Sir Walter Ralegh: Poet, soldier, explorer

"Raleigh's First Pipe in England" - an illustration included in Frederick William Fairholt's "Tobacco, its history and associations". [Public Domain] via Wikimedia.

Poems by Walter Raleigh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I must admit I had no idea Sir Walter Ralegh (alternatively spelt Raleigh) was a poet. This volume is interesting as it outlines the purpose of such poetry as a form of "appropriate" court communication that would otherwise be unacceptable in ordinary speech.

The book includes some of the poetic responses to Ralegh's work, especially from Queen Elizabeth and Ralegh's arch-rival, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. These two engaged in literary as well as political struggles. From what I have read about Ralegh, he was a key figure in the English Renaissance, and many members of the aristocracy dabbled in poetry. 

This book includes some of Ralegh's translations of classical Greek and Roman works into rhyming poetry, no doubt reflecting his education at Oxford (which was never completed). The ABAB rhyme scheme was quite common in many of the works, but several of the poems include ABBA and ABABCC rhyme schemes in the stanzas. 

I was surprised that such rigid rhyme schemes were used and the book develops a sort of rhythm that only appears to be interrupted in the section where poems "attributed" to Ralegh seem to miss a few beats. 

Two poems by Sir Henry Wotton, "The Character of a Happy Life" (p. 109) and "Upon the Sudden Restraint of the Earl of Somerset, then Falling from Favour" (p. 111) are worthy of quoting (respectively):

How happy is he born and taught, That serveth not another's will... This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise or fear to fall, Lord of himself, though not of lands, And, having nothing, yet hath all.

And:

Virtue is the roughest way, But proves at night a bed of down.

I sense some Stoic training in these lines. Wotton was a member of the House of Commons and an English diplomat before becoming provost of Eton College. 

From this small snippet of history, there is little wonder that Shakespeare emerged during this period, often regarded as the height of the English Renaissance. 

It was interesting to see Ralegh's use of smoke (from tobacco) and smoking pipes in his poems. Surprising, too, that Shakespeare died two years before Ralegh, supposedly from drinking, whereas Ralegh was beheaded. 

One of the many smoking stories about Ralegh suggests that he was nonchalantly smoking his pipe in the window of his cell in the Tower of London as he watched Essex being executed. 

I have generally avoided this period in history as I am yet to do a cover to cover reading of Thomas Hobbes Leviathan, and I am dreading a reading of the tome of Shakespeare's complete collection that is sitting there waiting for me when I can read without distraction. 

Yet all roads in English literature are leading to this period in history, and it was a pleasant surprise to learn something new about someone I had only ever known in the history books as a soldier and a maritime explorer.

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Lessons from Boy's Own Macabre: How not to be a twerp

Boy's Own Paper masthead, circa 1890s [Public Domain] via Flickr.

The Most Dangerous Game and Other Stories of Menace and Adventure by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sometimes I fear reading short story collections like this are little more than entertainment. Masculine, turn of the century Boy's Own macabre entertainment in this case. But writing about one's reading has its own kind of spiral effect, where learning about the authors leads from one thing to another. 

I purchased this book online because it listed Hemingway as the author and I had never heard of "The Most Dangerous Game". This title piece is actually by Richard Connell, and reminds me of Scott Fitzgerald's "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz". Hemingway's work was "The Killers" (with the racism appropriately edited out), which seemed somewhat out of place with the other authors' work. 

Five of the eight authors were all new to me, but I am pleased to own a copy of Jack London's "To Build a Fire" which I had only heard previously in a YouTube video narration.

Each of the stories has some form of inevitability as its theme, especially Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", the residue of which is still clinging to my thoughts. Kurt Vonnegut (another author I am yet to get around to) wrote in his 2005 work, Man Without a Country (p. 17):

Do you know what a twerp is? ...I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read the greatest American short story, which is ‘Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ by Ambrose Bierce.

In the same book, Vonnegut (p. 18) writes:

‘Socialism’ is no more an evil word than ‘Christianity.’ Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition.

He sounds like my kind of author.

H.G. Wells' "The Country of the Blind" was also new to me, but of course I have read his work previously. The others, which include H.H. Munroe (Saki), W.W. Jacobs, and Carl Stephenson are all freshly discovered and open up for me an entirely unexplored area of turn of the century literature.

Sometimes, taking a break from the classics and the odd tome is necessary to give me the feeling that I am getting somewhere with my reading. On writing about my reading, I find many lessons that I would have missed had I just consumed, rather than digested, the work.

The sense of inevitability that permeates this collection is not of the hopeless sense: sometimes we are just lucky. But the themes mirror a key Stoic lesson about luck. When someone else is unlucky, remember - Fortune was aiming at me.

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On Taste, Sound, and Smell: Calvino's unfinished business

Skunks rayé ou mouffette. Photo by Tomfriedel [CC BY 3.0] via Wikimedia.

Under The Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My experience of Calvino is quite limited, but after reading his Why Read the Classics, learning more about Calvino's influence from Harold Bloom, and more recently purchasing The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel, I have decided to immerse myself in Calvino's work. 

In Under the Jaguar Sun, Calvino begins what was planned to be a novel on the five senses. Unfortunately, Calvino died before he was able to complete sight and touch, but the three short stories on taste, sound, and smell survive and work as stand alone pieces, or pieces on a theme. 

The first story (the title piece) covers taste and tells the story of a couple of gastro-tourists discovering the link between taste and ancient Central American human sacrifice and cannibalism. 

The second piece, "A King Listens", had me shivering with imagery so vivid as to be on the edge of surreal. 

The third piece, "The Name, the Nose", was my favourite, although I can barely work out what was meant to have happened. This is, so far, the most gritty of Calvino's work I have read. 

It reminded me of Bukowski crossed with Thomas Mann. The language seems suited to the 1980s (when it was written), but after mostly reviews of classic works and Marcovaldo, I wasn't ready for Calvino to be so grunge. 

Cynthia Ozock's review in the New York Times of 23 October 1988 suggests "The Name, the Nose" was not a success. 

But I found it interesting in the way it echoes Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Story. Or rather, having previously thought of Calvino as a late-nineteenth early-twentieth century writer, "The Name, the Nose" is more like Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, where you get the sense that the characters and setting are of another time, but not as in the "on steroids" Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet. 

I am often amazed at how good short stories can fire up the imagination in such a way that the work takes some time to digest. "The Name, the Nose" has left its residue, and while it may not be regarded as one of Calvino's best, I am pleased to discover that his range is not as limited as I first thought.

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