B List: Manzoni--Betrothed...……………………………...361/668
C List: Hoffman--The Marriage of Opposites...…………...218/365
The set of poems I am in the middle of are Burns's "Scots Wha Hae", "Lycidas" (Milton), "Whispers of Immortality" (Eliot), "The Hound of Heaven" (Francis Thompson), and Shelley, "To a Sky-Lark", which I still have to get to.
Burns was great. I have read enough of Milton that his poems mean something to me. With Eliot I have always liked his form and language, the references in this one were a little too outside of my core knowledge to really feel the poem on the initial go. The Thompson started out all right but my attention was wandering by the end. I thought I might be at the point in my life where I could immerse myself in the poetic medium like I once did but I guess I am still too distracted, apart from a poet like Burns who has a very immediate, stirring kind of style.
So this took an extra day and I have been reading over Shelley as well ("Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!"). At one time when I was reading and thinking about these things more intently I decided that Shelley was the most innately talented of the English romantics, I don't remember why, I think it struck me that his thought process seemed to operate the most naturally in the terms of poetic imagery or something. "Skylark" is a meditation on the nature of artistic creation, not wholly devoid of charm or style. Today was for whatever reason a calmer day so I was able (a little) to enter into such of the spirit of 1820 as calls down through the ages.
I've been busy and haven't gotten as far in the Manzoni as I might have liked. It is good while also being different from other great European books of its type in presentation, etc. While I suspect that Renzo and Lucia are going to overcome their presently formidable obstacles and get married in the end, I don't see yet by what clever means the author is going to make this happen, or at least didn't until today, when the most savage and ruthless of the villains yet introduced seemed to undergo a crisis of conscience. Also there are a number of interesting characters whose roles do not require them by the conventions of the Romantic novel to come to a pre-ordained end either good or otherwise, and I am interested in seeing what becomes of them. Hopefully I will be able to finish this and have the report out before the next month is up.
I worried for a while that I might have to take a part-time (2nd) job, which would further cut into my reading, and writing, time, but it looks like I might be able to put that off for this year at least. Joking about cutting into the reading aside, it would also cut into my ability to keep up with the laundry, the dishes, cooking dinner, monitoring my children's schoolwork at all. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to do this (take a second job) later on, but right now it would be difficult to do.
I've actually given up on The Marriage of Opposites. I was kind of going through the motions anyway because it wasn't grabbing me, and then when the rich, smoldering love interest showed up it basically turned into a Harlequin romance. It checks a lot of the boxes of popular contemporary novels. Strong female white/Jewish protagonist, personally progressive, not as racist as everybody else, best friend is black, etc, conveniently set in colonial times so she can express her indignation with the injustice of it all while her hands are largely tied as far as her ability to overthrow the system. I don't mean to make fun of it, I think most of these contemporary writers are probably sincere in wanting to be good and atone for the crimes of history literary and otherwise, but most of the time it just kind of weighs down the story and puts the characters in straitjackets because of course they have no capacity to surprise. Besides, I think there are like four books still waiting on the C list and at least 3 of them are pretty long, if I were to finish them.
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