Only in academe

Professor: What's your middle name again? Hope? Joy?

Me: Hope.

Professor: You're getting me used to the idea that hippies should be allowed to procreate.

I should not be awake

I just used the phrase "locus amoenus" in my thesis. Some kind of frontier has been crossed, but I'll have to get back to you on what kind.

From this week's NYRB personals: "POUTING POETESS, 35, seeks philandering philanthropist able to stump up. London, England." You speak for us all, sister.

I need more caffeine and more myrmidons.

Administrivium

I've elected to make this blog a little less RED RED RED, even if that is how the Restoration appears in my head (that, or a tasteful dusty pink). But is pale gray really the best alternative? Do advise.

ETA: Blue? Is it too blue?

Let's take him to the Mulberry-Garden, and see what the ladies can do

My favorite passage in all of Restoration drama:

Estridge. If thou knew'st once the pleasure of such a sprightly Girl as Olivia, the kind quarrels, the fondness, the pretty sullenness after a little absence, which must be charm'd out of it with Kisses, and those thousand other Devises that make a Lovers happiness; thou wou'dst think all this as easie, as lying a bed in the Country in a rainy morning.

Though this one comes close:

Olivia. The only way to oblige most men is to use 'um thus, a little now and then; even to their faces; it gives 'um an Opinion of our wit; and is consequently a Spur to theirs: the great pleasure of Gaming were lost, if we saw one anothers hands; and of Love, if we knew one anothers Hearts.

--Charles Sedley, The Mulberry-Garden, 1668

Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed

There are three main schools of Valentine's Day philosophy. The first line of thought--generally propounded by people in love--holds that love is glorious, and that roses, truffles, diamonds, and Cupids are perfect emblems thereof. The second school dresses in black and mutters about commercialism; the third urges us all to Love Ourselves.

Then there's the historical view of the holiday: take Samuel Pepys's diary entry from Feb. 14, 1661. (Sir William Batten, born in 1600, was Pepys's superior at the Naval Board; "Mrs. Martha" was his spinster daughter; Mingo was his black servant. According to the DNB, "Pepys grew to detest Batten and supposed the feeling to be reciprocated. Batten was certainly infuriated by Pepys telling him his business, not least because the younger man was so often right." But forget that, for now.)

"14. Valentine's Day. Up earely and to Sir W. Battens. But would not go in till I had asked whether they that opened the door was a man or a woman. And Mingo, who was there, answered 'a Woman;' which, with his tone, made me laugh.

"So up I went and took Mrs. Martha for my Valentine (which I do only for complacency), and Sir W. Batten, he goes in the same manner to my wife. And so we were very merry.

"About 10 a-clock we with a great deal of company went down by our barge to Deptford; and there only went to see how forward Mr. Pett's yacht is. And so all into the barge again, and so to Woolwich on board the Rosebush, Captain Brown's ship, that is brother-in-law to Sir W. Batten - where we had a very fine dinner dressed on shoare. And great mirth and all things successefull - the first time I ever carried my wife a-shipboard - as also my boy Waineman, who hath all this day been called 'young Pepys', as Sir W. Pen's boy 'young Pen'.

"So home by barge again; good weather, but pretty cold."

I like this version of the holiday, because it doesn't imply that you must spend the day with your One True Love. The unmarried Martha Batten would have had a worse time of it in 2009 (though Pepys found her unpleasant, and refused to be her Valentine in 1662). And it's nice to see the skirt-chasing Pepys taking part in such an innocent tradition.

(Do you have any idea how hard it is to find Restoration images online? Google always thinks I mean furniture restoration. And, yes, I know that Vien is far too late and Titian is far too early. My long seventeenth century is very long, okay?)

Is it just me, or should there be a rap album called Master of the Revels?

Man differs more from man, than man from beast

In the past few days, I've checked here once in a while, thinking, "Maybe I've updated recently." That sort of thing never works.

Anyway, a happy bicentennial to Charles Darwin, neither a rake nor a fop, but still worthy our praise. The first lines of Rochester's "Satire Against Reason and Mankind" seem especially apt for the occasion:

Were I (who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man)
A spirit free to choose, for my own share,
What case of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal
Who is so proud of being rational.

And, later:

You see how far man's wisdom here extends;
Look next if human nature makes amends:
Whose principles most generous are, and just,
And to whose morals you would sooner trust.
Be judge yourself, I'll bring it to the test:
Which is the basest creature, man or beast?
Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey,
But savage man alone does man betray.
Pressed by necessity, they kill for food;
Man undoes man to do himself no good.
With teeth and claws by nature armed, they hunt
Nature's allowance, to supply their want.
But man, with smiles, embraces, friendship, praise,
Inhumanly his fellow's life betrays;
With voluntary pains works his distress,
Not through necessity, but wantonness.
For hunger or for love they fight or tear,
Whilst wretched man is still in arms for fear.

Queering the Restoration, Part II

Very high on my list of sentences I thought I'd never write:

"Blurring the line between heroism and homoerotics, Lovis recasts the female Britannia as a 'drooping' phallus."

It has the advantage of being true, but the handicap of being painfully silly. Oh, well.

Queering the Restoration (only half-ironically)

Resolved: My life would be better if I had myrmidons.

If I had myrmidons, I wouldn't be roaming the queer-theory section of the stacks on a Saturday night, searching for HQ76.3.E8 Q44 1994. "You," I'd say to the nearest myrmidon. "Yes, you, with the gold lace-up sandals. Please bring me every book you can find on early-modern homoeroticism."

"I don't know," the myrmidon would say. "I think that's a job for a minion."

In other news:

LOVIS. He does his blood for a lost mistress spend;
And shall I not die for so brave a friend?

LOVIS offers to fall on his sword, but is hindered by SIR FREDERICK.

SIR FREDERICK. Forbear, sir; the frolic's not to go round, as I take it.
--George Etherege, The Comical Revenge (1664)

No one on the corner has swagger like us

Am I wrong to detect parallels between rap and Restoration comedy? The flagrant foppery, the sexual one-upmanship, the serious themes swathed in plain silliness?

(Or am I just obsessed with M.I.A.?)

The charmer you disdain

Too busy writing about the Restoration to write about it, or something. Suffice to say that the semester has begun. In the meantime, have a classic Restoration lyric:

Farewell ungrateful traitor,
Farewell my perjured swain,
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.

'Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain,
But when we love you leave us
To rail at you in vain.
Before we have descried it,
There is no bliss beside it,
But she that once has tried it
Will never love again.

The passion you pretended
Was only to obtain,
But when the charm is ended
The charmer you disdain.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure,
When living is a pain.

--John Dryden (from The Spanish Friar, 1681)

Our friend L. C. Knights describes this song as a masterpiece of "music-hall sentiment," but he was writing at a time when the Metaphysicals were in fashion. I'm very fond of the song, though I confess that the Restoration was a bad time for most poetry, except epigrams, satires, and Paradise Lost.