Currently attempting to be a one-woman publishing machine.
Things I like: The Lord of the Rings, regency england, british history, football (and football players), historical novels, famous dead white males, chocolate, empire-cut clothing, old books, drunkenness, fantasy, self-photography, classical music and whimsy.
Things I do not like: mathematics, physics, crossing the road, hypocrites, tropical summers, neon colours, foods that are squishy, most Indian men
Beware, I have pretensions to Anglophilia, intellectualism and Elvishness.
P.S: ‘Lady Worth’ reflects my unabashed adoration of Julian St John Audley, Earl of Worth, the most desirable male I have ever come across in fiction. This blog is, among other things, witness to my perennial (and thus far unsuccessful) quest to discover a real live Lord Worth in “this filthy age”.
May 23rd, 2012 at 9:42 pm
Hey Lady,
Stumbled upon your blog after searching on Tolkien’s “Faerie is a perilous land” quote. I’m trying to write a short piece on how to stay sane, not for publication but for a writing project with a few friends. Finding it hard to get started but am feeling my way towards the right way in.
I like your blog and am now following. You have largesse of spirit and a generous heart, and you’re beautiful! More power to you….
May 23rd, 2012 at 9:44 pm
PS: The Saint Augustine quote on Loving is wonderful, never came across it before.
May 27th, 2012 at 8:50 pm
Hello! Thanks very much for your lovely comments on my blog :) It’s wonderful to know someone somewhere likes reading my writing. Do you have a blog too?
I found the quote in a biography of the poet Shelley that I was reading last year. It’s one of those startlingly insightful, timeless pieces of wisdom you come across now and then.
Anyway, thanks for reading! :)
May 30th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Milady,
I do have a long-neglected blog, here – http://my.opera.com/marineboy/blog/ – but it’s only a few eclectic pieces and attempts to make people laugh.
I’m a Tolkien nerd too. I’ve visited his grave and the Eagle and Child etc. I think alas that he will never be cool, he’s sooo against the zeitgeist. If anyone claims that high fantasy and fairy tales are for children I employ C S Lewis’ response: that wanting to appear grown-up is the mark of an adolescent.
Is your dissertation online anywhere? What did you read for it – Tom Shippey? Verlyn Flieger? Have you ever read Owen Barfield (intellectual sparring partner of C S Lewis) e.g. his ‘Poetic Diction’? It is pure wonderment, an extraordinary insight into the nature of the imagination, poetry, meaning, consciousness, mythology etc. Flieger’s ‘Splintered Light’ explores the parallels between Barfield’s philosophy of language – that language represents the splintered and refracted fragments of a primary, unified consciousness – and Tolkien’s use of primary light splintered and refracted in his mythologies: the Two Trees of Valinor, the Silmarils, the light of Earendil’s Star, the Phial of Galadriel etc. Barfield is DEEP, and concerned greatly with roots and origins, but is not any kind of reductionist. His thoughts don’t destroy the mystery but lay it bare.
Incidentally one can still see Earendil’s Star. In the Silmarillion it says Earendil voyages with the Silmaril on his brow in the heavens in his ship Vingilot, and can often be seen leaving before the sunrise and returning after sunset. This is exactly how Venus behaves, being closer to the sun than us and rising either before the dawn or setting after sunset; and if there’s anything that looks like a Holy Jewel in this world it is Venus. Therefore Venus is a Silmaril :-). Apparently on certain clear autumn mornings the pre-dawn Venus is so bright it will cast a shadow, but despite much tramping around the english countryside at odd hours this is not something I’ve yet witnessed.
Have you tried Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King”? It’s totally wonderful, I read it last year on holiday. Never attempted such a long poem before but it was worth it – a pure flood of Romantic imagination:
I saw the spiritual city and all her spires
And gateways in a glory like one pearl —
No larger, though the goal of all the saints —
Strike from the sea; and from the star there shot
A rose-red sparkle to the city, and there
Dwelt, and I knew it was the Holy Grail,
Which never eyes on earth again shall see.
[Or….]
So all day long the noise of battle rolled
Among the mountains by the winter sea;
Until King Arthur’s Table, man by man,
Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their lord,
King Arthur. Then, because his wound was deep,
The bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,
And bore him to a chapel nigh the field,
A broken chancel with a broken cross,
That stood on a dark strait of barren land:
On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full.
I also can’t recommend G K Chesterton highly enough, specifically his ‘Orthodoxy’. He’s kind of an Inklings father-figure. ‘Orthodoxy’ is his spiritual autobiography and philosophical manifesto and it kind of turned my mind inside out, just when I was dissolving in post-modernist self-referentiality and morbid modern ennui. Like Tolkien he was a catholic (a famous convert of his day), but his is an argument based on reason and not faith (although it is an argument for faith). Here’s a good bit:
“It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment’s thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else’s disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what a lunatic will do in a dull world.”
Since reading so much of the Inklings and their influences I’ve found myself dabbling dangerously with christianity, in the same way that one normally does with the occult; and I attend church haphazardly. I find church works for me in the autumn and winter; candlelit evensong is so sad and beautiful. In the spring and summer I can’t be doing with being inside and immediately convert to a nature-worshipping pagan running around the Surrey and Sussex hills. The Inklings were a kind of bridge between paganism and christianity so I feel it’s alright although it may seem confused and shallow to some. I like to think of it as very broadly ecumenical.
Oh well, must stop going on. It’s a quiet day at work and I’ve written too much. All the best to you!