38 and 39 of 1001

Last week I read sporadically, so I'm counting all of it as one day. Today, day 39 of the challenge, I managed to get some time to read both the essay and the short story. Poetry is never a problem. 

Day 38/1001

Short Story: I wanted to read The Lost Road by Tolkien, but this is a longer short story that I could make it through in one night, so I broke it up and read the chapters over the week. I wish he had finished it. But there is also something haunting about it ending where it does.

I also read The Aunt and Amabel by E. Nesbit from the collection called Tales Before Narnia.

Essays: I read a few essays throughout the week, mostly rereading Lewis's Inner Ring, Membership, and The Weight of Glory for an essay I'm trying to think about/write about. It's so far still a huge, unwieldy thought. I can see patterns in it, but figuring out how to connect them has me stumped. 

I read On Detective Fiction by Chesterton on Thursday and What is 'Popular Poetry'? by W.B. Yeats on Saturday. I'm still thinking about his distinctions between the popular poetry and Poetry.

"Longfellow has his popularity, in the main, because he tells his story or his idea so that one needs nothing but his verses to understand it. No words of his borrow their beauty from those that used them before, and one can get all that there is in story and idea without seeing them as if moving before a half-faded curatain embroidered with kings and queens, their loves and battles and their days out hunting, or else with holy letters adn images of so great antiquity that nobody can tell the god or goddess that would commend to an unfading memory. Poetry that is not 'popular poetry' presupposes, indeed, more than it says, though we, who cannot know what it is to be dis inherited, only understand how much more, when we read it in its most typical expressions...or when we meet the misunderstandings of others."

"I soon learned to cast away one other illusion of 'popular poetry.' I learned from the people themselves, before I learned it from any book, that they cannot seperate the idea of an art or a craft from the idea of a cult with ancient technicalities and mysteries. They can hardly separate mere learning from witchcrafta adn are fond of words and verses that keep half their secret to themselves. Indeed, it is certain that before the counting-house had created a neew class and a new art withoug breeding and without ancestry, and set this art adn this class between the hut and the castle, adn between the hut and the cloiseter, the art of the people was as closely mindgled with the art of the coteries as was the speech of the people that delighted in thythmical animation, in idiom, in images, in words full of far-off suggestion, with the unchanging speech of the poet. 
"Now I see a new generation in ireland which discusses Irish literature and history in Young Ireland Societies, and societies with newer names, and there are far more than when I was a boy who would make verses for people. They have the help, too, of a vigorous journalism, and this journalism sometimes urgest hme to desire the direct logic, the clear rhetoric of 'popular poetry.' It sees that Ireland has no cultivated minority, and it does not see, though it would cast out all English tings, that its literary ideal belongs more to England than to other countries." 

In another essay he talks about written and unwritten tradition. Maybe it is earlier in this one.

Poetry:

What the Birds Said Early in the Year

by C.S. Lewis

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:

This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees

This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,

Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back

To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,

Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.

Day 39 March 11, 2025

Essay: "Nature" from Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis

Short Story: The Giaconda Smile by Aldous Huxley - wow! It might be my favorite one yet.

I love this line:

"She was a machine-gun riddling her hostess with sympathy."

https://www.online-literature.com/aldous_huxley/mortal-coils/1/

Poetry:

The Wish

by Abraham Cowley

Well then! I now do plainly see

        This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.

The very honey of all earthly joy

Does of all meats the soonest cloy;

        And they, methinks, deserve my pity

Who for it can endure the stings,

The crowd and buzz and murmurings,

        Of this great hive, the city.

Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave

May I a small house and large garden have;

And a few friends, and many books, both true,

Both wise, and both delightful too!

        And since love ne'er will from me flee,

A Mistress moderately fair,

And good as guardian angels are,

        Only beloved and loving me.

O fountains! when in you shall I

Myself eased of unpeaceful thoughts espy?

O fields! O woods! when, when shall I be made

Thy happy tenant of your shade?

        Here 's the spring-head of Pleasure's flood:

Here 's wealthy Nature's treasury,

Where all the riches lie that she

        Has coin'd and stamp'd for good.

Pride and ambition here

Only in far-fetch'd metaphors appear;

Here nought but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter,

And nought but Echo flatter.

        The gods, when they descended, hither

From heaven did always choose their way:

And therefore we may boldly say

        That 'tis the way too thither.

Hoe happy here should I

And one dear She live, and embracing die!

She who is all the world, and can exclude

In deserts solitude.

        I should have then this only fear:

Lest men, when they my pleasures see,

Should hither throng to live like me,

        And so make a city here.