The Count of Monte Cristo

Title: The Count of Monte Cristo

Author: Alexandre Dumas

Original Date of Publication: 1844

This Edition: May 27th 2003 by Penguin Classics

Number of Pages: 1276

Original Language: French

Translator: Robin Buss

Purchase: Amazon, Barnes & Noble (ebook), ebay, Abe Books, The Book Depository

What Goodreads has to say:

'On what slender threads do life and fortune hang'

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialised in the 1840s.

Robin Buss' lively translation is complete and unabridged, and remains faithful to the style of Dumas' original. This edition includes an introduction, explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading.

What I have to say:

(warning: subtle spoilers)

The Arrest

On August 24, I began reading The Count of Monte Cristo. On September 30, around 11:00 pm, I finished The Count of Monte Cristo. This means that in the space of about one month I lived through 29 years. And they were epic.

If you're looking into reading The Count of Monte Cristo for the first time, I cannot recommend highly enough Robin Buss' translation. As the owner of the bookstore where I bought the 1276 page novel informed me, Buss grew up speaking both French and English in his household, so clearly he knows what he's doing. I found his translation lively, poetic, and moving. And don't even bother reading the unabridged version - seriously, who does that? - be a hipster and read the whole thing.

In reviewing Dumas' masterpiece, I first want to make it clear that I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and gave it four stars on goodreads. The compelling nature of many of the characters and the fast-paced plot kept me up reading the book for days on end and often late into the night - and when that happens with a book published over 170 years ago, you know there's something good there. So if you get the sense further on in this review that I'm criticizing Dumas and his novel, please know that I hold the author in very high regard and loved the novel very much.

The Trial

First of all I want to talk about the characters. I anticipate this will be the longest section in my review - because, let's face it: there are over 40 characters in this book. That doesn't mean I'm going to get through all of them (don't worry - it won't take you longer to read this review than it will to read the actual book). But I do want to look at some of the main characters - from the most compelling to the most pathetic.

Eugenie Danglars

Basically, she's boss. Half the characters in The Count of Monte Cristo suffer from arranged marriages, but while everybody else is suffering and lamenting, Eugenie sits her father down and tells him in effect: "You didn't consult me when you arranged this marriage. We're not living in the era of arranged matches anymore. I don't want to get married. I'm not going to." When her father makes it clear that they'll both be bankrupt unless Eugenie marries the wealthy Prince (he's not a real prince - see the book), Eugenie shrugs and runs away with a woman. Like I said, boss.

The main reason Eugenie's character comes across as so strong is precisely because she knows what she wants and is going to get it - despite what anyone else thinks she can or can't do. Some of the other characters start to seem rather pathetic about mid-way through the book. Albert doesn't want to get married to Eugenie, but the match has already been arranged and he doesn't want to upset his father, so he'll marry her. Valentine is passionately in love with Morrel, but her father has arranged her marriage to Franz, so she'll resign herself and marry him. Morrel loves Valentine and wants to marry her but figures he can't so he'll just kill himself. You know, whatever. In the midst of all of this, you can probably understand why, beside the paragraph when Eugenie outright tells her father she won't marry Cavalcanti, I wrote in pencil,"Eugenie is the best character in the whole book." 

Albert de Morcerf

I love Albert. In fact, he and Eugenie may be my favorite characters, though I also like Mercedes, Noirtier, and Franz, among others. Albert is so simply lovable. He's a sincere person. When he loves someone, such as the Count or his mother, Mercedes, he says so openly. And when someone upsets him, he tells them so openly. He's brave, honest, and simple in character - in the sense that he's a very straightforward person with no deceit and little complexity. You can almost always tell what he's thinking - usually because he'll just tell you. And he's unfailingly loyal. I love Albert.

I think Albert as a character may be the one that the reader connects with most easily on an emotional level (with the possible exception of Mercedes) - he seems to go straight to your heart, and when bad things start happening to him, your heart just breaks. I was aghast when he challenged one of his best friends to a fight to the death - and even more aghast when he challenged his best friend, the Count. His naive love for the Count is touching when, suffering acutely under the influence of a rumor that threatens his father's honor and that, unbeknownst to Albert, has in fact been propagated by the Count, Albert's friend suggests that they go and see the Count of the Monte Cristo in order to cheer Albert up. "Yes," Albert replies readily. "Let's go see the Count. I like him."

Albert may also be one of the characters in the novel that experiences the most profound change throughout. Introduced to the reader as a lovable, if rather simple, Parisian dandy whose deepest anxieties are over the stylishness of his clothes (or lack thereof) and whose greatest longing is to have a romantic adventure in Rome, the Albert shown to us in the novel's final chapters is quite a different character. He's always been brave, but now he finds the courage to uphold his inherent sense of honor by abandoning his wealth and manifold comforts and supporting himself and his mother entirely on his own. I suppose you could say that Albert grows up.

Valentine de Villefort

Valentine is in many ways Eugenie's foil. Both girls find themselves in a similar situation: their fathers have arranged a marriage for them to a man they do not love. Where Eugenie stands up and kicks butt, however, Valentine sits down and faints. Dumas juxtaposes the two girls several times, pointing out Valentine's gentle, feminine nature beside Eugenie's bold, more masculine nature. One of Albert's friends compares Eugenie to Artemis, the chaste huntress from Greek mythology. If Eugenie is Artemis, virgin goddess of the hunt, then Valentine is her softer counterpart, named for the saint who gives his name to Valentine's Day, and thus representative of traditional feminine love. This juxtaposition is interesting and holds a lot of promise, but in all other respects, Valentine is an uninteresting character. She's a bit like Cinderella, but without the spunk. A dutiful daughter - there's nothing wrong with that - Valentine absolutely refuses to stand up for herself and instead allows herself to be coerced by the men in her life - whether that's her father, her grandfather (but let's face it: her grandfather is awesome so there's no problem there), or her melodramatic and somewhat pathetic lover whom I'm not even convinced she loves. When her star-crossed lover (we'll get to him in a moment) tries to persuade her to run away with him, Valentine is adamant about the fact that she will not stand up for herself. Only when he threatens to kill himself upon her marriage does Valentine agree to run away with him, but with the stipulation that they will wait until the positively last second. And, in the event, they don't actually go through with it.

The only reason Valentine survives the novel is the Count of Monte Cristo, but her character won't survive long in memory.

Maximilien Morrel

Maximilien and Valentine are two peas in a pod: uninteresting, uninspiring, and not at all overbold. The first time I met Maximilien, I was inclined to like him - he was brave and morally upright, and the scene with his father was touching. To top it all off, he was kind to the Count - that was nice. But after his meeting with the Count, Maximilien's character set off on a downward spiral. The more I saw of him, the more uninteresting he became. In the final chapters of the novel, he managed to redeem himself by being so melodramatic and pathetic that he became humorous. Thus when he and the Count enter Marseilles and the Count asks if Maximilien had something he needed to do in town, Maximilien replies, "I will go weep upon my father's grave." I picture the Count rolling his eyes when Maximilen's head is turned. At another point, the Count is engaged in telling Maximilien the unfortunate story of a young man who was sent to prison and abandoned by his friends (hint: the young man is the Count but Maximilien doesn't seem to pick up on that, probably because he's too busy weeping over his father's grave) and Maximilien finds it hard to believe that this other young man has suffered more than he has. He starts comparing his own plight to that of the man in the story. But did that man consider killing himself? he asks, to which the Count replies in the affirmative. But did he lose his father? asks Maximilien. His father died of starvation while his son was imprisoned for 18 years, the Count replies. "Oh," says Maximilien.

Mercedes

Mercedes is the heart of The Count of Monte Cristo. Motivating all her actions are a mother's love for her son and a woman's love for her husband (or the man who would have been her husband had he not been sent to jail for 18 years and then been presumed dead - it happens). The moment that stands at the heart of the book is that when Mercedes accosts the Count as Edmond Dantes and begs him to spare the life of her son. She kneels before the man she once loved - and still loves - and will always love - to plead for the life of the son who is more precious to her than anything else on this earth. It is a moment of deep emotion, heart, and intensity - and the most thoroughly moving scene in the entire book:

The stranger looked all around her to make sure that she was quite alone then, bending forward as if she wanted to kneel down, and clasping her hands, she said in a desperate voice: "Edmond! You must not kill my son!"

The count took one pace backwards, gave a faint cry and dropped the pistol he was holding. 

"What name did you say, Madame de Morcerf?" he asked. 

"Yours!" she cried, throwing back her veil. "Yours, which perhaps I alone have not forgotten. Edmond, it is not Madame de Morcerf who has come to you, it is Mercedes." 

"Mercedes is dead, Madame," said Monte Cristo. "I do not know anyone of that name." 

"Mercedes is alive, Monsieur, and Mercedes remembers, for she alone recognized you when she saw you, even without seeing you, by your voice, Edmond, by the mere sound of your voice. Since that time she has followed you step by step, she has watched you and been wary of you, because she did not need to wonder whose was the hand that has struck down Monsieur de Morcerf."

Perhaps it is only too appropriate that, as the character with the most heart in all of the novel, Mercedes' ending is the one that seems to the reader the most tragic and undeserved. Carried away on the wings of the happy ending which comes after so much heartache, and the Count's final, transcendent words, echoed by Valentine, the reader touches down only for a moment, and that only to repeat a single name, questioningly - the name of the woman loved by Edmond Dantes for so long, and who loved Edmond Dantes even longer. We ask of Fate, or the Count, or God, or Dumas - for we are uncertain which of these fatalistic forces we should hold responsible for the outcome of her story - what of Mercedes? And we are left without an answer: Fate, or God, or the Count, or whoever it is we should ultimately hold responsible, are overwhelmingly silent on this point.

I can understand why most adaptations of The Count of Monte Cristo depart from the original ending to grant Mercedes her happily ever after; not only is the outcome of her story almost unbearable, but it feels like a splinter in the novel. There is a falling out or falling apart that occurs when the Count takes his final leave of Mercedes, and from that point on, the book feels less like a cohesive whole; at the end of it, the characters pair off and go their separate ways. And even though some of these characters seem perfectly happy and there is nothing to convince us that they are otherwise, we have doubts and hesitate to concede to them their happy ending. For how can Edmond Dantes be truly happy without Mercedes at his side? Having the Count reunited with Mercedes at the end of the story just feels more whole. But perhaps Dumas never intended to write that kind of a story.

The Verdict

After that tangent which wasn't really a tangent, I feel like there's probably nothing left to say and you wouldn't even read it anyway. I could talk at length about the Count, but I don't really want to, which seems like a cop-out in a review of The Count of Monte Cristo, but enough has been said about him in any case; Mercedes' is the story that begs for more attention. I could talk about Haydee, Father Noirtier, Villefort and his crushing defeat at the hands of the Count, or Madame Danglars' gently tragic ending and the fact that I liked her more than I ever had before the last time she ever appeared in the novel. I could glory in the shape of the book and the closure gained when Edmond revisits Marseilles, Chateau d'If and Monte Cristo in the final chapters, or I could revel in the beautiful serenity of the moment near the end of the novel when the Count meditates over a quiet ocean and a star-filled sky. Had we but world enough and time, I could talk to you about all these and a host of other things. But why delineate them for you here? The best and surest way for you to experience them is to read the book yourself - so do. I think you'll enjoy it. Then, if you feel inclined, we can talk about The Count together.

Release (or not)

After reading the novel and seeing an immensely disappointing stage adaptation of it, I have resolved to embark upon a Quixotic venture and watch every film adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo that I can get my hands on. I will find the one (or at least watch them all before admitting defeat). When I have done so, I will report my conclusion. Stay tuned. 

In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts on The Count of Monte Cristo. Have you read it? Seen an adaptation I should explore? Which characters moved you, and which left you feeling somewhat less that satisfied? Just because you (yes - I am talking to you) have never commented on this blog before doesn't mean I will give up on you. After all, as Dumas reminds us, "until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words, - 'wait and hope.'" That's not a bad motto.

Happy Hobbit Day Once Again

Mae govannen (well met), dear readers!

You may have  noticed that this blog kind of dropped off the face of the earth for several months. I can offer no sufficient explanation for this silence, so I won't.

Today we celebrate the birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo, International Hobbit Day, and the two-year anniversary of this blog. Hooray!

Let's celebrate in true hobbit fashion - with humor, song, and, of course, food. 

Firstly, humor.

Impress your friends with these hobbit-related jokes:

"Why didn't Bilbo want to go to Laketown?"

"He preferred cities with less Smaug."

"How many hobbits does it take to screw in a light-bulb?"

"Some hobbits changed one before, but I'm not Shire how many it Took."

"An elf walks into a bar. A hobbit laughs and walks under it."

"I would make another Lord of the Rings joke, but all the good ones Aragorn."

(I cannot take credit for any of these jokes: I found them online. I am sincerely sorry not to be as clever as you thought I was.)

Secondly, a song.

Warm your hearths and ale with this traditional hobbit walking song:

Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.

Tree and flower and leaf and grass,
Let them pass! Let them pass!
Hill and water under sky,
Pass them by! Pass them by!

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.

Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
Let them go! Let them go!
Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Fare you well! Fare you well!

Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
The world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to home and bed. 

Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!
Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
And then to bed! And then to bed!

A classic.

Thirdly, (and most importantly) food.

If you're wondering what to make for your Shire party, this website has a variety of recipes for dishes featured in Chapter 1 of The Hobbit. If seed cake, mince-pies, apple-tart, cheese, biscuits, eggs(ses), and chicken sound good to you, then you're set. (And don't forget po-ta-toes - boiled/mashed/stuck in a stew).


And, finally, as an added bonus, a piece of shire wisdom:

“There is nothing like looking if you want to find something. You certainly usally find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” 

Happy Hobbit Day. May the hair on your toes never fall out.

Shakespeare & Sons

A few years ago I discovered this really great group called Mumford & Sons. I was awed by the blue-grassy sound to their music and the fact that they were so popular; I love music that has a blue-grass/folk sound to it, but generally find that that isn't what gets played on the radio. Being the avid Shakespeare fanatic that I am, I immediately connected the title of their debut album Sigh No More with the song "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more" from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I wondered if the reference had been intentional, or if Mumford & Sons had just hit on the name themselves and the album had nothing to do with Shakespeare.

However, in a recent performance of Shakespeare's play that I attended, I recognized the line "man is a giddy thing" as being quoted in the title track of Sigh No More. After that I returned to the song, convinced now that Mumford & Sons had been fully intentional in quoting Much Ado. What I found this time around was very exciting for the English Major in me: The song "Sigh No More," after which their first album is named, quotes about six lines from Much Ado About Nothing. And it gets better. Mumford & Sons quotes lines from other Shakespeare plays in at least two other songs on the album. At this point, my literary analysis brain had gone into fifth gear and my esteem for Mumford & Sons had gone through the roof. It isn't everyday you find out one of your favorite bands quotes Shakespeare in three separate songs. I don't know how many people have noticed this; maybe I'm just a latecomer to the party and everyone is laughing at me right now because they all figured this out years ago. But I'm going to assume that the average casual listener hasn't noticed this trend in Mumford & Sons, so join me, if you feel inclined, as I delve a little more deeply into the content of Mumford & Sons' poetic masterpiece Sigh No More.

The opener: "Sigh No More"

Firstly, consider the first stanza of Shakespeare's poem of the same name, which appears as a song in his comedy Much Ado About Nothing:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.

    Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

    To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

    Into hey nonny, nonny.

(As a side note, we might ask ourselves how the Mumford & Sons' song would have turned out differently if the band had decided that the line "hey nonny, nonny" was a must have.)

A little background

This is not the time or place for an in-depth summary of Much Ado About Nothing, but the play centers on two of Shakespeare's most beloved characters, Beatrice and Benedick, who have forsworn love and engage in witty and insulting repartee whenever they meet. At one point, Benedick exclaims that marriage is like "thrust[ing] thy neck into a yoke, wear the print of it and sigh away Sundays" (1.1.). As you've probably already guessed, the two end up falling madly in love and declare their intent to marry each other at the play's conclusion. When his friends tease him for entering into marriage after he has spent his whole life bashing it, Benedick protests that "man is a giddy thing" or rather, man is changeable, and his past opinions should not be held against him. (5.4.)

The song

Mumford & Sons' "Sigh No More" opens with the line "Serve God, love me, and mend," a direct quote from Much Ado About Nothing. About mid-play, when things are at their darkest, Benedick asks Beatrice how she is holding up. When she replies that she is "very ill," he replies, "serve God, love me, and mend" (5.2.). 

The rest of the verse proceeds:

This is not the end
Live unbruised we are friends
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry

 In the final scene of Much Ado, Benedick and his best friend, Claudio, make up after having been set at odds through a miscommunication. Benedick tells Claudio that he would have beaten him if the duel they previously scheduled had taken place, but as it is, he tells him to "live unbruised." The two have a bit of sporting repartee after which Benedick exclaims, "Come, come, we are friends" (5.4.).

Though I'm not sure that any of the characters in Much Ado ever utter directly the line "I'm sorry," it applies to at least half of them and is implicit in many of the things they say in the play's final scenes. This apology could be that of Claudio and Don Pedro, who suspected the innocent young Hero of being untrue to her fiance; or that of Benedick and Claudio to each other after a turn of events renders their previously scheduled duel irrelevant. Possibly Benedick and Beatrice speak it to each other when they agree to put their history of quarreling and insulting behind them. There are multiple other characters who stand in a position to apologize as well, but the point is that the line is very fitting where it stands in the song.

The second verse runs:

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea, one on shore
My heart was never pure
You know me
You know me 

The first two lines may sound familiar, and if you take another look at the Shakespeare poem I've quoted above, you'll see why:

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
    Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
    To one thing constant never.

 Obviously, the first two lines of this verse borrow from Shakespeare's poem. But I think the lines that follow are also very apt in the context of Much Ado. I like to think they could be spoken by Benedick to Beatrice - she knows him well, and in knowing him perhaps knows that his heart was never pure. As Benedick says to Beatrice in the play, "Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably" (5.2.).

The song continues:

And man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing

Continuing the theme of the preceding verse, this line isolates and calls attention to the changeability of man and his opinions, "to one thing constant never." If the speaker is the same as that of the previous verse, he seems to be apologizing for his past behavior, citing his fallible nature - which was never wholly devoted to one thing - and man's tendency towards inconstancy. And, of course, this line comes directly from the play (Act 5. Scene 4.).

But the line "man is a giddy thing," standing as it does at the crux or turning point of the song, could also signify the speaker's changing attitudes towards love, especially since this line transitions us from a tragic apology to a more upbeat celebration of love. "Man is a giddy thing" might mean that man is capable of changing his behaviors and attitudes; hence this line moves us out of the speaker's apology for his past behavior and into a declaration that he is now putting all that behind him.

If you were wondering when the song was finally going to pick up - it's now. We have the characteristic Mumford & Sons decisive plucking of a chord followed by a slow upward swing in tempo, and that moves us into the chorus, or climax, of the song:

Love will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you
It will set you free
Be more like the man
You were made to be.
There is a design
And alignment to cry
Of my heart to see
The beauty of love
As it was made to be.

I think the subdued but heartfelt opening of this song followed by the exuberant climax makes this possibly Mumford & Sons' most rousing song. And by rousing I mean it takes the listener on a journey that begins in fallibility and regret and ends in jubilation and freedom. At least, it has that effect on me; call me melodramatic if you like, I don't care. If we return to Much Ado for one final moment of analysis, we might note that the song's climax mirrors Benedick's and Beatrice's transformation in the play. Though initially scorning marriage and fearing that it will "enslave" or "betray" them if they give it rein, the lovers find in the end that love, far from enslaving them, has set them free.

Other tracks on the album

Needless to say, I was pretty ecstatic when I figured all this out, but that's just a beginning. I'd long suspected that the title of the song "I Gave You All" on the same album was borrowed from Shakespeare's King Lear, but I couldn't find any other lines from the play in that song (I'm still hopeful - I just haven't found them yet). However, when I discovered a direct quotation from Macbeth in another song on the album, I figured I had proof enough to decide that "I Gave You All" was in fact a reference to Shakespeare.

"I Gave You All" is, with the exception of "Dust Bowl Dance" - which can be truly scary and always seems to come on whenever I'm in a particularly stressful situation, or maybe it's just that the song renders everything stressful (don't get me wrong I love it) - the most "angry" song on the album. But it's not just a screaming rant; it's a brilliantly crafted song that moves the listener through a series of emotions and leads her gradually up to the song's high point and then back down, and it ends with a low moan of loss and betrayal. The song's lyrics and structure seem to echo Shakespeare's great tragedy King Lear, in which the title character divides his kingdom up between his two older daughters, who proceed to misuse, abuse, and abandon him. Exasperated, Lear cries to his daughters, "I gave you all!" (2.4.) When his daughters refuse to invite him into the house in the wake of nightfall and a coming storm, Lear rages upon the heath in the midst of thunder, lightning, and rain. The scene upon the heath seems suggested by several lyrics in Mumford & Sons' song, such as the opening, "Rip the earth in two with your mind," which seems especially apt since Lear begins to lose his sanity at this point in the play. The song thus draws from the tragedy, anger, and bewilderment of King Lear in order to tap into the play's moments of darkness and tempest and achieve a deeper sense of loss. One final observation: the line "your tears feel warm as they fall on my forearms" from the song seems to echo the moment when Lear, towards the end of the play, awakes to find his young and faithful daughter Cordelia at his side. In the initial confusion of waking, Lear states, "mine own tears / do scald like molten lead" and when he recognizes his daughter Cordelia he asks, "be your tears wet?"

The quotation from Shakespeare's Macbeth appears in the song "Roll Away Your Stone" on the same album (Sigh No More). In Act 1, Scene 4, Macbeth, the title character, states, "Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires." Similarly, Mumford & Sons' song states, "Stars, hide your fires / These here are my desires / And I won't give them up to you this time around." The rest of the song, with its emphasis on darkness and man's inner character, or soul, seems particularly relevant to Macbeth.


The rest of the songs on the album are spectacular, but I have yet to discover any more Shakespeare lyrics in them, and I don't think there are any on the band's second album, Babel, which is, nevertheless, brilliant. I'll be on the lookout, however, and if you happen to find any, let me know! Their newest album, Wilder Mind, was just released earlier this week, so there's plenty more opportunity for analyzing Mumford and Sons' lyrics.

Thanks for taking this ride with me, and here's to lots more Mumford & Sons listening - and Shakespeare reading/watching - in the future!

A Middle-Earth (sort-of) Romance for Valentine's Day

“Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,
for ever blest, since here did lie
and here with lissom limbs did run
beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,
Lúthien Tinúviel
more fair than Mortal tongue can tell.
Though all to ruin fell the world
and were dissolved and backward hurled;
unmade into the old abyss,
yet were its making good, for this―
the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea―
that Lúthien for a time should be.”  

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

So, for Valentine's Day, I was going to write a post about the romance of J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith, but then I found this Wikipedia article that says everything I wanted to say and even has some awesome quotes that I never would have found on my own. It is very interesting. If you've read the story of Beren and Luthien in the Silmarillion but don't know the "real" story, it's definitely worth reading. I think you'll enjoy it. It's like something from a romantic idyll or from this one book I read that had this story of these two people who fell in love but they couldn't get married right away because one of them was an elf and one was - wait, that was the Silmarillion.

So how about this (since it is Valentine's Day) : Instead of writing up the facts in prose, seeing as Wikipedia has already beat me to it, I will render them in poetry. Everything's better in poetry, right? I mean Tolkien himself taught us that (see my post on Tolkien's poem "Mythopoeia").

For better or for worse (and entirely avoiding any thoughts on what Tolkien would say about it), I submit "Beren and Luthien":

In the spring of the world when you danced

Time stood still within my breast

Your eyes were bright as the sea of white stars

That swirled around your feet

But your hair was as dark as the valley of death

And filled with innumerous shadowings

I thought upon the days of our youth

When routed from my mother's house

Heavy with the scent of death

I came upon you sorrowing

Our tender hearts, o'er eager for love

Met once for all beneath the leaves

Long I sought you wandering far

As ever nearer out of reach

I chased your hem by the light of stars

We found each other all for once

And to each one clung quivering

You cast away your other life, to be but mine forevermore

We passed through dark and out of day

In woods of nightshade morrowless

And once we met in the valley wide

Amidst the war-death clamoring

And then it was my heart stood still

When you danced in the white stars sorrowless

When I returned from fog of war

We met again beneath the leaves

To cherish our eternity

And raise our children by the light of stars

And though your eyes were not as bright

As when you danced in the white sea-foam

My love for you could never dim

Our hearts danced once across the years

The story has gone crooked now

And I cannot plead to the moon-high gods

But into the stone of forevermore

I carve this word as immense as the sea

For me it contains the spring of the world

Held fixed in a clearing of white snow-flowers

As bright as the light that stood in your eyes

And your hair all shadowed with stars

New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year again. Or rather, the end of that year and the beginning of a new one. We stay up until midnight and then go to bed. We light fireworks and bang pots and pans. We watch the ball drop (just kidding - I've never done that and I bet you probably haven't either). We make resolutions.

We make resolutions that we completely forget about once February hits (if, indeed, our resolutions last until February). Then New Year's rolls around again and we make more resolutions we know we won't carry out. So what's the point?

My New Year's resolution for 2015 is to make only resolutions that I can in no way fulfill - even if I manage to remember them past February. For inspiration, I've drawn on my blog posts of 2014. I hope my list inspires you to make your own resolutions that you won't carry out. Good luck.




1. Go to Narnia.


















2. Free the unicorns.











3. Persuade Tolkien to finish The Fall of Arthur.

4. Time travel to the age of the dinosaurs.



5. Find this landscape.











6. Overthrow the monarchy.














7. Figure out how to format these posts correctly.

Happy New Year. Here's to lots of happy reading in 2015.

Your early Christmas present: Le Petit Prince

Happy December, everyone! I hope your plans for the Holidays are going well, and that you aren't drowning in finals and/or Christmas shopping. Now down to business.

If you haven't yet, watch this trailer NOW:



The Little Prince 

Premieres October 7th, 2015 in France.

Apparently they are also planning on making a version in English, but I'm kind of thinking I'd rather watch the French one. I don't know when the movie will be released in the U.S.

For (slightly) more info, head over to this article by the Verge:
The Little Prince could be one of the most beautiful animated films of 2015

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”   

  - Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Mythopoeia: Tolkien's argument for the power of myth

Hi. Remember that post three ages of men ago about five semi-obscure works by Tolkien that are really cool? They were:

1. The Tolkien Reader
2. Smith of Wooton Major
3. Letters from Father Christmas
4. Mythopoeia
5. The Fall of Arthur

(Here is a link to that post, where I go into depth about The Tolkien Reader: http://woodbtwntheworlds.blogspot.com/2014/05/5-works-by-tolkien-you-may-not-have.html).

Anyway, I'd like to talk about another of the works on that list. This is the poem "Mythopoeia."

"Mythopoeia" (I spelled it right twice now, I should win something) was the product of an argument between Tolkien and his friend C.S. Lewis. Lewis argued that myths were ultimately "worthless" because they weren't true, but Tolkien argued that myths were valuable in their own right. Apparently he didn't manage to convince Lewis in conversation, but he went home and wrote a poem about it, which he dedicated to Lewis and then showed to him. The poem must have done the trick; it reportedly convinced Lewis that myths had value and weren't just a pack of worthless lies. The moral we learn from this little story is that, if in prose you don't succeed, try, try a poem. "Mythopoeia" also functions as a great defense of fantasy literature, especially taken along with Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories," which you can find in The Tolkien Reader.

Because "Mythopoeia" can be difficult to come across, I've reproduced it below, taken from this website. When you're done, you might want to listen to this analysis of the poem by Dr. Corey Olsen - but all, of course, at your own choosing.

To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless,

even though "breathed through silver"

PHILOMYTHUS TO MISOMYTHUS 

You look at trees and label them just so,

(for trees are `trees', and growing is `to grow');

you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace

one of the many minor globes of Space:

a star's a star, some matter in a ball

compelled to courses mathematical

amid the regimented, cold, Inane,

where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend

(and must), but only dimly apprehend,

great processes march on, as Time unrolls

from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;

and as on page o'erwitten without clue,

with script and limning packed of various hue,

and endless multitude of forms appear,

some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,

each alien, except as kin from one

remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.

God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,

tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these

homuncular men, who walk upon the ground

with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.

The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,

green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,

thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,

slime crawling up from mud to live and die,

these each are duly registered and print

the brain's contortions with a separate dint.

Yet trees and not `trees', until so named and seen -

and never were so named, till those had been

who speech's involuted breath unfurled,

faint echo and dim picture of the world,

but neither record nor a photograph,

being divination, judgement, and a laugh,

response of those that felt astir within

by deep monition movements that were kin

to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:

free captives undermining shadowy bars,

digging the foreknown from experience

and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.

Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,

and looking backward they beheld the Elves

that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,

and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

He sees no stars who does not see them first

of living silver made that sudden burst

to flame like flowers beneath the ancient song,

whose very echo after-music long

has since pursued. There is no firmament,

only a void, unless a jewelled tent

myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,

unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.

The heart of man is not compound of lies,

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,

and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,

man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,

his world-dominion by creative act:

not his to worship the great Artefact,

man, sub-creator, the refracted light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with elves and goblins, though we dared to build

gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right

(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we're made.

Yes! `wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat

our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!

Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,

or some things fair and others ugly deem ?

All wishes are not idle, not in vain

fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,

not for itself to be desired, but ill;

or else to strive or to subdue the will

alike were graceless; and of Evil this

alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,

that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;

that seek no parley, and in guarded room,

through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom

weave rissues gilded by the far-off day

hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.

Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build

their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,

and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,

a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme

of things nor found within record time.

It is not they that have forgot the Night,

or bid us flee to organised delight,

in lotus-isles of economic bliss

forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss

(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,

bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).

Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,

and those that hear them yet may yet beware.

They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,

and yet they would not in despair retreat,

but oft to victory have turned the lyre

and kindled hearts with legendary fire,

illuminating Now and dark Hath-been

with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing

and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.

I would be with the mariners of the deep

that cut their slender planks on mountains steep

and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,

for some have passed beyond the fabled West.

I would with the beleaguered fools be told,

that keep an inner fastness where their gold,

impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring

to mint in image blurred of distant king,

or in fantastic banners weave the sheen

heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

I will not walk with your progressive apes,

erect and sapient. Before them gapes

the dark abyss to which their progress tends -

if by God's mercy progress ever ends,

and does not ceaselessly revolve the same

unfruitful course with changing of a name.

I will not treat your dusty path and flat,

denoting this and that by this and that,

your world immutable wherein no part

the little maker has with maker's art.

I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,

nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray

from gazing upon everlasting Day

to see the day-illumined, and renew

from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.

Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see

that all is as it is, and yet may free:

Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,

garden not gardener, children not their toys.

Evil it will not see, for evil lies

not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,

not in the source but in the tuneless voice.

In Paradise they look no more awry;

and though they make anew, they make no lie.

Be sure they still will make, not been dead,

and poets shall have flames upon their head,

and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:

there each shall choose for ever from the All.

There you have it: Tolkien's "Mythopoeia." Are you convinced?