23 & 24/1001 - February

2/1/25

Short Story - The Three Heads of the Well, a fairy tale from Joseph Jacobs collection of English Fairy Tales

Essay - the preface and end notes to the Fairy tales. I thought this was interesting:

"In the introduction to the notes of the companion volume, I have made some remarks on the form taken by the English folk-tale. This is essentially colloquial, and hence rarely if ever rises into romance. This is not peculiar to England. Wherever the stories are collected from the folk they almost always partake of this colloquial and unromantic nature. It would seem as if anything of a romantic type was produced by the folk in the form of ballads rather than of tales. Our idea of fairies is derived from literary versions rather than from those that are really folk-tales. Indeed, we may trace it mainly to the Countess d'Aulnoy and the other French contributors to the Bibliothèque des fées, who followed the example of Perrault in giving graceful form to the tales of the folk. In England, we get humour rather than romance from the productions of the folk-fancy. Very few of the extant English folk-tales show any signs of constructive plot ability among the folk."

The form of the fairy tale raises the folk tale to a higher form, that of romance. Interesting.

This from the preface amused me:

"The words 'Fairy Tales' must accordingly be taken to include tales in which occurs something "fairy," something extraordinary--fairies, giants, dwarfs, speaking animals. It must be taken also to cover tales in which what is extraordinary is the stupidity of some of the actors."

And this:

"I am doubtful as to my success in catching the colloquial-romantic tone appropriate for such narratives, but the thing had to be done or else my main object, to give a book of English Fairy Tales which English children will listen to, would have been unachieved. This book is meant to be read aloud, and not merely taken in by the eye."

The stories are meant to be read aloud. Something happens when fairy tales are read aloud and not just read on the page. The words live and move and have being. 

Poem

Repeat

by R.S. Thomas

He touched it. It exploded.

Man was inside with his many

Devices. He turned from him as from his own

Excrement. He could not stomach his grin.

I'll mark you, he thought. He put his finger

On him. The result was poetry:

The lament of Job, Aeschylus,

The grovelling of the theologians.

Man went limping through life, holding

His side.

But who were these in the laboratories

Of the world? He followed the mazes

Of their calculations, and returned

To his centre to await their coming for him.

It was not his first time to be crucified.

2/2/25

Short Story - Tom Tit Tot

Essay - The Rise of the Machines by Stratford Caldecott

"The tyranny of mechanism is the projection of mentality that reduces all of nature, including human nature, to something merely mechanical."

I really liked this quote that started the essay:

"The only sort of inner life allowed by the Technician would be a modest and moderate form of introspection, directed by the doctor and tending to produce an optimistic frame of mind by eliminating- by plucking out the very roots of- any desire that could not be fulfilled in this world. Fools! You don't care a tinker's curse for the inner life, yet it is nevertheless through the inner life and in it that certain real values have been transmitted to us without which liberty would be nothing but an empty word. You don't care a tinker's curse for the said values either? So be it."

- Georges Bernanos 

Poem -

The Riddle

by Richard Wilbur

Shall I love God for causing me to be?

I was mere utterance; shall these words love me?

Yet when I caused His work to jar and stammer,

And one free subject loosened all His grammar,

I love Him that He did not in a rage

Once and forever rule me off the page,

But, thinking I might come to please Him yet,

Crossed out 'delete' and wrote His patient 'stet'.

'Stet,' for those of you who don't know (like I didn't), is an editing term that means 'let it stand.'