Troilus and Creseyde
-- Of course, the Iliad and the Aeneid provide basic context, Boccaccio's Il Filostrato the basic story. But I'm going stick my neck out on this one: Chaucer is known to have used Persian sources for his Parliament of Fowles, so why not this one, too? Another note for the language-adventurous: a poet who followed Chaucer's generation translated The Aeneid into what I'd call a Scots-inflected late Middle English. His name was Gavin Douglas. (I attempted to read this in college, and I had to give up. And I got an "A" in Chaucer, and this was the full Middle English class, to boot.)A check earlier this month (June 2012) turned up a buyable Google eBook text of Troilus and Creseyde.
The Sonnets of Shakes-peare
-- Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, a narrative poem in English by Emily (or Emilia) Bassano Lanier (or Lanyer). She's the woman some have said is The Dark Lady of the Sonnets. I used gutenberg.org. Also, a book about Aemilia (as the author spells it) by Suzanne Woods is available for a (brief) preview on Google Books. But the book of the original researcher, A.L. Rowse, while listed on Books, is not available for preview, at least by me.
Paradise Lost
-- As I discussed at length (?) in Could it be? {Aug. 3, 2009 in the archive}, one source to look at here is The Koran. I've used various translations, but the choice "interpretation" for the literary set likely is The Meaning of the Glorious Koran by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (really, that's his name). The Meaning is widely available in paperback.
The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenal
-- Hmmm. What I'm thinking is, "Why Juvenal?" It seems the translation appeared in 1693, just a few years after Dryden, having converted to Catholicism, refused to swear loyalty to the new king and was dismissed as poet laureate. Also, it has been pointed out to me that Dryden translated only three of the Satires. Others translated the rest. However, I can't help but think that, since Dryden authored the dedication and had its publication attached to his name, that he had some oversight (at least) for the other translations in that 1693 volume. Google Books has a scanned copy of the third (I think) printing. The dedication is essential background reading.
The Rape of the Lock
-- Essay on Criticism by Pope. Written just prior to Rape of the Lock, it served as Pope's explanation of his critical theory and practice, as well as that of the Augustan Age. Not the other poem's equal, by a long shot (after a new re-read, I realize). But it is a source for what rules Pope had to bend or even break to make his tower poem work, as well as the source for quotes we use today.
While "rape" in Pope's case refers to the Middle English sense of "violent seizure of property," I think it also contains the modern sense of the word as a sexual assault in delicate (and deft) undertones. Because the author and the poem's dedicatee, Arabella Fermor, were both Roman Catholic, they did not enjoy full privileges of a citizen/subject in 18th Century England. The poem itself pokes fun at the fully privileged (in all senses of that word) of their era, however.
Another source: Le Comte de Gabalis by an anonymous(?) French author. Pope's dedicatory letter to his poem explains its relevance. That letter is also an essential source. It is very brief, just a half-dozen or so paragraphs, but does its job admirably. For comparison, check out the monster dedication Dryden felt he had to write for his Juvenal translation (see above).
I found a version of Rape of the Lock (with the letter) on gutenberg.org, with a nice introduction and notes by a turn-of-the-last-century Princeton scholar. This edition also adds the original "coffeehouse" text of the poem as an appendix. It is also available on Google Books. There are some funkily scanned versions of Le Comte on Google Books, and a very nice but undownloadable English version at
http://93beast.fea.st/files/section2/gabalis/Villars%20-%20Comte%20de%20Gabalis.pdf
BTW, a portrait of Arabella shows her with long, natural tresses -- no powdered wig or "beauty dot", which was likely part of a culture alien to her. My point is that it's a mistake to think Arabella Fermor is the "Belinda" of the final poem. She and her social circle served as a framework for the master poet to build his small but sturdy tower of carefully connected narrative, dramatic and epigrammatic couplets.
You can get a "graphic novel" feel for The Rape of the Lock courtesy of Art Nouveau magister Aubrey Beardsley. I think Dover is the source there.
Idylls of the King
-- As mentioned earlier in this blog, Morte D'Arthur by Malory. Also, The Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest (published by Dover in paperback not that many years ago).
La Vita Nuova
-- The Divine Comedy. In college, I used the Ciardi translation, mostly, but looked at Binyon's, too. A short collection of works by Dante's dolce stil nuovo contemporaries (Cavalcanti, Guinizelli, et cetera) is also essential. Again in college, I bought a parallel-text translation of Italian poems published by Penguin in the late 1950s or early 1960s in a used bookstore. This was 35 years ago. The translator and editor was George Kay. I still cherish this book. My copies of the Ciardi and Binyon books are long gone -- something I still regret. Ciardi was Bantam (?), while the Binyon was in the original Portable Dante, along with, you guessed it, Rossetti's "La Vita."
But, a check (June 28, 2012) of Google Books scored me a copy of the original book Rossetti published his translation in, Early Italian Poets (readable only on Google Play). The Kay and Binyon texts are listed, but "not available as an eBook" by Google.
The Ring and the Book
-- This is a 21,000-line set of 12 dramatic monologues. Just (3/18/11) finished the first one, titled "The Ring and the Book". OK. In it, Browning (as himself) describes his gold ring and how he came by this book, which describes a murder trial of the 17th Century. The editor of my borrowed edition that has the complete Ring (a beat-up and foetid Complete Poems of) includes an essay on Browning's debt to Shelley, so, as I dove into "The Ring and the Book," I thought immediately of The Cenci, Shelley's dramatic poem about a similar crime of passion in Italy. Still diving.
After diving for two weeks, it dawned on me that I need to give The Ring and the Book a rest. The original was published in parts, one-fourth a month, and I've read about a fourth. So maybe taking breaks was the idea all along.
Four Quartets
-- Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. Also, the Bhagavad Gita by whoever wrote the Mahabharata, Revelations of Divine Love by Dame Julian of Norwich and The Booke Named The Governor by one of Eliot's ancestors. All these books are referenced, quoted or paraphrased in Four Quartets. I have not read any of them, so it looks like I'll be busy. (Revelations and The Governor are available free on Google Books. But you must pay for a copy of Dark Night of the Soul.) A few years ago, I read God in Search of Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel at the same time as Four Quartets, and I found that they have a lot in common. Time, existence and what you do with them, for instance. But that course may not be right for everyone.
Here's another idea: look at (for instance) lines 1-3 in "Burnt Norton", lines 91-93a in "The Dry Salvages", 47-48 in "East Coker" and lines 127-128 in "Little Gidding". (Note the order [I hope -- no text in the PL] I'm using -- I, III, II, IV.)
Now, think about an old literary device called "chiasmus". Hard to do in English, but that didn't stop Pope, Milton and Tennyson from trying it anyway. I found no literal examples of chiasmus in Four Quartets. But, look at those quotes. Think about pressing grapes or compressing a document on a personal computer.
Just a thought I had the other day ... .
Here's another: look at the quotes from Heraclitus that preface the poem. They are not easy to translate. For one thing, they are in a very old dialect of Greek; for another, they are conversational and leave out (understood) words the way we do when we talk.
Then look at where they come from: a work by a German classical philologist who was breaking new ground when he collected those pre-Socratic fragments. Herr Doktor Diels even uses some English-type words in his groundbreaking book's title -- very 19th-century-unscholarly, it seems to me.
It also seems to me Eliot chose those quotes from that particular scholarly work for a number of specific reasons. He's not only sounding "modernist" by prefacing his poem with some thematically-meaningful yet untranslated Greek (even spelling 'Heraclitus' in progressive-philologist fashion), but he's also giving future interpreters of Four Quartets (us, in other words) a few additional clues as to his actual intent.
Mexico City Blues
-- Doctor Sax by Kerouac. Written at the same time as Mexico City Blues, Doctor Sax is a free-form autobiographical 'novel' that contains clues to the myriad symbols in his epic poem. While I'm still working on this one, it does seem to me that this novel could be a real 'skeleton key' to MCB.
-- Tristessa, also by Kerouac. This "novel" reads more like autobiography, but how much really was that, there's no telling now. More like a novella in two parts, Tristessa has layers that demand concentrated attention. Part one sets the scene of his stay above a home in Mexico City, while he was writing Mexico City Blues.
-- A Buddhist Bible by Dwight Goddard. The first edition, printed in the 1930s and found by Kerouac in the 1950s, became his vade mecum for Buddhism. The original edition now is available in various formats. I so far have only read fragments made available on line.
But I have done a little preliminary research with available resources. Here is one possible clue: "merudvhaga" in the 1st Chorus. It looks like a Sanskrit or Pali-type word, but I suspect it's not. My tiny amount of Sanskrit (of what I can recall of it) tells me "vh" is not a letter in that language. But, obviously, "dh" is (it's one of three or four kinds of "d's" -- big alphabet).
So, as an experiment, I searched the 'net for "dhvaga" -- got back "Did you mean 'dhvaja'?" A "dhvaja" is a type of victory banner, one of eight "auspicious symbols" in various East Indian religions, including Buddhism (that's right -- the first 'd' is a 'd' and the second one is a 'dh.').
Then I searched for 'meru' -- and got back Mount Meru -- a sacred mountain that figures centrally in various East Indian cosmologies, including some Buddhist.
Was the author, say, on board a tall ship when he wrote this? On board a train passing a signal flag? Do we have a metaphor buried in this malapropism? (Note: the (?)name 'Merudhvhaga' that appears in the 40-something Chorus got me nothing on Google.)
While later references in the poem like "Amida" check out, others, like "Santiveda" don't ('Shantideva', maybe?), and I'm starting to be persuaded that at least some of the many obscurities in Mexico City Blues may be actually deliberate (or at least semi-deliberate) clues that can be deciphered in this quasi-philological manner.
As another hint, "Acadian/PureLand" may reveal two things: where Kerouac was coming from ("Acadia" was the name of a place in New France) and where he wanted to go ("Pure Land" Buddhism is, very basically [from what I can gather], Zen for the working-class person. Any time you have the "I Was First No I Was Both Are Right Neither Were" type of situation, you're possibly looking at a common ancestor.). Hope all this helps.
(Note (9/16/17): After reading over the scroll version of On The Road, it has become increasingly clear that all of Kerouac's works that he personally prepared for publication, with the exception of The Town and the City, belong in something he called The Duluoz Legend. That would include his poetry, with the above provision that he prepared it for publiscation himself, regardless of when it was actually published. So, it may be that books like Some of the Dharma, for instance, might contain 'helps' to Mexico City Blues. Is it possible that the Legend is entirely self-contained?
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This is my list as a writer. I'm not an academic and never have been. That doesn't mean I don't believe students at all levels aren't reading this. But, if you are, how can you be sure your preceptor isn't reading it, too? Or, for that matter, your colleagues? Or your editor? Not that I'm bitter or sarcastic -- I'm having fun. Hope you guys are, too.
