What was the first book you read from cover to cover, even skipping meals?
Mine was “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by CS Lewis. I found it in the pocket library at North Auburn Elementary School in 1969, courtesy of our librarian, Mrs. Sidwell. This first volume of the seven-volume series captivated me and I quickly devoured all the books in the series up to “The Last Battle.”
Even today, 55 years after my baptism through books, the mere mention of these stories still excites me. I loved the books then and I love them now. Even today, I am crazy about a good read.
And a great recording, especially of poetry. As a child, one evening I put an old record with excerpts from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”, read in the original Middle English by Oxford professor Nevill Coghill, on the turntable and pressed the switch.
It blew me away. The sheer wonder of what I was hearing left me speechless. Beautiful things can do that. Years would pass before I could put into words what I felt in that moment: “The rhythm of beauty that calms the heart.”
James Joyce wrote of this peak experience in Chapter 4 of his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In it, his main character, the budding artist Stephen Dedalus, sees a thinly disguised version of Joyce himself, a beautiful girl on the river bank, and for him time stands still.
I quote the passage in full in the hope that it will stir a memory and help you understand what I am talking about. Personally, I think it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.
“A girl stood before him in the middle of the river, alone and silent, looking out to sea. She looked like one whom magic had transformed into the shape of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long, slender, bare legs were delicate as a crane’s and pure, except where an emerald-green trace of seaweed had marked the flesh. Her thighs, full and soft as ivory, were bare almost to her hips, where the white fringes of her underpants were like the plumes of soft white down. Her slate-blue skirts were wrapped around her waist and swallowtailed behind her. Her breast was like a bird’s, soft and delicate, delicate and soft as the breast of a dark-plumed dove, but her long, fair hair was girlish, and her face was girlish, touched by the wonder of mortal beauty.
She was alone and silent, looking out to sea. And when she felt his presence and the adoration of his eyes, her eyes turned to him, in silent suffering of his look, without shame or presumption. Long, long she bore his look, and then she turned her eyes silently from him and fixed them on the stream, gently moving the water with her foot, to and fro, to and fro. The first faint sound of gently moving water broke the silence, soft and soft and whispering, soft as the bells of sleep. to and fro, to and fro, and a faint flame trembled on her cheek. ‘Heavenly God,’ cried Stephen’s soul in a burst of profane joy.'”
This experience formed the core of Joyce’s entire thought and later works. For him, literature was about beauty.
I remembered this paragraph, and various books, when an English literature student in my college dorm came to the corner where I was sitting and quietly recited to me the prologue to the “Canterbury Tales” in Middle English. To me, it was like rolling gems through my mouth.
“You heard that on a record, right? You heard that on a record!!?” When I told him that, the fear disappeared. His shoulders relaxed and he started breathing like a human again.
“Phew,” he said, and walked away with his usual proud gait.
What struck me was the guy’s sheer fear. He was terrified that the high status he imagined himself to be as a world champion quote-dropper would be destroyed because someone else might know something he didn’t. When he found out that I had heard for the first time on a recording what our language sounded like in Chaucer’s time, it seemed to invalidate my experience, and he felt his endangered crown settle back on his head.
For him, the whole thing was about his ego.
I have always believed that the joy one takes from art should never be about piling up quotes to elevate oneself or impress the girls. When dealing with the accumulated wisdom, experience and gifts of the human animal, we should learn from it, absorb it all and use it as a guide in the twisty turns and turns of our lives.
You might object, “Yes, but we know so much more than the old people.” To that I would reply, “Yes, and they are what we know.”
So have a little respect for the masters.
Robert Whale can be reached at [email protected].
