Favorite literary passages

[Reidy]

As a companion to the favorite-music thread, I'm curious as to what are people's favorite pieces of writing? To start it off:

Boy on a bicycle and final chapter of The Fountainhead;

"Many the marvels" chorus in Antigone;

Description of the night sky at the beginning of Agammemnon;

Description of the bells of Paris in Notre Dame, Hugo;

Lots of Shakespeare, in small doses, though I can't name any one passage.

[kiaer.ts]

Richard II as a whole is Shakespeare's most poetic play, the language is incredible. The best production of this play is with Fiona Shaw (yes, a woman) playing Richard. (He was considered effeminate, and suspected to have male courtiers as lovers.) In that production (not on YouTube) Graham Crowden plays John of Gaunt. (I have appended a clip of Shaw and of Crowden.)

Setup: To finance his unwise wars, King Richard has mortgaged his Royal Revenues as feudal lord of England. (This is considered mercenary and base.) His uncle John, close to death, (and hence, near to the afterlife, capable of prophecy,) laments on the situation:

King Richard act II scene 1

JOHN OF GAUNT

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired

And thus expiring do foretell of him:

His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,

For violent fires soon burn out themselves;

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;

He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;

With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:

Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi-paradise,

This fortress built by Nature for herself

Against infection and the hand of war,

This happy breed of men, this little world,

This precious stone set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall,

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands,

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,

Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth,

Renowned for their deeds as far from home,

For Christian service and true chivalry,

As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry,

Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son,

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,

Dear for her reputation through the world,

Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,

Like to a tenement or pelting farm:

England, bound in with the triumphant sea

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,

With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:

That England, that was wont to conquer others,

Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life,

How happy then were my ensuing death!

Here is Crowden as Tom in Waiting for God. (Imagine his voice reading the lines.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWPjE5K-yGE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7-i1MVjnYM

[kiaer.ts]

Here are my two favorite poems:

"Ozymandias" by Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

"The Second Coming" by Yeats

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[Jonathan]

Lots of Shakespeare, in small doses, though I can't name any one passage.

The Tempest:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

The Merchant of Venice:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Much Ado About Nothing:

...I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage; but doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No; the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married...

Too many favorites to list from Hamlet.

J

[Chris Grieb]

I love the boy on the bycycle in The Fountainhead.

Also the opening of Moby Dick.

[kiaer.ts]

Well, the boy on the bicycle, the review Dominique writes where she compares Roark's building to a pink feather boa, the death of the wetnurse, and when Ragnar gives Rearden the gold bar are some of my favorites. Here is my favorite part of Moby Dick, especially the bold:

CHAPTER 42

The Whiteness of The Whale

What the white whale was to Ahab, has been hinted; what, at times,

he was to me, as yet remains unsaid.

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick,

which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm,

there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror

concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered

all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it,

that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form.

It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.

But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim,

random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters

might be naught.

Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly

enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own,

as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations

have in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue;

even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title

"Lord of the White Elephants" above all their other magniloquent

ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling

the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the

Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger;

and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome,

having for the imperial color the same imperial hue; and though

this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself,

giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe;

and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made

significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked

a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings,

this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things--

the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among

the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was

the deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies

the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes

to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds;

though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions

it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power;

by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being

held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies,

Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull;

and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred

White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology,

that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they

could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their

own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white,

all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their

sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock;

and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is

specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord;

though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed,

and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before

the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there

white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations,

with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet

lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue,

which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which

affrights in blood.

This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness,

when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled

with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror

to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles,

and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth,

flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are?

That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness,

even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect.

So that not the fierce-fanged tiger in his heraldic coat can

so stagger courage as the white-shrouded bear or shark.*

*With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him who

would fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the whiteness,

separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable hideousness of

that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness, it might be said,

only rises from the circumstance, that the irresponsible ferociousness

of the creature stands invested in the fleece of celestial innocence

and love; and hence, by bringing together two such opposite emotions

in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us with so unnatural a contrast.

But even assuming all this to be true; yet, were it not for the whiteness,

you would not have that intensified terror.

As for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose

in that creature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies

with the same quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most

vividly hit by the French in the name they bestow upon that fish.

The Romish mass for the dead begins with "Requiem eternam"

(eternal rest), whence Requiem denominating the mass itself,

and any other funeral music. Now, in allusion to the white,

silent stillness of death in this shark, and the mild deadliness

of his habits, the French call him Requin.

Bethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual

wonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails

in all imaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell;

but God's great, unflattering laureate, Nature.*

*I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during

a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas.

From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck;

and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing

of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime.

At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to

embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it.

Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghost

in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes,

methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham

before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white,

its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had

lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns.

Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell,

can only hint, the things that darted through me then.

But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this.

A goney, he replied. Goney! never had heard that name before;

is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown

to men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goney

was some seaman's name for albatross. So that by no possibility

could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical

impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck.

For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be

an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish

a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.

I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird

chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this,

that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses;

and these I have frequently seen, but never with such emotions as when I

beheld the Antarctic fowl.

But how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not,

and I will tell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl

floated on the sea. At last the Captain made a postman of it;

tying a lettered, leathern tally round its neck, with the ship's

time and place; and then letting it escape. But I doubt not,

that leathern tally, meant for man, was taken off in Heaven,

when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding, the invoking,

and adoring cherubim!

Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of

the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,

large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity

of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage.

He was the elected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses,

whose pastures in those days were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains

and the Alleghanies. At their flaming head he westward

trooped it like that chosen star which every evening leads

on the hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his mane,

the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more

resplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him.

A most imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen,

western world, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters

revived the glories of those primeval times when Adam walked

majestic as a god, bluff-bowed and fearless as this mighty steed.

Whether marching amid his aides and marshals in the van of

countless cohorts that endlessly streamed it over the plains,

like an Ohio; or whether with his circumambient subjects browsing

all around at the horizon, the White Steed gallopingly reviewed

them with warm nostrils reddening through his cool milkiness;

in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to the bravest

Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe.

Nor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record

of this noble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly,

which so clothed him with divineness; and that this divineness

had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same

time enforced a certain nameless terror.

But there are other instances where this whiteness loses

all that accessory and strange glory which invests it in

the White Steed and Albatross.

What is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks

the eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin!

It is that whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed

by the name he bears. The Albino is as well made as other men--

has no substantive deformity--and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading

whiteness makes him more strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion.

Why should this be so?

Nor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least

palpable but not the less malicious agencies, fail to enlist

among her forces this crowning attribute of the terrible.

From its snowy aspect, the gauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas has

been denominated the White Squall. Nor, in some historic instances,

has the art of human malice omitted so potent an auxiliary.

How wildly it heightens the effect of that passage in Froissart,

when, masked in the snowy symbol of their faction, the desperate

White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the market-place!

Nor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all

mankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue.

It cannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect

of the dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor

lingering there; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge

of consternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here.

And from that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue

of the shroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in our superstitions

do we fail to throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms;

all ghosts rising in a milk-white fog--Yea, while these terrors

seize us, let us add, that even the king of terrors, when personified

by the evangelist, rides on his pallid horse.

Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious

thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest

idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.

But though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal

man to account for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible.

Can we, then, by the citation of some of those instances

wherein this thing of whiteness--though for the time either

wholly or in great part stripped of all direct associations

calculated to impart to it aught fearful, but nevertheless,

is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however modified;--

can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us

to the hidden cause we seek?

Let us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,

and without imagination no man can follow another into these halls.

And though, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions

about to be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few

perhaps were entirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore

may not be able to recall them now.

Why to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but

loosely acquainted with the peculiar character of the day,

does the bare mention of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy

such long, dreary, speechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims,

down-cast and hooded with new-fallen snow? Or to the unread,

unsophisticated Protestant of the Middle American States,

why does the passing mention of a White Friar or a White Nun,

evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?

Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings

(which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White Tower

of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an

untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors--

the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer towers,

the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar moods,

comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare mention

of that name, while the thought of Virginia's Blue Ridge is full

of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all

latitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert

such a spectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea

lulls us with mortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on

the waves, followed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets?

Or, to choose a wholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed

to the fancy, why, in reading the old fairy tales of Central Europe,

does "the tall pale man" of the Hartz forests, whose changeless

pallor unrestingly glides through the green of the groves--

why is this phantom more terrible than all the whooping imps

of the Blocksburg?

Nor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling

earthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the tearlessness

of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide field

of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop

(like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues

of house-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;--

it is not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest,

saddest city thou can'st see. For Lima has taken the white veil;

and there is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe.

Old as Pizarro, this whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new;

admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay; spreads over

her broken ramparts the rigid pallor of an apoplexy that fixes

its own distortions.

I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness

is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror

of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there

aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind

almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited

under any form at all approaching to muteness or universality.

What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be respectively

elucidated by the following examples.

First: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands,

if by night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels

just enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under

precisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock

to view his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness--

as if from encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming

round him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded

phantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost;

in vain the lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm

they both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him again.

Yet where is the mariner who will tell thee, "Sir, it was not so much

the fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous whiteness

that so stirred me?"

Second: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of

the snowhowdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps,

in the mere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning

at such vast altitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness

it would be to lose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same

is it with the backwoodsman of the West, who with comparative

indifference views an unbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow,

no shadow of tree or twig to break the fixed trance of whiteness.

Not so the sailor, beholding the scenery of the Antarctic seas;

where at times, by some infernal trick of legerdemain in the powers

of frost and air, he, shivering and half shipwrecked, instead of

rainbows speaking hope and solace to his misery, views what seems

a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with its lean ice monuments

and splintered crosses.

But thou sayest, methinks this white-lead chapter about

whiteness is but a white flag hung out from a craven soul;

thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael.

Tell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful

valley of Vermont, far removed from all beasts of prey--

why is it that upon the sunniest day, if you but shake a fresh

buffalo robe behind him, so that he cannot even see it, but only

smells its wild animal muskiness--why will he start, snort,

and with bursting eyes paw the ground in phrensies of affright?

There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of wild creatures

in his green northern home, so that the strange muskiness he smells

cannot recall to him anything associated with the experience

of former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt,

of the black bisons of distant Oregon?

No; but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute,

the instinct of the knowledge of the demonism in the world.

Though thousands of miles from Oregon, still when he smells

that savage musk, the rending, goring bison herds are as present

as to the deserted wild foal of the prairies, which this instant

they may be trampling into dust.

Thus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea;

the bleak rustlings of the festooned frosts of mountains;

the desolate shiftings of the windrowed snows of prairies;

all these, to Ishmael, are as the shaking of that buffalo robe

to the frightened colt!

Though neither knows where lie the nameless things of

which the mystic sign gives forth such hints; yet with me,

as with the colt, somewhere those things must exist.

Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed

in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness,

and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul;

and more strange and far more portentous--why, as we have seen,

it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay,

the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is,

the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless

voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind

with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths

of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not

so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same

time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there

is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape

of snows--a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?

And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers,

that all other earthly hues--every stately or lovely emblazoning--

the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded

velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls;

all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent

in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified

Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover

nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further,

and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every

one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains

white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium

upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses,

with its own blank tinge--pondering all this, the palsied universe

lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland,

who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes,

so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental

white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him.

And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol.

Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? ..

[kiaer.ts]

I read this, [by Paul, in 1st Corinthian's 13] at my sister's funeral, with a dispensation from the priest, since it's not the Catholic translation:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

[Philip Coates]

Ted, thanks for the great passage from Richard II. That is one of the Shakespeare plays I have not read. I recognized the famous passage (Leslie Howard declaims it when he is defying his French captors in the movie version of

"The Scarlet Pimpernel"). But I did not know which play it was from.

In your last post, the funeral reading, it seems to obviously be from the Bible, but where exactly?

When I was in high school and we read "The Merchant of Venice", the teacher raved about Portia's famous courtroom speech to Shylock "the quality of mercy is not strained..it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven......." But none of us had any idea what Portia was on about. Since we didn't understand the play and the teacher hadn't gotten the fundamental theme and conflict across. It was only about two years ago, when I -taught- the play that it suddenly came alive. As did Portia. And I realized she was urging Shylock to be merciful about demanding his revenge and the pound of flesh and explaining why mercy is a good quality and that I first realized how eloquent and powerful the speech was.

By now, I could probably list a couple dozen powerful Shakespeare passages which have made me think or feel more deeply and have elevated my life.

And to think that I **HATED** Willy the Windbag in high school :-)

[kiaer.ts]

Ted, thanks for the great passage from Richard II. That is one of the Shakespeare plays I have not read. I recognized the famous passage (Leslie Howard declaims it when he is defying his French captors in the movie version of

"The Scarlet Pimpernel"). But I did not know which play it was from.

In your last post, the funeral reading, it seems to obviously be from the Bible, but where exactly?

When I was in high school and we read "The Merchant of Venice", the teacher raved about Portia's famous courtroom speech to Shylock "the quality of mercy is not strained..it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven......." But none of us had any idea what Portia was on about. Since we didn't understand the play and the teacher hadn't gotten the fundamental theme and conflict across. It was only about two years ago, when I -taught- the play that it suddenly came alive. As did Portia. And I realized she was urging Shylock to be merciful about demanding his revenge and the pound of flesh and explaining why mercy is a good quality and that I first realized how eloquent and powerful the speech was.

By now, I could probably list a couple dozen powerful Shakespeare passages which have made me think or feel more deeply and have elevated my life.

And to think that I **HATED** Willy the Windbag in high school :-)

Sorry, that was Paul in 1st Corinthians, chapter 13. King James uses "Charity" (i.e., "car"-ing) but this is oten translated as love which, obviously, I prefer.

As for Shakespeare I read him in HS, Romeo & Juliet (not my favorite) in 9th, 10th & 11th grade. I always found him too obscure. I saw one production of Macbeth in Ithaca which I could only half follow, but enjoyed. Then in the 90's I saw Richard III with Ian McKellan and it finally clicked. I was able to get the language without straining. A revelation. I love

McKellen's Richard III,

Romeo & Juliet with Claire Daines & Leo DiCaprio,

Pacino's Merchant of Venice, Julie Taymor's Titus,

Branagh's Hamlet, (My Boyfriend prefers Mel Gibson's)

Roman Polanski's Macbeth,

and Lawrence Olivier's (BBC?) and James Earl Jones's King Lear.

I do not like (have not been able to enjoy) Othello, or the Comedies.

[Philip Coates]

> Pacino's Merchant of Venice

Yes! I had been steadily weakening in my resistance to Shakespeare and had found scattered passages that resonated, but that performance was the first time a whole play became crystal clear to me, because Shylock the central figure became crystal clear. Unfortunately, seldom have I seen the plays performed, but have more often read them. The St. Crispin's Day speech as delivered by Branagh, however, is an example of something I did see on PBS and it was immensely stirring.

Ye plays I likest seemest to be not only among yon histories and tragedies, but his (misnamed) comedies: Last year I taught "As You Like It" and pretty much the whole school took a weekend trip, parents paid expenses, and we piled into a van and took a thousand mile round trip up to the Ashland Oregon Shakespeare Festival to see it.

Even the younger kids (middle school) were able to appreciate AYLI and the other play we saw: Moliere's Tartuffe, a genuine comedy.

[syrakusos]

"I been in the trade forever, way back, before the war, before there was any matrix, or anyway before people knew there was one. I got a pair of shoes older than you, so what the fuck should I expect you to know? There were cowboys ever since there were computers. They built the first computers to crack German ice, right? Codebreakers. So, there was ice before there was computers, you wanna think about it like that." -- The Finn in William Gibson's Count Zero.

In The Right Stuff, where Gordo comes into Pancho's and starts bragging and not knowing, points to the pictures of dead test pilots behind the bar and says, "Someday you're gonna put our pictures up there" and the noise stops. "What? Did I say somethin?" And where John Glenn is harranguing the astronauts over the young girls, the cookies. And Grissom counters, "The problem isn't pussy. It's monkey!" And the others all fill in with "what Gus means is..." and the scene where Lyndon Johnson wants to visit Annie Glenn and she doesn't want to see him, so they try to pressure John into talking to her by suggesting that the order of rotation will be changed, but the other astronauts back him up: "Yeah? Who you gonna get to fly it?" And the last scene... "Go, Hot Dog go!.... Astronaut Gordon Cooper was the last American to fly into space alone but on that glorious day, he flew higher, faster and farther than any man...."

The Fountainhead where Dominique and Roark meet at the party celebrating the opening of the Enright House. Their conversation is probably one of the greatest scenes in all literature! Enright could see that something was wrong because it was too normal, way too normal for normal. Perfect!

Julius Caesar. I saw it in modern dress in 1970. Brutus and Antony are in camos, sitting on camp stools, a bottle of whiskey on the table, deciding who gets killed to balance the losses. Scary beyond scary.

Edited November 10, 2008 by Michael E. Marotta

[kiaer.ts]

Ah! Here it is, Olivier's King Lear, apparently in full at You Tube. Stars Olivier as Lear, Leo McKern as Gloucester , John Hurt as the Fool, Diana Rigg as Regan. Quite worth watching.

Here it is at Wikipedia.

And here is the text on line.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otqt1LmADd4

Here is the Wikipedia synopsis:

King Lear: Cordelia's Farewell by Edwin Austin Abbey The play begins with King Lear's decision to abdicate the throne and divide his kingdom

among his three daughters: Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. The eldest two

are already married, while Cordelia is much sought after as a bride,

partly because she is her father's favorite. It is announced that each

daughter shall be accorded lands according to how much she demonstrates

her love for him in speech. To King Lear's surprise, Cordelia refuses

to outdo the flattery of her elder sisters, as she cannot be compelled

to describe her love with dishonest hyperbole. Lear, in a fit of pique,

divides her share of the kingdom between Goneril and Regan, and

Cordelia is disowned. Regardless, the King of France marries her, even after she has been disinherited.

Soon after Lear abdicates the throne, he discovers that Goneril and

Regan's feelings for him have turned cold, and arguments ensue. The Earl of Kent, who has spoken up for Cordelia and been banished for his pains, returns disguised as the servant Caius, who will "eat no fish" (that is to say, he is Christian),

in order to protect the king, to whom he remains loyal. When Lear's

daughters refuse to house his rowdy escort of knights, he rejects their

suggestion of firing the knights and is turned out into the stormy

darkness, along with his Fool. Meanwhile, Goneril and Regan fall out

with one another over their attraction to Edmund, the son of the Earl of Gloucester and are forced to deal with an army from France, led by Cordelia, sent to restore Lear to his throne. A cataclysmic war is fought.

Meanwhile, there is the Earl of Gloucester and his two sons, Edgar and

Edmund. The illegitimate Edmund concocts false stories about his

legitimate half-brother, and Edgar is forced into exile, affecting

lunacy. Edmund engages in liaisons with Goneril and Regan. Gloucester

is confronted by Regan's husband, the Duke of Cornwall, but is saved

from death by several of Cornwall's servants, who object to the Duke's

treatment of Lear; one of the servants wounds the Duke (but is killed

by Regan). Cornwall plucks out Gloucester's eyes and Regan throws him

out at the gates of his own castle, to "...let him smell his way to Dover". Cornwall dies of his wound shortly thereafter.

Edgar, still under the guise of a homeless lunatic, finds Gloucester

out in the storm. The Earl asks him whether he knows the way to Dover,

to which Edgar replies that he will lead him. Edgar, whose voice

Gloucester fails to recognize, is shaken by encountering his blinded

father and his guise is put to the test.

Lear and Cordelia by Ford Madox Brown

Lear appears in Dover, wandering and raving. Gloucester attempts to

throw himself from a cliff, but is deceived by Edgar in order to save

him and comes off safely, encountering the king shortly after. Lear and

Cordelia are briefly reunited and reconciled before the battle between

Britain and France. After the French lose, Lear is content at the

thought of living in prison with Cordelia, but Edmund gives orders for

them to be executed.

Edgar, in disguise, then fights Edmund, fatally wounding him. On seeing

this, Goneril, who has already poisoned Regan out of jealousy, kills

herself. Edgar reveals himself to Edmund and tells him that Gloucester

has just died. On hearing this, and of Goneril's and Regan's deaths,

Edmund tells Edgar of his order to have Lear and Cordelia murdered and

gives orders for them to be reprieved.

Unfortunately, the

reprieve comes too late. Lear appears on stage with Cordelia's dead

body in his arms, having killed the servant who hanged her, then dies

himself. Albany gives Edgar and Kent their power and titles back,

inviting them to rule with him. Kent, feeling himself near death,

refuses, but Edgar seems to accept. The few remaining survivors exit

sadly as a funeral march plays.

[Greybird]

[...] The Fountainhead where Dominique and Roark meet at the party celebrating the opening of the Enright House. Their conversation is probably one of the greatest scenes in all literature! Enright could see that something was wrong because it was too normal, way too normal for normal. Perfect!

The "way too normal" aspect is perfectly modulated, on the page, and fits how Roark and Dominique had treated each other earlier, with uninflected words masking great passion.

What I always found intriguing about this pivotal scene, though, is how Rand had the three characters play it completely differently in her screenplay — though, to be fair, some of that change may have come at the behest of director King Vidor. Dominique (Patricia Neal) is visibly and audibly shaken by seeing Roark (Gary Cooper) arrive at the party. Enright (Ray Collins) is expansive and jovial to an extreme, doesn't quite notice the byplay, and turns away without comment to attend to other guests. Roark doesn't bother to hide his sardonic amusement, in his voice or his smile.

I've long wondered about the difference between those treatments, and whether the film required a "warmer" approach. I saw the film before reading the book, and the emotional quotient on screen seemed necessary — as well as a moment of understated comedy, relieving the dramatic tension. (The one live audience I've seen the film with, at college, laughed at Dominique's shock — not uproariously, but consciously and audibly.)

The book's take on that moment fit the pattern of the 40 percent of the story that had transpired by then, yet provoked a notably more cerebral appreciation of what Rand was doing. For me, it was mostly literary admiration. I wasn't swept up in the moment, as I was by Neal, Collins, and Cooper, and their impeccable — and gently comic — timing.

[Philip Coates]

> I got a pair of shoes older than you, so what the fuck should I expect you to know?...The problem isn't pussy. It's monkey!...in modern dress in 1970. Brutus and Antony..sitting on camp stools, a bottle of whiskey on the table, deciding who gets killed [M. Marotta]

Mr. Marotta, have you read any great literature, or only science fiction - or modernized/bowdlerized or vulgarized bathroom language slangy stuff like the hippies chuckled over in the seventies? Maybe your post was in part (except for a couple choices) a joke, a parody of great literary passages? Or you are a postmodernist?

Have you read any of the great works of (to take nearly a dozen examples) Browning, Shakespeare, Orwell, Dickens, Bronte, Austen, Poe, Kipling, Tennyson, Orczy, Hugo? Or going further back, Homer or any of the Greeks? Nothing literary or of great power or beauty you could offer us from -any- of those?

[Philip Coates]

> "the party celebrating the opening of the Enright House. Their conversation is probably one of the greatest scenes in all literature" [M. Marotta]

The likelihood of someone grandiosely shooting from the hip on what is true "in all literature" seems to rise in inverse proportion to how widely read they actually are in literature.

Even though a screwdriver is a wonderful instrument, when I hear someone say it is the finest tool ever invented in all history, I begin to wonder how many other tools they are aware of. Or if they are knowledgeable in all eras of history.

[Brant Gaede]

> "the party celebrating the opening of the Enright House. Their conversation is probably one of the greatest scenes in all literature" [M. Marotta]

The likelihood of someone grandiosely shooting from the hip on what is true "in all literature" seems to rise in inverse proportion to how widely read they actually are in literature.

Even though a screwdriver is a wonderful instrument, when I hear someone say it is the finest tool ever invented in all history, I begin to wonder how many other tools they are aware of. Or if they are knowledgeable in all eras of history.

That one sure left me scratching my head. I thought the first meeting of Gail Wynand and Dominique was much stronger than this. Toohey's little speech to Keating when he told him the raw truth was better than Roark's courtroom declamations. Toohey's speech was literarily derived from what I think is the greatest speech in world literature I've been exposed to, that of The Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov." In any case, to have put "one of the greatest scenes in all literature" into that place in "The Fountainhead" would have completely unbalanced the novel.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

> "the party celebrating the opening of the Enright House. Their conversation is probably one of the greatest scenes in all literature" [M. Marotta]

The likelihood of someone grandiosely shooting from the hip on what is true "in all literature" seems to rise in inverse proportion to how widely read they actually are in literature.

Even though a screwdriver is a wonderful instrument, when I hear someone say it is the finest tool ever invented in all history, I begin to wonder how many other tools they are aware of. Or if they are knowledgeable in all eras of history.

That one sure left me scratching my head. I thought the first meeting of Gail Wynand and Dominique was much stronger than this. Toohey's little speech to Keating when he told him the raw truth was better than Roark's courtroom declamations. Toohey's speech was literarily derived from what I think is the greatest speech in world literature I've been exposed to, that of The Grand Inquisitor in "The Brothers Karamazov." In any case, to have put "one of the greatest scenes in all literature" into that place in "The Fountainhead" would have completely unbalanced the novel.

--Brant

After reviewing Roark's speech it's obvious I shouldn't have compared it to Toohey's lecture to Keating. It's an apples and oranges situation. Toohey's smear of evil heart and Roark's nobility of soul make it ridiculously incongruous to compare the two except as creative emanations from Ayn Rand, who, of course, gets kudos. But, oh boy, oh brother, the way Dosty sets up that Grand Inquisitor with a flick of his literary wrist--and the speech itself--are pure expressions of genius.

--Brant

[Ross Barlow]

Here is one of my own favorite literary passages, from the Pali records, c. 450 BCE:

.

“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason

and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,

then accept it and live up to it.”

.

– The Buddha.

.

.

-Ross Barlow.

Edited November 21, 2008 by Ross Barlow

[Guyau]

LOVE IS MORE THICKER THAN FORGET

—e.e.cummings

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom that a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MEMORY GREEN

—Archibald Macleish

Yes and when the warm unseasonable weather

Comes at the year’s end of the next late year

And the southwest wind that smells of rain and summer

Strips the huge branches of their dying leaves,

And you at dusk along the Friedrichstrasse

Or you in Paris on the windy quay

Shuffle the shallow fallen leaves before you

Thinking the thoughts that like the grey clouds change,

You will not understand why suddenly sweetness

Fills in your heart nor the tears come to your eyes;

You will stand in the June-warm wind and the leaves falling:

When was it so before, you will say, With whom?

You will not remember this at all: you will stand there

Feeling the wind on your throat, the wind in your sleeves,

You will smell the dead leaves in the grass of a garden:

You will close your eyes: With whom, you will say,

Ah where?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

POTPOURRI

—Gerald Stern (1979)

I see my wife struggling in the dirt

with her roses and her iris and I watch her

domesticate every mountain within ten miles,

but I know it is the delicate spring things,

the bloodroot and the columbine, that move her.

I think of the great space between her and

the wild domestic poets I hear reading at the Moat

and the Lavender Gate and I understand

exactly the difference between them;

and when I watch her on the flowered sheets

with her eyes finally closed

and her purple T-shirt already wet with sleep

I understand a delicacy and mournfulness

that neither Nietzsche my one love

nor Van Gogh my other

could help me with, for all their knowledge and purity.

—Tonight a huge black rose

sits on the oak chest

beside the silver candlesticks

dominating the small room with

its size and odor.

I am sitting down eating strawberries

and turning the rose on its thick stem.

Across the room a potpourri waits,

like a rich grave full of herbs and spices,

for the moist petals;

and under the light a bouquet of wild daisies

with three round thistles on the outer edges

is half buried inside a tin pitcher.

—What I will do after a minute is walk outside

to pluck the strings

and I will feel pleasure in the darkness

that will unite me forever with the sleepless Italians

and the waterless Greeks beside their stone jars.

In the morning we will sit on the metal chairs

and drink coffee and exchange dreams;

tonight I will sit there alone listening to trucks

go up the highway and getting mall glimpses

of the sky between the eaves and the black maples.

I will do two things before I go upstairs;

I will see if the thorn tree is still living

and I will put a blue trumpet in my shirt pocket.

On my way in I will practice a little

breathing, a little emptiness,

and I will listen to the crazy night bird

with my hand against the pillar and head bowed

so I can lie down in wisdom and luxury.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Those are some of my favorite poems.

Some favorite passages from Rand’s novels are here:

http://www.solopassion.com/node/3325

http://www.solopassion.com/node/1810#comment-25483

http://www.solopassion.com/node/2390#comment-30454

Her essays “Apollo 11” and “Kant versus Sullivan” also have fine literary quality.

I have not read much fiction, as my reading time has been consumed by non-fiction.

Some that I have treasured are:

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/East-of-E...42000656/?itm=1

James Baldwin, Another Country

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Another-C...79744719/?itm=1

Doris Lessing, Children of Violence

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearc....asp?SID=112011

Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/One-Hundr...60883287/?itm=1

Peter’s note below refers to Steinbeck’s “glory passage,” text I had earlier quoted in this post, but I think better to leave in treasure box.

Edited November 27, 2008 by Stephen Boydstun

[Reidy]

Mimi Reisel Gladstein has observed that the East of Eden passage looks suspiciously like a ripoff of Roark's courtroom speech.