Sweet Song Research Articles

One Sweet Song by Jyoti Rajan Gopal (review)

One Sweet Song by Jyoti Rajan Gopal (review)

Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord

Part of the Milman Parry Collection of Oral Literature at Harvard University (MPCOL) is the corpus of Albanian epic recordings, which consists of both audio recordings and texts. The audio recordings include 70 items recorded on aluminum discs by Milman Parry during 1934 and 1935 in the Balkans, consisting of songs and text recited in the Albanian language along with the conversations and recitations in South Slavic languages. The textual materials include 13 notebooks containing more than 22,000 verses of songs, dictated by 38 singers and collected by Albert Lord in various areas of Northern Albania in 1937. The first 10 notebooks were compiled during Lord's travel and the last three collected at Lord's request by two local collaborators. Although MPCOL has labeled the 13 notebooks “Heroic Ballads and Folksongs from Albania,” only Lord's recordings are from his visits in Albania and direct meetings with Albanian singers. Parry's Albanian recordings are from Bosnian singers who sung in two languages, Serbo-Croatian and Albanian, although he planned but never managed to go to Albania.Lord wrote about these recordings in Serbo-Croatian Heroic Songs (1954), noting that he intended to publish the Albanian recordings in another volume, which he never completed. Although scholars have had direct access in the MPCOL to the Albanian materials, the materials remained unpublished until Nicola Scaldaferri, David Elmer, Zymer Neziri, and John Kolsti met at an annual international seminar on Albanian culture and language in Prishtina, Kosovo, in 2003, and then continued their work with other meetings in the United States and Kosovo, with support from the University of Calabria and the University of Milan in Italy. Their work culminated in this volume published under the auspices of Nicola Scaldaferri, with additional contributions by Victor A. Friedman, John Kolsti, and Zymer U. Neziri. According to Scaldaferri, the reasons for the publication's delay are various, but are largely due to complex and well-known political events in the Balkans, which resulted in some significant barriers to communication.Why did they title the book Wild Songs, Sweet Songs? Local folk singers refer to the cyclic rhapsodies and heroic songs as kânge t'egra (wild songs), and to love songs as kânge të buta (soft or gentle songs). Both categories of songs characterize this volume's subject matter. The book's first part comprises essays by the aforementioned scholars, which provide very relevant but also analytical data for the methods of recording used by Lord and Parry; skills of the epic singers who sang successfully in two languages; the content and context related to the singers that Lord met; the texts, music, and performances of these recordings; and the admirative mood (used to express surprise or disbelief) of Albanian epic poetry, which makes this genre so distinctive and literally untranslatable in the Balkan context. This section opens many windows to enlighten cultural and professional issues on Albanian epics that folklorists have lacked for comparative studies on Balkan epics.The book's second part is a catalog that lists the Albanian recordings collected by Parry and Lord. Albanian recordings in the Milman Parry Collection are on aluminum discs as well as on wire spools and are listed with the PN prefix. The 13 notebooks in the Albert B. Lord Collection of Epics from Northern Albania are listed with the LN prefix. Because it contains detailed notes for each recording, the book's catalog is invaluable for researchers working with these materials.The book's most important and most voluminous part is the anthology, which brings together the best Albanian materials from the Epic Collections of Parry and Lord for the first time in one volume. The anthology presents the text songs—in the original Albanian and translated into English—of 12 recordings, five by Milman Parry and seven by Albert Lord. There are also two original texts sung in Albanian: one by Salih Ugljanin from 1934 and one by Fatima Biberović (originally from Prizren, Kosovo), which represents the phenomenon of female singers to whom Parry and Lord paid special attention. Another part of the anthology is the “Song of Sirotin Ali,” which Lord collected in 1937 as the longest Albanian epic text from oral tradition transcribed and known to scholarship. Dictated to Lord by Adem Brahimi, it has 2,165 verses. Also part of the volumes are appendices with photos, letters, manuscripts, and maps from Lord's archive, which add documentary value to this volume.With many of its materials published for the first time, Wild Songs, Sweet Songs: The Albanian Epic in the Collections of Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord offers opportunities for both Albanian and international scholars to compare and observe the differences and peculiarities of the Albanian oral epic—opportunities that were not available for nearly a century.

A new songbird potentially found in Arunachal Pradesh

The bird is strikingly similar to the grey-bellied wren babbler, but with a sweet song similar to that of the Naga wren-babbler The bird is strikingly similar to the grey-bellied wren babbler, but with a sweet song similar to that of the Naga wren-babbler

From Medieval Romance to Contemporary Opera: Philosophy, Allegory, Eros

From Medieval Romance to Contemporary Opera: Philosophy, Allegory, Eros

Baby birds beat the heat thanks to singing parents

Baby zebra finches hatch into one of Earth's most inhospitable environments, the Australian outback, where summer temperatures can exceed 40°C. Fortunately, zebra finch parents can prepare their young for this dangerously hot climate by singing to them before they hatch. When temperatures rise above 26°C, parents emit ‘heat calls’ that warn their embryos of high environmental temperatures. Unlike their normal vocalizations, heat calls have a high-pitched frequency, a fast rhythm and can prompt embryos to develop differently in preparation for the heat. Notably, birds that are serenaded by heat calls as embryos tend to be relatively small, a characteristic thought to help them lose heat more efficiently and produce more young throughout adulthood. Despite the lasting influence of heat calls on zebra finch physiology, the mechanism through which they act remains a mystery.Led by Eve Udino (Deakin University, Australia), a team of researchers also from Deakin University, Clemson University, USA, and the Doñana Biological Station, Spain, questioned whether the energy-generating units inside cells (mitochondria) are the missing piece to this musical puzzle. Mitochondria use oxygen to convert food into cellular energy (ATP), while a portion of this oxygen is also diverted to produce heat. Since changes in mitochondrial function during development can have long-term effects on animal physiology, Udino and colleagues suggested that zebra finch mitochondria may be responding to heat calls produced by their parents. The team collected eggs from zebra finches maintained at an outdoor aviary in Geelong, Australia, and incubated the eggs at a blistering 37.5°C. A few days before they were due to hatch, the team played recordings of heat calls to the developing embryos. The newly hatched chicks were then raised in nests at various temperatures, ranging from 22°C to 34°C. Once they turned 13 days old, the team obtained some blood from the chicks to assess the function of the mitochondria in their red blood cells.The researchers first discovered that nest temperature can alter how well zebra finch mitochondria work. The birds raised in hotter nests had less efficient mitochondria, meaning that their mitochondria produced less ATP and consequently more heat than the mitochondria of birds raised at cooler temperatures. Remarkably, embryonic exposure to heat calls improved mitochondrial efficiency across all nest temperatures (22–34°C), suggesting that heat calls re-program how zebra finch mitochondria balance ATP versus heat production.While a nest temperature of 34°C may seem hot, zebra finches can experience temperatures that are much, much higher. Therefore, Udina and colleagues took the study one step further and exposed a group of the 13-day-old birds to a brief heatwave, warming the youngsters’ nests to 44°C over the course of 2.5 hours before checking the mitochondria again. This time, the mitochondria of birds that had listened to heat calls as embryos tended to be less efficient. Although this may seem disadvantageous, the team suspects that there may be benefits to reducing mitochondrial efficiency under extreme heat conditions. High rates of mitochondrial ATP production can produce toxic reactive oxygen species, compounds that can wreak havoc on proteins, lipids and DNA. Making mitochondria less efficient at extremely high temperatures may help birds reduce the damaging effects of reactive oxygen species.We often think that a bird's life begins once it hatches, but birds can sense and respond to events going on in the outside world before they enter it. As zebra finch parents sound the heat alarm, their embryos get to work altering their physiology. So, next time you hear zebra finches calling in the Australian heat, don't think of their sweet songs as ‘music to the ears’, but rather, as ‘music to the mitochondria’.

Bright lights at night scramble the sweet song of crickets

Bright lights at night scramble the sweet song of crickets

Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned: A Mid-Career Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon's Journey to Sustain Energy and Avoid Burnout.

Twenty-three years into this journey as a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon, my path is littered with mistakes made. The collision of a "family-first" philosophy with the demands of my busy academic surgical practice-not pretty. As a canary in a toxic coal mine, I have failed to fix the mine, so I have focused on being the very strongest and resilient canary possible. This is a retrospective study of mistakes made and lessons learned. The mistakes include submitting to the tyranny of perfectionism; failure to resist the tendency to measure ourselves against others; saying "yes" to every request; thinking my job is Monday to Friday, and career is nights/weekends; being given a big new job, but using same old time/energy management strategy; sloppy time management; failure to manage energy; considering sleep "a waste of time;" failure to manage attention; dragging the challenges from my day through the door each night; thinking that the skills that make me good at work are same that will make me good at home; aiming for work-life "balance;" and sometimes losing sight of our mission. It is too soon to tell whether the lessons I have learned from all my mistakes are essential to preventing burnout. Although I am certain my results to date are significant, I cannot prove statistically significance. I am working to develop Appropriate Use Criteria for time and energy, and Best Practice Guidelines for prioritizing where to focus attention in life. We need to manage our energy, time, and priorities with great care, and learn from the experts who are trying to teach corporate executives and professional athletes how to function in a high-pressure environment. Pediatric orthopaedics is one of the most wonderful professional callings. We can and should be happy and resilient canaries. The owners of the coal mine should hear us singing sweet songs about the children we care for even as they make the air increasingly toxic.

Olympian Sound in the <em>Theogony</em> and the <em>Catalogue of Women</em>: Sweet Music and Disorderly Noise

The category of Olympian sound in the Theogony and the Catalogue of Women embraces two sharply contrasting elements, one of which closely resembles a species of non-Olympian sound. The Olympian Muses' sweet songs contrast with the non-musical, disorderly noise of Olympian Zeus' thunderbolt; and the sound of the thunderbolt—a weapon forged by the monstrous Cyclopes—resembles the disorderly din created by opponents of Zeus such as the Titans, Typhoeus and Salmoneus.

Ah, Wilderness!

Ah, Wilderness!

Ah, Wilderness!

Ah, Wilderness!

Bacch. Fr. 63 M. – Commento

This paper provides a commentary to Bacchylides’ fragmentum dubium 63 M. and off some further considerations about its interpretation. 1) The Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, are the patrons of chant and present their sweet song to mankind. But few men have ever been gifted poetical knowledge, and the poet’s duty is to be their servant, herald and prophet: he must give their words voice and disclose, through Memory’s intervention, the past, present and future events. 2) Few other words are still readable: they seem to delineate a mythical conflict on horse or chariot. Which one?

The Timelessness of Art as Epitomized in Shelley’s Ozymandias

Percy Bysshe Shelley was a poet whose name itself is a Metaphor for exquisite, rhythmic poetry laden with images of Nature as well as Man. He possesses the magical power of transporting the reader into an alternative world with the unique use of metaphors and imagery. His personal sadness was translated into sweet songs that are echoed in the entire world defying all boundaries and straddles. One of the most renowned works of Shelley, Ozymandias is a sonnet that challenges the claims of the emperors and their empires that they are going to inspire generations to come. It glorifies the timelessness of art. The all-powerful Time ruins everything with its impersonal, indiscriminate and destructive power. Civilisations and empires are wiped out from the surface of the earth and forgotten but there is something that outlasts these things and that is art. Eternity can be achieved by the poet’s words, not by the ruler’s will to dominate.

Strange Sweet Song by Adi Rule (review)

Reviewed by: Strange Sweet Song by Adi Rule Kate Quealy-Gainer Rule, Adi. Strange Sweet Song. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2014. [336p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-250-04816-5 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-250-03634-6 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10. With a name like Sing and with two world-renowned musicians as parents, seventeen-year-old Sing da Naveli was always destined to be a musician. Now she’s here at her dream school, Dunhammond Conservatory, and the academy’s production of Angelique, Sing’s favorite opera, offers Sing a chance to finally prove her worth to her father—if she can land the lead role. The opera, however, is rumored to be inspired by the bloody past of the school and a supposed evil that lurks in the forest that surrounds its grounds. As rehearsals begin, Sing finds herself as inexplicably drawn to the forbidden forest as she is to Nathan Daysmoor, a broody young man assigned to be her vocal coach. The cache of standard YA elements—a girl suffocated by parental expectations, a wickedly handsome love interest, a catfight among Sing’s peers—make a compelling story. A second narrative strand follows a mythical beast in the surrounding woods, from its fall from the heavens centuries ago, to its despair at killing its sibling, to its joy at birthing a cub, to its recent interest in human activity and specifically, their ability to feel joy and despair. The two storylines come together in a climactic scene that demands an accompaniment of swelling music, and the resolution manages a bittersweet blend of tragedy and [End Page 374] happiness. Music buffs will relate to Sing’s passion and insecurities, and readers who enjoy a good melodrama will be captivated. Copyright © 2014 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The Earliest European Responses to Dancing in the Americas

The Earliest European Responses to Dancing in the Americas John Haines In June 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed from Plymouth, England to Newfoundland with five ships, in order “to plant Christian inhabitants … upon those large and ample countreys … esteemed fertile and rich in Minerals, yet not in the actuall possession of any Christian prince.” Gilbert would eventually reach the bountiful continent, but he was never to make it back home; he and his ship, named the Squirrel, sank into the Atlantic Ocean before reaching English shores. Thankfully, another one of the five vessels, the Golden Hind, did return safely to England carrying Edward Hayes, who, six years later, published a detailed account of the Humphrey expedition. Describing the company that set off on that fateful day in June, Hayes supplies some unusual musical information. “Besides for solace of our people, and allurement of the Savages, we were provided of Musike in good variety: not omitting the least toyes, as Morris dancers, Hobby horse, and Maylike conceits to delight the Savage people, whom we intended to winne by all faire meanes possible.”1 What is exceptional about this last remark is the type of music specified: the raucous English Morris dance originating in the late medieval moresca from Spain and North Africa, the related ritualistic Hobby horse dance, and general “Maylike conceits”—by which Hayes probably meant other springtime performances popular in England and related to the two dances just mentioned.2 This passage relating an English attempt to entice “savages” with dance music speaks to the broader European fascination in early modern times with dance in [End Page 1] “America”—so named in 1507 by map maker Martin Waldseemüller, who labeled the vast and unknown “fourth part” of the world after the Florentine voyager and self-promoter Amerigo Vespucci.3 Dance was ubiquitous in the Americas: the initial jubilant greeting as European ships hit foreign shores, as well as one of the most common activities in the rituals and festivities that star-struck Europeans witnessed in the place they called the New World.4 In the words of one observer concerning the Aztecs, “songs and dances were very important in all this land.”5 As I will argue in this essay, Native American dance fascinated the earliest European visitors to this continent because of a fundamental paradox. Ritual dance was at once foreign and familiar to them. On the one hand, dance disturbed the priests—Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians and the newcomer Jesuits—who wrote up many of the surviving reports about the Americas. As an omnipresent activity, Native American dance as an ever-present cultural phenomenon had no exact counterpart in early modern Europe. On the other hand, similar dances had thrived in rituals and festivities not long before the early modern period—indeed, for the entire millennium known as the Middle Ages and long before that. An abundance of witnesses from all across Europe attests to these festive dances in contexts ranging from private banquets to public feast days throughout the liturgical year.6 For centuries, these European dance-related activities had more often than not been condemned by churchmen, the very group who now took in for the first time the non-Christian dances of the American continent and reported on them.7 What had especially irked medieval churchmen was the prominence of women, young and old, in these dances.8 Woman’s dance was feared because of woman’s perceived sensuality. Woman is “the organ of Satan,” explains Bernard of Clairvaux, for her sweet song and “shifting rhythms” are like “a siren of the sea”—the siren metaphor occurring more than once in medieval condemnations of dance.9 In sum, sixteenth-century European observers had more of an historical connection than an immediate cultural one with Native American dance. The latter conflicted—or at least appeared to conflict—with Christian music. Thus the early modern churchmen who first wrote about the “New World” viewed Native American dance with a mixture of condescension and fascination. But mainly apprehension. [End Page 2] This was unfortunate but inevitable. Europeans’ general predisposition against Native American dance music had been set up long before they reached American shores by centuries of...

Acrostics in Joyce’s Poetry

Acrostics in Joyce’s Poetry Tristan Power (bio) Joyce’s interest in puzzles, as displayed in Ulysses, is well known. We may point, for example, to the acrostic POLDY, which runs alongside the verses that Bloom sent to Molly for Valentine’s Day before they were married: Poets oft have sung in rhymeOf music sweet their praise divine.Let them hymn it nine times nine.Dearer far than song or wine.You are mine. The world is mine. (U 17.412-16)1 [End Page 641] The emphases are original: Joyce himself acknowledged this acrostic when he wrote to his Paris printer that the initial letters, which he marked on the proofs, should be placed in bold type: “Imprimez ces lettres en itals avec les types plus foncés” (JJA 27:151). Another acrostic in Ulysses may be found in the word LOSS, which is spelled through the four broken-up words from the title of Molly’s song (“Love’s Old Sweet Song”) for her concert: Love’s.Old.Sweet.Song.Comes lo-ove’s old … (U 5.157-61) Arline R. Thorn has made a convincing case for the importance of loss as a theme that not only connects this recurring musical allusion to several others in Ulysses, such as “[c]o-ome thou lost one” (U 7.59), “[a]ll is lost now” (u 11.22), and “[l]ast rose … of summer” (U 11.54), but also contrasts with the last line of Bloom’s acrostic (“[y]ou are mine”).2 The acrostic’s likelihood can be further supported by its appropriateness to the song “Love’s Old Sweet Song” itself, which begins with a lyric about lost time: “Once in the dear dead days beyond recall.”3 The song also ends on a similar note: “So till the end, when life’s dim shadows fall” (246). Notably, a partial quotation by Joyce of the song’s title maintains the acrostic through the word that follows it: “Love’s old sweet sonnez la gold” (U 11.682). These points make the acrostic LOSS a practical certainty, especially in light of the fact that Bloom’s highlighted acrostic above may signal the reader to look for another in the book’s earlier verses.4 Readers have been less attuned to such puzzles in Joyce’s poems outside of Ulysses, but I believe there are four acrostics there that have never been identified. The first appears in the 1907 collection Chamber Music at the end of Poem XXVII, “Though I thy Mithridates were”: For elegant and antique phrase, Dearest, my lips wax all too wise;Nor have I known a love whose praise Our piping poets solemnize,Neither a love where may not beEver so little falsity. (CP 35, my emphases) The word NONE in the last four lines provides a fitting punctuation to the poem’s end, since the lover knows no such love as he describes (“Nor have I known a love … Neither a love …”). This consonance with the meaning of the poem supports the acrostic’s probability, and we have a direct (and literal) parallel in the adjacent Poem XXVIII, [End Page 642] “Gentle lady, do not sing,” which similarly closes with an appropriate four-line acrostic: Sing about the long deep sleep Of lovers that are dead, and howIn the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now. (CP 36, my emphases) The appearance of the acrostic SOIL within lines that mention “the grave” can hardly be a coincidence, especially since the preceding poem also constructs the same type of wordplay in its final stanza.5 The two acrostics thus reinforce each other by their equal length, symmetrical position, and close proximity. There is even evidence that the first acrostic was an alteration by Joyce, who appears to have manipulated his material so as to achieve the word NONE. In the original version of “Though I thy Mithridates were” written in 1904, the last stanza was different: For elegant and antique phraseDearest, my lips are all too wiseNor have I known the love whose praiseThe...

Joyce's Noises

Joyce's Noises Derek Attridge (bio) Molly Bloom is lying restlessly in bed, her head next to her husband's feet, counting the days until she will next be with her lover, Blazes Boylan: "Thursday Friday one Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday" (Joyce, U 18.594-95).1 The next item we see on the page—one can hardly call it a word—is a bizarre string of letters: "frseeeeeeeefronnnng" (U 18.596). All in lower case, it begins the fourth of the so-called sentences of the final episode of Ulysses. Its challenge to our reading of the episode is multiple: it is unpronounceable, at least according to the norms of the English language; it is meaningless; and it is hardly conceivable as part of Molly's thought processes in the way that everything in the chapter up to this point has been. Joyce does not leave us mystified for long, however: the verbalized thoughts that follow this strange irruption explain what it is doing here: "train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants" (U 18.596-97). Distant train whistles may more usually evoke associations of travel, separation, nostalgia, or longing, but Molly's response is clearly colored by her active desire for the man she has just called, with obvious relish, a "savage brute" (U 18.594). Are we to take this series of letters as representing the actual sound of a train whistle—perhaps on two notes, higher then lower—as it penetrates the bedroom of 7 Eccles Street? (The train is too distant, I think, for the double tone to be a product of the Doppler effect.) Would it be legitimate for an audio version of the book to substitute for the reader's voice at this point a recording of the real sound? Surely not: although one could argue that the succession of e's and the subsequent o do mimic the higher and lower notes of the whistle, and that the prolonged nasal of the second syllable imitates a change in timbre in the second note, Joyce's choice of letters can hardly be said to aim at exact representation. The spelling is connected in some way with Molly's own perception of the sound. Is this how she would write it down if she felt the need to do so? (As I've argued elsewhere, there are many suggestions in the episode that the apparent flow of uncontrolled thoughts is constantly mediated by the constraints and characteristics of writing).2 This supposition is strengthened by the sudden change of tack in Molly's ruminations: "… like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng" (U 18.596-98). Given the obvious association between the imagined steam locomotive and Boylan's thrusting masculinity, we may well misread "like the end of …"; then, as so often in "Penelope," we have to correct our interpretation, as we realize that the comparison Molly is making is between the sound of the train whistle and one of the songs she'll be performing on the forthcoming concert tour with Boylan (and has probably been singing to him earlier). (Molly herself, of course, is in no doubt about what is like what; it's only the reader who may find a grosser meaning in "end." The result of Joyce's removal of punctuation in this episode is not, as is often thought, a more accurate rendition of mental processes, but a game of constant guessing and reassessment that has little to do with Molly's subjectivity.) The "onnnng" of the train whistle, it turns out, is there less as an attempt at mimesis than as an indication of the already forming connection with the "onnnng" of the song. (That the word of the song in question is "song" is, of course, another Joycean joke.) The implied downward change in pitch in the move from e to o is what links this sound in Molly's aural imagination to the singing of "sweet song." The strength of the association between sound and song is made clear...

Fritz Senn Receives the Golden Medal of Honour of the Canton of Zurich 2009

Fritz Senn Receives the Golden Medal of Honour of the Canton of Zurich 2009 Valentina Janner On 9 September 2009, Fritz Senn was awarded the Golden Medal of Honour of the Canton of Zurich. In order to celebrate the most recent of his many achievements, the English Department of the University of Zurich organized a symposium in his honor which took place on 6 November. Attendees included professors, students, scholars, the English Department in corpore, former students, friends, and longtime aficionados of Fritz's reading groups from all over Europe and North America. Andreas Fischer, the Rector of the University of Zurich, briefly introduced Fritz, the director of the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, before leaving the floor to other lecturers, each of whom paid a personal homage to their colleague and friend. Fritz's atypical career, which was outlined by the Rector, distinguishes him from every other literary critic. Academic ambitions never drew him to the studies of James Joyce; instead, his driving force was a purely visceral passion for Joyce's works that are rich in ambiguities, details, and provocations and that contain an intricate labyrinth of references impossible to be fully grasped. Thrilled by this challenge, Fritz has dedicated the last half of his life to finding the key to Joyce's enigmatic words. Thanks to his enthusiasm and undoubted sacrifices, he acquired an enviable expertise on Joyce. In his address, Fischer remarked that "Fritz Senn can speak to any kind of public." Because he is direct but also witty and ironic, Fritz knows how to seize his audience's attention whether at the Foundation, at universities, at any symposium, or on a page. Fischer noted that some of his devotees attend his lectures merely "to listen to him talk," regardless of the topic covered. The first lecture, delivered by Michael Groden, Professor at the University of Western Ontario, dealt with three main issues: Bloom as an outsider, the archival jolt (as quoted from the drafts), and the identity of Joyceans. While recounting the first meeting with Fritz, Groden described the warm welcome he received upon his arrival in Zurich. John McCourt, of the Università Roma Tre, presented the second [End Page 7] talk and focused on the importance of biography as a fundamental field in Joyce studies. In turn, he explained how he met Fritz, who played a decisive role in his career and provided support at the time when he was still a novice. As McCourt observed, Fritz's "generosity of spirit" prompts him to "invest in younger scholars," giving them "the courage to take on Joyce" and the confidence to persevere in dark moments of academic frustration. After these addresses, Fritz delivered a speech of thanks, in which he declared his dislike for pompous celebrations of his achievements and referred to himself as an "amateur" who is convinced that his accomplishments are nothing but the result of a "hedonistic" occupation. He felt "uncomfortable, but touched" by the presence of the people who came to share this moment with him, rather than by the ceremony itself. His goal, he stated, is "to pass on enthusiasm," and he said that "teaching on occasion gives him the feeling of not having lived life in vain." Fritz described the Joyce community as "the best club in the world" (the words of Brenda Maddox) and revealed that the emotion brought a lump to his throat. After a moving interruption, he concluded, "and I am experiencing it." On many occasions, Fritz has claimed not to be able to write about emotions, but he can certainly convey them. Joyceans constitute a big family, whose members share not only the same research field but also the feast of Bloom's Day, including symposia, workshops, excursions, and meals. The cordial atmosphere these occasions engender, especially ones at the Zurich Foundation, is very supportive. The most entertaining part of the symposium came, after some refreshments, with alternating textual analyses and performances of musical sections of Joyce's canon, including, among others, "I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls," selections from Bizet's Carmen, and the traditional Joycean anthem, "Love's Old Sweet Song." This ironic and joyful interpretation was provided by Michelle Witen, a...

Plant Polygraph

77 PLANT POLYGRAPH As if to expose them for the imposters that they are we attached crude instruments to their roots & stems & scrutinized each response to stimuli & whether we were determined to strike a match to singe their leaves or were only just pretending they were able to discern our intent & if we sang or played sweet songs they shared this pleasure eagerly with the others locked away in nearby rooms. We’d learned to speak to them in tenderness though they make no effort even to unfold a solitary petal in reply. But perhaps there are strange signals smuggled aboard each oxidized vessel voyaging invisibly to our bloodstream so that if there were something they wished for us to know we would know it, suddenly, & with a green clarity quickened by the sun. We believe in the sentient garden & that the rate at which water rises from the roots of the philodendron up through the stem to the tip of each perceptive leaf is electric though none of this would hold up in a court of law. J. BRAXTON COOPER ...

The Church as a Building and the Church as a Community in the Work of John Betjeman

Still they stand, the churches of England, their towers grey above billowy globes of elm trees, the red cross of St George flying over their battlements ... schoolmistress at the organ, incumbent in the chancel, scattered worshippers in the nave ... as the familiar Seventeenth Century phrases come echoing down arcades of ancient stone. --John Betjeman's Guide to English Parish Churches, 1 With more than two million copies of his Collected Poems sold to date, John Betjeman is one of modern English literatures most popular figures, loved for his poetry and for a broadcasting career of longer than forty years in which he shared his interests with his audience in radio and television programs. A measure of his revered status was the flood of new or republished material greeted the 2006 centenary of his birth, including a new biography by A. N. Wilson and the release in DVD format of the films Betjeman made for BBC television in the 1970s--Metroland, A Passion for Churches, and Summoned By Bells. A collected volume of his BBC radio broadcasts, assembled by Stephen Games and titled Trains and Buttered Toast was a great success, and a further volume, Tennis Whites and Teacakes, appeared the following summer, drawing together Betjeman's published and unpublished writings on the theme of Englishness. The autumn of 2007 also marked the publication of another volume edited by Games titled Sweet Songs of Zion: a volume more religious in its content, drawn from a series of radio broadcasts on hymns and hymn writers Betjeman gave toward the end of his life. On reading this extra material, it becomes clear Betjeman was a far more complex figure than we may have hitherto believed him to be. The man described by The Times in the 1970s as the teddy bear to the nation had once been something of a snob in his outlook, scornful of the very suburban, middle-class society would later take him to its heart. Although, in the words of one biographer, he entirely threw off [his] pacifist convictions when war broke out in 1939, his wartime writing and broadcasting toned down the harsh aesthetic pronouncements of the 1930s in favour of a more inclusive, shared sense of the Englishness was so threatened by Hitler's war machine. (Wilson 135) (1) His work from the 1950s to the 1970s, seen at the time as a prolonged exercise in nostalgia, was actually an urgent call to preserve aspects of English culture were being lost in the drive for post-war modernisation and rebuilding Furthermore, Betjeman's religious writing is remarkably candid in nature, and the honesty with which he addressed his own spiritual doubts and anxieties makes him a figure of considerable relevance to modern readers. Betjeman's Christianity was vitally important to him, but he was not always comfortable in that arduous love affair, as he described it in Summoned By Bells, and his writings fluctuate between spiritual assurance and anxiety. This fueled some of his finest poetry, collected and discussed by Kevin Gardner in his 2005 volume, Faith and Doubt of John Betjeman, and it may also be seen in his writings on subjects like church architecture and hymnology. From the material now available, it would appear whilst Betjeman was never wholly comfortable in his religious life, he never sought to suppress unease but chose rather to weave it into all aspects of his writing. In doing so he left his readers with poems that, in Gardner's words, describe the perils of faith and the struggle to believe ... celebrate the social and cultural significance of the Church of England [and] reveal the intersection of architecture and faith, of aesthetics and the spirit (Faith viii). In his lifetime, the enormous success of Betjeman's poems and radio and television broadcasts testified to his capacity to connect with his audience. His appointment as Poet Laureate in 1972 was, as some commentators noted, the official acknowledgement of what the British public had already decided: he was the poetic voice of the nation's culture. …

Sweet Songs of Zion: Selected Radio Talks

Sweet Songs of Zion: Selected Radio Talks