The Great Metaphysicians

Whenever I first think about traveling, I am struck with the horror that I cannot bring my whole library with me. How do I decide which books to bring? When I travel, I am on a strict budget. I could easily spend my entire budget on books. That’s true at home as well as abroad.

So, I try to bring books with me. Enough books to keep me entertained for the entire trip. I always resolve that I am not going to buy a single volume while abroad. This is a resolution that I know I am going to break even as I am making it; however, in making this resolution, I buy fewer books than I otherwise would.

I had begun to explore the poetry of W.B. Yeats before I went to Rome in 2004. Reading Yeats, I felt I found someone of a similar bent of mind, who looked for the mythic elements of life but also saw that the mythic elements are not enough to strip life of its banalities. Perhaps I had not realized that when I was packing for Rome. Whatever my reasons were, I decided not to bring The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats to Rome.

And that may have been a blessing in disguise.

Read more..

For Madmen Only

In This Essay

Steppenwolf: A Novel by Hermann Hesse (Basil Creighton, trans.)

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats (Richard J. Finneran, ed.)

Don Juan in Hell: From Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

Last night I finished rereading Steppenwolf. I had put it down for a while and flitted among the arts.

I know for certain I am in the middle of two other novels. But I think I may have forgotten that I am in the middle of any number of others.

The past few weeks have been filled with theatre and opera.

As if that were not enough, I have been reading from the poetry of Rumi, W.B. Yeats, and John Keats. In fact, I have been working on memorizing Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale.” I have the first stanza of ten lines memorized; only seventy lines left to commit to memory.

“Why are you spreading yourself so thin?” I asked myself earlier.

Read more..

Living through Literature

In This Essay

Don Juan DeMarco

Don Juan by George Gordon, Lord Byron

Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Sir Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra

I first saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni while studying at an Italian language institute in Rome during the summer of 2004. That summer was my introduction to opera. I saw both Carmen and Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni stuck with me, however.

That first performance piqued my interest, both in opera and the Don Juan legend.

Since moving back to Massachusetts, though I am not sure what triggered it, I have become increasingly more interested in the Don Juan legend. I saw the opera again when the Boston Lyric Opera performed Don Giovanni last season. I purchased a recording of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and have listened to it almost to the exclusion of all else since I bought it. I have reread Molière’s Don Juan. I read Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell as well as Baudelaire’s. I reread most of the first Canto of Byron’s Don Juan, and despite my renewed interest found Byron’s poetry dry. Next I want to read Tirso de Molina’s El Burlador de Sevilla which is thought to be the first written version of the Don Juan legend.

While looking at the works of the Don Juan legend, I stumbled across Don Juan DeMarco. I was intrigued by the description on Wikipedia. I ordered it from the public library and watched it this weekend.

Read more..