#i love this poem and a lot of philips' stuff | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lesbian-in-leather · 2 years

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Here's a couple more for the writing ask game! : 12, 25, 32

12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules

Okay FIRST OF ALL I think it's rude that I can't wish for more wishes, we all know I love loopholes. SECOND OF ALL this was really fun to think about, so here we go:

I'd wish for the ability to perfectly retain any and all information about my WIPs until I've written it down, at which point it can be stored with regular memories. How often have you had a great idea just as you're falling asleep, or in the shower, or just busy and don't have time to write it down, but by the time you actually can, it's left your head? Not a problem anymore

I'd wish that I can always think of the word I need. Not only does it stop annoying mid-flow thesaurus checks or ages of combing the internet because I know what I mean but I can't find it - but there are other applications too! Creating a fantasy language? No need for a translation document, I can just type out whatever shit I need and it'll be right. Get wrecked genie, two for the price of one and I didn't cheat so my WIPs are safe

And finally, I'd wish that I have the motivation to write whenever I have the time, so that all of my writing sessions will actually be productive (maybe I'd link this motivation to like. A specific word or something? Idk, I don't trust this genie not to mess with me here)

25. What is a weird, hyper-specific detail you know about one of your characters that is completely irrelevant to the story?

Okay so I know what I said in the last post, and I do over-plan, but also I try to include a lot of the random details because I much prefer reading and writing character driven stories, so like, the little details are usually relevant to something. Having said that, sometimes it's just a very short throwaway kinda relevance, or it's an extension of an actual plot point that doesn't come out until later. Although I do know some random stuff like, one OC constantly fidgets with her necklace without realising, and another one always wears a hoodie and messes with the zip because she likes the sound it makes. Sorry I feel like this wasn't as interesting as it could have been lmao

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc. that you return to time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

Okay I physically cannot pick just one, but know that there are also so many more that I could have said here (including but not limited to: all of the works I mentioned in the last post that I am deliberately not allowing myself to repeat). Because I've picked so many examples and you asked a former English student for analysis, I'm going to put them all under the cut and honestly I had so much fun thinking about this and writing out the analysis that I don't even mind if no one reads it lmao

Mentions of death and suicide (in relation to the fictional characters in the texts I'm talking about)

Poems

This Be The Verse, by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. [...] Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.

Technically I first heard this (or, the last stanza of it, at any rate) quoted in The End by Lemony Snicket, but I also studied the full poem when I did my A-Levels, and honestly the whole thing is absolutely incredible. It's such a beautiful poem, and I do think about the entire thing all the time (I have it memorised) but specifically the first two lines and the final stanza have always been my favourite. Something about the acknowledgment of how you can still be fucked up by your parents even if they didn't mean it really, really got to me (I wonder why haha), and the final stanza has such a bleak outlook on everything but... it also really resonated with me, especially at the time I first read the full poem. And even though I don't think like that anymore, and I now have a much more neutral or even positive outlook on humanity and human nature, this poem still holds such a crucial place in my heart, and I do think about it all the time

Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

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.

Another one I have memorised - what initially started as GCSE work really stuck with me lmao. Again, the full poem gets me just as much, but this passage specifically... oh my god. As someone who has a genuine Issue in my head about being remembered after I’m gone, this poem really got to me. The fact that Ozymandias spent so much time and effort into ensuring he was remembered, and he got his wish... on a technicality. The idea that I can't control how I'm remembered, only what I do, and if I spend too long focusing on my legacy, then that's all that people will know about me... yeah, this poem got me fucked up

Novel

The End, Chapter Thirteen, by Lemony Snicket

“You're the one who made us orphans in the first place,” he [Klaus] said, uttering out loud for the first time a secret all three Baudelaires had kept in their hearts for almost as long as they could remember. Olaf closed his eyes for a moment, grimacing in pain, and then stared slowly at each of the three children in turn. “Is that what you think?” he said finally. “We know it,” Sunny said. “You don't know anything,” Count Olaf said. “You three children are the same as when I first laid eyes on you. You think you can triumph in this world with nothing more than a keen mind, a pile of books, and the occasional gourmet meal.” He poured one last gulp of cordial into his poisoned mouth before throwing the seashell into the sand. “You're just like your parents,” he said, and from the shore the children heard Kit Snicket moan. “You have to help Kit,” Violet said. “The baby is arriving.” “Kit?” Count Olaf asked, and in one swift gesture he grabbed an apple from the stockpot and took a savage bite. He chewed, wincing in pain, and the Baudelaires listened as his wheezing settled and the poisonous fungus was diluted by their parents' invention. He took another bite, and another, and then, with a horrible groan, the villain rose to his feet, and the children saw that his chest was soaked with blood. “You're hurt,” Klaus said. “I've been hurt before,”

Alright I know I don't shut up about asoue but here me out, okay? Similarly to the last post (because even though I'm not letting myself repeat passages, I can still repeat themes) I read this when I was like seven or eight, and it was, once again, one of the first times grey-morality was introduced to me. But, where Witches Abroad taught me that sometimes heroes don't want to be heroes and that villains might not think they're villains, The End taught me that even if a villain knows and embraces the fact they're a villain... that doesn't mean they're evil. Now, as an adult, I actively reject the 'Good Vs Evil' dichotomy, but as a kid, basically everything you're exposed to has the heroes always be Morally Correct while the villains are Entirely Evil (hell, even most media aimed at adults struggles with the concept of villains being terrible people while still being allowed to have redeeming qualities). And then I read this passage. I mean, the whole entire scene still makes me fucking sob, but I come back to this passage in particular over and over and over again. Because Olaf was fucking dying. He's tired, and he's been stabbed, and poisoned, and he was going to let himself die right then and there. He doesn't even deny the accusation that he killed the Baudelaire parents - what would be the point, when we all know that villains lie? No one would ever believe him - but that question in response is heartbreaking. He looks at these children that he's tormented for months on end, and just asks them, simply, if that's what they think. Like he can't quite believe they'd think so little of him. As if, suddenly, he's realising how they see him, how they've always seen him. Realising that, to them, he really is just a cartoon villain. And that death would have been sad enough. That death would have still stuck in my head, and I would still probably be talking about it now, if he'd died on the very next line. But he doesn't. He hears Kit's name and launches himself at the antidote, and the kids and the reader finally realise that he's bleeding out but he doesn't care. All he cares about it Kit, saving Kit, helping Kit, and it's so jarring. He's spent thirteen books not caring about anyone but himself, leaving even his own henchpeople in the dust when it suits him, but suddenly he's not only helping someone else, but disregarding his own wellbeing to help someone that's shown to be directly opposed to him. He helps someone that we, as a first time reader, assume to be his enemy, and he's so panicked at the thought that she's in danger, and so soft when he helps her. He's still the same man he's always been - but we now know that that man isn't evil, and he never was. He's cruel, and greedy, and selfish, and he cares. He loves someone else enough to die for her. He's hurt, but it doesn't matter to him as long as Kit's safe. He's been hurt before

Fanfic

Now, most of the time with fanfic what sticks in my head is a particular scene, or theme, or even just the feeling evoked by the entire work. Having said that, there are some notable exceptions to this rule (and, again, I’m only choosing two and not letting myself repeat any of the works I talked about in the last post) so I would like to draw attention to:

This Ficlet by @beatricebidelaire

Ernest sits down next to him. “When she [Violet] frowns,” he says in a low voice. “It’s almost as if I'm looking at him.” [Bertrand] Frank doesn’t turn his head. “I thought he always smiled when he’s talking to you.” “You say that as if those are the only times I ever looked at him,” Ernest replies.

Oh,,, the love in that sentence. I can't stop thinking about it. The fact that we can tell it was reciprocated - Ernest looked at Bertrand even when he didn't notice, but whenever Bertrand looked at him he was smiling, and everyone else saw it. OH I feel so many things. This is love, you know? That's what I want, and I love how gentle this quote is. How softly it's presented. Like a fact and a confession all at once

And then there's this fic by @jeromesqualor

And then, all of a sudden, he [Jacques] feels like he’s been hit by a freight train. The laughter stops, and he feels nothing but a strange, pleasant warmth, all over. This is the moment where he realises that he doesn’t want her [Esmé] to ever leave. This is the moment where he realises he’s completely, inconceivably, very inconveniently, fucked. [...] When he’s [Jacques] no longer able to sit straight, when he slumps against the bricks and his head lolls forward to press his forehead into the bars, he distantly hears her sharp, broken intake of breath. “It’s alright, Jacques,” she [Esmé] whispers, cutting through the haze, choked with tears. “It’s alright.”

I found this (predictably) by combing through the Esmé tag, and though it was for a ship I'd never really considered before, it is absolutely one that now consumes my thoughts. These two passages specifically, though, for very different reasons. The first one is such a soft, genuine way to present love and it's beautiful. A freight train that leaves him feeling a pleasant warmth. The fact that he isn't even necessarily happy about it, but the feeling is there all the same. It wasn't a choice, but it isn't bad, either. It's just... I don't know, that's love. Uncontrollable, unpredictable, sudden and slow all at once. And then there's the second section - ohhhhhh man. Because it's so clear that she loves him back - you can see it. But she had to do it - she had to poison him. And she knew he would die and it would be her fault, and it would have been so easy to present her as someone who doesn't care, but that's not true. She did what she thought had to be done, but the second she sees the result she breaks down. It's so out of character, but in a perfectly in-character way - it's something that feels so real, so right, but also something no one would ever expect from Esmé, and I think about it literally all the time

Etc. Plays

I know that usually plays aren't read, but I studied both of these and I've (tragically) never gotten the chance to see either of them performed (though I have seen a film adaptation of Streetcar, but I still read it first) so I'm saying they count

A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

BLANCHE [holding tight to the DOCTOR's arm]: Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Oh my god. Oh my god. This play, this whole entire play, is a masterpiece. But studying it in my class was much less fun than it should have been, because I was one of the only people in that room that liked Blanche, and I stand by that to this day. She is a beautifully written character. She's flawed, and selfish, and materialistic, and so, so fragile that she's already broken before the play has even begun. And it breaks my heart to see it. But this line. This line hurts. Because the Doctor she's clinging to so desperately is taking her away to an asylum. That's how her story ends. It's the last line she says before she leaves, and it's almost the end of the play. And after she's gone, almost everyone goes back to exactly how they were before she'd arrived, like she'd never even existed. And she's been hurt so many times - we learn about her past, and how she's been treated, and see how she's treated during the play. People - and especially men - are not kind to Blanche. And yet, after crying on the floor, being pinned to the ground while screaming and making "inhuman cries", she sees this man. This stranger. And, as an audience, we know what he's here to do. After this line they leave, arm-in-arm. And she's trusting him, she's relying on him to protect her. And he won't. We know he won't - but she doesn’t. She truly believes it. Over and over, she believes she'll be protected. Even after everything that she's seen, and done, and everything that's been done to her... Still, she depends on the kindness of strangers

Hedda Gabler, by Henrik Ibsen (translated by Michael Meyer)

TESMAN [runs to the doorway]: Hedda dear, please! Don't play dance music tonight! Think of Auntie Rena. And Eilert. HEDDA [puts her head through the curtains]: And Auntie Juju. And all the rest of them. From now on I'll be quiet. [She closes the curtains behind her]

This is another play I studied at A-Level (Drama, this time, instead of English), and while this isn't the last time Hedda talks, it is the last time we see her alive. And ever since I first read it, it's been bouncing around in my head. It's the understated way she disappears - and only a few lines later, she cuts herself off with a gunshot to her own head. It's the way everyone around her misunderstands her so thoroughly - her own husband thinks that mentioning the dead will get her on side, and no one thinks it odd that she brings up a woman she's repeatedly made it clear that she dislikes. As a reader or a member of the audience, you can see that she's realising there's no way out of her life - she can't divorce her husband, she might even be pregnant with his child. And she tells them that she’s going to end it - I'm sure, to her, she was making her intentions perfectly clear. "From now on I'll be quiet." It's so sad, and soft - especially when said by such an unpredictable character. And then her death is the culmination of everything she's been feeling throughout the play - the longing for beauty, because to her it is beautiful. And I think part of the reason it sticks with me so much is because I was the only one to see her that way in my class. Not everyone hated her (though a lot of them did), but no one else was sympathetic to her. I'm not saying she was a good person, but I did empathise, especially in a room of people all arguing that she deserved her fate

I apologise for the sheer amount I talked about all of those. And if you did read all of this rambling, thank you! I appreciate it, even if it might not have been particularly coherent

#aaah thank you for sending more asks!!!#i am having literally SO MUCH FUN answering these #the lesbian herself #weird questions for writers #vaguely functional directions #by the time i finished this it was only like #half an hour until my daily queued post #so i just booped it up to the top of that list lmao

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sleepdeprivedflower · 19 days

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kind of a vent post and i don't usually do that shit, but i'm just so sick and tired of my dad right now... i love him, and a lot of the time he's great; he helped me a lot when i was in a bad place and continues to do so. but he gets in an awful mood all of a sudden almost every day, rants to my mom and me about the government and how no one moved a finger to help him when he lost his job due to an administrative error, complains that my mom, siblings, and i should riot against this system (which, i know the system is fucked up, but i just don't have the energy to fight, and i'm not a fighter in the first place, i just want to live my life for now, after not having one for years due to my mental state...). he takes his anger out on us, and it's really fucking exhausting. he says some downright condescending, mean shit to us, and also makes some... unsavoury comments about a bunch of stuff and i totally disagree with him, and i tried arguing with him, countless times, but there's no debating when he's like that. and then the next day he's back to normal, until he snaps back to this awful mood again. it's honestly giving me whiplash. and it's hurting us all, i actually don't know why my mom stays with him sometimes... i can't wait to move out...

anyway, sorry for venting, i guess i just wanted to get it all off my chest

that one poem by philip larkin, "this be the verse", is a little too accurate for my taste tbh...

#sleepy rant

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thedepartmentofdiscoveries · 2 years

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A Quick Tumblr Bio About Me:

Name: Sarah and my middle name is Ngakaari which is of Māori origin (was the name of my Great Grandfather's first wife) and is pronounced "Nah Car Ree" and means something like "The Garden" or "The Card" according to certain Māori Dictionaries. Some guy in a chatroom called me "Nagasaki" once which I thought was funny so that's what inspired my Tumblr account.

Western Zodiac: ♎☀️♋🌜♋⬆️ (Libra Sun, Cancer Moon and Cancer Rising/Ascendant).

Chinese/Eastern Zodiac: 🪵🐀 (Wood Rat).

Favourite Colour: Dark Blue.🔵

Hogwarts House: When I did the original Pottermore quiz I got Slytherin 💚🐍and when I redid the quiz after the website update I got Ravenclaw 💙🦅 which was interesting. I see myself as a mix of both though with some Gryffindor ❤️🦁 and a bit of Hufflepuff 💛 (couldn't find a Badger).

Edit: The Badger 🦡 has been located! Thx Anon!

Favourite Music: My taste is really eclectic but I do tend to listen to a lot of New Wave according to Spotify. The first musicians I ever loved and still love are the late and great David Bowie 👨‍🎤 and Annie Lennox. 🎵🎶🎧

Favourite Book: Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. 📖📚

Favourite Film: My favourite film 🎬🎥 🎞️ as a kid was "The Wizard of Oz" and as a adult I would have to say "Blade Runner" and yes I have read Philip K.Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"⚡🐑 which inspired it.

Favourite Animals: I ❤️ most animals but my favourite wild animal is the Tiger. 🐯🐅

Hobbies: Well, this account was originally a Poetry account but it eventually ended up into being what it is now and to be honest I don't mind at all. You can still find my poems using the #poem and #poetry suitable hashtags. I'm also an amateur though procrastinating author that suffers from writer's block now and again as well.

Favourite Anime/Manga: It's hard for me to choose my favourite but I really enjoy stuff such as Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki,Vampire Hunter D, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell, Samurai Pizza Cats aka Kyatto Ninden Teyandee (Cat Ninja Legend Teyandee),The Dragon Ball Saga, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Cat's Eye, Pokémon (though I haven't watched the latest versions), Digimon, Card Captor Sakura and Sailor Moon (Though *Gasp* I've never watched the whole Sailor Moon series but I know the important characters well enough).

I'm a pretty open-minded (LGBTQIA+ 🌈🏳️‍🌈 persons are welcome here for example and I'm non-racist and a freethinker etc) and friendly down-to-earth New Zealander so feel free to message me or submit a question and I'll get back to you when I can. 😊😎

MAJOR P.S. Note: I apologize that my perfectionist neuro-diverse ways have made me rewrite and re-edit this about 4 times now. This is NOW the definite final version. You may resume with whatever you're doing now thanks.

#my tumblr biography #all about me #hello there #of course pornbots liked this lol

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4dtk · 2 years

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hey!! How are you doing? (◕ᴗ◕✿)

I really connected with this request that you just posted.

It was so poetic.. I am 💞 touched 💞

So I read poetry a lot and Sir Philip Sydney that you mentioned here really has my respect; his poems are lovely. Did you refer to a specific poem of his in this? Cuz I tried to remember but he has great love poems so I thought it's best I ask you (✿^‿^)

- 🧚🏻‍♀️

hiii anon i am doing good!! how about you? sorry i got to ur voice ask so late lol i was busy TT

and yes!! i got some reference from ‘my true love hath my heart’, song from arcadia! it was actually a search through google bc i like to write comparisons and stuff, comparing ___ to a piece of media, so i wasn’t so familiar with love poems until yesterday!

i probably gonna have to read up on poetry more though because the love poems i scanned through are all so nicely written 😭 do you have any recommendations?? :3

#🧚🏻‍♀️ anon #asks

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maddie-grove · 3 years

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The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2020

My main takeaways:

I’m glad that I set certain reading goals this year (i.e., reading an even mix of different genres and writing about each book I read on this tumblr). I feel like it really expanded my horizons.

There are a lot of proper names on my Top 20 list this year, which possibly means something about identity? That, or I just tried to read more Victorian novels.

Be horny, and be kind.

Now...

20. The White Mountains by John Christopher (1967)

In a world ruled by unseen creatures who roam the countryside in tall metal tripods, all humans are “capped” (surgically fitted with metal plates on their heads) at age fourteen. Thirteen-year-old Will Parker looks forward to becoming a man, but a conversation with a mysterious visitor to his village raises a few doubts. This early YA dystopia has gorgeous world-building (notably a trip to the ruins of Paris) and expert pacing. The choices Will has to make are also more surprising and complicated than I ever anticipated.

19. What Happened at Midnight by Courtney Milan (2013)

John Mason wants revenge on his fiancée Mary after she skips town following her father’s death...apparently with the funds that her father, John’s business partner, embezzled from their company. When he tracks her down, though, she’s working as a lady’s companion to the wife of a controlling gentleman who refuses to pay her wages, and John’s fury turns to sympathy and curiosity. This is a smart, well-plotted Victorian-set novella about a couple who builds a better relationship after a rocky start.

18. Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (1943)

It’s 1773, and fourteen-year-old Bostonian Johnny Tremain has it all: a promising apprenticeship to a silversmith, the run of his arguably senile master’s household, and...unresolved grief over his widowed mother’s death? When a workplace “accident” ruins his hand and career, though, he must “forge” a new identity. Despite its jingoism and surfeit of historical exposition, I fell in love with this weird early YA novel. It’s a fascinating, heartbreaking portrayal of disability and ableism, and, to be fair, Forbes was just jazzed about fighting the Nazis.

17. Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf by Hayley Krischer (2020)

After universally beloved jock Sean Nessel rapes starry-eyed junior Ali Greenleaf at a party, his queen-bee friend Blythe Jensen agrees to smooth things over by befriending his victim. Ali knows Blythe’s motives are weird and sketchy, but being friends with a popular, exciting girl is preferable to dealing with the fallout of the rape. This YA novel is a complex, astute exploration of trauma and moral responsibility.

16. The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein (2017)

Rothstein details how the federal U.S. government allowed, encouraged, and sometimes even forcibly brought about segregation of black and white Americans during the early and mid-twentieth century, with no regard for the unconstitutionality of its actions. He brings home the staggering harm to black Americans who were kept from living in decent housing, shut out of home ownership for generations, and denied the opportunity to accumulate wealth for generations. It’s an impactful read, and I was honestly shocked to learn Rothstein isn’t a lawyer, because the whole thing reads like an expansion of an excellent closing statement.

15. My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf (2012)

In this graphic memoir, Backderf looks back on his casual, fleeting friendship with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, a high school classmate who amused Backderf and his geeky friends with bizarre, chaotic antics. Backderf brings their huge, impersonal high school to life, illustrating how the callousness and cruelty of such an environment allowed an isolated, troubled teen to morph into something much more disturbing without anyone really noticing. It’s a work of baffled, tentative empathy and regret that stayed with me long after I finished it.

14. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876)

Gwendolyn Harleth, beautiful and ambitious but with no real outlet, finds herself compelled to marry a heartless gentleman with a shady past. Daniel Deronda, adopted son of her husband’s uncle, finds himself drawn into her orbit due to his helpful nature, but he’s also dealing with a lot of other stuff, like helping a Jewish opera singer and figuring out his parentage. I love George Eliot and, although this bifurcated novel isn’t her most accessible work, it’s highly rewarding. The psychological twists and turns of Gwendolyn’s story are a wonder to experience, and Daniel’s discovery of his past and a new community is moving.

13. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)

The Roths, an ordinary working-class Jewish family in 1940 Newark, find their quiet lives descending into fear, uncertainty, and strife after Charles Lindbergh, celebrity pilot and Nazi sympathizer, becomes president of the United States. This alternate history/faux-memoir perfectly captures the slow creep of fascism and the high-handed cruelty of state-sanctioned discrimination, as well as the weirdness of living a semi-normal life while all of that is going on. Also: fuck Herman and Alvin for messing up Bess’s coffee table! She is a queen, and she deserves to read Pearl S. Buck in a pleasant setting!

12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1850)

Young David Copperfield has an idyllic life with his sweet widowed mom and devoted nursemaid Peggotty, until his cruel stepfather ruins everything. David eventually manages to find safe harbor with his eccentric aunt, but his troubles have only begun. Although the quality of the novel falls off a little once David becomes an adult, I don’t even care; the first half is one of the most beautiful, funny, brilliantly observed portrayals of the joys and sorrows of childhood that I’ve ever read.

11. The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt (2017)

Greenblatt examines the evolution and cultural significance of the story of Adam and Eve from the Bible to the modern day (but mostly it’s about Milton). I can’t speak to the scholarship of this book--I’m not an expert on the Bible or Milton or bonobos--but I do know that it’s a gorgeously written meditation on love, mortality, and free will. Greenblatt brought me a lot of joy as an unhappy teenager, and he came through for me again during the summer of 2020.

10. The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg (2019)

Self-conscious seventeen-year-old Jordan is mortified when his widowed mother hires Max, an outgoing jock from his school, to help out with their struggling food truck. As they get to know each other, though, they realize that they have more in common than they thought, and they end up helping each other through a particularly challenging summer. This is an endearing, exceedingly well-balanced YA romance that tackles serious issues with a light touch and a naturalness that’s rare in the genre.

9. Red as Blood by Tanith Lee (1983)

In nine wonderfully lurid stories, Tanith Lee retells fairy tales with a dark, historically grounded, and lady-centered twist. Highlights include a medieval vampiric Snow White, a vengeful early modern Venetian Cinderella, and a Scandinavian werewolf Little Red Riding Hood. Fairy tale retellings are right up my alley, and Lee’s collection is impressively varied and creative.

8. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster (1908)

Unnerved by an impulsive make-out session with egalitarian George Emerson on a trip to Florence, young Edwardian woman Lucy Honeychurch goes way too far the other way and gets engaged to snobbish Cecil Vyse. How can she get out of this emotional and social pickle? This is an absolutely delightful romance that gave a timeless template for romantic comedies and dramas for 100-plus years.

7. My Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918)

Jim Burden, a New York City lawyer, tells the story of his friendship with slightly older Bohemian immigrant girl Ántonia when they were kids together on the late-nineteenth-century Nebraska prairie. It was a pretty pleasant time, give or take a few murders, suicides, and attempted rapes. This is one of the sweetest stories about unrequited love I’ve ever read, and it has some really enjoyable queer subtext.

6. Mister Death’s Blue-Eyed Girls by Mary Downing Hahn (2012)

In 1956 Maryland, gawky teen Nora’s peaceful existence is shattered by the unsolved murder of her friends Cheryl and Bobbi Jo right before summer vacation. Essentially left to deal with her trauma alone, she begins to question everything, from her faith in God to the killer’s real identity. Hahn delivers a beautiful coming-of-age story along with a thoughtful portrait of how a small community responds to tragedy.

5. The Lais of Marie de France by Marie de France, with translation and introduction/notes by Robert Herring and Joan Ferrante (original late 12th century, edition 1995)

In twelve narrative poems, anonymous French-English noblewoman Marie de France spins fantastically weird tales of love, lust, and treachery. Highlights include self-driving ships, gay (?) werewolves, and more plot-significant birds than you can shake a stick at. Marie de France brings so much tenderness, delicacy, and startling humor to her stories, offering a wonderful window to the distant past.

4. Maus by Art Spiegelman (1980-1991)

In this hugely influential graphic novel/memoir, Art Spiegelman tells the story of how his Polish Jewish parents survived the Holocaust. He portrays all the characters as anthropomorphic animals; notably, the Jewish characters are mice and the Nazi Germans are cats. I read the first volume of Maus back in 2014 and, while I appreciated and enjoyed it, I didn’t get the full impact until I read both volumes together early in 2020. Spiegelman takes an intensely personal approach to his staggering subject matter, telling the story through the lens of his fraught relationship with his charismatic and affectionate, yet truly difficult father.

3. At the Dark End of the Street by Danielle L. McGuire (2010)

McGuire looks at a seldom-explored aspect of racism in the Jim Crow South (the widespread rape and sexual harassment of black women by white men) and the essential role of anti-rape activism led by black women during the Civil Rights movement. This is a harrowing yet tastefully executed history, and it’s also a truly inspirational story of collective activism.

2. In for a Penny by Rose Lerner (2010)

Callow Lord Nevinstoke has to mature fast when his father dies, leaving him an estate hampered by debts and extremely legitimate grievances from angry tenant farmers. To obtain the necessary funds, he marries (usually!) sensible brewing heiress Penelope Brown, but they face problems that not even a sizable cash infusion can fix. This is a refreshingly political romance with a deliciously tense atmosphere and fascinating themes, as well as an almost painfully engaging central relationship.

1. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814)

Fanny Price, the shy and sickly poor relation of the wealthy Bertram family, is subtly mistreated by most of her insecure and/or self-absorbed relatives, with the exception of her kind cousin Edmund. When the scandalous Crawford siblings visit the neighborhood, though, it shakes up her life for good and ill. I put off reading Mansfield Park for years--it’s practically the last bit of Austen writing that I consumed, including most of her juvenilia--and yet I think it’s my favorite. Fanny is an eminently lovable and interesting heroine, self-doubting and flawed yet possessed of a strong moral core, and the rest of the characters are equally realistic and compelling. Austen really made me think about the point of being a good person, both on a personal and a global scale.

#books #reading #rape #racism #genocide #murder #(it was a more cheerful reading year than these tags indicate)#(or was it? i don't know)

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paraclete0407 · 3 years

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Stuff I might never get to do (from books I read after I thought I had mastered the Bible / Scripture)

Theories of ‘political vision’ - ex. Obama’s ‘A Promised Land,’ or from someone I miss, UKPM David Cameron’s ‘For the Record.’ Also records of military careers and the consequences and lessons therefrom, particularly Gen., Prof. Stanley A. McChrystal’s ‘My Share of the Task’ - decades of one meal a day, utterly excellent love-letters and wisdom-writings to his wife, sweeping reports, culminating in the operation that ‘extrajudicially or para-judicially executed’ bin Laden. I also never forgot the NYTimes photo of the SEAL operator’s back-muscles. My giant Obama critique, however, was one of those ‘grandfather Hall of Presidents’ books that I want to postpone.

My mistakes and wishes. Ex. the woman I wanted to marry in early 2011; I had cut off my parents for 6 months and called one night my mom; she got really drunk that night, flirted with foreigners from [ultra-mercenary cram-school that hires anyone], got terrorized by [b/Black man of the type who clearly believes ‘As I am b/Black I know everything worth knowing and can terrorize, antagonize, demonize anyone and anything for the greater glory of my own ego / Chairman Mao]. Culminating in me in the ladies’ room telling her to get up and I told her so, going back to the pub-room and threatening the mercenaries, and finally being ‘mogged,’ masculinity-compromised or eclipsed / overpowered, by the man who was either her surrogate father-figure, rapist, seducee-turned-wrist-breaking-controller, no one really knew, and my ex-father-figure who however either a) failed to bait the trap properly and/or b) failed to communicate the true meaning and message and purpose of his love for me, to me. But, it was instrumental in blowing what was probably the best job I ever had, and the only job that ever asked me back.

After that I started honestly trying to live for either a) the younger generation b) ‘just me.’ I also made a number of hard or soft promises to students involving me writing stuff. Don’t say ‘will’ or ‘might’ to Koreans b/c it kind of spiritually translates in to ‘shall’ or ‘must’ or ‘has to.’ They’re the poor in spirit from what I can tell.

I also drove around California for a while, missed a job-offer from a Catholic university in [central Korean city], and thought a lot about F. Scott Fitzgerald. Studied Emmanuel ‘ethics-as-first-philosophy love-of-wisdom-converting-into-wisdom-of-love’ Levinas a bit, read ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’ and couldn’t sleep

Sundry ‘Teacher Dream(s).’ I’d been hoping in a way that ‘Free Food for Millionaires’ author Min Jin Lee, JD Yale etc, would put this all in her ‘American Hagwon’ but she’s been baking fancy cakes and writing offside / deflective lit. about Japanese gays for like 10 years while NK marched on in real life killing people and Koreans were also dying from numerous causes, running away from home, economically induced suicide, amazing shame- and rape-culture: cashing in. I remember my last night at the hagwon, a time of bonhomie, when I perhaps might’ve even said, ’Y’know, can I un-resign-in-protest?’ Boss, What’ll you miss most about Korea, Korean women?’ Me (playing the fool), ‘There are Korean women in America.’ Boss, (sforzando), ‘Gyopo women.’

My ‘best guess’ anyway at ‘edubusiness’ was sth I labored at off and on for now like 6 years called ‘Three Kings’ which is partly about a white ex-literary agent family named ‘Foch’ after the French Generalissime who actually won WW1, famous for his ‘moral factor’ theory of war as well as his remark, ‘This is not a peace but an armistice for 20 years. He makes 400,000 dollars in his 1st year of college by advising his roommate to publish his ‘freshman’ novel with an extreme ‘point,’ not worrying about winning every possible reader, just let me edit all the sign-post-phrases and tell you what I firmly believe you were trying to write, sell this novel for 2million dollars, marry the Korean girl across the hall, forget RU, cultivate life and love with your stylus, and I’ll continue to march on simultaneously trying to promote love while reading everyone and everything semi-against or [angle / thrust-vector to] their grain (for their own good). Later he starts a school with his two friends, an MD/PhD program dropout from LA and an MBA ex-Samsung Managing Director or something. But in the end his MD/PhD friend can’t stop thinking about [student’s] amazing breasts and [MBA] friend can’t stop hating and short-selling himself w/r/t marriage and self-regard b/c he’s stuck in the other-always-has-more-money-always-more-money-to-make mentality. In the end the protagonist resigns in protest from the company he himself designed, developed, planned, etc. but didn’t have the money to call his own after reaching the position of ‘Joint Department Head’ which is kind of like ‘Chief of Staff’ to a president at a much smaller scale. He’s a devout literal Christian or at least Christianist who wishes the world were Christian and he reflects in the end on the Longfellow poem about the Three Kings who ‘know King Herod’s hate’ and had to travel back to their homelands a different way. There is also a possibly-to-be-deleted ‘Interludio Meridiana’ where he happens across the molested constantly male-gazed student in Nonhyeon (a neighborhood South of the Han River but not at all like the PSY song), starts to hear Palestrina’s ‘Sicut Cervus’ (listen to it on YouTube - Palestrina’s polyphony philosophy is one of the crowns of human art) in his head, wanders down to the bus depot and finds that his thoughts / creativity etc. have become cathected, chained to, or at least led by memory, and he has joined a ‘chain of being’ that connects the past to the future.

‘Bethlehem Dream’ - kind of my homage to the forementioned Kim Minju of IZ*ONE, my last favorite pop-star before assuring Christian friend I’d stop following K-pop (I’m against BlackPink and their entire organization). Connects to all my dreams and theories of education - including my extreme disillusionment with education, and sympathy for anyone made the ‘beneficiary’ of the latest theory or tool - as well my homage to the school that most closely approximates my dream school, Prof,. Pastor, Dr. Chancellor John Piper’s Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis. And also, women’s desire to have children / babies, even without husbands, men’s desire to bear spiritual fruit with or without traditional fellowship.

Masculinity in novels. Not Norman Mailer Philip Roth stuff but novels that can lens reality from the top down and not get addicted to some or other cupidity or method of endearing / charming the audience, which often makes them stupider or causes them to regard hidden truth as an outright lie and/or triviality. MJL’s ‘Free Food for Millionaires’ was pretty masculine; better is billionaire Michael Kim’s ‘Offerings,’ a novel I wish I could teach someone only I can’t find a good student / reader and maybe I myself missed the point and only thought I got it.

Thinking quitting while ahead - I really don’t know whether adding to people’s minds and knowledge at this point in Time is good or whether writing amounts to feasting the already glutted, furnishing them further excuses for disbelief and inaction and alienating / dividing them from the hungry and poor. I like a song called ‘Love Song for No. 1.’ Remember talking about a walk in the woods I took, understanding something about the Other’s first language the authenticity of this language and its nativity to their understanding and ‘originary’ or ‘birth-mother’ identity or ‘self-system.’ Not something to tell your Anglo-but-ish-they-were-Teutonic biological parents because they will make like they want to backhand your head off then spend years denying they’re either racist, non-believers, or what I have come to call anti-believers; people who amid ‘Delta Covid Summer’ are trying to destroy the beliefs of others. Also Dr. R.C Sproul Ligonier Ministries, ‘Forgetfulness is apostasy.’

‘Flowers on Water.’ Kind of my homage to Krystal Jung Soojung of ‘hieroglyphic’ girl-group f(x) and later IMO excellent actress, her best moment perhaps the final episode of ‘My Lovely Girl,’ a shocking and awesome scene that appears to talk about Resurrection and Eternity. The protagonist is another cynical edubusinessman who is thinking about mass-death, getting mad at mainstream American Christianity for singing songs while people were drowning, and finally on Google Books comes across a teacher-poem from 1881 titled ‘Flowers,’ for a group of rather hapless seemingly American Indian students in California as well as critiques of educational praxis which, in 1881, were identical to what they are today. ‘God is sovereign in all things’ - such a difficult category. I abandoned this novel for a number of reasons such as the belief that I might be able to reverse-engineer Brad Thor or something for a quick buck. Went to Half Price Books (now closed) where they had a picture of the Jackson Five over the toilet in the men’s room. I read a bit of a one-dollar Brad Thor book about Russia but on the way on home I once started once again dreaming mytically about Korean girls / women as it began to snow and thinking about ‘Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming’ (’Es Ist Ein Rosentsprungen) the German Nativity song which Michael Praetorius composed at least in part in response to the appalling Reformation Wars and out of a hope or wish that remembrance of Christ’s birth could somehow reunite the Church. This also made me think about a high school I admire / respect and my old friend and his now-divorced wife with whom I many times fantasized about singing and talking with again; and whom I kind of wish I could tell the author of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ remarried his first wife eventually but IDK what good it is to give already-dreaming people more dreams either.

It’s 9:35 AM and my ‘insomnia’ type notebook-postings haven’t made me any new friends in a while. My last thing is just, if you care about Education or young girls / American women / culture / schools, achievement, heroines, stories, or for that matter Bible-translation or the latter-day odysseys of the nominal Episcopalian Church, with trembling heart, try to reflect on Headmaster Josiah Bunting III’s ‘All Loves Excelling.’

One of my favorite Christian songs is ‘The Death of King David’

And God said that day shall dawn

to bring that flow’r newly born

from thy stem in fullness growing

in fragrance sweet night and morn

all My people shall adorn

with Breath of life bestowing

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

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oatbrew · 4 years

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*slides 50$ across the table Could you pls elaborate more on the novels you think that kou loves and the ones he would lend to akane? do you think that he would like poetry as well? I've been reading some Proust's poems and I think he would be interested in them !! I can totally imagine kou loving Poe's as well

takes your 50 and spends it on nendoroids

i forgot the rules of literature accessibility and what texts have survived in their world so to make things easier for me, this list is based on the premise that kou had full access to a library with no censorship. it’d be cute if he and akane started like a two-person book club where they just exchanged books and “conversed” via annotations and underlines. so here’s a really long list (im sorry)

lit already mentioned in canon that he’d enjoy/find enlightening:

kou’s favorite books are the running man and the stand by stephen king. i’ve never read these before but looking at their wikipedia synopses it’s easy to see why he’d identify with the protags.

do robots dream of electric sheep? by philip k dick. sci-fi classic and makishima’s fave. there’s a lot of overlap in their reading tastes.

swann’s way (in search of lost time) by marcel proust. it’s apt you mention proust as a poet kou might like because he was reading this book at the end of s1. i read swann’s way a long time ago and was baffled as to why kou liked it. then i revisited it when i was less of a dumbass and found it to be an introspective, lyrical and deeply almost painfully tender love letter to the experience of human existence. reading that in light of kou’s character made me realize that this tenderness is a constant but hidden core part of who he is underneath the trauma, armor, facade, and intellect.

mystery/detective novels: agatha christie, arimasa osawa, tarō hirai, hideo yokoyama, dashiell hammett, arthur conan doyle and others (some of these authors are also masaoka’s favorites. there’s an overlap there, too. no doubt masaoka lent him some of his books.)

his favorite shakespeare play would probably be something typical like hamlet or macbeth (i can see him reading and getting frustrated with ham during his enforcer days and he’d probably read macbeth while he was on the run.) but i genuinely think younger kou was a secret romantic so i think his true faves are the comedies like much ado. he’d consider the idea of a partner who could outwit him in verbal flirtation charming.

kou seems like a guy who’d have a wide reading range because he would be willing to read anything to widen his perspective but i also imagine him as a secret book snob and keeps to canonized (mostly western) classics. so this is stuff he’d most likely have loved if they were available:

the count of monte cristo by alexandre dumas. man wrongfully labeled a criminal hunts for revenge? check.

crime and punishment by fyodor dostoevsky. man morally reckons with his crime and despairs for release? check.

frankenstein by mary shelley. exploration on nature, monsterhood and retribution. who has the humanity here: the monster or the man? as a latent criminal, i’m sure he had the same question.

war and peace by leo tolstoy. there’s something about the sensibilities of (particularly imperial and post-revolutionary) russian lit that vibe w kou’s inner life (i.e. the ennui of a decadent/gilded society, andrei’s disillusionment, pierre’s existential angst, etc.) i can see him picking this up and dropping it, picking it up again throughout the years.

great expectations and the tale of two cities by charles dickens. young kou would relate to pip while older kou would relate to carton.

a clockwork orange by anthony burgess. the underrated dystopian novel compared to brave new world and 1984. the concept of ultraviolence and desensitization esp in light of the crimes he’s witnessed and the methods employed by enforcers would hit close to home.

the memory police by yoko ogawa. half dystopian/half kafkaesque existential dread exploring collective totalitarianism against individual resistance. it reminds me a lot of 1984 too but is more superior

the dispossessed by ursula k. le guin. utopian fiction exploring the conflict between anarchy vs social order/freedom vs authoritarianism. akane would really take to this one. plus it’d be criminal for an avid sci-fi reader like kou not to read le guin’s works

i dislike ernest hemingway but i could see kou liking his books. i’d personally send him kurt vonnegut instead if he really wanted to explore the ramifications of war and trauma.

in the miso soup by ryu murakami. one of those hazy noir-like existential thrillers that would really speak to his experiences witnessing the nihilist underbelly of society in japan and out of the country.

kokoro by natsume sōseki. a japanese classic that would have easily been in kou’s radar. it’s a melancholy book about isolation and liminality while the self and culture are shifting. i imagine him reading this after proust while he’s exiled and alone.

philosophers/critical thinkers he’d find value in reading regardless of whether he agreed with them or not: john locke (liberalism), st. thomas aquinas (principle of double effect), thomas hobbes & jean-jacques rosseau (their two alternate views on the social contract theory), donna haraway (post-humanism), john stuart mill (utilitarianism and the liberty principle), jean baudrillard (hyperreality), mark twain (anti-imperialist satire), henry david thoreau (self-determination and civil disobedience), friedrich nietzsche (ubermensch), sigmund freud (psychoanalysis), and maybe friedrich engels/karl marx (historical/dialectical materialism) if kou was up to reading all three fucking volumes of capital. i bet he reads philosophy and critical theory like me aka skim the actual book then buy another book that explains how to read the first one.

as for poetry, i don’t know many poets except my pal mr siken (and a few others) so i can’t give that many examples. i can definitely see him enjoying the macabre and melancholy of poe though as you said. maybe he’d also like poe’s contemporaries like charles baudelaire or his inspirations such as lord byron. which would fit given that kou is a byronic hero of sorts but imagining any of my faves reading that bastard’s works is just so funny to me

for my own indulgence, here’s also some stuff i’d personally give him to broaden his scope: black thinkers esp richard wright, ralph ellison, james baldwin who deal w themes of masculinity, alienation and (black) identity/individualism in an oppressive society. i’d also give him some exilliteratur or other anti-fascist works from walter benjamin, elie wiesel, and hannah arendt. following proust’s heritage, i’d also give him speak, memory by vladimir nabokov and ulysses by james joyce since the power to recall seems like a pretty important motif for kou. and just for some taste: octavia butler, kirino natsuo, the bronte sisters (esp anne), zora neale hurston, and our queen jane austen.

anyway if he really wanted to court akane properly after their reunion, he’d gift her a copy of persuasion that akane would expect to already be annotated but the only thing he’d really mark is the underlined passage with wentworth’s confession (“i am half agony, half hope.”) can’t think of a more explicit way to tell her he loves her besides actually saying the words. plus the romance of it!! akane deserves to swoon

#reply.#anon.#notes.#pp.#kou would read anything #hell i'd give him some queer theory (is it widely accepted now that he's bi? or is that just still a niche hc?)

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jawnkeets · 4 years

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hi :-) do you happen to have recs for any british authors/poets that are a little more.. obscure, i guess? i'm not a native speaker of english but studying it at university, and i would like to branch out a little in my reading - i feel like we only talk about the same people in my seminars, eg. milton, austen, dickens, shakespeare, pope, some of the romantics etc., and i would like to read sth that's a little.... idk how to say it, i love these authors but i'd like to find sth different? thx 🌹

hi!! so i’m not sure what is and isn’t well-known outside of the uk (some of these are still pretty well-known within the uk), but i’ll dump a load and hopefully a few will be new to you :+) let’s do it in periods.

if you’re feeling adventurous and want to go medieval/ pre-shakespeare, i recommend (in translation) the elegies and riddles of the exeter book, ‘the wanderer’ (one of said elegies), ‘the dream of the rood’, ‘the phoenix’, ‘the whale’ (these are old english), mandeville’s book of marvels and travels, julian of norwich’s revelations of divine love (middle english), the poetry of william dunbar (a scottish makar active late 15th/ early 16th century), especially ‘the goldyn targe’. also if you’d like to venture into chaucer (not obscure obviously but equally lots of syllabuses don’t stretch this far back), his dream visions r my fav and a great place to start.

if you like shakespeare and want stuff from a similar-ish period that’s still quite different to shakespeare, try andrew marvell and george herbert. they have a couple of v v famous poems that come up again and again in uk secondary school syllabuses (’love (iii)’ for herbert, ‘to his coy mistress’ for marvell), but they are consistently excellent poets.*

if you’re a pope fan, try john gay, especially trivia, and lady mary wortley montagu. swift is my favourite writer from this period, but gulliver’s travels is massive, so he’s not a very out-there recommendation.

if you’re a fan of the romantics, try john clare – he’s a lesser-known late romantic poet who i absolutely adore. this is a fabulous poem. charlotte smith is a female romantic poet (there were female romantic poets…?) who wrote this lovely nightingale poem, which is of course a popular romantic subject. also i know mary shelley’s v famous, but if you haven’t read the last man, it’s about a plague slowly wiping out all of mankind… interesting too is what comes in between pope and co. and the romantics: william collins (try ‘ode on the poetical character’), oliver goldsmith (’the deserted village’), thomas gray (’elegy written in a country churchyard’ is pretty famous, but i like ‘ode on a distant prospect of eton college’, too).

into victorian: i’m super into victorian horror and spookiness so this is pretty weighted towards that, my apologies. richard marsh’s the beetle outsold dracula at the time, but has since faded into obscurity. it’s got some serious issues but i have a soft spot for it. arthur machen is a welsh writer who wrote this AMAZING story called the great god pan, which i think has been SO unfairly neglected. well-known authors like robert louis stevenson and george eliot wrote lesser-known stuff that is great and that i rly hope ppl will give some love to (the body snatchers and the lifted veil respectively).

moving into modern and beyond, i struggle to keep it british as i tend to prefer american modernism, postmodernism etc. but try samuel beckett (huge but good), philip larkin, and, if you’re looking for a challenge, j. h. prynne (the white stones). edit: i forgot jez butterworth’s jerusalem - big mistake.

i also have a poetry recommendations list! most of the lesser-known english-speaking poets on it are american, though, rather than british. but a lot of the poets i’ve mentioned above are on there, if you’re looking for a place to start with their poetry 😊 hope this helps, and happy reading!

- - - -

*gap here bc there rly isn’t much like paradise lost lol it’s smth else

#asks #added from finals - try looking at the epyllion if you like shakespeare #and city comedy #and for 18th century daniel defoe #esp moll flanders #and also edward young

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46ten · 4 years

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AH: marriage and military service should not mix

The summary of this post: A lot of historians have noted how important AH’s marriage to EH was to his future, a true before and after marker in his life. But the strangeness of it has gotten less attention - AH married while the war was going on, and even wrote of not hanging around the army at all in order to setup for his life with his new wife. Once one sees the oddity of that, a lot of other things fall into place in his 1780/81 letters.

For the past few years, I’ve wanted to work more on the theory that although marriage was generally expected of the 18th century Anglo-American colonial man (see prior posts here and here), the elite in AH’s circle did not marry until their military obligations and other duties were complete. From their examples and a few phrases here and there, getting married seemed to have been frowned upon, perhaps because of the uncomfortable examples of general’s wives and this idea that romantic love with a woman was a weakness that interfered with duty and hindered one’s commitment to military glory. (I am familiar with the challenges faced by Martha Washington, Catharine Greene, and Lucy Knox; Philip Schuyler refused a return to military assignment and presidency of the Continental Congress after the death of a newborn, among other things, in 1778). AH is an exception among his circle, with Meade, in getting married during the war itself - nearly everyone else who is unmarried waits until after their military service is complete (and sometimes well after) to marry. Not enough is made of the oddity of his courtship and marriage, within his circle, while the war is ongoing.

Now to modern thought, the title of this post makes a lot of sense - relationships are often strained when one partner is in military service, and the hows and whys are very familiar to us. But for the 18th century, when adult manhood was tied to matrimony, avoiding matrimony seems odd, as does the length of some of the courtships of AH’s friends: two years for William Jackson, about the same for Tilghman, four years of flirtation for McHenry. At a time when engagements lasted a matter of weeks (and AH notes that his own is unusually long - it’s lasting “an age” in one of his letters to ES), the delay in taking the next step is notable. Even in the prior generation, although Philip Schuyler was sexually intimate with Catharine Van Rensselaer, he continued his military service and did not marry her until it became unavoidable by decency standards (CVR was 4 months pregnant).

So what’s with AH and ES wanting to get married in such a hurry, comparatively, besides the obvious emotional ones? Maybe he really was 26-27 years old and time was running out! Another obvious possibility, noted then and noted by biographers since, was the benefits of their marriage on a personal and political dynastic level. @aswithasunbeam has noted a contemporary article (sourced from Mitchell) about what Philip Schuyler had to gain through the new attachment between himself and Washington’s aide-de-camp. (And look how quickly P. Schuyler had AH working to get GW to visit them.) The advantages for AH were obvious to, as the Marquis de Fleury stated outright to AH: “ I congratulate you heartyly on that conquest; for many Reasons: the first that you will get all that familly’s interest, & that a man of your abilities wants a Little influence to do good to his country. The second that you, will be in a very easy situation, & happin’s is not to be found without a Large estate.”

I also suspect part of AH’s decision to hurriedly marry was tied to getting a command and spending the rest of his time studying the law.* I agree with most biographers that he never takes the steps of leaving Washington’s family and asking for (Nov 1780) and then demanding (June 1781) a command without being Philip Schuyler’s son-in-law. (I also think the break with GW doesn’t happen without AH feeling VERY confident in his relationship with his new wife. EH should have been a better patriot - as in other times - and seemed less happy in her marriage, or at least not let AH read her letter to her sister.) I think that’s what Laurens knew while on parole in Phil. and causes the minor flurry of letters in late August/September 1780, when P. Schuyler was briefly at HQ and then sending lots of letters about Congress to GW, AH was going on about his planned six month leave, McHenry was writing a love poem about AH and ES and trying to get AH to get P. Schuyler’s help in getting him a command, etc . AH and ES likely intended to marry in October/early November, but both Meade and Harrison took leave instead, and AH had to stay, though he would leave in late November before their return (in fact, Harrison and Meade never returned.)

Take Laurens (left wife and daughter he’d never see in England) and Lafayette (absent from France from March 1777 to Feb 1779 and March 1780 to early 1782). Both of them left wife and child(ren) behind, and here AH was planning a long absence from military service and telling his fiancee that he’ll leave it entirely if that’s her wish. AND Meade is discussing doing exactly that! [So Laurens presumably wrote to AH - we don’t have that letter - that he hopes AH will get over this quickly, and AH wrote back that he won’t, but I’m getting ahead of myself.]

I offered to make a comparison of AH’s letters to Laurens vs Elizabeth Schuyler - while revealing of personal feelings, in content and expression they are more different than they are similar - but I think I first need to set up that major transition that’s occurring in AH’s life in 1780/81. To the extent Laurens may have objected to AH’s excitement about ES and their impending nuptials (and there’s only one phrase in one letter, and that from AH to Laurens, from which it can be interpreted that those were Laurens’ feelings), and AH felt embarrassed about conveying the news of his engagement, it was because it interfered with a (believed to be mutual) sense of military obligation and public duty and dismissal of marriage and its attendant obligations. I touch on it in a response here; I’ll try to elaborate on it in upcoming posts. [I will get into why this makes the most sense, and why claims of AH trying to spare any romantic feelings JL may have felt, quite frankly, do not make sense in a later post. Spoiler: AH wrote absurdly callous stuff re ES and his relationship with her in his letters to JL if he was hoping to spare JL’s feelings.]

I already put some of my thoughts on this in old posts that may have some helpful content and may spare me having to repeat myself too much, and then I’ll also provide some quotes from letters to get started, limited to 1777-1782 and then probably the most famous quote from 1799.

Hamilton on marriage part 1 (overview)

Hamilton on marriage part 2 (feelings on marriage 1777-early 1780)

Hamilton-Schuyler engagement (early 1780-mid 1780)

Hamilton on marriage part 3 (my breakdown of the July-Oct 1780 letters to ES)

Hamilton on marriage part 4

Reynolds Pamphlet, part 2

And a post (not my own) about how much AH’s military involvement as Inspector General was affecting his family financially.

Letter quotes [my emphases]:

You and I, as well as our neighbours, are deeply interested to pray for victory, and its necessary attendant peace; as, among other good effects, they would remove those obstacles, which now lie in the way of that most delectable thing, called matrimony;—a state, which, with a kind of magnetic force, attracts every breast to it, in which sensibility has a place, in spite of the resistance it encounters in the dull admonitions of prudence, which is so prudish and perverse a dame, as to be at perpetual variance with it. AH to Catharine “Kitty” Livingston 11Apr1777

Do I want a wife? No—I have plagues enough without desiring to add to the number that greatest of all; and if I were silly enough to do it, I should take care how I employ a proxy. AH to John Laurens 1779 [likely from mid-April up to July - this letter is actually undated, and the April date is based on other mentions in the letter; both JCH and Lodge dated it December 1779]

The most determined adversaries of Hymen can find in [ES] no pretext for their hostility, and there are several of my friends, philosophers who railed at love as a weakness, men of the world who laughed at it as a phantasie, whom she has presumptuously and daringly compelled to acknowlege its power and surrender at discretion. I can the better assert the truth of this, as I am myself of the number. She has had the address to overset all the wise resolutions I had been framing for more than four years past, and from a rational sort of being and a professed contemner of Cupid has in a trice metamorphosed me into the veriest inamorato you perhaps ever saw. AH to Margarita Schuyler, Feb1780

I would add to this by way of consolation, or rather of countinance, that the family since your departure have given hourly proofs of a growing weakness. Example I verily believe is infectious. For such a predominancy is beauty establishing over their hearts, that should things continue to wear as sweet an aspect as they are now beheld in, I shall be the only person left, of the whole household, to support the dignity of human nature. But in good earnest, God bless both you, and your weakness, and preserve me your sincere friend James McHenry to AH, 18March1780 [this was during the time of AH’s courtship of ES]

Here we are my love in a house of great hospitality—in a country of plenty—a buxom girl under the same roof—pleasing ⟨expect⟩ations of a successful campaign—and every thing to make a soldier happy, who is not in love and absent from his mistress. ... Assure yourself my love that you are seldom a moment absent from my mind, that I think of you constantly and talk of you frequently, I am never happier than when I can engage Meade in some solitary walk to join me in reciprocating the praises of his widow and my betsey. AH to ES, 6July1780

I hope for a decisive campaign. No one will desire it more than me; for a military life is now grown insupportable to me because it keeps me from all my soul holds dear. Adieu My love. Write to me often I entreat you, and do not suffer any part of my treasure, your sweet love, to be lost or stolen from me. AH to ES, 20Jul1780

Impatiently My Dearest have I been expecting the return of your father to bring me a letter from my charmer with the answers you have been good enough to promise me to the little questions asked in mine by him. ... Meade2 just comes in and interrupts me by sending his love to you. He tells you he has written a long letter to his widow asking her opinion of the propriety of quitting the service; and that if she does not disapprove it, he will certainly take his final leave after the campaign. You see what a fine opportunity she has to be enrolled in the catalogue of heroines, and I dare say she will set you an example of fortitude and patriotism. I know too you have so much of the Portia in you, that you will not be out done in this line by any of your sex, and that if you saw me inclined to quit the service of your country, you would dissuade me from it. I have promised you, you recollect, to conform to your wishes, and I persist in this intention. It remains with you to show whether you are a Roman or an American wife. AH to ES, Aug1780

But now my love to speak of the practicability of complying with both our wishes in this article—There is none, I am obliged to sacrifice my inclination to ⟨my public⟩ ch⟨aracter.⟩ Even though my presence shou⟨ld n⟩ot be essential here, yet my love I could not with decency or honor leave the army during the campaign. This is a military prejudice which while I am in a military station I must comply with. No person has been more severe than I have been in condemning other officers for deviating from it. I have admitted no excuse as sufficient, and I must not now evince to the army, that the moment my circumstances have changed, my maxims have changed also. This would be an inconsistency, and my Betsey would not have me guilty of an inconsistency. Besides this my Betsey, The General is peculiarly averse to the practice in question. If this campaign is to end my military services, ’tis an additional reason for a constant and punctual attendance, if it is not my leaving the army during the campaign would make it less proper to be away all the winter ’till late in the spring. In one case, my honor bids me stay, in the other my love. AH to ES, 31Aug1780

Pardon me my love for talking politics to you. What have we to do with any thing but love? Go the world as it will, in each others arms we cannot but be happy. ...I was once determined to let my existence and American liberty end together. My Betsey has given me a motive to outlive my pride, I had almost said my honor; but America must not be witness to my disgrace. AH to ES, 6Sept1780

I have told you, and I told you truly that I love you too much. You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think of any thing else—you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream—and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness. ‘Tis a pretty story indeed that I am to be thus monopolized, by a little nut-brown maid like you—and from a statesman and a soldier metamorphosed into a puny lover. I believe in my soul you are an inchantress; but I have tried in vain, if not to break, at least, to weaken the charm—you maintain your empire in spite of all my efforts—and after every new one, I make to withdraw myself from my allegiance my partial heart still returns and clings to you with increased attachment. To drop figure my lovely girl you become dearer to me every moment. I am more and more unhappy and impatient under the hard necessity that keeps me from you, and yet the prospect lengthens as I advance. AH to ES, 5Oct1780

I would not have you imagine Miss that I write to you so often either to gratify your wishes or to please your vanity; but merely to indulge myself and to comply with that restless propensity of my mind, which will not allow me to be happy when I am not doing something in which you are concerned. This may seem a very idle disposition in a philosopher and a soldier; but I can plead illustrious examples in my justification. Achilles had liked to have sacrificed Greece and his glory to his passion for a female captive; and Anthony lost the world for a woman. I am sorry the times are so changed as to oblige me to summon antiquity for my apology, but I confess, to the disgrace of the present age, that I have not been able to find many who are as far gone as myself in such laudable zeal for the fair sex. AH to ES, 13Oct1780

How often have I with Eloisa exclaimed against those forms which I now revere as calculated to knit our union together by new and stronger bands...Meade already begins to recant. I have received a letter from him on the Journey2 in which he tells me he finds he must return to the army. This will be a new proof to you that I cannot leave it, as we both so ardently desire. AH to ES, 27Oct1780

You possess a heart that can feel for me; you have a female too that you love. I was reduced at one period to entreat, threat, kiss, but all to no purpose; her fears were for my safety, mine for hers. You must imagine to make out the tragedy all that I am incapable for want of words to express. After placing her with at least Twenty other females & children at a safe distance I immediately returned, & joined the Baron about the time the Enemy left Richmond in order to render him all the aid I could being intimately acquainted with the Country for many miles in the vicinity of the Enemy & on their return down the river I left him to go in pursuit of a residence for a favorite Brother who was driven from his home & obliged to attend to his Wife & a family of little children. Was it not cruel my dear fellow that my matrimonial enjoyments should have been interrupted thus soon; not more than one month had passed when the damned invasion seperated us, & we have yet to meet again, for 60 miles divides us. You know I am a Philosoper my dr fd & prepared to meet much more serious disappointments. This gives me an opening to speak of my return to the army. I have been long wishing your advice in full on the occasion; you are acquainted with the arguments I have used in favor of my stay here. I have now but one to add to them, the experience of that happiness I ever expected to enjoy with the best of Women. She loves not less than your Betsy, & I fear could not bear a seperation. I have not however as yet thrown off the uniform, but I am inclined to believe that it must be the case. Meade to AH, 13Jan1781

I was cherishing the melancholy pleasure of thinking of the sweets I had left behind and was so long to be deprived of, when a servant from Head Quarters presented me with your letters. I feasted for some time on the sweet effusions of tenderness they contained, and my heart returned every sensation of yours. Alas my Betsey you have divested it of every other pretender and placed your image there as the sole proprietor. I struggle with an excess which I cannot but deem a weakness and endeavour to bring myself back to reason and duty. I remonstrate with my heart on the impropriety of suffering itself to be engrossed by an individual of the human race when so many millions ought to participate in its affections and in its cares. But it constantly presents you under such amiable forms as seem too well to justify its meditated desertion of the cause of country humanity, and of glory I would say, if there were not something in the sound insipid and ridiculous when compared with the sacrifices by which it is to be attained.

Indeed Betsey, I am intirely changed—changed for the worse I confess—lost to all the public and splendid passions and absorbed in you. Amiable woman! nature has given you a right to be esteemed to be cherished, to be beloved; but she has given you no right to monopolize a man, whom, to you I may say, she has endowed with qualities to be extensively useful to society. Yes my Betsey, I will encourage my reason to dispute your empire and restrain it within proper bounds, to restore me to myself and to the community. Assist me in this; reproach me for an unmanly surrender of that to love and teach me that your esteem will be the price of my acting well my part as a member of society. AH to EH, 13Jul1781

Don’t think me unkind for not talking of your making a journey to the Southward. It would put us to a thousand inconveniences and would in fact be of no avail; for while there I must be engrossed in my military duties. Heaven knows how much it costs me to make the sacrifice I do. It is too much to be torn away from the wife of my bosom from a woman I love to weakness, and who feels the same ardent passion for me. I relinquish a heaven in your arms; but let me have the happiness to reflect that they ever impatiently wait my return sacred to love and me. Give your Mama, your sisters and the whole family every assurance of the warmest affection on my part. Indeed I love them all.

Yrs. with unalterable tenderness and fidelity AH to EH, 25Aug1781

Early in November, as I promised you, we shall certainly meet. Cheer yourself with this idea, and with the assurance of never more being separated. Every day confirms me in the intention of renouncing public life, and devoting myself wholly to you. AH to EH, 6Sept1781

My heart disposed to gayety is at once melted into tenderness. The idea of a smiling infant in my Betseys arms calls up all the father in it. In imagination I embrace the mother and embrace the child a thousand times. I can scarce refrain from shedding tears of joy. But I must not indulge these sensations; they are unfit for the boisterous scenes of war and whenever they intrude themselves make me but half a soldier. AH to EH, 12Oct1781

You cannot imagine how entirely domestic I am growing. I lose all taste for the pursuits of ambition, I sigh for nothing but the company of my wife and my baby. The ties of duty alone or imagined duty keep me from renouncing public life altogether. It is however probable I may not be any longer actively engaged in it.

I have explained to you the difficulties which I met with in obtaining a command last campaign. I thought it incompatible with the delicacy due to myself to make any application this campaign. I have expressed this Sentiment in a letter to the General and retaining my rank only, have relinquished the emoluments of my commission, declaring myself notwithstanding ready at all times to obey the calls of the Public.4 I do not expect to hear any of these unless the State of our Affairs, should change for the worse and lest by any unforeseen accident that should happen, I choose to keep myself in a situation again to contribute my aid. This prevents a total resignation.

You were right in supposing I neglected to prepare what I promised you at Philadelphia. The truth is, I was in such a hurry to get home that I could think of nothing else. AH to Meade, March 1782 (from a JCH transcription)

You were right, My dear General, in saying that a Soldier should have no Other wife than the service...William North to AH, 12Nov1799

AND just for amusement:

I thank you My Dear Sir for the military figures you have sent me. Tactics you know are literally or figuratively of very comprehensive signification. As people grow old they decline in some arts though they may improve in others. I will try to get Mrs. Hamilton to accompany in games of Tactics new to her. Perhaps she may get a taste for them & become better reconciled to my connection with the Trade-Militant. AH to McHenry, 21June1799

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*I broke this down in a prior post too, but I’ll repeat it here again: I think the clearest statement of his plan left to us is from the draft of the letter he sent to Philip Schuyler explaining why he wants to break with GW (18Feb1781):

As I cannot think of quitting the army during the war, I have a project of re-entering into the artillery, by taking Lieutenant-Colonel Forrest’s10 place, who is⟩ desirous of retiring on half pay. I have not however made up my mind upon this , Start insertion,head, End,, as I should be obliged to come in the youngest Lt Col instead of the eldest, which I , Start deletion,should, End, , Start insertion,ought to, End, have been by natural succession had I remained in the corps; and , Start insertion,at the same time, End, to resume studies relative to the profession which, to avoid inferiority, must be laborious.

If a handsome command for the campaign in the , Start insertion,light, End, infantry should offer itself, I shall ballance between this and the artillery. My situation ⟨in the latter⟩ would be more , Start deletion,substantial, End, , Start insertion,solid, End, ⟨and permanent;⟩ but as I hope ⟨the war will not last long enough to make it progressive, this consideration has the less force. A command for the campaign would leave me the winter to prosecute studies relative to my future career in life. With⟩ respect to the former, I have been materially the worse for going into his family.11

I have written to you on this subject with all the freedom and confidence to which you have a right and with an assurance of the interest you take in , Start deletion,what, End, , Start insertion,all that, End, concerns me.

This letter implies 1) he had a plan post-military; 2) he had discussed with PS what that plan was, and possibly that six month leave (that never happened because of illness and unavailability) was tied to undertaking some of those studies to be a lawyer, to put himself in better shape to support a family. Being able to do so was important to AH - Philip Hamilton was born Jan 1782, and Angelica would not be born until Sept 1784.

#Alexander Hamilton #Elizabeth Schuyler #Elizabeth S. Hamilton #18th century masculinity #Philip Schuyler #John Laurens #I've always found it interesting that he references Achilles to state his willingness to #throw everything away for a woman (Briseis)

15 notes · View notes