I heard this poem for the first time in a lecture yesterday, and found it so interesting that I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy!
La Figlia Che Piange
O quam te memorem virgo...
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair -
Lean on a garden urn -
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair -
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained suprise -
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and a shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight, and the noon's repose.
-- T. S. Eliot
Wednesday 11 February 2009
Monday 2 February 2009
Confession
OK. So here is my confession:
I am in love with one of my students.
Before you condemn me to an everlasting academic underworld torment of never finished book-reviews, undergrad essay mountains which grow taller the more you mark, and TA peanuts pay for evermore, I should probably explain.
He a mature-ish student (mid 20s), he’s tall, he’s slim, he’s quite attractive. He has small glasses and floppy hair. He wears shirts under tidy jumpers under neat jackets. He looks like he ought to be writing poetry in a garret room. He attends all of the lectures, and he usually has an exceptionally good (or politically interesting) reason if he misses seminars, and he has missed very few. He is informed, he is articulate, and he wants to learn. He has actively sought help from me with his analytical skills. And – and I’ve saved the best until last – he LOVES literature.
You might think this is a strange thing to say, when I earn my peanuts teaching literature students. But it seems to be becoming increasingly unusual to find an English Lit student who actually likes reading books.
The garret poet loves reading. He reads things that are not on the reading list, and he wants to talk about them. And he exudes an enthusiasm for literature and literary analysis, that sometimes leads him astray in his essays, but at least his essays are not in any way mechanical.
The tutor in me wants to nurture and train this enthusiasm into good academic criticism (hopefully without squashing the joy). My younger teenage self, who loved literature and was also fond of floppy-haired boys, is hopelessly in love with the garret poet.
So can I just say: if, after this confession and explanation, you still want to condemn me to the above mentioned academic purgatory of never-ending TA pay, please – pretty please – could it be teaching students like him.
I am in love with one of my students.
Before you condemn me to an everlasting academic underworld torment of never finished book-reviews, undergrad essay mountains which grow taller the more you mark, and TA peanuts pay for evermore, I should probably explain.
He a mature-ish student (mid 20s), he’s tall, he’s slim, he’s quite attractive. He has small glasses and floppy hair. He wears shirts under tidy jumpers under neat jackets. He looks like he ought to be writing poetry in a garret room. He attends all of the lectures, and he usually has an exceptionally good (or politically interesting) reason if he misses seminars, and he has missed very few. He is informed, he is articulate, and he wants to learn. He has actively sought help from me with his analytical skills. And – and I’ve saved the best until last – he LOVES literature.
You might think this is a strange thing to say, when I earn my peanuts teaching literature students. But it seems to be becoming increasingly unusual to find an English Lit student who actually likes reading books.
The garret poet loves reading. He reads things that are not on the reading list, and he wants to talk about them. And he exudes an enthusiasm for literature and literary analysis, that sometimes leads him astray in his essays, but at least his essays are not in any way mechanical.
The tutor in me wants to nurture and train this enthusiasm into good academic criticism (hopefully without squashing the joy). My younger teenage self, who loved literature and was also fond of floppy-haired boys, is hopelessly in love with the garret poet.
So can I just say: if, after this confession and explanation, you still want to condemn me to the above mentioned academic purgatory of never-ending TA pay, please – pretty please – could it be teaching students like him.
Sunday 1 February 2009
Markers of folly.
From The French Lieutenant's Woman (chapter 34):
He did not like her when she was wilful; it contrasted too strongly with her elaborate clothes, all designed to show a total inadequacy outside the domestic interior. The thin end of the sensible clothes wedge had been inserted in society by the disgraceful Mrs Bloomer a decade and a half before the year of which I write; but that early attempt at the trouser suit had been comprehensively defeated by the crinoline - a small fact of considerable significance in our understanding of the Victorians. They were offered sense; and chose a six-foot folly unparalled in the most folly-ridden of minor arts.
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