Tragedy, Music, and Piety

Today is decidedly a grumpy day for me, though I think that I haven't inflicted my grumpiness on others by any means other than a slightly overcast mien. The weather was clear but not so very bright, and since I woke up at perhaps 12:30 I only experienced perhaps half of the daylight.

I did read Le Cid today, from start to finish. To be more exact, I skimmed, though I didn't skip large parts the way I usually have with other plays to find out what happens at the end and who the main characters on whom the plot hinges are. I must say it was a nice surprise that the end was not the tragic bloodbath I'd expected. I've gotten used to the idea of reading books and plays with unhappy endings, but I still dislike the negative anticipation I feel in the process. Besides, to exaggerate a little, it particularly annoys me in tragedies how no one has any common sense except perhaps minor characters in whom I'm barely (if at all) interested, and how the main characters, deficient of brain and deficient of humour, wallow in two or three unnaturally intense conflicting emotions until one of the idiots runs his sword through the other. It all seems so useless.

Then I played the piano: Schumann's Kinderszenen and some of his Waldszenen and pieces from Album für die Jugend, Bach's Preludium and Fugue in C major from the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier, the C major/minor scales, three beginners' studies by Czerny, some of Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte, a few mazurkas, waltzes and nocturnes by Chopin, the beginning of Händel's Largo from Xerxes as arranged for the piano and cello, and the beginning of Schubert's B flat major sonata. Then Terese (on the recorder) and I played an old dance, perhaps five American folk songs ("Yankee Doodle," "We Gather Together," etc.), and English Christmas carols. We've been singing and playing carols a lot lately, but still only the English ones.

By the way, these are currently my favourite English carols:
Joy to the World
Once in Royal David's City
O Come, All Ye Faithful
Good King Wenceslas
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks

In the meantime Papa built a broad, sturdy shelf, which is now the base for a bookcase at the head of my bed. Mama filled the shelves with the piles of books I had lying around. These piled-up books are highly impressive, from an English translation of Don Quixote through Diderot: Oeuvres Romanesques to Plutarch's Lives, but I'll probably never read them. I do have my old favourites among them, too, like French fairy tales and Tales from Shakespeare and the autobiography of Agatha Christie.

Right now I am mainly reading, at gutenberg.org, the nineteenth-century book Queechy by Susan Warner. This book is about a beautiful and high-minded but rather impecunious young girl who is early an orphan, then lives in rural New England with her high-souled grandfather until he dies. After his death she goes to live with her uncle and aunt and two cousins in Paris and New York, then returns to her ancestral farm when this uncle is financially ruined and selflessly keeps the family from starving by growing flowers and vegetables and doing much of the housework. Remaining "unspotted by the world," she finally marries an Englishman of noble birth and a similarly high mind. I do enjoy reading the book, but I don't particularly like the Christianity in it. The authoress, though fairly subtly, equates official Christians with good and everyone else with bad. The hero is also hard to take, for, once the heroine has gotten him to see the light, the authoress depicts him as immeasurably superior, only to be partially understood by his fellow man, infinitely wise and noble, and one to be obeyed by the heroine without question or comment -- his only troublesome tendency being that of becoming very angry, but always in a good cause. First of all, it strikes me that the authoress seems to be presenting a second God here; secondly, the hero may mean well but he is despotic and clearly considers himself superior to everyone else, including the heroine. He doesn't ask his beloved's opinion on anything except when he asks her an essentially rhetorical question on some ethical point to probe her character; other than that he only asks her about her life or her tears (frequent, alas), or he tells her to do something. Besides, I can't believe that one ever could satisfactorily feed a family of five (including the servant) through the ladylike means of selling roses and strawberries and beans, and, occasionally, a lovely little gem of a poem.

On the other hand, the ideals of high-mindedness, profound learning and thought, and goodness do appeal to me, as do the pictures of rural New England life. Also, I don't only find the plot and characters fairly interesting, but also the underlying question of how one can cope with poverty and living in an isolated area, and what the emotional and intellectual effects of these problems are. And the style is quite good.

And now I think this post is quite long enough!