The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Lord Henry's Vulgarity

"We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to."

"The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer."

Ha ha, I thought that was a bit amusing.

"To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies."

"Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play."

"In the present case, what is it that has really happened? Some one has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience. It would have made me in love with love for the rest of my life."

"No, she will never come to life. She has played her last part. But you must think of that lonely death in the tawdry dressing-room simply as a strange lurid fragment from some Jacobean tragedy, as a wonderful scene from Webster, or Ford, or Cyril Tourneur. The girl never really lived, and so she has never really died. To you at least she was always a dream, a phantom that flitted through Shakespeare's plays and left them lovelier for its presence, a reed through which Shakespeare's music sounded richer and more full of joy. The moment she touched actual life, she marred it, and it marred her, and so she passed away."

But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are."

Lord Henry’s life-view was very much depicted in the things he said. Of course, he probably didn’t even believe all the things that came out of his mouth- it was only a wish for him to make it be so. For instance, his “realism” so to speak, was just a form of defense against reality’s cruelties. The fact that he advised Dorian so coldly that Sylvia’s death not only was a beautiful thing in the end, but that Dorian was “lucky” to have such a tragedy happen because of him. Lord Henry’s realism was a way for him to distance himself emotionally not only from the situation at hand but also everything in general. This allowed him to not be affected- note- outwardly. Inwardly he was dead, he didn’t have any joy left, because reason does not bring one joy but a fact. Why else would he say, “We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."? A marvelous experience is to be kept in the past, not go back to it as a direct source of happiness, because that is unnatural and beats the purpose of a memory. Again, so sorry to bring Dostoevsky up again, but he referred to this specific thing: And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him!"

And I call this a kind of vulgarity because as Lord Henry says, "It is only the sacred things that are worth touching, Dorian," because on the contrary- the sacred is to be left alone; not to be analyzed to death, to make it rise after it has died, and reduce it to a mere combination of accidental occurrences.

Lord Henry's Sincerity

"Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies."

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. . ."

"There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love."

"But really, Dorian, how different Sibyl Vane must have been from all the women one meets! There is something to me quite beautiful about her death. I am glad I am living in a century when such wonders happen. They make one believe in the reality of the things we all play with, such as romance, passion, and love."

"Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it."

The process of it is love- not the object it is bestowed upon.

"Ah, Dorian, how happy you are! What an exquisite life you have had! You have drunk deeply of everything. You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. You are still the same."

Even though he may not have done it on purpose, Lord Henry’s sincerity does come out a couple of times throughout the story. Unconsciously he tells the reader something about his past life that has changed him. He too had experienced the irrationality and chaos of love- which one cannot reason himself out of. He too, was innocent once, when he was capable of loving (for instance when he married his wife whom he misses). I think life disappointed him too often for him to keep his faith in the optimism of life, while Dorian in the beginning was full of faith and optimism.

Lord Henry’s Life-Lessons

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals."

"Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century."

So true. All ordinary people die with their century, for they never make themselves stand out in time. They are incapable. But that is not to say that the common man is worthless- on the contrary, he is quite essential. The common man brings us back to the essence of society- and he is undoubtedly more good than the intellectual with all of his knowledge. More humble at least.

"People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity."

Interesting, that they give the advice they themselves need.

“A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize."

"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."

"Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race."

"(...) unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality."

I actually agree- I don't know, the noble type of person are quite annoying because they're doing what they're supposed to be doing.

"Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons. It always means that they have a history." :)

Premonitions

"Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul."

"The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience."

"A feeling of pain crept over him as he thought of the desecration that was in store for the fair face on the canvas."

"If thought could exercise its influence upon a living organism, might not thought exercise an influence upon dead and inorganic things? Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?"

"His own soul was looking out at him from the canvas and calling him to judgment."

"Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the senses, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment."

Curious- that’s what society teaches us today.

"I thought of telling the prophet that art had a soul, but that man had not."

"There was purification in punishment."

The main concept/theme in this story is the vital connection between sin and its consequences on the physical. Dorian was exempt from the physical suffering that sin inevitably brings, “If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.” Dorian experienced the “experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.” He was exempt from the outer consequences. Of course, that didn’t really help him in the end, as Basil prophesized, “"One has to pay in other ways but money." "What sort of ways, Basil?" "Oh! I should fancy in remorse, in suffering, in . . . well, in the consciousness of degradation." This “consciousness” is so vivid for the “wretched man” that has to see himself degrade physically. And yet, even Dorian experienced the same process internally. First, he started being paranoid, then indifferent, and then entered into a cycle of reason and guilt. My question is, how did he benefit from this outward mask? Because honestly, I’m thinking these physical consequences are easier to bear, as he himself declares before he changes his mind, YET AGAIN. “There was purification in punishment.” I think that the “wretched man” is more lucky in this situation than Dorian with his outer mask. The sinner consciously sins, knowing what he’s in for. The sinner gets to the point where he accepts his physical consequences. That is why, when one looks at a prostitute- she isn’t happy but she isn’t in denial. They are more realistic than the average person, because the consciously deal with sin first-hand. This consciousness is essential for the survival of the sinner. Dorian did not survive because he avoided his consciousness. And this consciousness was consequently the portrait (a physical thing). Having his beauty made it easier for him to deny his reality, and that is what destroyed him. The fact that he murdered just out of impulse to “terminate the problem” added to his inevitable suicide. If he had done that consciously, (prepared for it and so on) he would have been okay with the murder. But, like Lord Henry said, he didn’t have the right personality to be a murder, his so-called innocence and nature recoiled from this act instinctively. His whole being rejected this action- and so- he could not have reasoned his way out. Lord Henry on the other hand- he reasoned about things before-hand, slowly killing his innocence. He became no more than a live dead man blabbering about this and that. Lord Henry killed his conscience by reason, while Dorian tried to kill it through denial.

I want to use a very interesting example that I have thought of before- sort of like an example of the anti-Dorian, if that makes any sense. Jesus Christ, as some of you have heard, took the others’ sins on himself. You see, sin or vice, as it is focused on in this book, does come with pleasure (which is only what Dorian wanted). And of course, it also comes with consequences. Jesus Christ experienced the consequences of sin (physical and in the end spiritual) but did not experience the pleasure of it. So in an affair, instead of going through the wonderful play of “oh should we, and yes we should because we are made to love each other” delightful reasoning, and just SKIPPING all of the marvelous satisfaction this person can offer and so on, and landing right into the “Oh you love your wife more than me, and I don’t ever want to see you again!” (or however these things end up). I mean, that is very unpleasant isn’t it? Well that is sort of what DID NOT happen to Dorian. He wanted just the “satisfaction” part but not the consequences. And yet, the consequences are essential to vice, because it makes one get over them. Dorian could not get over his sin, because it was stuck inside of him- and only he knew what hell he was living with. That must be terribly lonely.

Dorian's Character

"He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been shallow and unworthy."

His love changed so suddenly. So bipolar. He only loved her for her art. Without it she was nothing. Maybe he was in love with the idea she was trying to portray.

"His unreal and selfish love would yield to some higher influence, would be transformed into some nobler passion, and the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all."

Wanted to force himself to be good.

"You don't know the danger I am in, and there is nothing to keep me straight. She would have done that for me. She had no right to kill herself. It was selfish of her."

Even after she died! What an egoist!

"He would not think any more of what she had made him go through, on that horrible night at the theatre. When he thought of her, it would be as a wonderful tragic figure sent on to the world's stage to show the supreme reality of love."

"The portrait was to bear the burden of his shame: that was all."

"Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?"

"He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs."

As if it wasn’t himself.

"It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood."

The main idea of this story.

"She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost."

He loved her for her innocence.

"Then he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery."

So if he did have the consequences physically he would've abstained?

"For curiosity's sake he had tried the denial of self."

One cannot repent rationally.

Dorian’s character is of course portrayed as very fickle. I think Wilde is trying to show that one cannot repent without the help of consequences. If a child is never to be told “no” and “go to the corner” (or whatever the up-to-date child punishment is)- then he will never learn. Just as Dorian kept running and running farther into desperation, because he was not being corrected. In this case, I think correction would be the things that people would have seen if his sin would have marked him physically. He would have experienced shame and rejection FROM SOCIETY- which is what would have turned him. A sinner is rarely so devoted to his sin that he would excommunicate himself consciously. Someone would have looked at him one day and say “Dorian, what have you done? Who have you become?” Coincidentally- that is what Basil basically told him- unfortunately. I think the significance of Basil is that he, as an artist, looked at the person’s soul and not the outward appearance. That is why Basil painted Dorian so beautifully, because at the time, Dorian’s soul really was beautiful.

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Kindle Edition

And so after this very long post, I would like to end with a wonderful poem my very good friend, Lisa Petersson wrote:

Dorian Gray,
Is dead.
It was not until they examined the rings,
That they could proclaim,
And in so doing myself inform,

that Dorian Gray is dead.


I ran my hands over the fragile loom.
Felt the threads,
Tried to discern the meaning of the tapestry
Inversed.
With framework faded,
In dusty, dank air,
The strings rest suspended in infinite lozenges.
Each thread drips from the looms
Twisting, slightly, from tiny, curling breezes
That drift and meander through the empty room.

My fingers glide over the bumps and twists,
Sometimes pressing deep
Into the fabric, pulling,
Looking for a thread.
A thread that will reveal to me the intricate picture, a thread that needs only to be pushed aside to bring me great clarity.

I brush across fine gold
And glide along soft wool
But no.
For the smallest glimmer is not less crucial than the strongest tendon, the very life-giving tendon, of art.
And so,
none will give way.

I must return,
And try my luck with this fickle portrait another day.


I avoid a mirror as I leave;
I shall never see one again, I think.

But the implications of dear Henry are possibly correct:
I may view myself in a mirror,
Providing I do not fall into the pool.

The Mark On the Wall by Virginia Woolf

"[...] one may hope, will be laughed into the dustbin where phantoms go."

"How peaceful it is down here, rooted in the centre of the world gazing up through the grey waters, with their sudden gleams of light, and their reflections (...)"

What a wonderful sense of freedom.

"All the time I'm dressing up the figure of myself in my own mind, lovingly, stealthily, not openly adoring it, for if I did that, I should catch myself out, and stretch my hand at once for a book in self-protection. Indeed, it is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed in any longer."

"As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes. And the novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the description of reality more and more out of their stories,"

We are all living in our own made-up realities.

"I understand Nature's game--her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action--men, we assume, who don't think. Still, there's no harm in putting a full stop to one's disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall."


"One by one the fibers snap beneath the immense cold pressure of the earth, then the last storm comes, and, falling, the highest branches drive deep into the ground gain. Even so, life isn't done with; there are a million patient, watchful lives still for a tree, all over the world, in bedrooms, in ships, on the pavement, living rooms, where men and women sit after tea, smoking cigarettes. It is full of peaceful thoughts, happy thoughts, this tree."

I think Woolf is trying to portray the delicious feeling of just soaking up delightful, floating thoughts. This "tree" represents, like she herself said, "happy thoughts" which entertain the mind. "I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle, I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts." These thoughts grow in our idle thinking.

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Before someone put Virginia Woolf in a good light for me- I first heard of her and this story, The Mark on the Wall. Of course, I'm sure, like many others, they first hear that she was this crazy writer. And her writings such as this one would certainly seem to lean towards that. However, I don't think so. She reminds me of many of Dostoevsky's characters; when they ramble on and on incoherently. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that- for who doesn't do that? When one just sits there and thinks, it happens automatically. And actually, I don't think it's as incoherent as one may think. What did she try to say with the tree? Because somehow everything comes together in the end.

Virginia Woolf constructs the bridge between reality and our idle thoughts- and brings it to light. "How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, liftint it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it..." Our thoughts manipulate reality in some way, and so, reality ceases to be cold, hard facts, but a creation of our imagination. And she goes on to say that, in fact, her made up reality is more real than actual "facts"."Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon it, I feel that I have grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality which at once turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the shadows of shades. Here is something definite, something real." Throughout the story she tries to balance her thoughts and this real, definite mark on the wall. In the end, Woolf brings us back to "reality" and ends by saying that this actual mark was not a mark the whole time, but a snail. All of these thoughts, concentrating on this one thing; were they all worthless? And I think she already answered it through the symbol of the tree, that these happy thoughts keep on growing without being affected by reality. Our mind will constantly produce them, and soon, they will spill over beyond the looking glass into our existence consisting of "hard separate facts."

And so, I want to end with this:

"How shocking, and yet how wonderful it was to discover that these real things, Sunday luncheons, Sunday walks, country houses, and tablecloths were not entirely real, were indeed half phantoms, and the damnation which visited the disbeliever in them was only a sense of illegitimate freedom."

--
Published by Halcyon Classics Series

Sarrasine by Balzac

"A good man, we had agreed, must at any rate be honest, passionate, and unworldly."

"'If we hadn’t learnt to read,' she said bitterly, 'we might still have been bearing children in ignorance and that I believe was the happiest life after all.'"

"She was the type of that hidden poesy, the link which connects all the arts and which always eludes those who seek it."

"By virtue of one of the strangest of nature's freaks, the thought half draped in black, which was tossing about in my brain, emerged from it and stood before me personified, living; it had come forth like Minerva from Jupiter's brain, tall and strong; it was at once a hundred years old and twenty-two; it was alive and dead."

"He saw before him at that moment the ideal beauty whose perfections he had hitherto sought here and there in nature,"

"He did not applaud, he said nothing; he felt a mad impulse, a sort of frenzy of the sort that seizes us only at the age when there is a something indefinably terrible and infernal in our desires."

"He had had such exquisite pleasure, or perhaps had suffered so, that his life had flowed away like water from an overturned vessel."

Pleasure and suffering go hand in hand.

"He met La Zambinella, spoke to her, entreated her, exhausted a thousand years of life and happiness with her, placing her in all imaginable situations, trying the future with her, so to speak."

"Sarrasine drew his mistress in all poses: he drew her unveiled, seated, standing, reclining, chaste, and amorous--interpreting, thanks to the delirious activity of his pencil, all the fanciful ideas which beset our imagination when our thoughts are completely engrossed by a mistress."

He created his own imagination visually. Oddly combining the real and unreal.

"The golden age of love, during which we enjoy our own sentiments, and in which we are almost as happy by ourselves,"

Interesting. Solitude and the impression is just as important as being with them.

"To talk of danger to a man in love is to sell him pleasure.

"I am an accursed creature, doomed to understand happiness, to feel it, to desire it, and like many, many others, compelled to see it always fly from me."

"I shall never cease to think of that imaginary woman when I see a real woman."

"'I shall always have in my memory a divine harpy who will bury her talons in all my manly sentiments, and who will stamp all other women with a seal of imperfection. Monster! you, who can give life to nothing, have swept all women off the face of the earth.'"

He's stuck with that idea forever.
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Woah! That was a very surprising ending! I cannot believe this was a story about a "trap". Even though it was all for a joke. It's so interesting how he imagined that Zambinella was a woman, and insipired all of these passions, and yet he didn't figure out that it was actually a man. I mean, what is Balzac trying to say with all of this? Because in the end, wouldn't it eventually be revealed that Zambinella would actually be a man? I think Balzac is trying to say something about the blindness of passion...maybe that Sarrasine saw what he wished so desperately to see. He developed his strongest passions for Zambinella when he was AWAY from her. Therefore, I think Balzac is trying to say that it didn't really matter who Zambinella really was, but what Sarrasine thought she was. This is stressing the importance of our mind, and what a large role it plays in the process of "falling in love". The imagination satisfies so much that the person that first stimulated them ceases to be important. It was just a stimulus, a trigger, but then gets lost as our fantasies reach new realms with a being that ceases to resemble the original. It makes me think how unfair it is to that being. But when one falls in love, doesn't the imagination eventually cool down, and starts to resemble the real? For instance, Virginia Woolf's Night and Day- the interesting balance between what one imagines in the person, and what it is. In the end, Ralph cooled his delusions and finally enjoyed the real. Well, as best as he could. The ending of this story though- I have no idea what to make of it. Sarrasine swears that he will forever uphold the imagine of woman he had made in his mind, and that the real woman for him is forever destroyed. Tragic, but the tone and the way Zambinella bows his head in despair, strikes me as rather comic? Or maybe that's just my odd way of thinking. I don't know, but personally, I thought the ending was rather humorous.

Anyway, Balzac makes a very interesting point- and of course, so eloquently. That ending- I think it depicts so much of who he was in real life.

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This is a very nice commentary on the book, mixed with a little bit of French, saying that of course the French original is much better. Which, I can imagine, is certainly true. Too bad my French is horrendous, or I would try it. (link)

This post (readear) says that the audio-which links it to-is extremely funny.
I listened to some parts of it, starting with the line "Suppose I were not a woman" which strikes me as extremely hilarious now that I know the ending! He proceeded to respond, "Would you venture to say now that you are not a woman?" Oh, little did he know! Zambinella's helpless voice at the end, and Sarrasine's question "Have you any sisters that resemble you?" depicts the marvelous genius of Balzac's wit. Shall we say "lol"? One needs to listen to this after one has read the book: makes it much more enjoyable.

other links:

An analysis of Sarrasine by Ronald Barthes (link) from which this Bibliophil references.

This post (making friends and enemies) goes on to further talk about Barthes' argument in which he says to separate the Author from the creation (in his work Death of the Author), as he talks about Sarrasine and "who" is actually speaking in the story. As it says in the post, "When, in the passage, the character dotes over her perceived womanliness, Barthes challenges his own readers to determine who is speaking, and about what. "Is it Balzac the author professing 'literary' ideas on femininity? Is it universal wisdom? Romantic psychology? … We can never know." Writing, "the destruction of every voice," defies adherence to a single interpretation or perspective."

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Produced by Dagny; and John Bickers

The Black City by Sand

Although in the beginning and at the end the translation got a bit annoying- too contemporary for my taste (translated by Tina Kover)- the story was pretty interesting. Not amazingly written though, since I didn't write down any quotes. The ending was also too perfect... I did like that the old man lived in delusion and everyone protected it.

The story was way too realistic for me, because I expected something very conceptual from Sand- like her Lelia. I guess she was trying to make a point?

Valentine by George Sand

"The poetic atmosphere of the fields, to which he was so susceptible, excited to delirium the intensity of the unfathomed cravings which were consuming him."

"She fancied that she could see behind that curtain, which the wind blew back and forth across the window, the whole brilliant, fairy-like scene of her younger years, the tower of the old manor-house, the venerable oaks in the great park, the white goat she had loved, the field in which she had plucked corn-flowers."

I often catch myself in reveries just staring at the way the light hits the wall just so- or the spiderweb floating in the small breeze that escaped into my room.

"[...] they regretfully left that spot, where their hearts had spoken secretly but forcibly to each other."

***
"He wept for the dream which had taken him away for an instant from the world, and had given him more joy in a few moments of illusion then he had known in a whole life-time of reality."

And that is what it means to be a romantic: to yearn after the unreal, while being unhappy with the real.
"Must we part with every ray of sunlight in order to assure the solidity of our own walls of ice?"

We have to extinguish any type of light in order to live in the darkness...

"Since have loved Valentine I have been another man; I feel that I exist. The dark veil which shrouded my destiny is torn away on every side. I am no longer alone on earth; I am no longer distressed by my nothingness (...)"

"Those fleeting moments, cast into their lives like a dream, formed already in their eyes a whole existence, which it seemed to them must last forever."

So little, and yet seems so eternal!

"He dared not even utter the world love, which frightens even love itself."

It's very odd how something so misused and misunderstood can lose its virginity by categorizing and labeling it. It is not mean to be labeled, but to let be. Flow and wander, not written on a greeting card.

"He considered that love was profaned bv taking from it the veil of mystery. He would have liked to encompass the women with so much respect that no one would know the object of her choice, and that people would be afraid of offending her by naming him to her."

Such a different view from the society of the time, and more so even now. Society kills this beautiful mystery by having love "placarded at the door of the mayors' office and in the church." The world placarded completely describes the vulgarity of it all- there isn't any delicacy about it. But one must learn to compromise! Unless one would like to be completely secluded- one must live among society. Benedict hinted at this seclusion a couple of times, and it is nice in theory- but one cannot avoid society completely- or the lovers will end up killing each other. I am saying this because that's exactly what happened in Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. They had fled from society, and yet, although it was supposed to be perfect, she killed herself because of jealousy. Paradise doesn't exist for a couple, because the flaws are too great to be ignored in total seclusion. At least, society provides a momentary distraction- a distraction that is necessary to be able to admire the one one loves. And also seeing the other among society can be quite charming- for society conveniently offers obstacles, which greatly strengthens a relationship in bloom.






















Arnolfini Wedding Portrait (1434)


"If the soul is not an empty breath which the wind blows away, mine will live always near you."

This acknowledges the fragile state of humanity, and how nothing is under our control.

"It was a fatal moment, sure to come sooner or later. It is most presumptuous to hope to overcome a passion, when two people see each other everyday, and are only twenty years old."

It is as if the inevitability of it all mocks these two- as if to say "Why are you even trying? How ridiculous you are!"

"Their life was a perpetual combat, a storm constantly renewed, a bliss without bounds, and a hell from which there was no issue."

Is such a "storm" healthy and natural? Passion is violent by nature, but is there a limit to that violence? Can it destroy just the same way it created?

***
"This Valentine, naturally calm and reserved, had become passionate to the point of delirium as a result of a combination of pitiless misfortunes and seductions which had developed within her unsuspected powers of resisting and of loving. The longer and more resolute her resistance, the more violent her fall. The more strength she had mastered to combat passion, the more elements of force and duration did passion find in her."

The amazing thing is that this was all within her- repressed. It is truly beyond our powers- to combat such a passion...the more one represses what needs to come out, the more trouble it will cause when it finally does- it will escape either way.

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Horrible ending! It reminds me of Romeo and Juliet- how they did give in to their passions- although with a lot less guilt. Valentine was not constituted for this sort of "escape" to the point where she was "fanatical in her impiety". The most devoted monk could be the most treacherous demon, if rebellion builds inside of his breast. If the being rebels against the constant repression, then it will shockingly when it does escape out of mere exhaustion and vengeance. I did like the complete realistic plot of it all- and the way it was described- who knows? This story might've happened thousands of times in different forms. For who hasn't been under some kind of passion or another?

There is an interesting connection between weddings and society, it being- society dictating weddings, and the concept of marriage in general.

Anyways I have no idea how I found this article, but here is portrayed the ridiculous nature of weddings, and my favorite being:























I guess this is emphasizing the need to publicly display something, which obviously isn't just love. These "themes" as simple as they can be, make a big deal about something that is sacred. But of course, society, as the society from Sand's time, feels the need to advertise. Anyways- I found this very entertaining.

Poor Liza by Karamzin

"He read novels arid idylls; he had a rather lively imagination, and often transported himself in thought back to those times (real or unreal, when, if one is to believe poets, everyone wandered carefree through the meadows, bathed in clear springs, kissed like turtledoves, rested under the roses and the myrtle, and spent all their days in happy idleness."

"It's a wonder, a wonder, my friend, that I could have lived quietly and happily before I knew you!"

How a whole lifetime can seem such a waste of time, how we can forget all those years filled with thoughts and dreams, filled with seconds.

I absolutely loved the marvelous descriptions of the pure thoughts, on both sides, how each wanted to be pure to the other. Especially the young man- unexpectedly- he too wanted to live like "brother and sister". And yet, Karamzin wisely asks, "Foolish young man! Do you know your own heart? Can you always answer for your actions? Does reason always rule your emotions?"

The dynamics of their love shifted after they had "intercourse", saying sex seems to almost insult their "accident", and they neither "made love" since they weren't emotionally ready or consciously to do so. Intercourse has changed everything,

"Platonic love had given way to those feelings of which he could not be proud, and which were no longer hew to him."

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No wonder Karamzin is thought to be one of the first Russian romantic writers. Similar to the style of Gogol, Karamzin binds the reader to the character, and creates this odd relationship. The way he asks theoretical and rhetorical questions, as if asking the reader why a certain action of the character took place, that is so attractive. We are no longer people in the 21st century reading about a character in a book, but conceptually we actually meet. That may sound odd, but I feel very attached to these characters.

Poor Liza! And so many have been betrayed. I thought it was interesting the way Karamzin first described Erast- only commenting on his appearance, that he was "nice looking." Reminds me of Balzac's Daughter of Eve. Female temptation is man.

Something I found while Googleing the book:

Indiana by George Sand

It took me a long time before I could finally get my hands on this book. I first read a cruel excerpt of this in a book about George Sand, and it ended right where they threw themselves off the cliff. Oh, the despair! I was dying to know what happened to them!


















"[...] everything was linked to a certain ability to create delusions, to an ardent aspiration towards something that was nor memory, nor expectation, nor hope, nor regret, but desire in all its consuming intensity. She lived like this for weeks and months beneath the tropical sky, loving, knowing, cherishing only a shadow, going only more deeply into a dream."

Maybe due to this "dreaming", she was all the more desperate to give herself to the embodiment of this ideal- or what she thought was her ideal. Do dreams bear desperation?

"She made for herself a world apart, which consoled her fro the one in which she was forced to live."

"Who can relate the dreams of the poet before his emotion has cooled so that he can write them down for us?"

He still loses something...he distorts it so that the mind's of cattle can criticize it. This sick reality is so cruel- this process of transferring from the dream to the practical.

"It was with these thoughts in mind that I asked you to put on this white dress; it's your wedding-dress, and that rock jutting out over the lake is the altar that awaits us."

Morbid romanticism.

"[...] and how the things of this life appear in their true light just when we are about to put an end to them."

And how miserably ironic. As if destiny mocks the pathetic attempt, letting us know that we still don't know the whole story. Oh, to live as if it was our last day! How different that would be!

"[...] there are memories we take the sine off by recounting them."

Memories can be pried open too much by the increasing dependence of the joy they provided. Then, they cease to become memories and instead turn into a source of a high, just like any other drug. This distorts their essence.
"What can the heart that has not suffered understand of happiness?"
One simple word: contrast!

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Which was stronger?- Ralph or Indiana? Indiana truly did sacrifice herself for most of her life, but then gave vent to her passions and wished to escape her vitues- claiming she deserved this freeedom. While Ralph had all the virtues of Indiana, and yet buried it within himself. I think Ralph was stronger because he didn't expect a reward unlike Indiana. He thought himself beneath a reward, giving him a noble character. Indiana broke and gave in to "temptation" over and over, even George Sand called her character weak.

The concept of suicide, and discovering this world once again is extremely interesting. (Of course, I only mean this from a literary point of view, since suicide in real life is of course tragic.) For only when we have nothing left to lose do we have everything to gain. To get to the pont where verything is viewed as temporary and insignificant-to treasure nothing-that requires a lot of suffering. And yet, when we let go of life, then we can truly grasp it, then one can become part of the "harmony", to quote Rilke. When one takes himself OUT of his existence, only then can he truly admire and observe it. But easily said, when one has things to treasure, one has the luxury of looking at this as a concept (even from a literary point of view), as a possible choice. How does one let go of one's treasures consciously, without any suffering required? Is it even possible, and if so, is it really sincere? It is so sad, because being "sober"one desires this uncaring attitude, and yet, it cannot soberly be achieved. It will remain an idea, something vague...

Suicide as a literary concept has a very romantic feel to it- a couple of books come to mind such as Balzac's Lost Illusions. The poet, through despair, knows there isn't a way out, and so- coward that he is (because they usually are cowards, and that's what makes them passive)- and weak, he gives in to the ultimate lure of the ideal suicide. And of course it is very tempting, to take control of the world and show fate that they too can choose their destiny, even though in reality they cannot. But after all, that is the charm of the poet, his weakness and loneliness makes him sensitive to Genius. I don't condemn them at all- actually I personally think that for the literary poet, happiness is impossible, and suicide is their only suitable death. Because there is this wonderful drama and tragedy about it, that gives their death such feeling and emotion. Which is so individual, depicting one last time the trace of their existence.

I was curious what the blogging world would say on such a topic: suicide as a literary concept. This blog was interesting, giving a historical view on this concept through literature. Then, unexpectedly, Wikipedia comes up with "Suicide in 19th Century Russian Literature" and there is Gogol! I did read the Nevsky Prospekt, and am very surprised that I haven't commented on it. Poor Liza by Karamzin was already on my to-read list. Must get to it! (I actually found it here in pdf format!)

In art, I found a marvelous blog that features this excellent collection of paintings/images on the topic of suicide. Tastefully picked.

My favorite, and appropriately French, The Suicide by Édouard Manet: