The Tempest, Papa's Birthday, and Literature

Today Gi. and Ge. came home early for school because of "Orkanböen," or "hurricane gusts." I thought they were joking when they explained it. But there was indeed a steady wind and driving rain when Gi. and I went grocery-shopping. As evening fell the storm intensified. There were two or more flashes of lightning and corresponding rolls of thunder. The rain ran down our windows, dripped in under the window frame, and pooled in the space between our double windows. We had to twist up newspapers and wedge them in under the windows, to soak up the water that called unwanted attention to the dirty nature of the frames. Every now and then there were gusts that sounded like low thunder and pushed at our windows and balcony door. The wind whooshed uneasily down into the stove in the living room. When I looked outside the branches of the trees were all agitated, even street signs and street lamps were shaking, the winds drove the rain from the roads as mist and blew them in every which way, and every now and then a solitary leaf would appear out of nowhere high above the road and be whirled across it.

When my uncle W. dropped by later he said that the trains had been put out of service because of branches and perhaps even trees that had fallen across the tracks. On the radio he had also heard that about seven people had died due to the storm. Watching the eleven o'clock news, I learned that the winds peaked at 131 km/h at Berlin-Wannsee. But at one spot in Germany gusts reached 202 km/h. Countless flights have been cancelled, and the trains are out all over. But the storm is expected to literally blow over soon; the high winds should have ended in Berlin by 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. at the latest.

Perhaps this account implies that all of this is rather exciting. But it hasn't really been, except for the strongest wind gusts.

At any rate, today it was Papa's birthday. This time we properly remembered it, and it was a nice day. To celebrate we had a dinner of a large leg of lamb, broiled to perfection with oregano, sage and garlic cloves, and accompanied by green beans. For dessert we had two cakes as well as nougat-nut pralines and chocolate-covered wafers and, it must be confessed, a certain fizzy brown drink. There were no formal presents as such, except some liquor-filled chocolates from W., and a phone call from Uncle Pu.

Yesterday evening I began seriously writing on my French Revolution story. I think it will do no harm if I write much on it now, even with my research in a highly incomplete state, because it should be no difficulty to rewrite it properly when I'm older. The personalities of my characters are crystallizing beautifully, though they are not well-rounded yet (I still have to do a lot of practice observing and depicting character). I am describing the d'Eules family in the May of 1789 (hopefully the dates are right), just before the opening of the Estates-General. On television I recently saw an image of a hilltop castle that seemed more livable than my previous template, Burg Braubach, so I used it instead. The natural surroundings were more or less the same.

But before I worked on my French Revolution story I wrote a draft of an essay entitled, "What Makes a Good Poem?" Today I typed it up and greatly improved it. It ended up being four single-spaced pages. I enjoyed the process of writing it a lot, because, despite the broad topic, I felt that my approach was reasonably comprehensive. Quotations from the poetry I've read in school and university and with my sister and our French teacher Marie and on my own over the years simply fell into place.

I was fresh from Shakespeare, because I've been browsing through our edition of his Complete Works (even the Passionate Pilgrim is included in the back) for two days already, hoping to understand more and get more out of him than I have in the past. In the sonnets I discovered two lines that I found somehow gripping, perhaps because I've read them before: "Thou art too fair for my possessing" and "Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore (. . .)" -- if I remember properly. But while skimming through the sonnets and some of the plays I've been thoroughly paranoid about sexual innuendo, and I find it distracting. My English 220 professor found that sort of thing amusing, but whether it is out of Puritanism or out of the more flattering quality of innate delicacy, I don't.

As for the individual plays, All's Well That Ends Well bothers me. I find the Bertram de Roussillon character singularly unappealing, and do not understand why one would possibly want to be tied for life to a philandering snob. In contrast I much appreciated Rosalind's caricatures of a female during courtship, in As You Like It. Then I looked at the Love's Labour's Lost speech about the eye of a woman being the truest teacher of love, or some such thing. When I was still at UBC there was a house event where one of the students recited that speech, and I was much struck by it though I only really remembered the eye part. Turning to Pericles, I thought that the character of Mariana was an unlikely choice for Shakespeare, her effortless angelic goodness being wearisome in the extreme. I've avoided Timon of Athens for being too depressing (I only know it as one of the Lambs' "tales from Shakespeare"). But then I read the scene where those whom Timon had helped the most in the past refuse to give him any money in his difficulty, and now I want to read all of it. The end of King Lear I found truly moving for the first time, with Cordelia's recovery of her father and her subsequent death. Somehow, even though she is similarly perfect, I see her as a real woman much more than Mariana. Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream -- no new thoughts, as far as I remember. As for The Merchant of Venice, I still can't come to terms with the way that Antonio treated Shylock. While I still see Shylock as a disagreeable character, I don't see how one can condone Antonio's humiliation of and contempt for him, and this conduct is particularly jarring coming from a supposedly good individual.

And now I'll catch up on my sleep, as my hapless reader may be doing by the time that he reaches this sentence. (c: