See The Iliad Performed as a One-Woman Show in a Montreal Bar by McGill University Classics Professor Lynn Kozak

in Literature, Poetry, Theatre | April 30th, 2018

Homer’s Ili­ad staged as a one-woman show? IN A BAR! It’s an out­rage. A des­e­cra­tion of a found­ing work of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion™. A sure sign of cul­tur­al decline.

But wait…. What if McGill Uni­ver­si­ty clas­sics pro­fes­sor Lynn Kozak’s per­for­mance returns the epic Greek poem to its ori­gins, as a dra­mat­ic oral pre­sen­ta­tion for small audi­ences who were, quite pos­si­bly, ine­bri­at­ed, or at least a lit­tle tip­sy? Kozak’s Pre­vi­ous­ly on… The Ili­ad, described as “Hap­py Hour Homer,” presents its inti­mate audi­ence with “a new, par­tial­ly impro­vised Eng­lish trans­la­tion of a bit of The Ili­ad, all the way through the epic.”

The per­for­mances take place every Mon­day at 6 at Montreal’s Bar des Pins. Like the sto­ry itself, Kozak begins in medias res—in the mid­dle, that is, of a chat­ter­ing crowd of stu­dents, who qui­et down right away and give the sto­ry their full atten­tion.

Ancient Greek poet­ry was per­formed, not stud­ied in schol­ar­ly edi­tions in aca­d­e­m­ic depart­ments. It was sung, with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, and prob­a­bly adapt­ed, impro­vised, and embell­ished by ancient bards to suit their audi­ences. Grant­ed, Kozak doesn’t sing (though some per­for­mances involve music); she recites in a man­ner both casu­al and dra­mat­i­cal­ly grip­ping. She reminds us that the sto­ries we find in the text are dis­tant kin to the bloody seri­al­ized TV soap operas that occu­py so much of our day-to-day con­ver­sa­tion, at home, on social media, and at hap­py hour.

The lib­er­ties Kozak takes recre­ate the poem in the present as a liv­ing work. This is clas­sics edu­ca­tion at its most engag­ing and acces­si­ble. Like any poet­ic per­former, Kozak knows her audi­ence. The Ili­ad  is a lot like Game of Thrones, “because of the num­ber of char­ac­ters that you have to keep up with,” Kozak tells the CBC’s As It Hap­pens, “and also because of the fact that there’s not always clean-cut kind of vil­lains or who you’re sup­posed to be root­ing for in any major scene—especially in bat­tle scenes.”

The per­for­mance of the “anger of Achilles” (top, with beer pong) con­veys the moral com­plex­i­ty of the Greek hero. “He must be bru­tal and ready to risk bru­tal­i­ty,” as UNC pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy CDC Reeve writes. “At the same time, he must be gen­tle to his friends and allies, and able to join with them in group activ­i­ties both mil­i­tary and peace­ful.” Is Achilles a tool of the gods or a man dri­ven to extremes by rage? Homer sug­gests both, but the action is set in motion by divine agency. “Apol­lo was pissed at King Agamem­non,” Kozak para­phras­es, then sum­ma­rizes the nature of the insult and checks in with the young lis­ten­ers: “every­one still with me?”

The sto­ry of The Ili­ad, many schol­ars believe, exist­ed as an oral per­for­mance for per­haps 1,000 years before it was com­mit­ted to writ­ing by the scribe or scribes iden­ti­fied as Homer. But the poem “isn’t real­ly a the­atre piece,” says Kozak, despite its musi­cal nature. “It’s real­ly a sto­ry. It’s real­ly a one-per­son show. And for me it’s just impor­tant to be in a place that’s casu­al and where I’m with the audi­ence.” It’s doubt­ful that the poem was per­formed in its entire­ly in one sit­ting, though the notion of “seri­al­iza­tion” as we know it from 19th cen­tu­ry nov­els and mod­ern-day tele­vi­sion shows was not part of the cul­ture of antiq­ui­ty.

“We’re not real­ly sure how The Ili­ad was bro­ken up orig­i­nal­ly,” Kozak admits. Adapt­ing the poem to con­tem­po­rary audi­ence sen­si­bil­i­ties has meant “think­ing about where or if episodes exist in the epic,” in the way of Game of Thrones. Each per­for­mance is styled dif­fer­ent­ly, with Kozak hold­ing court as var­i­ous char­ac­ters. “Some­times there are cliffhang­ers. Some­times they have res­o­lu­tions. It’s been an inter­est­ing mix so far.” That “so far” extends on YouTube from Week 1 (Book 1, lines 1–487) to Week 14 (Book 11, line 461 to Book 12, line 205). Check back each week for new “episodes” to come online, and watch Weeks One through Four above and the oth­er ten at the Pre­vi­ous­ly on… The Ili­ad YouTube chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

One of the Best Pre­served Ancient Man­u­scripts of The Ili­ad Is Now Dig­i­tized: See the “Bankes Homer” Man­u­script in High Res­o­lu­tion (Cir­ca 150 C.E.)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Bill Murray Reads the Poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Wallace Stevens, Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins, Lorine Niedecker, Lucille Clifton & More

in Audio Books, Poetry | March 20th, 2018

Who among us wouldn’t want the inef­fa­bly mel­low, wit­ty, and wise Bill Mur­ray to crash their par­ty, wed­ding, or White House press brief­ing room? Maybe you’re one of the few who could resist his com­ic charms. But could you throw him out if he brought along a cel­list and read Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem “Dog”? Not I.

Mur­ray appeared at SXSW on Mon­day and read the poem as part of the pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion ani­ma­tion film Isle of Dogs. And it can seem when we look back at Murray’s many pub­lic appear­ances over the last few years, that the one thing he’s done more than crash oth­er peo­ple’s par­ties and star in Wes Ander­son films has been read poet­ry in pub­lic.

Mur­ray, as Ayun Hal­l­i­day point­ed out in a pre­vi­ous post, is a “doc­u­ment­ed poet­ry nut,” who once wrote poet­ry him­self as a much younger man. He’s been “wise enough,” writes Gavin Edwards at Rolling Stone “not to share it with the world.”  Per­haps we’re miss­ing out.

But we do have many, many clips of Mur­ray read­ing his favorites from oth­er poets he admires, like Fer­linghet­ti, and like Wal­lace Stevens, whose “The Plan­et on The Table” and “A Rab­bit as King of the Ghosts,” he reads above at New York’s Poets House, an insti­tu­tion he has whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port­ed.

Wal­lace Stevens is a famous­ly dif­fi­cult poet, but he is also quite fun­ny, in an oblique­ly droll way, and its no won­der Mur­ray likes his verse. Poets House direc­tor Lee Bric­oc­cetti observes that there is “an align­ment between com­e­dy and poet­ry… a pre­ci­sion in the way you han­dle lan­guage.” Some of my own favorite poets—like Frank O’Hara and the “will­ful­ly ridicu­lous” Ste­vie Smith—are also some of the fun­ni­est writ­ers I’ve ever encoun­tered in any form. Murray’s own poet­ic efforts, were we ever to hear them, may not mea­sure up to the work of his favorites, but he is undoubt­ed­ly “a mas­ter of lin­guis­tic con­trol and pac­ing.”

We also know that he can turn in fine­ly nuanced dra­mat­ic per­for­mances when he wants to, and his mas­tery of the spo­ken word con­tributes just as much to mood­i­er poets like Emi­ly Dick­in­son, whom he reads above in a sur­prise per­for­mance for con­struc­tion work­ers at work on the new Poets House home in 2009. You might agree, how­ev­er, that he real­ly shines with com­ic fare, like Bil­ly Collins “Anoth­er Rea­son I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House” and Lorine Niedecker’s major­ly con­densed “Poet’s Work.”

Any of these read­ings should grant Mur­ray admis­sion into the most uptight of lit­er­ary affairs. If any­one still doubts his skill in the craft of read­ing lit­er­a­ture well in public—which, any writer will you, is no easy thing by far—then hear him read Lucille Clifton’s uplift­ing “What the Mir­ror Said” (above), or Sarah Manguso’s “What We Miss,” Bil­ly Collins’ “For­get­ful­ness,” and Cole Porter’s song “Brush Up on Your Shake­speare.” Hear him read from Huck­le­ber­ry Finn and mum­ble his way through Bob Dylan’s “Shel­ter from the Storm,” in char­ac­ter in the film St. Vin­cent.

Oh, but does the mul­ti­tal­ent­ed Bill Mur­ray, “mas­ter of lin­guis­tic con­trol and pac­ing,” sing show tunes? Does he ever….

Find these poet­ry read­ings added to OC’s col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Bill Murray’s Favorite Poems Read Aloud by Mur­ray Him­self & Their Authors

Bill Mur­ray Gives a Delight­ful Read­ing of Twain’sHuckleberry Finn (1996)

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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H.P. Lovecraft Writes “Waste Paper: A Poem of Profound Insignificance,” a Devastating Parody of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1923)

in Literature, Poetry | March 15th, 2018

Image by Lucius B. Trues­dell and Lady Mor­rell, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Howard Phillips Love­craft, as his ever-grow­ing fan base knows, sel­dom spared his char­ac­ters — or at least their san­i­ty — from the vast, unspeak­able hor­rors lurk­ing beneath his imag­ined real­i­ty. Not that he showed much more mer­cy as a crit­ic either, as his assess­ment of “The Waste Land” (1922) reveals. Though now near-uni­ver­sal­ly respect­ed, T.S. Eliot’s best-known poem failed to impress Love­craft, who, in his jour­nal The Con­ser­v­a­tive, wrote in 1923 that

We here behold a prac­ti­cal­ly mean­ing­less col­lec­tion of phras­es, learned allu­sions, quo­ta­tions, slang, and scraps in gen­er­al; offered to the pub­lic (whether or not as a hoax) as some­thing jus­ti­fied by our mod­ern mind with its recent com­pre­hen­sion of its own chaot­ic triv­i­al­i­ty and dis­or­gan­i­sa­tion. And we behold that pub­lic, or a con­sid­er­able part of it, receiv­ing this hilar­i­ous melange as some­thing vital and typ­i­cal; as “a poem of pro­found sig­nif­i­cance”, to quote its spon­sors.

Eliot’s work, Love­craft argued, sim­ply could­n’t hold up in the mod­ern world, where “man has sud­den­ly dis­cov­ered that all his high sen­ti­ments, val­ues, and aspi­ra­tions are mere illu­sions caused by phys­i­o­log­i­cal process­es with­in him­self, and of no sig­nif­i­cance what­so­ev­er in an infi­nite and pur­pose­less cos­mos.” Sci­ence, in his view, has made non­sense of tra­di­tion and “a rag-bag of unre­lat­ed odds and ends” of the soul. A poet like Eliot, it seems, “does not know what to do about it; but com­pro­mis­es on a lit­er­a­ture of analy­sis, chaos, and iron­ic con­trast.”

Look­ing on even this hatch­et job, Love­craft must have felt he’d failed to slay the beast, and so he com­posed a par­o­dy of “The Waste Land” enti­tled “Waste Paper” in late 1922 or ear­ly 1923. This “Poem of Pro­found Insignif­i­cance,” which Love­craft schol­ar S.T. Joshi calls the writer’s “best satir­i­cal poem,” begins thus:

Out of the reach­es of illim­itable light
The blaz­ing plan­et grew, and forc’d to life
Unend­ing cycles of pro­gres­sive strife
And strange muta­tions of undy­ing light
And bore­some books, than hell’s own self more trite
And thoughts repeat­ed and become a blight,
And cheap rum-hounds with moon­shine hootch made tight,
And quite con­trite to see the flight of fright so bright

You can read the whole thing, includ­ing its prob­a­bly apoc­ryphal half-epi­graph from the Greek poet Gly­con, at the H.P. Love­craft Archive. “In many parts of this quite lengthy poem,” Joshi writes, “he has quite faith­ful­ly par­o­died the insu­lar­i­ty of mod­ern poet­ry — its abil­i­ty to be under­stood only by a small coterie of read­ers who are aware of inti­mate facts about the poet.”

Love­craft also tried his hand at non-par­o­d­ic poet­ry, though his­to­ry remem­bers him much less for that than for strik­ing a more pri­mal chord with his sui gener­is “weird fic­tion,” whose para­me­ters he was deter­min­ing at the same time he was sav­aging his con­tem­po­rary Eliot. And though sci­en­tif­ic progress has marched much far­ther on since the 1920s, espe­cial­ly as regards the under­stand­ing of the human mind and what­ev­er now pass­es for a soul, both men’s bod­ies of work have only gained in res­o­nance.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

H.P. Lovecraft’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ries Free Online: Down­load Audio Books, eBooks & More

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary)

T.S. Eliot Reads His Mod­ernist Mas­ter­pieces “The Waste Land” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Pablo Neruda’s Poem, “The Me Bird,” Becomes a Short, Beautifully Animated Film

in Animation, Poetry | March 1st, 2018

From 18bis, a Brazil­ian design & motion graph­ics stu­dio, comes this: an ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of “The Me Bird,” a poem by the Nobel Prize-win­ning poet Pablo Neru­da. Writes 18bis, “The inspi­ra­tion in the stra­ta sten­cil tech­nique helps con­cep­tu­al­ize the rep­e­ti­tion of lay­ers as the past of our move­ments and actions. The frames depict­ed as jail and the past as a bur­den serve as the back­ground for the sto­ry of a bal­le­ri­na on a jour­ney towards free­dom. A diver­si­fied artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion recre­ates the tem­pest that con­nects bird and dancer.” It’s all pret­ty won­der­ful.

Bonus mate­r­i­al: You can watch The Mak­ing of The Me Bird here. And find the orig­i­nal text of the Neru­da poem here. We have more poet­ry put to ani­ma­tion below.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Poems as Short Films: Langston Hugh­es, Pablo Neru­da and More

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Film of Emi­ly Dickinson’s Poem ‘I Start­ed Early–Took My Dog’

The Ani­ma­tion of Bil­ly Collins’ Poet­ry: Every­day Moments in Motion

Four Charles Bukows­ki Poems Ani­mat­ed

Neil Gaiman’s Dark Christ­mas Poem Ani­mat­ed

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H.P. Lovecraft’s Poem “Nemesis” Gets Unexpectedly Sung to the Tune of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”

in Music, Poetry | January 29th, 2018

“The inter­net made me do it,” says musi­cian Julian Velard. For what­ev­er rea­son, it made him take H.P Love­craft’s 1917 poem “Neme­sis” and mash it up with Bil­ly Joel’s “Piano Man.” Find the orig­i­nal poem below. But know Velard “had to cut a cou­ple lines to get it to fit.” Enjoy.

Thro’ the ghoul-guard­ed gate­ways of slum­ber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives with­out num­ber,
I have sound­ed all things with my sight;
And I strug­gle and shriek ere the day­break, being dri­ven to mad­ness with fright.

I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawn­ing,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark uni­verse yawn­ing,
Where the black plan­ets roll with­out aim;
Where they roll in their hor­ror unheed­ed, with­out knowl­edge or lus­tre or name.

I had drift­ed o’er seas with­out end­ing,
Under sin­is­ter grey-cloud­ed skies
That the many-fork’d light­ning is rend­ing,
That resound with hys­ter­i­cal cries;
With the moans of invis­i­ble dae­mons that out of the green waters rise.

I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arch­es
Of the hoary pri­mor­dial grove,
Where the oaks feel the pres­ence that march­es
And stalks on where no spir­it dares rove;
And I flee from a thing that sur­rounds me, and leers thro’ dead branch­es above.

I have stum­bled by cave-rid­den moun­tains
That rise bar­ren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid foun­tains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.

I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenant­ed hall,
Where the moon writhing up from the val­leys
Shews the tapes­tried things on the wall;
Strange fig­ures dis­cor­dant­ly woven, which I can­not endure to recall.

I have peer’d from the case­ment in won­der
At the moul­der­ing mead­ows around,
At the many-roof’d vil­lage laid under
The curse of a grave-gir­dled ground;
And from rows of white urn-car­ven mar­ble I lis­ten intent­ly for sound.

I have haunt­ed the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pin­ions of fear
Where the smoke-belch­ing Ere­bus rages,
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert con­sumes what it nev­er can cheer.

I was old when the Pharaohs first mount­ed
The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncount­ed
When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untaint­ed and hap­py, dwelt in bliss on the far Arc­tic isle.

Oh, great was the sin of my spir­it,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heav­en can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infi­nite aeons come beat­ing the wings of unmer­ci­ful gloom.

Thro’ the ghoul-guard­ed gate­ways of slum­ber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives with­out num­ber,
I have sound­ed all things with my sight;
And I strug­gle and shriek ere the day­break, being dri­ven to mad­ness with fright.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 14 Hours of Weird H.P. Love­craft Sto­ries on Hal­loween: “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Dun­wich Hor­ror” & More

23 Hours of H.P. Love­craft Sto­ries: Hear Read­ings & Drama­ti­za­tions of “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Shad­ow Over Inns­mouth,” & Oth­er Weird Tales

Hear Drama­ti­za­tions of H.P. Lovecraft’s Sto­ries On His Birth­day: “The Call of Cthul­hu,” “The Dun­wich Hor­ror,” & More

H.P. Lovecraft’s Mon­ster Draw­ings: Cthul­hu & Oth­er Crea­tures from the “Bound­less and Hideous Unknown”

H.P. Love­craft Gives Five Tips for Writ­ing a Hor­ror Sto­ry, or Any Piece of “Weird Fic­tion”

Love­craft: Fear of the Unknown (Free Doc­u­men­tary)

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Depression & Melancholy: Animated Videos Explain the Crucial Difference Between Everyday Sadness and Clinical Depression

in Animation, Poetry, Psychology, TED Talks | December 11th, 2017

“Depres­sion,” the TED-Ed video above informs us, “is the lead­ing cause of dis­abil­i­ty in the world.” This may be a hard fact to swal­low, the prod­uct, we might think, of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal adver­tis­ing. We all feel down from time to time, we think. “Then cir­cum­stances change, and those sad feel­ings dis­ap­pear.” Isn’t it like this for every­one? It is not. “Clin­i­cal depres­sion is dif­fer­ent. It’s a med­ical dis­or­der, and it won’t go away just because you want it to.”

Depres­sion can linger for up to two weeks, and become so debil­i­tat­ing that suf­fer­ers can­not work or play. It inter­feres with impor­tant rela­tion­ships and “can have a lot of dif­fer­ent symp­toms: a low mood, loss of inter­est in things you’d nor­mal­ly enjoy, changes in appetite, feel­ing worth­less or exces­sive­ly guilty,” rest­less­ness and insom­nia, or extreme lethar­gy, poor con­cen­tra­tion, and pos­si­ble thoughts of sui­cide. But sure­ly we can hear a paid pro­mo­tion­al voice when the nar­ra­tor states, “If you have at least 5 of those symp­toms, accord­ing to psy­chi­atric guide­lines, you qual­i­fy for a diag­no­sis of depres­sion.”

What we don’t typ­i­cal­ly hear about in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ads are the mea­sur­able phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes depres­sion writes in the brain, includ­ing decreased brain mat­ter in the frontal lobe and atro­phy of the hip­pocam­pus. These effects are mea­sur­able in humans and rats, in study after study after study. But while most of us know the names of a neu­ro­trans­mit­ter or two these days, not even neu­ro­sci­en­tists ful­ly under­stand the biol­o­gy of depres­sion. They do know that some com­bi­na­tion of med­ica­tion, ther­a­py, and, in extreme cas­es elec­tro­con­vul­sive treat­ment, can allow peo­ple to more ful­ly expe­ri­ence life.

Peo­ple in treat­ment will still feel “down” on occa­sion, just like every­one does. But depres­sion, the explain­er wants us to under­stand, should nev­er be com­pared to ordi­nary sad­ness. Its effects on behav­ior and brain health are too wide-rang­ing, per­va­sive, per­sis­tent, and detri­men­tal. These effects can be invis­i­ble, which adds to an unfor­tu­nate social stig­ma that dis­suades peo­ple from seek­ing treat­ment. The more we talk about depres­sion open­ly, rather than treat­ing as it as a shame­ful secret, the more like­ly peo­ple at risk will be to seek help.

Just as depres­sion can­not be alle­vi­at­ed by triv­i­al­iz­ing or ignor­ing it, the con­di­tion does not respond to being roman­ti­cized. While, indeed, many a famous painter, poet, actor, etc. has suf­fered from clin­i­cal depression—and made it a part of their art—their exam­ples should not sug­gest to us that artists shouldn’t get treat­ment. Sad­ness is nev­er triv­ial.

Unlike phys­i­cal pain, it is dif­fi­cult, for exam­ple, to pin­point the direct caus­es of sad­ness. As the short video above demon­strates, the assump­tion that sad­ness is caused by exter­nal events arose rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly. The humoral sys­tem of the ancient Greeks treat­ed all sad­ness as a bio­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. Greek physi­cians believed it was an expres­sion of black bile, or “melaina kole,” from which we derive the word “melan­choly.” It seems we’ve come full cir­cle, in a way. Ancient humoral the­o­rists rec­om­mend­ed nutri­tion, med­ical treat­ment, and phys­i­cal exer­cise as treat­ments for melan­cho­lia, just as doc­tors do today for depres­sion.

But melan­choly is a much broad­er term, not a sci­en­tif­ic des­ig­na­tion; it is a col­lec­tion of ideas about sad­ness that span thou­sands of years. Near­ly all of those ideas include some sense that sad­ness is an essen­tial expe­ri­ence. “If you’ve nev­er felt melan­choly,” the nar­ra­tor says, “you’ve missed out on part of what it means to be human.” Thinkers have described melan­cho­lia as a pre­cur­sor to, or inevitable result of, acquir­ing wis­dom. One key exam­ple, Robert Burton’s 1621 text The Anato­my of Melan­choly, “the apogee of Renais­sance schol­ar­ship,” set the tone for dis­cus­sions of melan­choly for the next few cen­turies.

The scientific/philosophical/literary text argues, “he that increaseth wis­dom, increaseth sor­row,” a sen­ti­ment the Roman­tic poets turned on its head. Before them came John Mil­ton, whose 1645 poem Il Penseroso address­es melan­choly as “thou God­des, sage and holy… Sober, sted­fast, and demure.” The deity Melan­choly over­sees the con­tem­pla­tive life and reveals essen­tial truths through “Gor­geous Tragedy.”

One of the poem’s lofti­est themes showed the way for­ward for the Roman­tics: “The poet who seeks to attain the high­est lev­el of cre­ative expres­sion must embrace the divine,” write Mil­ton schol­ars Kather­ine Lynch and Thomas H. Lux­on, “which can only be accom­plished by fol­low­ing the path set out in Il Penseroso.” The divine, in this case, takes the form of sad­ness per­son­i­fied. Yet this poem can­not be read in iso­la­tion: its com­pan­ion, L’Allegro, prais­es Mirth, and of sad­ness says, “Hence loathed Melan­choly / Of Cer­berus, and black­est mid­night born, in Sty­gian Cave for­lorn / ‘Mongst hor­rid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.”

Rather than con­tra­dict each oth­er, these two char­ac­ter­i­za­tions speak to the ambiva­lent atti­tudes, and vast­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, humans have about sad­ness. Fleet­ing bouts of melan­choly can be sweet, touch­ing, and beau­ti­ful, inspir­ing art, music, and poet­ry. Sad­ness can force us to reck­on with life’s unpleas­ant­ness rather than deny or avoid it. On the oth­er hand, in its most extreme, chron­i­cal­ly intractable forms, such as what we now call clin­i­cal depres­sion, sad­ness can destroy our capac­i­ty to act, to appre­ci­ate beau­ty and learn impor­tant lessons, mark­ing the crit­i­cal dif­fer­ence between a uni­ver­sal exis­ten­tial con­di­tion and a, thank­ful­ly, treat­able phys­i­cal dis­ease.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stanford’s Robert Sapol­sky Demys­ti­fies Depres­sion, Which, Like Dia­betes, Is Root­ed in Biol­o­gy

How Bak­ing, Cook­ing & Oth­er Dai­ly Activ­i­ties Help Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness and Alle­vi­ate Depres­sion and Anx­i­ety

A Uni­fied The­o­ry of Men­tal Ill­ness: How Every­thing from Addic­tion to Depres­sion Can Be Explained by the Con­cept of “Cap­ture”

Stephen Fry on Cop­ing with Depres­sion: It’s Rain­ing, But the Sun Will Come Out Again

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Raven: a Pop-up Book Brings Edgar Allan Poe’s Classic Supernatural Poem to 3D Paper Life

in Books, Poetry | October 24th, 2017

You know a sto­ry has stay­ing pow­er not just when when we keep telling it decades and even cen­turies after its com­po­si­tion, but when we keep telling it in new forms. Even when Edgar Allan Poe set his lit­er­ary sights on writ­ing a poem that would win both high crit­i­cal praise and a wide pop­u­lar audi­ence back in 1845, he could hard­ly have imag­ined that it would still bring haunt­ed delight to its read­ers, lis­ten­ers and even view­ers more than 170 years lat­er. But The Raven does endure, not just in the var­i­ous celebri­ty read­ings we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture but in numer­ous illus­trat­ed edi­tions, a beloved Simp­sons seg­ment, and now even a pop-up book.

Though The Raven: a Pop-up Book, illus­trat­ed and designed by Christo­pher Wormell and David Pel­ham, adapts Poe’s work of super­nat­ur­al verse into a per­haps unex­pect­ed medi­um, it does so with thor­ough­ness indeed.

Flip through it as do the hands in the video above, you’ll find spring­ing to paper life before you not just the poem’s lovelorn nar­ra­tor and the talk­ing crow who pays him a vis­it, but every ele­ment of the set­ting as well, from the fur­ni­ture and oth­er objects of the nar­ra­tor’s study — the vel­vet chair, the books, the bust of Pal­las, the lock­et with the image of lost Lenore — to the sea­side cas­tle in which this vision of the sto­ry locates it.

Those of us who haven’t opened a pop-up book since child­hood might be sur­prised to see how far its art has come. Not only would the illus­tra­tions of The Raven: a Pop Up Book hold up in a mere two dimen­sions as well, they inter­lock in three to form rel­a­tive­ly com­plex geo­met­ric struc­tures, ones that some­times move with an almost eerie hint of nat­u­ral­ness. (You may, as I did, want to watch the nar­ra­tor open his lock­et-hold­ing hand more than once.) What’s more, the design allows view­ing from more than one angle, pro­vid­ing details that those who only look at the book straight on will nev­er see. Using the archa­ic apos­tro­phe of which Poe him­self might have approved, Boing Boing’s Cory Doc­torow rec­om­mends the book “if you’re gear­ing up for Hal­lowe’en and want to get your kids in the spir­it of things” — and espe­cial­ly if those kids wrong­ly believe them­selves too old for pop-up books or too 21st-cen­tu­ry for Poe. Get your copy of  The Raven: a Pop Up Book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gus­tave Doré’s Splen­did Illus­tra­tions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)

Édouard Manet Illus­trates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edi­tion Trans­lat­ed by Stephane Mal­lar­mé (1875)

A Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in 100 Celebri­ty Voic­es

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Win­ning Short Film That Mod­ern­izes Poe’s Clas­sic Tale

The Simp­sons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teach­ers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Lit­er­a­ture

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman, Stan Lee & More

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hear Benedict Cumberbatch Read John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” and Other Great Works by Shakespeare, Dante & Coleridge

in Poetry | October 7th, 2017

Would Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch have such ardent fans if he could­n’t read poet­ry so well? Almost cer­tain­ly he would, although his way with verse still seems not like a bonus but an inte­gral com­po­nent of his dra­mat­ic per­sona. Though not eas­i­ly explained, that rela­tion­ship does come across if you hear any of the actor’s read­ings of poet­ry. In the video above, Cum­ber­batch per­forms “Ode to a Nightin­gale,” the longest and best-known of John Keats’ 1819 odes that casts into verse the poet­’s dis­cov­ery of “neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty,” or as he defined it in a let­ter two years ear­li­er, “when a man is capa­ble of being in uncer­tain­ties, mys­ter­ies, doubts, with­out any irri­ta­ble reach­ing after fact and rea­son.”

Yet one sens­es that the Cum­ber­batch fans who put up these videos, such as the one accom­pa­ny­ing “Ode to a Nightin­gale” with imagery rem­i­nis­cent of a Tiger Beat pic­to­r­i­al, care less about his neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty than cer­tain oth­er qual­i­ties. His voice, for instance: the uploader of the video com­bin­ing five poems just above describes as “the vel­vety dul­cet tones of a jaguar hid­ing in a cel­lo.”

That com­pi­la­tion includes “Ode to a Nightin­gale” as well as Shake­speare’s “The Sev­en Ages of Man” (“All the world’s a stage”), Lewis Car­rol­l’s “Jab­ber­wocky,” a piece of Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy, and Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.” With Coleridge’s dream of Asia and Dan­te’s Ital­ian vision of the after­life, this poet­ic mix does get more exot­ic than it might seem (at least by the stan­dards of the eras from which it draws).

But Cum­ber­batch, who in 2015 received the hon­or of Com­man­der of the Most Excel­lent Order of the British Empire from the Queen and even read at the rebur­ial cer­e­mo­ny of King Richard III, clear­ly match­es best with the canon of his native Eng­land. As a ver­sa­tile per­former, and thus one who pre­sum­ably under­stands all about the need for neg­a­tive capa­bil­i­ty, Cum­ber­batch and his cel­lo-hid­den jaguar deliv­ery (a poet­ic descrip­tion, in its own way) has done jus­tice in the past to Kaf­ka, Kurt Von­negut, and Moby-Dick. Still, one won­ders what poem Cum­ber­batch could per­form in order to achieve an unsur­pass­able state of peak Eng­lish­ness. How long could it take for him to get around, for instance, to “If—”?

Cum­ber­batch’s read­ing of “Ode” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads Shakespeare’s Oth­el­lo and Keats’ “Ode to a Nightin­gale” (1940)

Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner Ani­mat­ed: A Clas­sic Ver­sion Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles

Hear 20 Hours of Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Poet­ry Read by Ralph Fiennes, Dylan Thomas, James Mason & Many More

Hear Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Read Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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