Of Literature and Other Abstract Thoughts

One of my favourite exercises when I did impro at uni was one in which the instructor gave us, actors, a famous play each and asked us to open it on a random page. We, then, had to create and develop a scene on the spot using texts which, most of the time, were not related to each other. The format was changed slightly for actual performances, with the addition of adjectives, nouns or verbs thrown at us by a live and totally engaged audience who was willing to see whether we were able to craft a credible and, above all, comic scene out of the material provided. It was possibly one of the few instances in which the likes of Ionescu, Brecht and Molière shared the bill in the same show.

One of the outcomes of said exercise was that my reading habits slowly changed. Whereas up to then I was happy to read sequentially - and novels usually demand this approach, exceptions notwithstanding -, eventually I began to read volumes of poetry and short stories randomly. Sometimes, it would be the name of a particular author that would make me open the book on a particular page. Sometimes, I would close my eyes and let the book fall on my lap and work my way forward or backward from the passage selected. Obviously, it goes without saying that if it was a collection of short stories what I was devouring, I had to rewind to the beginning of the tale.

This approach was instrumental in my reading of The Bible, for instance. Bought for ten Cuban pesos in the 1992 Havana International Book Fair, the holy text arrived shrouded in the mystery of the forbidden and unexpected. The former because of an earlier clampdown by the government on religious people and the latter because no one could predict that one day the highly influential volume would be sharing the sales shelves with the likes of Guillén and Gabo.

Naturally, the first chapter I read was the Book of Genesis and straight away I realised that in order to really enjoy this cultural landmark, sequence had to give way to randomness. One reason for The Bible's popularity over the centuries is how its scriptural writings are laid out. They invite readers to sample bitesize texts and mull over them. Like Aesop and his fables, where you can jump from The Tortoise and the Hare to The Boy Who Cried Wolf; in The Bible you can go from reading about Solomon in the Books of Kings to learning about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.

Thus, random reading has been my companion in my literary jaunts for many years. For example, one night last August whilst vacationing in Wales, I was (again!) trudging through my old copy of Shakespeare's sonnets when I decided to close my eyes and let the book open on any page. The result was Sonnet 2, which until then had escaped my radar. It was a cool, fresh night, the caravan's windows were shut and the only sounds came from Mother Nature struggling to find a balance between summer and early autumn.

The lines called out to me from the word go. And I was not surprised in the least as to why. For someone about to hit the big four-o this year, the opening "When forty winters shall beseige thy brow..." carries the musky smell of experience, the joys and tribulations of a life well lived. Shakespeare's poem also points at continuity, at the bloodline, passed down from one generation to the next. From this perspective, his paean to middle age is one of the many rewards one encounters when reading randomly.

SONNET 2

When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tottered weed of small worth held:
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

© 2011

Next Post: ‘Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music’, to be published on Sunday 22nd May at 10am (GMT)

April, Poetry Month - Sonnet 105: Let not my love be called idolatry by William Shakepeare

'The Embrace' by Egon Schiele

Sonnet 105: Let not my love be called idolatry

Let not my love be called idolatry,

Nor my belovèd as an idol show,

Since all alike my songs and praises be

To one, of one, still such, and ever so.

Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,

Still constant in a wondrous excellence;

Therefore my verse to constancy confined,

One thing expressing, leaves out difference.

"Fair, kind, and true" is all my argument,

"Fair, kind, and true" varying to other words;

And in this change is my invention spent,

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.

Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.

Which three till now never kept seat in one.

Living in a Bilingual World (Aria)

To sound, or not to sound--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of letters

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That non-sound is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud letter's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When it itself might its quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those non-sounds we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus muteness does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Spanish 'h'! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

Copyright 2008