Music Tuesday: The Light of Christmas Morn by Sarah Hart

I'm always in search for Christmas music that is not the same old classics.  Not that there is anything wrong with the classics, but they do get repetitive.

Here is an original, contemporary Christmas song by Sarah Hart that I just adore, and should be a classic.  For me, right now it hits the perfect melancholy note with the future promise Christ's birth.

Oh do check out the lyrics here.  Here are a couple of stanzas that just stand out for me.  The third stanza:

The welcome snow each Christmastide
Falls shining from the skies
On village paths and uplands wide
All holy white, it lies
It crowns with pearl, the oaks and pines
And glitters on the thorn
But purer still the light that shines
On gladsome Christmas morn

And the sixth and last stanza:

And o’er the child a guiding star
Shall lead us into peace
And still in souls, that childlike are
His guardian love shall be
Oh then rejoice, good Christian men
Nor be of heart forlorn
For unto you, in Bethlehem
The Son of God is born
December’s darkness brings again
The light of Christmas morn.

You can read all the lyrics here.

Literature in the News: Dictionary of Medieval Latin Completed After 100 Years

This is rather interesting.  Hat tip to Tom McDonald at his God and the Machine blog for bringing it to my attention.   

 

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources completed after 100 years

By

Medievalists.net

– December 10, 2013

After over 58,000 entries, 3830 pages and seventeen volumes, the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources is now finished. The final volume will be published tomorrow by the British Academy.

Begun in 1913, the finished dictionary is the culmination of a century-long enterprise which has had over 200 researchers working on it over the decades. Based on the writings found in poetry, sermons, chronicles, scientific texts, legal documents, state records, accounts and letters that were created between the years 540 and 1600 by thousands of authors who were born or worked in Britain, the Dictionary includes material from well-known works such as the Domesday Book, Magna Carta and Bayeux tapestry.

Dr Richard Ashdowne, the current editor of the Dictionary and a member of Oxford University’s Faculty of Classics, said, “This is the first ever comprehensive description of the vocabulary of the Latin language used in Britain and by Britons between AD 540 and 1600. For the last hundred years, the project has been systematically scouring the surviving British medieval Latin texts to find evidence for every word and all its meanings and usage.

 

“Much of this fundamental work was done in the early years of the project by a small army of volunteers, including historians, clergymen, and even retired soldiers. They provided the project with illustrative example quotations copied out from the original texts onto paper slips – an early form of crowdsourcing that had previously been used in the preparation of the Oxford English Dictionary.

“During its existence the project has accumulated an estimated 750,000 such slips. Nowadays, in addition to this invaluable resource, which covers a vast quantity of material only available in the form of the original manuscripts, we also have access to large electronic databases enabling us to examine the works of authors such as the Venerable Bede more thoroughly than ever before.”

The project began on April 6, 1913, when a Mr Robert J Whitwell had a letter printed in The Times in which he called for volunteers to help compile a new dictionary of the Latin used in medieval times. The first volume, which contained the letters A and B was published in 1975. The last word of the last volume is zythum, which means ‘an Egyptian beer’.

Interestingly some of the words of Old and Middle English that were ‘borrowed’ in the Latin language were found in earlier Latin texts than the first appearance of these words in English. Many we still use today in a modern form, for example, the Medieval Latin huswiva corresponds to modern English housewife, found as early as 12th century Latin texts.

 

Read the rest. 

What an effort.  That last paragraph I quoted shows you the importance of the work.  It has enlightened us on the etymology and development of English words.  Now I wonder if languages of other nations have attempted and completed such an effort.  If it took a hundred years to complete such an effort from British sources, what would it take to do all Latin sources from the European continent?

They have a website where you can read about the project, learn about medieval Latin, and find out how to obtain or access a copy. 

 

Faith Filled Friday: Veni Veni Emmanuel

Here is probaby everyone's favorite Advent song.  Sung in the original Latin.

Musical credit: L’Accroche-Chœur ensemble vocal Fribourg

Arranged by Zoltán Kodály

Poetry: The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

I just came across this Ezra Pound poem for the first time, though apparently it’s somewhat well known.  I came across it in my reading of Imagist Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Bob Blaisdell.    Ezra Pound either has some really great poems or some really crappy ones.  This is a great poem. 

 

First, let me say that Pound translated a lot of classical Chinese poetry, but his translations are fine poems in themselves.  A lot of times, poetry loses something in translation.  I can’t vouch for how accurate this translation but it’s a wonderful poem in English.  This translation comes from a poet known as Li Po. 

Second, Pound was one of the founding members, and perhaps the most important, of the early 20^th century poetic movement known as Imagism.  The key feature of imagism is that the poet creates an image to carry the meaning of his ideas, so that the emotion and abstract ideas are buried within the image.  Under ideal circumstances, nothing is explained, and what the reader is left to intuit is the meaning the image is suppose to project.  As you can see, this makes imagist poems difficult at times, but they can also be quite simple.  This particular poem by Pound is not particularly complicated.

Notice in the very first line how the image of bangs suggests a certain innocence and childlike inexperience.  Notice in the second stanza how the image of the bashful lowering of her head suggests a young woman’s submissiveness to a more powerful husband.  The third stanza’s image of dust mingling with dust shows the evolving love toward what at first must have been an unequal power allocation in the marriage.  In the final stanza, notice how the varying images weaved together suggest a complex emotional state in the young woman.

 

The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter

Translated from the Chinese of Li Po [Rihaku]

by Ezra Pound

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse;
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden --
They hurt me.
I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
               As far as Cho-fo-Sa.

Isn’t that a lovely poem?  The one place where Pound doesn’t use images is right at the core of that last stanza, lines 24 and 25: “They hurt me/I grow older.”  All the images really substantiate those feelings.  The poem is about growing older, starting with girlish bangs and ending with her taking on the challenge and assertion of meeting her husband at the river.

This site, Modern American Poetry, has varying comments and exegesis on the poem.  I can’t vouch for each comment’s accuracy, but from what I skimmed it doesn’t seem far astray.

Matthew Monday: Accepting Brandi’s Passing

It’s been a week since we had to euthanize ourbeloved Brandi, and I think it’s finally sinking into Matthew that Brandi is gone.  He understands she’s dead and that now she’s gone to heaven, but I think until this weekend he expected her to return.  Today I finally saw sadness that she’s gone for good.  He even asked if she’s with God.  I said she was and that she was playing with our previous dog, Sasha, which Matthew has never seen.  Sasha died a few months before Brandi was born in 2003. 

 

Here’s a picture from Brandi’s last week, where the three of us are sitting on the couch.  Looks like I was reading to Matthew while Brandi rested in one of her favorite spots.

 

Losing a dog is like losing a family member.  I can tell you the pain has not softened around here yet.

Lines I Wished I’d Written: Old Marley Was as Dead as a Door-Nail

Here’s a new feature for my blog, Lines I Wished I Had Written.  These are passages that captivate me as someone that just appreciates great writing.  When I was younger I would write down such passages in the hopes that I would absorb the skill that went into the passage.  Plus I love to capture really fine writing.  Even when I read I highlight with my trusty mechanical pencil passages that are exceptional.  I either underline them or if they run an extended length I’ll run a curvy line down the margin along that length and write an exclamation mark beside it.  And if it’s really something special, I’ll put a couple of exclamation marks!

So why not share such passages with readers of my blog.  Actually I got the idea for this feature from Will Duquette’s blog, Cry ‘Woof’…andlet slip the dogs of whimsy where he has a feature “Words I’d Wish I’d Written.”  I’m not sure why I prefer “Lines” over “Words” I Wished I’d Written but I do.  I know “words” adds to the alliteration of the phrase, and so may have a snappier sound, but “lines” suggest a passage rather than a sentence, and perhaps, at least to me, a certain eloquence since it alludes to poetry.  So there, I’m not completing stealing.   

Note also, this is not the same as my feature, “Notable Quotes.”  A notable quote has a certain depth of wisdom to it isolated from where it might come.  It also might be a thought outside of a creative work.  “Lines I Wish I’d Written” strictly come from a creative written work and are presented solely for its compositional beauty and interest.

For my first post in this feature, I’m going to offer the opening paragraphs from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  Well, it is the holiday season, but this came to mind because our parish last night invited the performers from Quicksilver Radio Theater to perform the radio play version of Dickens’ classic.  As it turns out our music director at St. Rita’s parish, Deborah Williams, has performed with the theater group and somehow was able to bring the full cast over to our church for a performance.  Here’s the press release for the group:

QUICKSILVER RADIO THEATER (founded in 1995) is a group of seasoned New York performing artists, who are dedicated to using the classic Radio Drama form (full cast, layered sound effects, and musical score) to present stories worth telling, executed with both talent and heart.  Quicksilver’s work has aired nationally, and been heard internationally on the World Wide Web.  Quicksilver has earned awards from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the National Audio Theatre.  It has performed by invitation at the Museum of Television and Radio’s Annual Radio Festival, and its shows are in the collection of the Museum.

They had just about the full cast in attendance and performed with full sound effects and score.  It was a great treat.  You can actually buy a performance from iTunes if you look, but I was able to find a free listen at PRX(Public Radio Exchange).  You just have to sign up and it’s free.  So give it a listen.  You’ll enjoy it.  I took Matthew, and while he didn’t quite get everything, Marley’s ghost with his clinking chains and woeful  holler, really got his attention.

Now here are the opening lines from A Christmas Carol.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often `came down' handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, `My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?' No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, `No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!'

But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call `nuts' to Scrooge.

 
Excerpt cited from The Literature Network. 

 

Isn’t that just a great characterization?  It’s so important to Dickens that the reader know Marley is dead that he uses such a distinct phrase, and drills the reader with “d” consonant alliteration in those first few paragraphs: dead, no doubt, door-nail, deadest, not disturb it, done for, dreadfully, distinctly.  I’ve always thought that Dickens created the phrase “dead as a doornail” but as it turnsout he didn’t.  But I always associate this.  It has forever stuck in my mind from reading A Christmas Carol.

And notice the “s” alliterations in the paragraph the starts with “Oh.”  Isn’t this a marvelous list of adjectives?  “Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!”  In rhetoric that's called synathroesmus.  And then that seventh paragraph with all those negative characteristics in parallel sequence to describe him (there’s a rhetorical term for that too, but I can’t remember or find it) is possibly the height of the passage.  It needs to be repeated:

 

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often `came down' handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Oh that’s a double exclamation mark!!

Ten Books That Have Stayed With You

Here’s a neat little exercise that according to Julie Davis of Happy Catholic has been going around on Facebook. 

Rules: list 10 books that have stayed with you. Don't take more than a few minutes; don't think too hard. They don't have to be great works, just the ones that have touched you, and of course with me they are great works.   Ninety percent of what I read is great works.  Now this is off the top of my head and without a lot of thought, and I reserve the right to change my impulsive mind.  I could also have gone into poetic works but I limited myself to only novels.  The author of the work is in parenthesis.

 

1. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

2. Light In August (William Faulkner)

3. The Rainbow (D.H. Lawrence)

4. The Brothers Karamazov (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

5. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)

6. Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

7. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

8. To The Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf)

9. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)

10. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)

 

Are any of these on your list?