Les Mis
August 28, 2007
My current reading experience, with which I am completely captivated, is Victor Hugo’s classic: Les Misérables, the unabridged edition, no less. I haven’t quite finished it yet (on page 980 of 1,463), but I am very impressed with his vocabulary and originality of thought and phrase. Victor Hugo is a cut above all; above Patrick O’Brian, Alexandre Dumas, Fyodor Dostoyevosky, or any other author I’ve read (so far).
Let’s see if I can give you the flavor of Hugo’s prose. The context is an innocent girl and her unknown lover from a distance. They both have fallen in love with an idea of the other. They have never met nor exchanged a word.
This is from p. 932, “A Heart Beneath A Stone“:
The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being into God, this is love.
Love is the salutation of the angel to the stars.
How sad the soul when it is sad from love!
What a void is the absence of being who alone fills the world! Oh! How true that the beloved becomes God! One would understand that God might be jealous if the Father of all had not clearly made creation for the soul, and the soul for love!
One glimpse of a smile under a white crepe hat with lilac veil is enough for the soul to enter the palace of dreams.
God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a human being is to make her transparent.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
I suspect that passages like the above trigger vastly different emotions or images for different readers. Some of my reactions are that the theology is a tad confused but right on target for one who hardly ever thinks about God or his/her relationship to Him.
Another thought is that a modern popular author would deal with the same theme with a lot of gratuitous physical sex.
Another thought is that the passage deserves deeper thought than most moderns are prepared to give it. Most of our lives are filled with noise and cruft that effectively stifles much serious thought.
Can you, dear reader (if you in fact exist) be reached by this passage? I would love to see your comment below.
Dave, off the deep end and not holding his breath.
P.S. Another little quote:
Thoughtful minds make little use of this expression: the happy and the unhappy. In this world, clearly the vestibule of another, no one is happy.
The true divisionof humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.
Hell is other people at breakfast (Sartre)
August 16, 2007
I wonder why I liked “Caring for Your Introvert?” Thanks to Michael Kruse who thanked Wendy Bailey for finding this article. My name is Dave, and I am an introvert.
Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?
Of course you do. As for the opposite end of the personality scale,
Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.
Here’s one more quote, and then you can jolly well click through and read it for yourself.
Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts’ Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say “I’m an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush.”
Dave, feeling it’s time to shush himself.
A Tragic Day
August 8, 2007
From one of my favorite blog destinations comes this poignant story. Although I don’t have the same sense of family about the family car that Toby does, I can understand. Why do you think so many of us men get all sappy and teary about their cars and trucks?
A Classical Presbyterian: A Tragic Day: The real cost of family life
Not that the ladies don’t have to give up some of their own cherished habits and lifestyle choices to live with us men, I’ll grant you. My wife has had to give up plenty to put up with the likes of me in her life, like floral sheets and fluffy pillows neatly arranged on couches!
But, it still hurts! Oh, how it hurts…
But I will stay strong. For the family, I will hide my suffering and put on the stiff upper lip, the stoic mask of perseverance. That which does not kill me can only make me stronger, right?
Dave, not a complete stranger to 4-wheel worship.
Shank’s Mare
August 7, 2007
Have you walkers among us ever wondered why you walk? It used to be that one walked from here to there because of a lack of other transportation. Today, many walk to improve their health, meaning they are worried that they may not live forever. In this blog article, Larry does some musing on the subject and decides that he walks for his mental health.
Riverside Rambles — by Larry Ayers » Shank’s Mare
Some walk or run for their physical health. I’m aware of the benefits to the cardiovascular system, but I walk for my mental health. Staying home you are surrounded by predictability, while on a walk you open yourself to what Thoreau called “the influx of novelty”. Televised entertainment and news are pale, feeble replicas of the experience of actually encountering the unexpected “out in the world”.
To back up his thesis, he points us to an essay by a naturalist, one William Holland.
The demand is forever that exercise, if taken at all, shall have an aim ulterior to itself, in the pursuit of which the upbuilding of the system shall take place as a collateral incident. The popularity of golf is due to the fact that it answers the demand of a great class of persons to be amused while they are being invigorated. It is one of the least objectionable forms, in which the pill of exercise is sugar- coated for consumption by a race which is slowly but surely working itself to death in office, mill and factory. Walking for its own sake is pursued to a far greater extent in England and in Germany than in America. We may well learn to imitate our cousins on the eastern side of the Atlantic in this regard.
Wwhy do you walk? I tend to agree with Larry (well, I do sometimes). My walks are my time to think on God’s workmanship and thank Him for it. Life is good, even though I no longer expect to live forever.
Dave, shuffling down the pike, thinking and praying.
Let’s hear it for the comma
August 1, 2007
Commas are disappearing, according to this article. I was taught that a comma was a little pause in the flow of a sentence to let the reader catch his breath or scratch an itch. Our fast-paced lives need more than a few commas, it seems to me.
Samuelson: Why Dont We Use commas Anymore? - Newsweek Robert Samuelson - MSNBC.com
I have always liked commas, but I seem to be in a shrinking minority. The comma is in retreat, though it is not yet extinct. In text messages and e-mails, commas appear infrequently, and then often by accident (someone hits the wrong key). Even on the printed page, commas are dwindling. Many standard uses from my childhood (after, for example, an introductory prepositional phrase) have become optional or, worse, have been ditched.If all this involved only grammar, I might let it lie. But the comma’s sad fate is, I think, a metaphor for something larger: how we deal with the frantic, can’t-wait-a-minute nature of modern life. The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes PAUSE. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and then move on. We don’t have time for that. No pauses allowed. In this sense, the comma’s fading popularity is also social commentary.
I like the idea of the comma as metaphhor. I need more commas in my life these days. The problem is, I usually don’t know where to put them. Will you tell me where to put my commas, politely?
Dave, who probably should look for more important things to worry about.
