Mathew Arnold--Balder Dead (1855)

I suppose I could make the claim that Matthew Arnold is one of my favorite poets, based on the circumstance that "Dover Beach" and "Thyrsis" are two of my favorite poems. I was not however familiar with any of this author's other poetic productions, though I have read several of his famous critical essays over the years, and I generally liked those too (he is a staunch Great Books kind of guy after all). I felt that my readings of the last two longer form Victorian poets that came up on this list, Swinburne and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, were not as satisfactory as might have been hoped. It is possible that the poems in question were not especially great (I don't think that they were, in fact), or that the style in which they are written has become too difficult for my aging 21st century brain to follow (I hope not), but I also made the mistake when reading these of trying to keep on a schedule, even if it meant reading later at night when I was tired, or was otherwise distracted. It was after the Browning book I believe that I decided not to be so ironclad about following the schedule going forward, at least where poems or other more, I don't want to say difficult, books, but books requiring more time or concentration, were concerned. So I determined to take my time with Balder Dead, though my pre-existing affinity for Arnold's poetry also led me to hope that I would be able to get into it more easily.


As is not infrequently the case with the IWE list, this particular poem is something of an eccentric selection, not because it is not a decent poem, but because I feel like it is not very well known, and it is even difficult to find a copy of the full poem in a bound book put out by a major publishing house within the last 100 years. I ended up ordering a 1942 Oxford edition of Arnold's poems from somewhere in Wales, which was the only place I could find selling a copy of this book. I discovered when it arrived that the poem is only 31 pages. The IWE doesn't say anything about Arnold, and only notes that "the story of Balder is a favorite in Norse mythology" and then goes on to relate some of the basic elements of the story. Why Arnold chose this particular story to be the subject of a poem of some ambition and length (in terms of lines) none of the materials I have at hand has anything to say about at all.


As is usual with me, I did not mark any passages until I was a good way into the reading.


II ll. 166-8: "And old men, known to Glory, but their star
Betray'd them, and of wasting age they died,
Not wounds..."


I thought it interesting that even the brave and glorious don't make it to Valhalla if they don't die in battle.


III ll. 162-72. Almost the whole third section of the poem is given over to Balder's funeral.

"...then the corpse
Of Balder on the highest top they laid,
With Nanna on his right, and on his left
Hoder, his brother, whom his own hand slew...
And slew the dogs which at his table fed,
And his horse, Balder's horse, whom most he lov'd,
And threw them on the pyre..."


A lot of living creatures needed to be slain to be tossed on Balder's pyre, including his wife, who had already been taken care of in these lines.


III ll. 190-215. The description of the burning ship is good. Appropriately grim, especially the references to the northern forests, the sound of fires in winter, and the like.


As noted earlier, I had a difficult time discerning Arnold's particular motivation for choosing this story. Obviously he had one. And it is a good poem after his style, I am just not sure what he is so taken by in it. Is it the dramatic and serious manner in which this culture addressed death?


III ll. 509-14. Perhaps this is it? The ghost of Balder is speaking:


"For I am long since weary of your storm
Of carnage, and find, Hermod, in your life
Something too much of war and broils, which make
Life one perpetual fight, a bath of blood.
Mine eyes are dizzy with the arrowy hail;
Mine ears are stunn'd with blows, and sick for calm."


III ll. 565-70. I like this image. It also revisits the theme of storks which is prevalent in a lot of European stories.


"And as a stork which idle boys have trapp'd,
And tied him in a yard, at autumn sees
Flocks of his kind pass o'er his head
To warmer lands, and coasts that keep the sun;
He strains to join their flight, and from his shed,
Follows them with a long complaining cry--"


Is Balder referring to Christianity at the end, from his ghostly perch (of perception)? It is not clear to me.

The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge


The keywords in this one were too source specific to bring up many titles outside the realm of Norse mythology.



1. D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths..........................................................237
2. H. R. Ellis Davidson--Gods and Myths of Northern Europe...................58
3. Graham Masterson--The House That Jack Built.....................................45
4. Dan McCoy--The Love of Destiny, etc....................................................41
5. Robert J. Mrazek--Valhalla.....................................................................34
6. Snorri Kristjansson--Swords of Good Men..............................................20
7. Urdu to English Dictionary......................................................................19
8. Allen Mawer--The Vikings.........................................................................3
9. A Guide to the Common Epiphytes and Mistletoes of Singapore..............0




This subject does not appear to attract a lot of women authors. I thought Snorri Kristjansson might be one, but he too is a man.




Play-In Game


#8 Mawer over #9 Guide to Epiphytes

Round of 8


#1 D'Aulaires over #8 Mawer
#2 Davidson over #7 Urdu to English Dictionary
#3 Masterson over #6 Kristjansson


These are both genre books, though I would have been inclined to give Kristjansson the edge based on his being from a foreign literary culture, being a native of Iceland, though it looks like he may write and publish primarily in English anyway. Masterson was entitled to an upset however.


#4 McCoy over #5 Mrazek


Because I dread genre fiction so much I always try to make sure it loses when I have a chance.




Final Four


#1 D'Aulaires over #4 McCoy
#2 Davidson over #3 Masterson




Championship


#2 Davidson over #1 D'Aulaires


Published in 1964, which is in the heart of the era wherein I actually trust the intent of much academic scholarship, H (for Hilda!) R. Ellis Davidson's study might be difficult to procure a copy of, but I think it is the clear choice here. I have many of the D'Aulaires' books at home, and I have always been a fan of theirs, but they are essentially children's writers. I'll have to see if I can make this happen.

April 2018

A List: Jules Verne--20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.....................76/257
B List: Between books
C List: Kathleen Ann Goonan--In War Times.............................341/348


This has been the year (or so) of Jules Verne, whom I had never read all the days of my life before taking on Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth, and now this, all in a relatively short space. I have found them all to be entertaining. In this one some of the technical talk, about atmospheric pressure and oxygen pumps and such subjects, seems to be too much for my concentration and/or understanding and my eyes tend to glide over these parts. This cannot be said to be a fault of the book, I suppose.


In War Times I have liked quite a lot, though in terms of strict construction and intellectual power I don't think it holds together very well. There are a number of different strains in it that appeal strongly to me however even if they don't necessarily cohere with each other. The first half of the book takes place during World War II, and the narrative centers around an able young male American engineer who belongs to a company of mostly fellow able young male American engineers and their wartime experiences in New York and England and Germany. I am always taken in by stories of the able young men of the Allied forces in World War II. I wish that there was a way, in the absence of stupendous and overwhelming intellectual or creative ability, to recreate the intensity and energy of experience that the able young men, at least as depicted in books, seemed to get out of the war, and the camaraderie also, without the accompanying horrors of the actual conflict. Of course there probably is not. In any event I like reading stories of smart young men, and I like reading stories of 1940s America, and the victorious part of World War II, and the camaraderie of men who have succeeded together in worthwhile enterprises. The able young white buddies in this are big jazz fans, which they see as related to developments in modern physics, and they even end up playing one night with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. This part is admittedly rather corny, but from my point of view I rather liked it too, this music is one of the defining energies of that era, but it isn't always clear if you're someone like me how to find a way into it, but I felt like there was something of that here. After the war ends there is more of a science fiction plot that takes hold. The main character continues to live in the postwar world that we know, the Cold War and Vietnam and so on, but most of his old Army mates, including his best friend whom in his world died in Germany in 1945, live on in an alternative postwar world where Stalin was overthrown, Berlin became a boomtown, the nations work together on space exploration, technology and economic growth progress even faster than they did in the familiar world, Kennedy was not killed, and so on. The guy stuck in our world is able to know this because there are nodes of time where these differing strains of history briefly come together. So he can reunite with his friends from time to time (often near his home in Washington, D.C; They are confused as to why it is so shabby) but then at some point they will get up to go to the bathroom and not come back and the node is lost. This idea made an impression on me for some reason. (This alternative worlds thing is the result of some atomic energy that the protagonist got hold of during the war that has been channeled to work differently from the way the atomic bombs did, or something like that. I am out of time, I have to stop now...)