And when that I have murdered the man in the moon to a powder

[sovay]

The good thing about yesterday: although the day was a loss, I was functional enough by the evening to meet lesser_celery for dinner at The Salty Pig and I hardly sounded like a TB ward at all. Between Tufts and Back Bay on the Orange Line, I looked up from Irmgard Keun's After Midnight (Nach Mitternacht, 1937) and the last sunlight was turning a cliff of brick and windows and the sky reflecting off them the color of a desert rose. It looked like some views from the train coming in to New Haven, which was not what made me happy.¹ I have no idea what did, but it lasted until I woke up this morning and went back to coughing.

The good thing about today: I also went back to Raven Used Books. To my frank surprise, no one had bought Robert Graves' In Broken Images: Selected Letters 1914–1946 (1982). I did promise nineweaving:

13 July 1943

Dear Alan:

Thanks for long letter. I disagree with the critics about those historical chapters. They are short, but necessary to the argument, and it would have been awful to have to deal with E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and other contemporary giants and giantesses!

I have been worried by thinking about poetry and finding that all the poems that one thinks of as most poetic in the romantic style are all intricately concerned with moon-worship. This sounds crazy, and I fear for my sanity; but it is so. The old English ballads like Kemp Owyne, the Lykewake Dirge, are all composed with a sort of neurosis-compulsion for arranging things in 3s (although the stanza is a four line one) which is the chief characteristic of the Moon Goddess—Triple Goddess—ritual; and the 17th-century Loving Mad Tom poem, which is generally regarded as the most 'purely poetic' of all anonymous English compositions is a perfect compendium of Ashtaroth–Cybele–Hecate worship—not a single element omitted. Of course, Apollo originally pinched Parnassus and Pegasus from the Moon Goddess. And the Muse, whom poets habitually address, was the Moon originally in her Mouse aspect. The history of English poetry has been the modifying of the original moon-poetry, which is stressed, with sun-poetry (intellectual, Apollo-poetry) which is measured in regular beats and metres. Let me ramble on for a bit more. I find that Shakespeare, almost habitually, though using a five foot line only uses three interest-centres or operative words in any line; the rest is syntax or words of no particular accentuation—Chaucer seems to use four habitually. Chaucer was very much an Apollonian: a very good poet too.

This may lead me anywhere and I am so anxious not to get dogmatic or psychological. But I find myself making the Bards into Moon-men and the minstrels into Sun-men.

Help!

Love,
Robert

. . . Happy last of Candlemas, Robert. Don't scan this at home:

Brede, Brede, tar gys my thie, tar dys thie ayms noght
Foshil jee yn dorrys da Brede, as lhig da Brede cheet stiagh

Emma Christian, "Vreeshey, Vreeshey"

1. I thought also of a painting in the MFA, John Sloan's Pigeons (1910). I was just now curious enough to look up the artist, about whom I knew almost nothing. I have no idea where he posed for this portrait, but I like it..

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm glad for the good things. I wish you less coughing and soon.

Thanks for sharing the Graves letter, and your lovely poem that's up at Lone Star Stories.

Beannachtaí Lá 'le Bhríde duit! (You can take that as blessings or greetings of St. Bríd's Day, whichever you'd prefer to have.)

I feel as if there's more I should say, but it's escaped me now, whatever it might be.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

But the bonny mad boys are lacking. Alas.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Stark. Staring. Bonkers.

What a hoot! But seriously, Graves had the definitiver case of apophenia. And pareidolia. He could have looked at a Guiness bottle in a gutter, a windblown Daily Mail, and a blue bollard (slowly metamorphosing into a policeman), and seen the Goddess. Three!

Many thanks. You've immeasurably brightened a tough day.

Nine

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I love the poetry speculation. I've had thoughts along those lines, but never in so organized a fashion. Clearly this was a pet theory of his that he was able to finally express.

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

Three disparate objects. Vun! Two! Three! Ah ah ha!

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

A conspiracy of moon-worshippers? That's fabulous, and I want in.

If I visited this bookshop, you'd probably need a crowbar to get me out. Hope you're feeling better today.

[lady-tigerfish.livejournal.com]

The "this may not lead me anywhere..." is perhaps the funniest bit about that letter, in retrospect. Considering the doorstopper that was to come.

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

I adore John Sloane. I like his prints better than his paintings--I think he's better with line than color. But then, I have a bunch of his prints of 1910's New York hung in my back hall, so perhaps I'm prejudiced.

[sovay]

The "this may not lead me anywhere..." is perhaps the funniest bit about that letter, in retrospect. Considering the doorstopper that was to come.

I know. Also, I think he was right to worry about his sanity.

That is a great icon.

[sovay]

Beannachtaí Lá 'le Bhríde duit! (You can take that as blessings or greetings of St. Bríd's Day, whichever you'd prefer to have.)

Thank you! I hope you had the same.

[sovay]

But the bonny mad boys are lacking. Alas.

*hugs*

[sovay]

But then, I have a bunch of his prints of 1910's New York hung in my back hall, so perhaps I'm prejudiced.

I've only seen the one painting in the MFA that I know about, but it's entirely possible that I'd recognize more if shown them. I really like Pigeons.

[sovay]

Clearly this was a pet theory of his that he was able to finally express.

Reading the letters, The White Goddess sounds a lot more like something that happened to him than something he set out to write.

[sovay]

A conspiracy of moon-worshippers? That's fabulous, and I want in.

Shakespeare as secret bard of the Moon is way more awesome than anything Roland Emmerich could come up with.

(There's a secret history of A Midsummer Night's Dream waiting in there somewhere . . .)

If I visited this bookshop, you'd probably need a crowbar to get me out.

They're where I find books I didn't know existed and generally need.

Hope you're feeling better today.

Thanks. I'm hurting less, but coughing more. I have no idea how this works.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

Pah to Emmerich.

*A secret history of A Midsummer Night's Dream*

Write it! Write it!

Oh, a copy of Singing Innocence And Experience is in the post to me... I'm looking forward to reading it.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I hope you had the same.

Most welcome! And thank you!

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

*nod* If something like that ambushes you on the road, you write it down. Either that or kill the Buddah. I always get these things confused.