hopkins
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
*

2019年6月4日 星期二

"Meditation" by Charles Baudelaire

"Meditation" by Charles Baudelaire
Wise up, Sorrow. Calm down.
You always lay claim to twilight. Well, here it is, brother,
It descends. Obscurity settles over the town,
bringing peace to one, worry to another.
The restless crowd, whipped on by pleasure—
our dogged torturer—carry their hearts’ raw
remorse with them as they serve their vapid leisure,
while you, my Sorrow, drop by here, take my hand, and draw
me apart from them. We watch the dying years
in faded gowns lean out from heaven’s balconies, as Regret rears,
smiling, out of the deep dark where the dead ones march.
Dragging its long train—now a shroud—from its early light
in the East, the sun goes to sleep under an arch.
Listen, Sorrow, beloved, to the soft approach of Night.
*
Modern poetry begins with Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), who employed his unequalled technical mastery to create the shadowy, desperately dramatic urban landscape — populated by the addicted and the damned — which so compellingly mirrors our modern condition. Deeply though darkly spiritual, titanic in the changes he wrought, Baudelaire looms over all the work, great and small, created in his wake. READ more here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/…/baudelaire-poems-by-c…/

2019年6月2日 星期日

The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw




George Bernard Shaw by Edward Steichen, Autochrome, four-color halftone. Camera Work, April 1908






此系列叢書,有複印本。上海外語教育出版社

The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw

Front Cover
Christopher InnesProfessor Christopher Innes
Cambridge University PressSep 24, 1998 - Drama - 343 pages
The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw is an indispensible guide to one of the most influential and important dramatists of the theatre. The volume offers a broad-ranging study of Shaw with essays by a team of leading scholars. The Companion covers all aspects of Shaw's drama, focussing both on the political and theatrical context, while the extensive illustrations showcase productions from the Shaw Festival in Canada. In addition to situating Shaw's work in its own time, the Companion demonstrates its continuing relevance, and applies some of the newest critical approaches.
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Eldon Cleon Hill

Contents

Shaws life a feminist in spite of himself
3
Imprinting the stage Shaw and the publishing trade 18831903
25
New theatres for old
55
New Women new plays and Shaw in the 1890s
76
Shaw the dramatist
101
Shaws early plays
103
Shavian comedy and the shadow of Wilde
124
Structure and philosophy in Man and Superman and Major Barbara
144
Reinventing the history play Caesar and Cleopatra Saint Joan In Good King Charless Golden Days
195
Shaws interstices of empire decolonizing at home and abroad
218
The later Shaw
240
Theatre work and influence
259
Shaw and the Court Theatre
261
Please remember this is Italian opera Shaws plays as musicdrama
283
Shaw and the popular context
309
Index
334
Nothing but talk talk talk Shaw talk Discussion Plays and the making of modern drama
162
The roads to Heartbreak House
180

Other editions - View all



Sep 24, 1998
No preview

Popular passages

Page 188 - NOW, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, And all the little emptiness of love...
Page 15 - The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.
Page 8 - For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.
Page 61 - With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his.
Page 58 - I postulated as desirable a certain kind of play in which I was destined ten years later to make my mark as a playwright (as I very well foreknew in the depth of my own unconsciousness) ; and I brought everybody, authors, actors, managers, to the one test: were they coming my way or staying in the old grooves ? Sometimes I made allowances for the difference in aim, especially in the case of personal friends.
Page 60 - This would be a very good thing if the theatre took itself seriously as a factory of thought, a prompter of conscience, an elucidator of social conduct, an armory against despair and dullness, and a temple of the Ascent of Man.
Page 153 - It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool's paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all...
Page 64 - Everything has its own rate of change. Fashions change more quickly than manners, manners more quickly than morals, morals more quickly than passions, and, in general, the conscious, reasonable, intellectual life more quickly than the instinctive, wilful, affectionate one.
Page 115 - The drama can do little to delight the senses : all the apparent instances to the contrary are instances of the personal fascination of the performers. The drama of pure feeling is no longer in the hands of the playwright: it has been conquered by the musician, after whose enchantments all the verbal arts seem cold and tame.