Scribal Terror

The Bookshelf

We haven't had a book day at  Scribal Terror for a long time, so what are you reading -- and what are you learning from it? Squire Frogworthy wants to know.

Two ads by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Peacay at BibliOdyssey has posted a fascinating collection of  nineteenth-century advertising  "trade cards."  The ones above are  by Charlotte Perkins Gilman of "Yellow Wallpaper" fame. Peacay writes:

The pair of Tub Soap girls and the Soapine carriage advertisement {~1880} are of particular interest because the artist/lithographer was Charlotte Perkins Gilman (niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe) who would later become a notable writer/social reformer and feminist. Her 1892 short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' was a first hand account of post-partum depression and suffering at the hands of (learned) quackery. The great medical minds of the day recommended isolation from family, near-total bed rest, restriction of intellectual activity and occasional application of electricity to the muscles.

Madeleine L'Engle, RIP

Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and many other gloriously deep and imaginative books for children and adolescents, has passed away at 88. She wrote children's books because, she explained, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." She wrote about and deeply believed in embracing the paradox of life in a world that is simultaneously physical and spiritual:

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

And, for her, it was the artist's response that best captured, and best honored, the paradoxical nature of reality:

Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth.

Thanks to Locust Eater , who links to a post by a clergyman who knew her.

Pop quiz

Props to anyone who can say where Harry Hutton got the phrase Mute Inglorious Stilton.

Cyrano de Bergerac's first flight

From The Other World: The Societies and Governments of the Moon:

I attached to myself a number of bottles of dew, and the heat of the sun, which attracted it, drew me so high that I finally emerged above the highest clouds. But the sun’s attraction of the dew drew me upwards so rapidly that instead of approaching the Moon, as I intended, I seemed to be farther from it than when I started. I broke open some of the bottles  and felt my weight overcome the attraction and bring me back towards the earth.

My impression was not incorrect, because I touched down again some time later. Judging by the time I left, it should have been midnight. However, I saw that the sun was at its highest point in the sky, and that it was noon. You may imagine how surprised I was; in fact, I was so surprised that, not knowing how to account for this miracle, I had the insolence to imagine that God had rewarded my boldness by once again stopping the sun in the sky  in recognition of such a noble undertaking.

My astonishment was increased by my failure to recognize the country I was in. Since I had flown straight up, it seemed to me that I should have come down at the same place I started from. With my equipment, I walked toward a thatched cottage from which I saw smoke emerging. I was scarcely within pistol-shot range when I was surrounded by a large number of savages. They were very surprised to meet me, because I think I was the first they had seen dressed in bottles.

Do you know where he and his nose made landfall?

Manga Shakespeare!

Great-looking Hamlet, and an R&J too:

Via Bookslut. What a fabulous medium for the pop-lit of another era.

"Double-Entendre"

This patriotic Loyalist poem breaks into two patriotic Revolutionary poems -- straight down the middle. To read the pro-American poems, you need to read all the lines just to the commas on the left side (this portion of the poetic line is called the caesura); then do the same beginning with the caesuras on the right. From Futility Closet:

Hark! Hark! the trumpet sounds, the din of war's alarms,
O'er seas and solid grounds, doth call us all to arms;
Who for King George doth stand, their honors soon shall shine;
Their ruin is at hand, who with the Congress join.
The acts of Parliament, in them I much delight,
I hate their cursed intent, who for the Congress fight;
The Tories of the day, they are my daily toast,
They soon will sneak away, who independence boast;
Who non-resistance hold, they have my hand and heart,
May they for slaves be sold, who act a Whiggish part;
On Mansfied, North and Bute, may daily blessings pour,
Confusion and dispute, on Congress evermore;
To North and British lord, may honors still be done,
I wish a block or cord, to General Washington.

– Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882

P. S. Who knows what is meant by "a block or cord"?

A Delight in Disorder poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness;
A lawn* about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher**;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands to flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

*A lawn is a  semi-sheer cotton or linen (so-called lawn cotton) shawl. Lawn gets its name from the French city of Laon where it was originally manufactured.
**A stomacher is a triangular piece of fabric that fits in the front of a woman's gown. "Enthral" literally means to make a slave of or hold prisoner.

Structural note: the poem is divided into two main clauses. The first is contained in lines one and two; the second takes up the rest of the poem. Lines three through twelve contain five two-line noun clauses, all acting as the subjects of the verb Do in line thirteen.

The illustration is A Lady Reading Eloise and Abelard by Jean-Baptiste Greuze

Just a thought

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

Theseus and the Minotaur; or, Smite 'em Cowboy by Scott Emmons

If you like poetry that rhymes and scans, you'll love the clever and remarkably well-executed poems on Greek mythology by Scott Emmons in his collection, Myth-Demeanors, and Chris Harding's accompanying illustrations are a hoot. Here's a taste of the Minotaur myth:

In Crete, where brazen goddesses wore all-revealing bodices,
Where wild and raucous rituals made palace rafters ring,
A man of inhumanity that bordered on insanity
Was known as mighty Minos, and he ran the place as king.

Malicious and deplorable, he harbored something horrible:
The Minotaur, a most bull-headed beast, to coin a phrase.
An ill-conceived atrocity of unsurpassed ferocity
Imprisoned in a Labyrinth – in other words, a maze.

It happened in that dismal time, that dreary, dark, abysmal time,
That Athens owed a debt to Crete and felt an awful crunch.
For rates were unbelievable.  The payment deemed receivable
Was seven youths and seven maids to be the creature's lunch!

Read the rest of it! It just tumbles along.