Mostly I read to myself. But, every once in awhile, someone reads aloud and I am reminded of how beautiful language can be and that in the right hands it can capture inexplicable emotions. In high school, my English teacher played a recording of T.S. Eliot reading from my blog's namesake "The Wasteland," as well as "The Hollow Men." It was the first time I truly appreciated poetry and I can still hear Eliot's raspy voice warning, "This is the way the world ends..."
But, more importantly, and fitting for today...when I was in my last year of college, I took my favorite 19th Century Victorian Novels class. This is where I learned to love Austen, Dickens and Thackery, and developed my dislike for George Eliot. My professor (the brilliant Robert Polhemus) was also a Joyce scholar. I had studied Joyce during my summer in Dublin, and struggled mightily through Ulysses, which I appreciated, but could never quite follow.
On Valentine's Day (1997), Professor Polhemus stopped class to read Molly Bloom's soliliquy from the book's final chapter in which Molly (Penelope) welcomes home her long-adventuring husband Leopold Bloom (the wily Odysseus). And now when I think of returning and what it means to fall in love, I think of Professor Polhemus reading Molly's words:
"I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."
Wishing everyone a very happy valentine's day (and in a leapyear, no less)!!
1 comment:
Hi Anne,
Just checking in on you here. Wondering if you have seen the eighties (or was it 90s) movie with Rodney Dangerfield called "Back To School" Rodney's character decides to go to college with his son to prove to him a degree is worthwhile. It is a pretty bad movie, but one of the female professors that Rodney has a crush on reads this passage! It also has a cameo of Kurt Vonnegut which I always thought was very cool. Hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day. Love, Jes
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