Christina Rossetti

            On Wednesday morning I tried to find a translation for “l'éventre-tomates" and settled on "tomato disemboweler” but now I have to find a word for "disemboweler that rhymes with "cannon".

            I worked out most of the chords for “C’est la vie qui veut ca” by Serge Gainsbourg but I was stuck on the last one. I’ll approach it with a fresh brain on Thursday morning.

            I worked for over an hour on close reading some more Rossetti poems and had a quick lunch of corn crackers and cheese before leaving for Aesthetics and Decadence Movements class.

            There was another class in our room again and so I waited outside and did some more close reading.

            We started off with our first seminar starter, which involves a student having written a short paragraph on one of the week’s poems. Olivia was our premier presenter and she had written on the sonnet “Soul’s Beauty” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She said it was about spirituality and so when it was time for us to answer questions I asked if she’d just seen it as spiritual because of the word “soul”, since I couldn’t see anything else in the poem that pointed towards spirituality. She confirmed it had been the word “soul”.

            Professor Li said that if the word “spirituality” was really the word she was looking for it’s fine but we should always be sure of what we really mean.

            There would be another seminar starter but first we looked at a couple more sonnets, starting with “Vain Virtues”. In the sonnet he talks about virgins going to hell when they die. I said that he’s saying that it’s a sin to not enjoy oneself while one is alive. It’s also right in the ironic title that one can maintain virtue out of vanity in such a way one’s very virtue becomes a sin. There is also a double meaning of “vain” as in it not only representing someone being self-important but also of vain actions being useless.

            We discussed “Autumn Idleness” after I read it. Professor Li commented that my reading had captured the sense of idleness in the poem. A lot of people thought of idleness being a negative thing but I said poets like being idle. She asked about the line, “While I still lead my shadow o’er the grass”. I pointed out that if he is leading his shadow he must be walking toward the sun and so his darkness is behind him.

            The other seminar starter was by Elizabeth and she had chosen to write about Christina Rossetti’s “Another Spring”. She said that the poem is about sounds of nature but symbolically about the sound of art. I told her that I could only see the second stanza being about listening, whereas the first is visual. She argued that the last line of the first verse, “to blow at once not late” refers to sound but it really only continues the visual of flowers blowing in the wind without touching on the sound.

            Professor Li said Christina Rossetti was influenced by her brother but “Another Spring” is one of her many departures from his influence.

            We looked at two more Christina Rossetti poems, the first being “Promises Like Pie Crust”. Since piecrust is not mentioned beyond the title we were asked what it could mean. Someone said that promises crumble like piecrust. Someone else pointed out that “promises like piecrust” is part of a longer quote from Charles Dickens: “Promises are like piecrust, they are made to be broken”. But my research shows that the saying was first recorded by essayist Heraclitus Ridens in 1681 when he wrote of acts of parliament as being “like promises and piecrust, made to be broken”. It was popularized by Jonathon Swift in one of the satirical dialogues from his 1738 book “Polite Conversation” in which Lady A argues, “Promises and piecrust are made to be broken”. It’s probably a saying that long predates it having been written down.

            I pointed out that all of the Christina Rossetti poems that we’ve read express an aspiration to live in the moment but that in the case of this poem she says, “Promise me no promises / so will I not promise you”. I said that the word “so” is conditional, meaning that the speaker requires of the other to not make promises so they can live in the moment. Otherwise if the other makes promises then she will also.

            The last poem we discussed was Rossetti’s “Yet a Little While”. I said that the final stanza continues her theme of living in the present when she says, “hope itself is fear”. I gave the example that hope in love comes from a fear of not being loved. So hope, in projecting into the future is a betrayal of the moment.

            Chiasmus is a reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases without a repetition of words. Examples: “By day the frolic and the dance by night” and “Despised if ugly; if she’s fair, betrayed".

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco to buy nectarines, blueberries and grapes. The only grapes they had were green but I got two bags anyway. The nectarines were not very good because the season is over.

            I took a siesta and when I got up at 19:00 I did some exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. This was the second episode of a two-part story. Andy had gotten his girlfriend to do his taxes for him but to impress her h wrote in that he’d made $7000 in 1944 rather than $250, which was his real income. He’d expected she would give the form back to him so he could change it but she filed it for him, which meant he’d have to pay $1200. Most of the second part involves Andy thinking that he is going to be wanted dead or alive by the government. And then when their friend Henry calls Kingfish to tell him to tell Andy that it’s no big deal and all he has to do is go down to the IRS and tell them that he made a mistake, rather than conveying the message Kingfish tells Andy that he is a certified accountant and he can fix his problem for $10. Andy gladly pays and Kingfish informs the IRS of Andy’s mistake but then they find out Kingfish hasn’t files his taxes for five years.

            I had an egg with toast and a beer for dinner while watching four episodes of Annette.

            New girl in town, Annette has been invited to a party to get to know some of the local teenagers. Her escort is supposed to be the handsome Steve but he’s taking Laura and so short and rude Olmstead is sent in his place. Steady arrives and Annette makes the best of it but her aunt and uncle and Katie are not impressed with Steady’s informal manners and his lingo, such as when he calls the party they are going to a “brawl”. One of Steady’s character traits is that he is constantly eating and so he takes Annette to the malt shop on the way to the party. There Annette meets and befriends Mike, who works behind the counter but would not have been invited to the party because he’s not part of the in crowd. Because of Steady’s detour the party has started already and Laura is entertaining her friends with a song called "The Three Rs – Reading Writing and Rhythm” in which she mentions various dances and the guests perform them. Annette and Steady arrive and Laura takes an immediate dislike to Annette. A short girl named Kitty has been anticipating Steady's arrival and although he doesn’t treat her very well they seem to be an informal couple. We saw Kitty doing the Mambo by herself during Laura’s song and later she and Steady do a very animated swing dance together.

            The whole group plays a complicated version of spin the bottle that I’d never seen. In my experience spin the bottle was a kissing game and it’s how I met my first girlfriend, Bonnie Hansen, when I was fifteen. But this game involved the bottle being spun and the spinner calls out a number. The person holding the number has to catch the bottle before it stops spinning or temporarily forfeit a worn possession. Laura has to forfeit an expensive necklace. Steady has to forfeit his shoes and Annette forfeits her corsage. To get one’s things back players have to put on a performance of some sort. Laura plays her song again, Steady dances a jig and Annette sings “How Will I Know My Love?” but in the middle Steady calls out that the food is ready and everyone walks away. Annette is standing alone in the living room but she hears Laura say from the patio, "Thank goodness we didn't have to listen to any more of that dull song!” Her feelings are hurt and she's about to leave but then changes her mind. There is dancing but then Steady has to leave early because his mother is strict and since he’s Annette's escort she has to leave as well. After she leaves Laura looks for her necklace but can't find it. She thinks Annette took it.

            Kitty was played by Sharon Baird, who won a Little Miss Washington beauty contest at the age of six and won a trip to LA to compete in the national equivalent. She came in second and her parents decided to move to LA. She started dancing and singing in films at the age of seven. At eleven she auditioned for the Mickey Mouse Club and got in. She had a famous act in which she tap-danced and skipped rope at the same time. She played Lady Boyd on “H.R. Pufnstuf” and was Frodo in Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings.