Modern Love

            On Saturday morning I finished translating “Le complainte du progres" by Boris Vian. The translation will probably change as I start memorizing the french lyrics. I sang along with it once and it has a lot melodic changes, so it's going to take a while to memorize it and to work out the chords.

            I tried to write down the lyrics to the parody of “Que je t’aime" by Serge Gainsbourg but I couldn't catch them all. I also looked for his parody of “Chanson d cour” but couldn't find that either. So that finishes 1972 of my translations of Gainsbourg. I moved on to 1973’s “La noyée” (The Drowned Girl) and sang along with it a couple of times.

            I went down to No Frills where the grapes were not in great shape but they were cheap enough that I could pick through them. I also bought strawberries, raspberries, three steaks, some yogourt, coffee mouthwash and Murphy’s Oil Soap.

            I took another stab at washing the glue from the floorboards on the threshold of my living room and kitchen. It was hard to se what I was doing while cleaning under the bookshelf because it was cloudy and rainy outside and so I wasn’t getting enough ambient light to see the gluey spots. I just scrubbed all the boards back there over and over and over and hoped I was getting it. It looks like I was mostly successful. There are just a few small glue spots left under the shelf but nothing worth spending a whole session on. When I tackle the adjacent southwest corner of the kitchen floor I’ll reach around and give the threshold another quick scrub, but all in all, at last in the dim light of a rainy day, it looks pretty good there right now.

            I had cheese and crackers for lunch.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story Kingfish wants to prove how ridiculous women’s Easter hats are by designing one with Andy and getting Miss Fifi's Hat Shop to sell it to Sapphire. They make one out of a straw hat that had been worn by a horse. Amos says that no woman would buy that hat and certainly not his wife Ruby. They add all kinds of things to it and then they pose as French hat designers from Paris. The dialogue between the two men trying to sound French to Fifi it pretty funny. She asks, "Are you free French?” George answers, "We ain't exactly free but we is very reasonable". She wants them to tell her about Paris and he tells her that it seems like yesterday they were in Paris at a sidewalk café sipping cokes with a couple of coquettes. Of the bank of the Seine Kingfish says he has his savings account at the main branch. "Me and André know Paris inside and out!" "Yeah we is real Parisites all right!" She asks if Paris was occupied while they were there and Andy says, “Oh sure, you could hardly get a seat on the bus". Madame Fifi isn't sure what to think of their hat but she agrees to put it on display and try to sell it to Sapphire Stephens. The next day Amos is with them when Sapphire reveals she didn’t buy the hat but his wife Ruby did.

            I didn’t take a bike ride because it had been raining.

            I answered some reading questions that Professor Li gave us about George Meredith’s “Modern Love”.

            What is modern about the relationship?

            It’s really as old as the hills but it was modern to write about the love affair.

            These sonnets are uncommon in that they have 16 lines instead of 14. None of them come with a resolution and in fact there is no real resolution throughout the poem. The sonnet format serves to convey a sense of being trapped while at the same time taking liberties within the enclosing form. The speaker's will is contained in 16 line moments, most of which are not entirely pleasant for him. It’s a stretched sonnet and he is stretched in this love triangle. He is bound by duty, love and guilt. The poem is bound to a sequence. The poet is bound to finding rhymes in abba, cddc, effe, ghhg for fifty sonnets.

            A question claims that there are two speakers but I think there is only one. “He” is usually in the past tense and I think the speaker refers to another man that was the woman’s lover. "I" is mostly in the present tense.

            How does Meredith make the “fleshly” felt?

            Meredith is subtler than Rossetti.

            In stanza IX: “He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles / so masterfully rude, that he would grieve / to see the helpless delicate thing receive / his guardianship through certain dark defiles ... Here thy shape / to squeeze like an intoxicating grape …"

            In stanza XXVII: “O lady, once I gave love: now I take / Lady, I must be flattered, shouldst thou wake / the passion of a demon …”

            Buchanon pointed out Rossetti's "Nuptial Sleep" as an example of fleshly poetry:

At length their long kiss severed with sweet smart

And as the last, slow sudden drops are shed

From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled

So singly flagged the pulses of each heart

Their bosoms sundered with the opening start

Of married flowers to either side outspread

From the knit stem, yet still their mouths burnt red

Fawned on each other where they lay apart

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams

And their dreams watched them sink and slid away

Slowly their souls swam up again through gleams

Of watered light and full drowned waifs of day

Till from some wonder of new woods and streams

He woke and wondered more, for there she lay

            Buchanon would probably give Meredith a pass for the most part.

            The last two lines of Modern Love are saying that love tears through a person’s being like a charging warhorse but only leaves behind faint traces of understanding.

            Stanza I: “Sobs that shook their common bed” They share despair but no longer love.

            Stanza XXII: “Her tears fall still as oak leaves after frost".

            I had a fried egg with a piece of toast and a beer while watching four episodes of Annette. Annette brings Jet home for dinner and Uncle Archie is delighted to have her because he used to be close friends with Jet’s father. Aunt Lila is less enchanted because she doesn’t believe Jet advances Annette’s social standing. Jet invites them out to their farm the next Saturday. Later Steve asks Annette to be his date for the hayride and barbecue he’s throwing at his parent’s ranch but she has to turn him down because she doesn’t want to disappoint her uncle. On Saturday the gang are enjoying a sing-along on the hayride when Steve gets the idea to swing by the Maypen place to pick up Annette and Jet. Laura is not happy about including them but everyone else insists. When they arrive at Jet’s place at first Annette is reluctant to go but Uncle Archie insists she go with them while he catches up with his old friend. They rid and sing their way to the barbecue where Annette dances with Steve, much to Laura’s chagrin.