Pot of Poetry: Favourite Poets

This month, Classics Club poses an interesting topic.

Let’s talk about classic poetry! Have you got a favorite classic poem? Do you read poetry? Why or why not? // You could also feature a poet or a book of poetry, rather than a poem.

 I have to say that I'm in love with poetry. When I was little, I wrote my own poems, a hobby I can't let go of when I grow up. Why? Maybe I will never know.

When it comes to poets, "two loves I have" - Shakespeare and Keats. The two are very very different both in style and sense. Keats, as a Romantic poet, loves the melancholy of Nature. His poems flow like springs of water, or fall like leaves in autumn, or whisper like breeze before rain. The other is completely different. Shakespeare uses a lot of different rhetorical techniques to convey his thoughts. He's a drama king, and he knows how to get people's attention. His poems talk about so man different things, delivers huge variety of emotions and thoughts, and resonates with the deepest, most secret desires in human beings.

Shakespeare wrote mostly plays. Never mind they're poetic, they're still plays. It's quite a different thing. When using poetry for plays, Shakespeare pays attention to the dramatic nuance that poems have. That's why he wrote in metrical lines of iambic pentameter. But he also wrote poetry. They are not much, compared to his plays, but they are still worthily famous. If you are in love and don't know how to express your feeling, read his sonnets out loud. It helps.

Lately I sometimes find myself reciting this particular sonnet.

O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,
As easy might I from my self depart
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again;
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe though in my nature reigned,
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
   For nothing this wide universe I call,
   Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

It sounds like a lame excuse, but that depends on what you are talking about. I am a fangirl, so when I fall in love with something, I let myself fall hard. However, there are several things I can't entirely leave. "That is my home of love." If I get distracted, if I fall in love with something entirely different, if it seems like I have a new obsession, in short, "if I have ranged/Like him that travels," I will return.

Oh, but the poem above is hardly my favourite sonnet of Shakespeare. In fact, I cannot choose my favourite. It so much depends upon my moods and feelings at a given moment.

Now let's talk about Keats. I don't remember the first time I read his poems. I remember though, long before I actually read his works, I read a quote in a Japanese manga, saying, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter." The manga attributed it to Keats. Sadly, it was a translation, and believe me, it took me some time to finally get the authentic English version of that sentence.

My current favourite from Keats is some lines from his "Lines to Fanny." But that's not it. The pain and beauty of reading Keats is reading death in every line. You can't forget that he's dying when he wrote those. I can't read "Bright Star" or "Ode to Grecian Urn" without thinking of the poet's desire to stay still, to be "still steadfast, still unchangeable", to happily "forever piping songs forever new," to stop the clock and enjoy that one perfect moment forever. Whether it's "Ode to a Nightingale" or "To Autumn" or anything else that he wrote, it always gives me some sort of melancholic sadness. The worst part is, of course, I love him nonetheless.

So, Keats and Shakespeare - my two big loves. Do you have any?

Classic's Challenge: December Wrap-Up

I am so happy to be able to say that I completed the Challenge by November's Autumn. It has been a great pleasure reading the challenges and participating in the prompts this year. Here's the links to the posts of the prompts:

July
August
September
October
November

And I also love to say that I have read 13 books from my Classics Club's Project's list. I have made the review of 12 of them, and here's the list of those posts.

It has been a good year for me, and also the first year for my blog. Hope things will be as good, if not better, next year.

A Classic's Challenge: November Prompt

We're ready for the month's prompt from November's Autumn. Here we go.

One of the books I
immensely enjoyed.

Of all the Classics you've read this year is there an author or movement that has become your new favorite?
New favourite? Well, I have always loved Dumas, so I guess it's not a “new” favourite, but I've been enjoying more books from him, namely The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After. I'd like to say also that I like Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, long as it is.

Which book did you enjoy the most?

I immensely enjoyed Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After. I also enjoyed Ivanhoe, but not as much as the former two.

Or were baffled by?

I'm a little baffled by Ivan Denisovich. It's my first time reading Russian literature, and even now I haven't written its review. I don't know where to start. I mean, it's truly only a day of Ivan's life, but the book has very intense air and so long for a diary.

The best character of my choice, Athos

Who's the best character?

I don't need to think twice – Athos, aka Comte de la Ferre. He is a wonderful character – with flaws. Just perfect, for me. If I could marry a fictional character, I would marry him. (In two months time, my favourite will change, trust me.)

The most exasperating?

Thernadier in Les Miserables. He's more than annoying – he's unbearable!

From reading other participants' posts which book do you plan to read and are most intrigued by?

Margaret's post mentions Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. I think I'm going to read it next year. This year's reading is too much already.

Chapter Musings: Odyssey

This challenge is hosted by November's Autumn. This month's meme is about a chapter that we find very interesting of impressive. Here I quote the post:

“Jot down some notes about the chapter you've just read or one that struck you the most. It can be as simple as a few words you learned, some quotes, a summary, or your thoughts and impressions.“

Odysseus and Penelope by Primaticcio

The last book that I read this month is the Odyssey. It's a wonderful epic, with lots of adventures and misfortunes that happen around the hero, Odysseus. The hero must face terrible things before he can go back home, to Ithaca, his son, and especially his wife. But then, when he meets his wife again, she faces him with much coldness.

Penelope still loves Odysseus, of course, but she worries that a god might try to fool her by making himself look like her husband. After a test, though, she is finally convinced that it's really Odysseus coming back. That's the chapter I choose. Chapter 23 of Homer's Odyssey: The Great Rooted Bed.

I think it's very interesting how both husband and wife are good in tricks and schemes. Odysseus lies several times in the story – even to Athena herself, and Penelope tricks her suitors and eventually her own husband. Perhaps that's why Penelope loves her husband so much. She says nobody equals Odysseus, and that's very understandable.

Music for the Book

This prompt is hosted at November'sAutumn. This month we share the music we feel fit for a book that we read this month. This month I've been reading Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, but I didn't think of any music when I read them. (I have a habit of connecting things in my mind, so when a piece of music or a scene of history links to the subject that I read, I usually remember something.)

Then I read Les Miserables. I haven't finished it, naturally, but there's a piece of music that it brings to my mind. I love opera. When I read about the misery and suffering of the people in Les Miserables, I remember this aria from Giordano's opera, Andrea Chenier. I put a link of a video in Youtube of the aria, complete with subtitle, for those who don't understand Italian. Placido Domingo (my favourite singer) sings this piece.

Classics Club Group Check-In #1: September

It has been several months since the project started. I've been enjoying the Club and things in it immensely. The readalongs, the memes, the people, the reviews, and many other things. As a new blogger, reading and enjoying others' review and joining readalongs has been such a great experience.

I've read 9 books from my list this far. For the last few months, Dumas has been dominating my choices, that among 9, 3 of them are actually Dumas'. Those are The Count of Monte Cristo, my favourite, The Three Musketeers, which title is actually misleading because it doesn't count D'Artagnan as one of them, and Twenty Years After, its sequel. Even now I still find it hard to move from those novels to others I've never touched.

The other six are John Milton's Areopagitica, Stevenson's Treasure Island, Solzhenitsyn's Ivan Denisovich (I know I must make a review, but later, please), Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Pyle's compiled ballads of Robin Hood, and Leroux's Phantom of theOpera.

As for the other books, I'm reading the book of Nehemiah in the Bible now, in order to complete it soon. The last book I read from Aeneid was Book IV, but I think I'd rather read it in a readalong. Reading alone makes it harder to understand what it says. Starting this month, I will be reading Les Miserables through October and November. And for Historical Fiction Challenge byHobbyBuku, I will read Vicomte the Bragelonne from Dumas as well (for the sake of Athos). For the same event perhaps I will add Sabatini's Captain Blood to the list.

I've been enjoying also the Weekend Quotes. By doing that I remind myself what lesson I can learn from the books that I read. I also love participating in Fanda's Character Thursdays. My choice of characters may not vary a lot, but I still love to look deeper into the characters, protagonists as well as antagonists. I also love to exploring the use of coat-of-arms in literatures. Though I'm no expert in the matter, I like to learn the blazoning of each to understand better those mentioned in the novels I read. 

(Re-)Reading Ivanhoe

I'm going halfway through reading Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. Just a little background of my reason for reading it.

When I was 14, and was in love with Sherlock Holmes, I went to a friend's house, a fellow fonder of the detective. She told me she made a review of SH's short stories for her homework, and showed me her Sherlock Holmes book, a translation in Bahasa. In the shelf, however, I saw a book, thin and small, with a soft purple cover. That book was a English simplified version of Ivanhoe.

Needless to say, I borrowed the book right away. My friend consented, and I read it. My English was not very good at that time, naturally, but was enough to understand the brave and noble character of Robin Hood and King Richard. Thanks to the book, I've been very fond of them ever since. But simplified version is still a simplified version. I looked for the original, and was frightened by the size of it, not mentioning the difficulty of its language. So for the moment I gave up and diverted my eyes to other books easier to comsume.

Yet it is destined that I must read the book somehow. After Robert Lancelyn Greene's Robin Hood and Dumas' Musketeers, I am hungry for more adventurous tales, and I remember my old bold Ivanhoe. Now, my English permits me to peruse the book without letting the language deprive me the joy of reading it. Besides, the words unknown to me, whether in the old English or the modern one, enrich my vocabulary after I search their meaning.

Anyway, I'm in the 21st chapter of it, and very impatient to finish the story. Hope the end will be as happy as related in the simplified one.  

A Memorable Quote: Twenty Years After

This prompt is hosted at November'sAutumn. The idea is to share a memorable quote that you find in a book that you are reading, or in my case, the last book that you have finished reading. The last book that I finished is Dumas' Twenty Years After, as you can see from my recent posts.

I'd like to share my favourite quote of the book, which comes from my favourite chapter of the novel and spoken by my favourite character among the Musketeers.

The air is tense, and two of his friends are quarelling, each states that he is right and the other is wrong. Among the four of them, two has drawn their swords, and one is ready to draw any time he needs to defend himself. If they fight, their friendship will be lost forever.

Athos stands, unsheathes his sword, and breaks it. Then he says these lines:

"Never!" exclaimed Athos, raising his right hand to Heaven, "never! I swear before God, who seeth us, and who, in the darkness of this night heareth us, never shall my sword cross yours, never my eye express a glance of anger, nor my heart a throb of hatred, at you. We lived together, we loved, we hated together; we shed, we mingled our blood together, and too probably, I may still add, that there may be yet a bond between us closer even than that of friendship... 

D'Artagnan, I have always loved you as my son; Porthos, we slept six years side by side; Aramis is your brother as well as mine, and Aramis has once loved you, as I love you now and as I have ever loved you. What can Cardinal Mazarin be to us, to four men who compelled such a man as Richelieu to act as we pleased? What is such or such a prince to us, who fixed the diadem upon a great queen's head? 

D'Artagnan, I ask your pardon for having yesterday crossed swords with you; Aramis does the same to Porthos; now hate me if you can; but for my own part, I shall ever, even if you do hate me, retain esteem and friendship for you."

Athos always speaks with such intensity and tranquility that cools his friends down. These words save them all from what might be an 'unevitable fight among ex-friends'. Certainly a quote I will remember.

A Lasting Impression: The Count of Monte Cristo

This prompt is hosted at November's Autumn, and I think it's a very brilliant prompt. I couldn't help joining. But once I decided to join I face a serious problem: Which Classic would I choose? As a young reader, I sometimes find myself lacking a sense of loyalty towards my favourites. I would spend a month or two deeply in love in one book, and intoxicated by the other book shortly after that period.

But talking about lasting impression, I have more limited choices. There are books that I won't forget in all my life such as Sherlock Holmes' series, Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Phantom of the Opera, and the book I am going to talk about.

If you look at my sidebar, here, on my blog, you would notice one author that has more posts than the others. It's Dumas, and that's because I love his novel The Count of Monte Cristo. I first read it when I was in high school, and this year I re-read it again for the Classic Club's Project.

The moment I find very touching is when Dantes as Monte Cristo revisited his jail at Chateau d'If. There he contemplated on his life, the misfortune that had befallen him, the path he had taken, the choices he had made, his friendship with the deceased Abbe, his lost love for Mercedes, and so many other things.

“Woe,” he cried, “to those who confined me in that wretched prison; and woe to those who forgot that I was there!” 

His horrible experience in dealing with human beings made him so disappointed that he lost all trust in humanity. One of the quotes I will never forget from the book is:

“But man — man, whom God created in his own image — man, upon whom God has laid his first, his sole commandment, to love his neighbour — man, to whom God has given a voice to express his thoughts — what is his first cry when he hears his fellow-man is saved? A blasphemy... Oh, man, man — race of crocodiles.”

I don't think I will ever forget such a bitter sentence, spoken by someone who has tasted so many bitter experiences in his life. Yes, I pity him, the Count who has been played by the world, and by human cruelty and greed.

As for the unforgettable character from the story, aside of the Count himself, is Haidee. The Greek princess has the Count's soul inside of her. Her indifference to things beyond her business, the hatred that burns within her heart, the passion for revenge that rages in her mind, all so much alike with the Count. But I'm so happy that the two poor creatures find happiness at last.

Through the story I realise that no matter what happens to you, revenge is not the answer. Even if you get what you want, and they get what they deserve, it wouldn't bring you satisfaction. On the contrary, it adds more pain to your past suffering.