The Eve of St Agnes

            When I first looked out on Queen Street on Wednesday morning it looked fairly clear, but later on during song practice it began to snow again.

            When I left for class it had stopped snowing. As I looked up O’Hara it was carpeted in slush but it seemed like it would be manageable. When I began to ride though I realized that the slush had frozen and it was like riding over rocks. Maple Grove wasn’t as bad because a garbage truck had left a path the size of a wide tire track for me to ride along. Brock Avenue was fairly clear. Bloor Street was fairly messy and wet with slush but I was able to get through without any snowy or ice treachery. The bike lane had not been ploughed and though I saw that some bikes had left a narrow trail along its middle, I chose to make faster progress by simply staying out with the cars on Bloor.

            I was about ten minutes early for class. When Professor Weisman arrived I asked her why Keats’s “To Autumn” could be seen as an example of ekphrasis. She said it isn’t strictly ekphrastic but it has ekphrastic elements. I asked if it would be ekphrastic if I were to write about autumn leaves and describe them as if nature had used a brush. She said that would not be ekphrasis and added that I would have to be familiar with descriptions of sculptures in Keats’s time to how he was describing autumn in an ekphrastic way in the second stanza.

            Andala asked the professor about gleaning and mentioned that she’d seen a film that shows that it’s still being done. I told her that people still do it where I come from. The big harvester machines leave a lot of produce behind and nobody comes back for it and so people can get a winter’s supply of carrots or whatever just from walking behind. She said that her mother grew up in a farm community in Southern Ontario and she did that as well.

            The professor’s lecture was on “The Eve of St Agnes”, and the last talk on Keats.

            She said it was appropriate with the snow coming down outside to look at this poem in which a world of sleet and snow is transformed through romance.

            She mentioned the poem we looked at on Monday, “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again” and said there is no justice in King Lear. It was so painful for audiences to watch that the producers would sometimes end it with Cordelia alive.

            “The Eve of St Agnes” has the comfort of romance but the poet sometimes self-reflexively challenges the comforting points of reference.

            St Agnes is the patron saint of virgins. She was martyred in the year 303 at the age of 13.

            “The Eve of St Agnes” has a Romeo and Juliet motif. The lovers are the children of conflicting families. They try to escape together. The professor asked for a synopsis of the ending of Romeo and Juliet. I said Romeo thinks that Juliet is dead and so he kills himself. Juliet wakes up and sees Romeo dead and so she kills herself. I said, “I think it’s funny!” Some people laughed. Professor Weisman said she knew what I meant but that it’s still a tragedy. I would add that the romance between Romeo and Juliet is not meant to be taken seriously because he was 15 and she was 13.

            There is a legend of the virgin who confers to St Agnes.

            “The Eve of St Agnes is in Spenserian stanzas like his “The Faerie Queen” in which a knight goes in search of illumination. It’s in iambic pentameter. An iamb consists of two syllables: one unstressed u and one stressed /. Trochee is the opposite and the word “iamb” is a trochee. Iambic pentameter is the closest to human breath patterns.

            St Agnes’s feast day is January 21.

            She asked if we’d read James Joyce’s Dubliners. Only a couple had. She mentioned it because the snow was coming down at the end much like it was coming down outside the windows of our classroom.

            In “The Eve of St Agnes” there is the juxtaposition of bitter chill with enchantment. Also of plenitude and abstinence. If Madeline fasts and performs certain rituals she will have a vision of fulfillment with her boyfriend. Don’t look at the world but only up to heaven.

            The imagery is of virginity but also maybe gullibility.

            Madeline is looking up like the speaker in “Ode to a Nightingale”.

            In the line “The music yearning like a god in pain / she scarcely heard …” More juxtaposition. A powerful sensual and sensuous experience is present but she closes herself to the experience. She maintains her chastity.

            Porphyro wants to literalize the legend. He appeals to Madeline’s aged caregiver, Angela, who is rooted in the real world. Big deal, so it’s St Agnes Eve.

            Nowadays Porphyro would be arrested for carrying out his plan and so would Angela as an accomplice. The scenario was disturbing even in Keats’s time.

            It’s a painful change to wake up from a dream about someone to see that person physically there. She has lost the dream vision.

            “Into her dream he melted". He wants them back in her dream and so he changes the storm to a faery land.

            The Beadsman is a way of remembering death.

            A castle is a bulwark of romance.

            As the last verse begins with Madeline and Porphyro fleeing into the storm and the rest of the stanza is about suffering and death, I told Professor Weisman that it seems to imply that the couple died.

            I added that this reminds me of Santa Clause for horny adolescents. The rituals that Madeline went through before bed in order to have the vision of her love is like children saying their prayers so that Santa Clause will be generous with them. Even Porphyro portraying Madeline’s dream is like a child’s father dressing up as Santa.

            I stopped at Loblaws on Queen on my way home where I bought five bags of black sable grapes. The checkout counters at that Loblaws always take a long time; partly because when a customer says they want bags the cashier actually bags the groceries. There also seemed to be a glitch in the machine that reads credit cards and so customers ahead of me had to make several tries.

            Once I was on my way and riding again I ran into a snow squall. Swarming tufts of cold snow were blowing against my face all the way to Dufferin. I had to look slightly down just so I could see ahead of me through the whiteout enough to not ram into parked cars. It was landing and melting in my eyes. I felt like a dull knife slicing through frozen butter. Snow was clinging to my black clothing so much that it must have looked to someone like I was wearing white. I was the abominable snowman on a bicycle. I could feel it giving me surreal icy eyebrows and lashes. My front tire was spitting snow from both sides like a field seeder. As the frozen fluffs lambasted my forehead I was getting brain freeze without drinking anything. It was like getting blasted by a shredded frozen feather bed in a wind tunnel. Once I was on the other side of the Dufferin railroad bridge and officially in Parkdale, as if by magic the squall stopped. I was covered in snow when I got home and looked in the mirror.

            I wanted to go out to buy a can of Creemore but then I thought that since it was on sale maybe I’d buy a case. I checked the price online and found that actually the price for a case of eight when Creemore is on sale is the same price it is when it’s not on sale and so it’s a better deal when it’s not on sale.

            But when I went to the liquor store and brought a case to the counter the cashier told me it was $38.40. I figured I must have made a big mistake in my calculations at home and so I said “Sorry, I’ll have to just get a can.” But on my way back to the beer room I did the math again. A case of eight would have to be less than $24 at $2.90 a can. I mentioned it to the cashier and he said it was a case of twelve but I insisted that it had been a case of eight. I went back to get it and the guy said he must have made a mistake. I asked, “Do you guys even sell cases of twelve?” and he said they don’t. He scanned the case of eight and it came out $38.40 again. He said the code on the case was for a case of twelve even though it was a case of eight. He found out the sale price for each can and just charged me for eight individual cans.

            I had a piece of toast with marble cheese for lunch and a small slice of pie with yogourt.

            I took a late siesta. I woke up six minutes short of an hour and a half later and was proud of myself for not oversleeping. I decided to lie there for six more minutes and woke up an hour later.

            I typed most of my lecture notes.

            I put the last of some frozen bacon in my cast iron frying pan and cooked it in the oven. I had it on one piece of toast with my last two slices of marble cheese while watching the third episode of Rawhide.

            This story was far more interesting than the first two. Gil and Rowdy see a stagecoach going way too fast to make a turn. It flips over and the coach is wrecked but everyone inside is okay but they keep looking back and seem as if they are being pursued. They are five men: a salesman, a banker, a gunfighter, a farmer turned rancher and the driver; and two women: a saloon owner and a singer. They won’t say what has got them all spooked but suddenly on a hill on the horizon a mysterious rider is motionless and watching. They are invited by Gil to ride with the trail drive until they can get to a town. The rider follows at a distance. That night when they have dinner the rider is standing on the edge of their camp. Gil calmly brings him some food. He is recognized as a notorious executioner named Jardin. The gunfighter tries to pick fight with Jardin, pulls his gun and dies. The next day Jardin continues to follow. Every person, including the people on the drive each think Jardin is after them, although I don’t see why anyone on the trail drive thinks so, since he was initially following the stagecoach. He is scaring everyone so much that he’s slowing down the drive and so Gil tells him to stop following or be shot. The next night the drive arrives at someone else’s campsite and it turns to be Jardin’s. He says they are his guests. When the farmer is in a standoff with Jardin after Jardin exposes her as a fraud only claiming to be a singer, Gil opens Jardin’s black satchel to reveal three things. They are mementoes from Jardin’s wife and daughter whom he killed after his family ran off with another man. Gil and Jardin stand off and Gil outdraws and kills Jardin.

            Jardin was played by Dan Duryea, who played bad guys through most of his career but usually more the conniving type than tough guys like Jardin.

            Mary the “singer” was played by Jan Shepard, who was in the Elvis film, Paradise Hawaiian Style.

            Madge the saloon owner was played by Marguerite Chapman, who started out as a switchboard operator but on the insistence of her friends became a model and then went on to star in thirty films.