Past Salons – Poetry

Dante’s Divine Comedy

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Dante’s Divine Comedy

Dante1

Già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle,
sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa,
l’amor che move ’l sole e l’altre stelle.

Now my will and my desire were turned,
like a wheel in perfect motion,
by the love that moves the sun and the other stars.

These breathtaking lines conclude Dante’s Divine Comedy, a 14,000-line epic written in 1321 on the state of the soul after death. T. S. Eliot called such poetry the most beautiful ever written—and yet so few of us have ever read it. Since the poem appeared, and especially in modern times, those readers intrepid enough to take on Dante have tended to focus on the first leg of his journey, through the burning fires of Inferno.

As I prepare opening notes for Dante’s Inferno, I am reading again about the medieval world view and how our idea of the human being has evolved. Dante offers a wonderful road into these deep and dense queries as his Divine Comedy is his attempt to construct an intellectual universe based on the visions of his faith. Several interested participants have wondered how the study of the Inferno might be approached if one is not formally religious. I am finding, as I did in the previous Paris-based study of this work, that the pilgrim’s exploration of his moral and spiritual universe—and the fantastic images that result—provide the reader a map for their own inquiry.

Dante fought the Church—his banishment from his beloved Florence was in part a result of his criticism of Pope Boniface and the political party he supported. His creation of the realms of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise were his attempt to bring his intellect and faith in alignment; a struggle that humans have been inspired by since Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Although I will provide background on the historical moment of Dante’s Florentine world and the political and ecclesiastical struggles that tore at his home, these are background to the very human pursuit: to understand the human soul. Although Dante’s terms are Christian, I do not think this desire is limited to the Christian realm. As always, the Salon conversation is enriched with a variety of perspectives, those who hold a formal faith as well as those who hold a formal questioning, along with those, (and I would place myself in this category) whose inquiry is loose and fluid and lifelong. We have so few spaces to share diverse views in religious ideas or spiritual traditions; I propose the study of a great work that engages a vigorous questioning of a formal belief offers that space.

From Inferno, we move towards the mountain of Purgatory. . .

As Dante explains in the opening lines of the canticle, Purgatory is the place in which “the human spirit purges himself, and climbing to Heaven makes himself worthy.” Dante’s Purgatory consists of an island mountain, the only piece of land in the southern hemisphere. Divided into three sections, Antepurgatory, Purgatory proper, and the Earthly Paradise, the lower slopes are reserved for souls whose penance was delayed. The upper part of the mountain consists of seven terraces, each of which corresponds to one of the seven capital sins. Atop the mountain Dante locates, Eden, the Earthly Paradise, the place where the pilgrim is reunited with Beatrice, the woman who inspired the poem. (from The World of Dante: http://www.worldofdante.org/purgatory1.html)

Then on to Paradise. . .

In each translation and writing about the Divine Commedia that I have consulted, the unanimous conclusion is that Paradise is the most difficult—the least likely to be read—the most likely to be started and not finished. We are warned by Dante himself, in the longest address to the reader, that if we have followed thus far in our little boat we should turn back now while we can still see the shores, lest in “losing me, you would be lost yourselves. . .” (l.5, Canto 2). How can we turn back now? I recognize the going will be tough and this might not be the most enjoyable Salon read- but I have not known any of us to shrink from challenge.

Dante has these challenges of ineffability as he attempts both to describe Paradise and his journey—the experience is beyond memory, the visions beyond human words. Here he uses the examples of the human need to put feet and hands on God, to give the Angels wings—we cannot conceive of what he has seen because we are still in our human state. Thus Dante himself must change—transhumanize—(Canto I, l. 70) to manage the journey, and we must shuffle along as best we can in our mortal skins to understand what Dante is offering.

“O you, who in some pretty boat,

Eager to listen, have been following

Behind my ship, that singing sails along

Turn back to look again upon your own shores;

Tempt not the deep, lest unawares,

In losing me, you yourselves might be lost.

The sea I sail has never yet been passed;

Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,

And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.

You other few who have neck uplifted

Betimes to the bread of angels upon

Which one lives and does not grow sated,

Well may you launch your vessel

Upon the deep sea.”

― Dante Alighieri, Paradiso

SALON DETAILS:

  • Three six-meeting studies, one on each book of the Divine Comedy
  • Recommended editions:
    • Inferno by Dante Aligheri, translated by Mark Musa; Penguin Classics; ISBN-13: 978-0142437223
    • Purgatorio by Dante Aligheri, translated by Robin Kirkpatrick; Penguin Classics; ISBN-13: 978-0140448962
    • Paradiso by Dante Aligheri, translated by Mark Musa; Penguin Classics edition; ISBN-13: 978-0140444438

From Joseph Luzzi\’s illuminating article in American Scholar 03.16

How to Read Dante in the 21st Century

How to Read Dante in the 21st Century 

“Dante requires what Nietzsche called “slow reading”—attentive, profound, patient reading—because Francesca’s sparse, seemingly innocent-sounding words speak volumes about the kind of sinner she is. In the first place, she’s not “speaking” to Dante in a natural voice; she’s alluding to poetry. And it’s a very famous poem, Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore, “Love always returns to the gentle heart,” a gorgeous medieval lyric by Guido Guinizelli, one of Dante’s poetic mentors in the Sweet New Style, a movement in the late 1200s that nurtured Dante’s emerging artistic sensibilities. Francesca, by citing the poem and the Sweet New Style, is saying: it wasn’t my fault, blame it on love. Despite her prettiness, her sweetness, and her eloquence, she is like every other sinner in hell: it’s never their fault, always someone else’s. They never confess their guilt, the one thing necessary for redemption from sin. With one deft allusion, one lyrical dance amid the ferocious winds in the Circle of the Lustful, Dante delivers a magnificent psychological portrait of Francesca’s path to damnation.”

The Waste Land

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T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

Waste-Land-cover

‘The Waste Land’ is the early Modernist poem classic. T. S. Eliot was striving to understand a shattered world post WWI and how the inherited cultural knowledge could offer direction or solace in a broken, mechanistic world. His use of literary and cultural allusions may feel overwhelming at first, but an open mind and supportive discussion will illuminate this gorgeous poem.
At this moment of Modernism, the urge was to separate from the oppressing past (‘Make it new!’ charged Ezra Pound, Eliot’s mentor) but this becomes a double gesture. The attempt to repress or break free from the past ends up haunting the writers and thinkers of the modern period—until they negotiate a link with the myths and images of the past that threatened. ‘Waste Land’ demonstrates this in the specific allusions to past works and in its melding of characters of the past and the present (Cleopatra becoming a modern working woman in ‘A Game of Chess’ for example) as well as the use of myth to reconnect our lost modern psyche to a past of ritual and meaning.

The experience of ‘The Waste Land’ combines a dig through allusions to a sense of what we hear: the journey is impressionistic. Eliot struggles to rediscover primitive, authentic emotion against the falseness of modern life. He employs the poetic technique of multiplying references (thinking of form of sedimentary rock—the layers evoking ages but holding discordant impressions together).

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
—from The Burial of the DeadSALON DETAILS

  • Two-meeting Salon intensive

Four Quartets

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T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

But to what purpose

Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves

I do not know.

Other echoes

Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?

–From ‘Burnt Norton’

T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ is often described as the best long poem of the 20th century. Eliot’s vast final work attempted to order and understand the movement of time, the dissatisfaction of worldly experience, the nature of purgation and the struggle towards artistic wholeness and spiritual health(modified from C.K. Stead). In the poem, Eliot weaves belief systems and diverse influences including Dante, The Bhagavad Gita, The Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the New Testament, medieval mystics, Greek myths and the Grail Legend: so our study will also involve comparing wisdom traditions.

I will provide each participant with pages of annotations and reference reading (gratefully donated by Mike McGarry, fellow educator and philosopher)—but as always with the Salon work, the focus is on the text itself. In previous Salons, we have found our way to thoughtful considerations of various belief systems in a respectful atmosphere; this study will open up space for such considerations using the poem as a spring board. What we believe—as individuals, as cultures—addresses how we live and how we try to invest our lives with meaning. Eliot is taking on these elemental questions through his Anglo-Catholic faith but drawing into this perspective wisdom across time and beliefs.

Christopher Guerin, writing in the on-line magazine ‘When Falls the Coliseum’, describes his pleasure in the poem:

“Though I first studied the poem in college — emphasis on “studied”, which doesn’t always mean “experience” or “appreciate” — my firstencounter with Four Quartets took place while being chased by fierce thunderstorms across Interstate 70 in Kansas in the early evening. (I learned the next day that I had been surrounded by tornados!) I had put in a cassette recording I’d made off an LP of Four Quartets being read by Sir Alec Guinness.
No, the incredible impression the poem made on me at the time had nothing to do with Obi Wan Kenobi. Guinness’ delivery, though, seems the perfect voice for this poem, much more earnest and spiritually aware than Eliot’s own weary, almost defeated delivery. (The recording is hard to find, but well worth the search. Highly recommended.)
From the beginning, I was captivated by the cadence, the imagery, and the playful, seeking nature of the words. It’s impossible to quote anything less than the whole of the first section…”
Which he does—and you can read the rest of his commentary and selections of the poem here.

SALON INTENSIVE DETAILS
The Salon Intensive offers a wonderfully dynamic five-hour study (with a necessary pot-luck meal break half way through). Although this format may feel intimidating, those who have participated find the conversation gallops along and we take the book in one big and satisfying gulp. The study is a rich weave of participant questions and responses, readings of significant passages and consideration of the themes and genres that the book illuminates.

The facilitated discussion will use the text of the poem as a springboard for our conversation; participant questions, responses and ideas are welcomed to help navigate the challenges of the work. There is no expectation of previous study or work with the poem nor in the academic tradition: this study will challenge and invigorate the first time reader as well as the life-long lover of T.S. Eliot’s extraordinary vision.

The poem can be found in T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-62 (Faber & Faber; ISBN-13: 978-0571105489).

Song of Myself

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Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself

Come, said my soul,
Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)
That should I after return,
Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
There to some group of mates the chants resuming,
(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,
Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now
Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

–Walt Whitman (From introduction to Leaves of Grass)

What better way to offset the lethargy of winter and the exhaustion of the holiday schedules then to dip into the poetry of Whitman? His poetry is exuberant, embracing and evocative of the Transcendentalist philosophy that he admired.

In the words of Clifton Fadiman:

“It is Whitman’s language rather than his message that exerts power. He worked with all his soul to become a national bard, the voice of “the divine average, ”the Muse of Democracy…He has penetrated our consciousness not because he is accepted by the “powerful uneducated persons ”he idealizes, but because he is a poet in the original sense: a maker, a coiner of wonderful new language.”

Our study will consider “A Noiseless Patient Spider” and selections from “Song of Myself”…we will read aloud, with gusto his words of expanse and celebration; we will use the sounds, words and rhythms to explore meaning and recognize mystery.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

The Aeneid

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Virgil’s Aeneid

“Arma virumque cano. . .”

“Wars and a man I sing–an exile driven on by on by Fate. . .”

T.S. Eliot claimed that the Aeneid is the ultimate ‘classic’: “our classic, the classic of all Europe.” Even more than Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey, the Aeneid is probably the one text from classical antiquity that has had the longest continuous influence over the later Western tradition. Taking both of Homer’s great epics as his models, Virgil created a hero and a poem that are uniquely his own—and that are distinctly Roman. Through them he told his story of the formation of a vast imperial power, and the human cost of that process.

The Aeneid is a grand poem of adventure, heroism, duty and love, recounting along the way the famous tale of the Trojan horse and the fall of Troy, Aeneas’ love affair with the doomed Queen Dido, his journey into the underworld, and ultimate settlement of Aeneas and the survivors of Troy in Italian lands. Salon participants who have studied Dante will recognize in the Aeneid the tension between personal and political, as the hero Aeneas struggles with and against his duty to carry forth the remnants of a fallen Troy to a new land from which will spring the grandeur of Rome.

This study is the third of a three-study sequence, covering Homer’s Iliad, Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid. New participants are welcome to join the sequence with this study; familiarity with the preceding books is not required.

SALON DETAILS

  • Six meeting study
  • Recommended edition: Virgil’s The Aeneid, translated by Robert Fagles, introduction by Bernard Knox; Penguin Classics; ISBN-13: 978-0143106296

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

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Ovid’s Metamorphoses

metamorphoses

The Salon Intensive offers a one-meeting study that ambitiously takes an entire work in one big, energetic gulp. Participants have described this as a wonderfully dynamic approach– we work hard and have a joyous time.  Why Ovid? Folks in the  Salon have considered Homer (The Odyssey and The Iliad), The Oresteia, Virgil’s Aeneid among other significant classical works. Ovid’s work includes characters and situations referenced throughout literature–and a deep meditation on how humans and gods shift and change as a result of harrowing circumstances. We will consider the work in the context of its own time and how Metamorphoses illuminates our own moment.

The recommended edition is the Ted Hughes: Tales from Ovid (Faber & Faber, 1997).
From Hughes’ brilliant introduction: 

“In its length and metre, the Metamorphoses resembles an epic. But the opening lines describe the very different kind of poem that Ovid set out to write: an account of how from the beginning of the world right down to his own time bodies had been magically changed, by the power of the gods, into other bodies.

“This licensed him to take a wide sweep through the teeming underworld or overworld of Romanised Greek myth and legend. The right man had met the right material at the right moment. The Metamorphoses was a success in its own day. During the Middle Ages throughout the Christian West it became the most popular work from the Classical era, a source-book of imagery and situations for artists, poets and the life of high culture. It entered English poetry as a fountainhead, as one of Chaucer’s favourite books, which he plundered openly,sometimes, as with the tale of  Pyramus & Thisbe–in quite close translation. A little later, it played an even more dynamic role for Shakespeare’s generation–and perhaps for Shakespeare in particular. The ‘sweet, witty soul’ of Ovid was said to live again in him.

“But perhaps Shakespeare’s closest affinity lay not so much in the sweet, witty Ovidian facility for ‘sniffing out the odoriferous flowers of fancy’, as one of his characters put it, nor in his aptitude for lifting images or even whole passages nearly verbatim, nor in drawing from two stories in the Metamorphoses his own best-seller, the seminal long poem Venus & Adonis. A more crucial connection, maybe, can be found in their common taste for a tortured subjectivity and catastrophic extremes of passion that border on the grotesque. In this vein, Shakespeare\’s most Ovidian work was his first–Titus Andronicus. Thirty or so dramas later, in Cymbeline, his mild and blameless heroine Imogen– whom her beloved husband will try to murder, whom her loathed step-brother will try to rape–chooses for her bedtime reading Ovid\’s shocking tale of Tereus and Philomela.”

Paradise Lost

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John Milton’s Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is, as one Salon participant put it, “ …an IMMENSE piece of English Literature. The language is mind boggling, wonderful rhetorical, metaphorical moments…such fabulous imagination…”. The work is a cornerstone of English literature; a natural bridge between Shakespeare and Joyce, Dante and Mary Shelley…but it is some work!
Milton seeks to justify the ways of God to humankind in this work. In revisiting the Fall (both Satan’s and Adam and Eve’s) and giving these ancient stories narrative flesh, we learn the Christian boundaries of Good and Evil.

Clifton Fadiman, in his Lifetime Reading Plan, says:

“It is hard to like John Milton. Suffering the penalty of charmlessness, of humourlessness, he has been less read than admired, less admired than merely accepted…Perhaps I have persuaded you to skip Milton…(but) for all the mustiness of his theology and morality…he remains a great artist in both verse and prose. With rock-like–he would say adamantine–grandeur, he continues to impose himself even on our age, which laughs at grandeur, at the noble style, and at erudition…at least read Paradise Lost for the gorgeous sound, the elaborate imagery, the portrait of Satan, that fallen god with whom Milton himself had so much in common…”

We will move through this work, hearing favorite parts aloud, sharing our knowledge of the Bible and English Renaissance History and love of language to help illuminate the text. There are some wonderful internet resources to help prepare you for our study, in particular the sites that offer audio readings. Some that I have found or Salonistas have recommended:

Paradise Lost Internet Resources

Why Read it thread
Notice how this conversation gets side-tracked to an intense feminist wrestling match…
Some resources I pulled from this conversation:
· The Milton Reading Room at Dartmouth

And perhaps the most exhaustive is the Darkness Visible site set up and maintained at Cambridge…very accessible and easy to lose an hour or two!

The Odyssey

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Homer’s Odyssey

Odys400seysrirensmast

“Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.”

Homer’s Odyssey is the original tale of longing for and coming home. The hero Odysseus has been away from his kingdom on the island of Ithaca for almost twenty years. For ten of those years he has fought before the walls of Troy; it was his stratagem the Trojan Horse that finally enabled the assembled Greek forces to storm that city and bring the war to an end. Now, he has wandered the Mediterranean for another ten years, beleaguered by an angry god, threatened by monsters, bewitched by temptresses. Odysseus endures trials and temptations that arouse his sense of adventure, but still he drives on, to reach Ithaca, his wife Penelope, his son Telemachus—his home.

The Odyssey is both a marvelous adventure drama and a moving tale of loyalty, friendship, family, fate, and lasting love. David Denby, in his work Great Books, describes his engagement with The Odyssey as an essential exploration of the formation of the self for the reader as well as for Telemachus and Odysseus: “Even at the beginning of the literary tradition of the West, the self has masks, and remakes itself as a fiction and not as a guiltless fiction either.”

This study is the second of a three-study sequence, covering Homer’s Iliad, Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid.

SALON DETAILS

  • Six meeting study
  • Recommended edition: Homer’s The Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles, introduction by Bernard Knox; Penguin Classics; ISBN-13: 978-0143039952

The Odyssey in Greece

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Homer’s Odyssey in Greece

Kayaking near Agistri

We are excited to expand the studies by offering retreats that place participants in locales that reflect and expand the literature. By taking participants to beautiful places, the London Literary Salon retreat offers a more intensive immersion in the book while opening the mind to a part of the world illuminated through the beauty of the language.

The Greek Odyssey study uses Homer’s epic poem to consider closely the guest-host relationship, the defining struggle of humans against overwhelming nature, the struggle to know ourselves in foreign spaces, our understanding of the heroic and the role of myth and epic in lived experience. Actor Jane Wymark and Poet Caroline Hammond will be assisting Salon Director Toby Brothers in this week-long study, sharing their insights into the spoken word, metre and translation.  In an era where the epic poem is in eclipse, the novel and film having taken over as the preferred vehicles for  complex narratives, we will explore aspects of the Odyssey as a work in the oral tradition.

We have found the perfect site to host this study providing the ideal combination of a local space run by someone who understands our mission & can provide us room & board that has some cultural and adventure offerings — and is easy to access. We will be staying at Rosy’s Village on the stunning island of Agistri.

SALON DETAILS

  • Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Jane Wymark and Caroline Donnelly
  • Two preparatory meetings in London
  • Recommended edition: The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles AND the Emily Wilson translation

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About the epic. . .     

The Salon has certainly been a place to re-discover- or discover for the first time – the works that form the cornerstones of Western literary tradition. The Odyssey is a root for our understanding of ourselves as well as the words and ways of the ancients. How does it continue to shape our idea of the heroic? What do the dilemmas that Odysseus faces offer to us today? Can we still appreciate the lyric and narrative quality alongside a violent story filled with the suffering and death of nameless servants, slave girls and soldiers?

Many artists have used The Odyssey as an inspiration for their work as Joyce does with Ulysses and the Coen brothers did for their film(winning an Oscar for the best screenplay adaptation from Homer’s original)…the epic struggle to return home and exploration of the guest/relationship remain relevant across time.

David Denby, in his work Great Books, describes his engagement with The Odyssey as an essential exploration of the formation of the self for the reader as well as for Telemachus and Odysseus: “Even at the beginning of the literary tradition of the West, the self has masks, and remakes itself as a fiction and not as a guiltless fiction either. . .

The Odyssey is an after-the-war poem, a plea for relief and gratification, and it turns, at times, into a sensual, even carnal celebration.”

Further reading : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10833515/Alice-Oswald-how-to-read-Homer.html

The Iliad

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Homer’s Iliad

“Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls. . .”

The first great work of Western literature is a magnificent poem recounting the story of the final stages of the Trojan War—one of the central legends of ancient Greek, and later European, culture. Tales surrounding the Trojan War constitute a vast and interwoven cycle of Greek poems, plays, myths and artwork: the rape of Leda by Zeus; the Golden Apple and the Judgement of Paris; the Oath of Tyndareus; the abduction (or seduction) by Paris of Helen, “the face that launched a thousand ships”; the sacrifice of Iphigeneia at Aulis; the siege of Troy, its fall, and the death of Achilles. The Trojan War, too, is the starting point for Homer’s Odyssey, one of the many stories of the aftermath of this culturally-scarring war.

The Iliad takes place over just a few pivotal weeks near the end of the Greeks’ ten-year siege of Troy. The invading Greek army’s greatest warrior, Achilles, withdraws from the fighting after a dispute with their leader Agamemnon, bringing the threat of defeat and destruction upon the Greeks. His action precipitates devastating results for both sides, ultimately leading to the fall of Troy itself.

Though memorable for its scenes of bloody battle and the squabbling of the gods on Olympus, the Iliad exudes an intense humanity, infusing a tragic longing for peace amid the seeming inevitability of war and destruction.  Homer invites us to put ourselves into the world of the war: a place no one wants to be, where the gods seem unpredictable, and where there\’s a genuine question of whether justice is anywhere to be found. We are challenged to take seriously the warriors\’ values of honor and glory, which may be very different from values we hold.

The Iliad asks basic questions about what really matters: about what is worth living—and dying—for. It confronts us with fundamental questions about honor, community, justice, love, and loyalty, as the story’s characters search to make sense of their own mortality.

SALON DETAILS

  • Six meeting study
  • Recommended edition: Homer’s The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles, introduction by Bernard Knox; Penguin Classics; ISBN-13: 978-014027536
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