Review: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Dubois

W.E.B. Dubois, author of The Souls of Black Folk, was born in 1868. He earned his B.A. at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, and went on to earn a second BA at Harvard, continuing his studies there until he earned his doctorate in history, the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

The Souls of Black Folk is a collection of essays first published together in 1903. The book includes both arguments and narrative, as Dubois draws on his own experience and that of people he knew.

One of the most famous passages introduces the idea of double consciousness, now used in sociology as a term describing the internal conflict experienced by oppressed groups:

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, -- a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

The book is well known for its critique of Booker T. Washington. Washington was one of the most influential black leaders from the last generation of black Americans born into slavery. Washington was the main architect of the Atlanta Compromise. Dubois critiques his strategy of accommodation:

The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate,—a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,—so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this,—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Dubois's prose is very quotable. I really liked these two bits from chapter twelve:

The nineteenth was the first century of human sympathy, -- the age when half wonderingly we began to descry in others that transfigured spark of divinity which we call Myself; when clodhoppers and peasants, and tramps and thieves, and millionaires and -- sometimes -- Negroes, became throbbing souls whose warm pulsing life touched us so nearly that we half gasped with surprise, crying, "Thou too! Hast Thou seen Sorrow and the dull waters of Hopelessness? Hast Thou known Life?"

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

If you, like me, have read the book but haven't read anything else by the author, you might find this lecture about Dubois's contributions to sociology interesting.

This is my book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2020: Classic by a POC Author.

Deal Me In: The Eve of St Agnes by John Keats (1820)

Manuscript of the poem (British Library)

This is the first poem I have read for the Deal Me In challenge. I have read some of the short stories and I will write about them later, but I think I will do individual posts for all the poems (if I read all of them). I read the poem a couple of times, and then read the commentary on the poem at the website of Brooklyn College (found via Wikipedia). The "overview" at that link quotes some comments (from a reviewer of the time) calling it "one long sensuous utterance," but lacking in substance. The commentary, I think, shows that there actually is a great deal to think about in this poem, but it goes through the whole thing in much more detail than I have in this post!

The Eve of St Agnes was written in 1819 and published in 1820. The poem is named for the evening before the feast of Saint Agnes, which falls on January 21st. Legend had it that a girl could see her husband in a dream if she performed certain rituals, going to bed without supper and lie down naked, looking upward to the heavens rather than behind or sideways.

The British Library website (at the link above) says: "The poem is richly detailed with full of intimate descriptions, although Keats’ publishers forced him to tone down some of the sexual description for fear of provoking an adverse reaction from readers." 

I.

ST. AGNES' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!

The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;

The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told 

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,

Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.

The poem begins outside a medieval chapel, where a beadsman enters to say his prayers. (A beadsman is a poor man paid to pray for a wealthy patron; the word refers to the beads of a rosary.) He overhears the music from the revels in the castle nearby. The narrator shifts to describing the revels, where Madeline is anticipating the vision she hopes to receive from St. Agnes that night. 

VII.

Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline:

The music, yearning like a God in pain, 

She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine,

Fixed on the floor, saw many a sweeping train

Pass by -- she heeded not at all: in vain

Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,

And back retired; not cooled by high disdain,

But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere:

She sighed for Agnes' dreams, the sweetest of the year.

Porphyro is introduced in stanza IX. He is hiding nearby in the shadows, seeking Madeline. 

Apparently, he has seen her in a vision. He sneaks into the castle, and we are told (in stanza X) that he would be killed if discovered, because the castle's inhabitants are hostile to "his lineage." (I am guessing this refers to a family feud). The only one who is friendly to him is the old woman Angela. She recognizes him and urges him to leave. I don't think there is any explanation of how she knows who he is. Porphyro convinces her to help him find Madeline. He finds her in her room, where he watches her. At the end of stanza XXIII, she is compared to a nightingale:

XXIII

... As though a tongueless nightingale should swell 

Her throat in vain, heart-stifled, in her dell. 

This looks like an allusion to Philomela, the woman who was raped by Tereus, who also cut out her tongue; ultimately she was transformed into a nightingale. The most famous version of the story comes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. (I wrote a post about Metamorphoses last week which covered this story.) I will come back to this, as its relevant later.

XXIV

A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,

All garlanded with carven imag'ries

Of fruits and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,

And diamonded with panes of quaint device,

Innumberable of stains and splendid dyes,

As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;

And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,

And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

A shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings.

XXX
And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, 
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavendered,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

Porphyro continues to watch Madeline sleep, and starts to play her lute. In stanza XXXIV, she opens her eyes and sees Porphyro. At this point she is "wide awake," but she still sees "the vision of her sleep" indicating that she still thinks that she is dreaming. She speaks for the first time in the next stanza (XXXVI), revealing that Porphyro was in her dream. Now that she sees him in the waking world, she is startled by the difference between the dream Porphyro and the real one; the latter, she says, is "pallid, chill and drear." Almost as soon as she says this, he becomes invigorated again and... melts into her dream: "Into her dream he melted, as the rose/Blendeth its odour with violet,—"

So this looks like a poetic way of saying that they're having sex, and consent is ... dubious under the circumstances. This is why the mention of Philomela jumped out at me... without that allusion, I might say that any disturbing element in the relationship is probably unintentional. As it is, that angle sort of looks deliberate. 

There is a storm outside, and the moon sets. Porphyro declares that this is not a dream. Madeline is not pleased to hear this; she fears that he's going to leave her, even though she says a few lines later that she has been deceived (and it seems plausible that if she had known the whole thing was real, she would have refused to have premarital sex with him). He tells her that the storm outside is an elfin-storm from faery land, and that it will help them slip away to his home in the southern moors before everyone else in the castle wakes up. This is partly because they drank a lot the previous night (so they are sleeping in) but also possibly a magical effect of the storm.

And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form 
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
Were long be-nightmar'd. Angela the old
Died palsy-twitch'd, with meager face deform;
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,

For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.


So maybe they never arrived at that house on the moors; it sounds as if they were blown away to faery land. 

Whew! That was weirder than I was expecting. The danger and the attraction of being lost in dreams is a prominent theme here, and one that comes up in some of his other poems (e.g. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which was written later). I have read some of Keats's other poems, but not since before I started blogging, and this one was new to me. 

The Eve of St Agnes by Arthur Hughes, 1856 (Wikimedia)

Review: Three Men in a Boat

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Three Men in a Boat is a very funny novel written (and set) in the late nineteenth century.

The three men of the title are the narrator, J., and his friends George and Harris. They are all hypochondriacs. Hoping to take their minds off things, the three of them decide to take a boat trip up the River Thames. J's dog Montmorency, a fox terrier, comes with them. There is almost no plot, but there are many amusing digressions.

This book was an inspiration for Connie Willis (To Say Nothing of the Dog). At one point the characters are attacked by a bunch of swans; I'm pretty sure that scene inspired a similar incident in Willis's book.

I listened to the Naxos audiobook read by Martin Jarvis, but I also have the ebook from Project Gutenberg.

some quotes I liked:

“Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a "T." I don't know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and- butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit.”

“How good one feels when one is full -- how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.”

“Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.”

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Review: Manfred

Manfred by Lord Byron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm not sure I had heard of this play until I came across a reference to it in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It is not mentioned by name, but here's the relevant passage:

" 'Now I know very little of English magicians. They have always seemed to me a parcel of dull, dusty old men — except for John Uskglass. He is quite another matter! The magician who tamed the Otherlanders! The only magician to defeat death! The magician whom Lucifer himself was forced to treat as an equal! Now whenever Strange compares himself to this sublime being — as he must from time to time — he sees himself for what he truly is: a plodding earthbound mediocrity! All his achievements — so praised in the desolate little isle — crumble to dust before him! That will bring on as fine a bout of despair as you could wish to see. This is to be mortal, and seek the things beyond mortality.'

Lord Byron paused for a moment, as if committing the last remark to memory in case he should want to put it in a poem…

[later:]

'I am by chance writing a poem about a magician who wrestles with the Ineffable Spirits who rule his destiny. Of course, as a model for my magician Strange is far from perfect — he lacks the true heroic nature; for that I shall be obliged to put in something of myself.' "

***

Manfred is a verse drama published in 1817. Lord Byron started writing it a few months after the famous ghost-story sessions with Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley that provided the inspiration for Frankenstein. I've never read much of Byron before this, except for a few of his poems in anthologies. This is longer, but still fairly short, so it's a good one to read if you want to get a taste of Byron without reading the much longer Don Juan.

Count Manfred is a Swiss nobleman tortured by mysterious guilt for a sin that is somehow connected to the death of his beloved, Astarte. He summons seven spirits to grant him forgetfulness: the spirits of air, mountains, ocean, earth, winds, night, and of Manfred’s own guiding star. Most of the play is in blank verse, although the spirits have rhyming dialogue. I was completely captivated! I loved this mix of the Gothic and the Romantic. It probably draws some inspiration from Faust and/or from Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, but it also feels like its own thing. (I read part 1 of Faust years ago; I just don't have it listed on GoodReads, since I haven't added most of the books I read before joining the site.)

Manfred really is a vivid character. He has contempt for most people, but he does not seek to dominate them; instead he seeks to separate himself from others.

"I could not tame my nature down; for he
Must serve who fain would sway—and soothe, and sue,
And watch all time, and pry into all place,         
And be a living lie, who would become
A mighty thing amongst the mean, and such
The mass are; I disdain’d to mingle with
A herd, though to be leader—and of wolves.
The lion is alone, and so am I.         
  Abbot.  And why not live and act with other men?
  Man.  Because my nature was averse from life;
And yet not cruel;"

I listened to the LibriVox audio recording after reading this. It's an excellent reading. Highly recommended!

Some of my favorite lines:

"The stars are forth, the moon above the tops
Of the snow-shining mountains.—Beautiful!
I linger yet with Nature, for the night
Hath been to me a more familiar face
Than that of man; and in her starry shade
Of dim and solitary loveliness,
I learn'd the language of another world."

"The mind which is immortal makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts, 
Is its own origin of ill and end,
And its own place and time; its innate sense,
When stripped of this mortality, derives
No colour from the fleeting things without,
But is absorb'd in sufferance or in joy,
Born from the knowledge of its own desert."

Review: The House of the Wolfings

The House of the Wolfings by William Morris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream."

"… they worshipped the kind acres which they themselves and their fathers had made fruitful, wedding them to the seasons of seed-time and harvest, that the birth that came from them might become a part of the kindred of the Wolf, and the joy and might of past springs and summers might run in the blood of the Wolfing children. And a dear God indeed to them was the Roof of the Kindred, that their fathers had built and that they yet warded against the fire and the lightning and the wind and the snow, and the passing of the days that devour and the years that heap the dust over the work of men. They thought of how it had stood, and seen so many generations of men come and go; how often it had welcomed the new-born babe, and given farewell to the old man: how many secrets of the past it knew; how many tales which men of the present had forgotten, but which yet mayhap men of times to come should learn of it; for to them yet living it had spoken time and again, and had told them what their fathers had not told them, and it held the memories of the generations and the very life of the Wolfings and their hopes for the days to be."

This is the first book I have read by William Morris. I already had The Well at World's End on my reading list, but I was in the mood for something with a bit more action in it, so I decided to start with this one instead.

This novel is historical fiction and also to some extent fantasy, although the fantasy elements tend to stay in the background. Morris includes some excellent poetry as well. It is a fictionalized portrait of the lives of the Germanic Goths and their war against imperial Rome. There are prophecies and battles and women who take part in defending their homes, although only men fight on the battlefield. The main character, Thiodolf, falls in love with a woman who is a seer and a daughter of the gods.

The Wolfings and their allies, the Laxings, live by a river in the forest of Mirkwood in a land called the Mark. If I hadn't already known that J.R.R. Tolkien was influenced by Morris, that would make it pretty obvious. (Tolkien mentioned this book and The Roots of the Mountains as influences on Lord of the Rings.)

I have read a couple of short essays about this book that I found insightful:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/morr...

http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/Ma...

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