"seasons don't fear the reaper / nor do the wind the sun or the rain / we can be like they are"

[larryhammer]

The start of Part I, Canto 1, Section ii of Owen Meredith's best-selling 1860 verse-novel Lucile:

Now in May Fair, of course,--in the fair month of May--
When life is abundant, and busy, and gay:
When the markets of London are noisy about
Young ladies, and strawberries,--"only just out;"
Fresh strawberries sold under all the house-eaves,
And young ladies on sale for the strawberry-leaves: ...

and so on -- I'll be merciful and stop here. Even more merciful, that is: the actual opening is worse, though not for the same reasons. The brave can read it here.

The joker in this pack being that "Owen Meredith" is better known as Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, 1st earl of Lytton, son of the more famous Bulwer-Lytton of the contest. Yes, dear readers, in addition to being an even more disasterous imperialist politician than his father, he was an even worse (but just as best-selling) poet.

Clearly, I need to read this. And, indeed, I now own a copy (one of this publisher's editions) -- 379 12mo. pages (gilt edged) of anapestic tetrameter couplets, in twelve cantos.

My question to you -- any interest in my live-blogging reading it? By way of forcing me to actually ride all the way through (as judging by the extract in The Stuffed Owl, describing the financial implications of a bank failure, the terrain is heavy going in stretches). Or would you prefer to receive a final report of the damage?

---L.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Final report, plizz. (His poetric aggrocities are not new to me.)

[larryhammer]

Hee. Fair enough.

---L.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I would be delighted either by liveblogging or by a final report. I have read some Bulwer-Lytton, but not that one. (I did tell you to read Bulwer-Lytton's King Arthur, right?)

[larryhammer]

It is still on my list of Things To Acquire (buried under flurry of classical Japanese scholarship).

This one's an epigone of Bulwer-Lytton, for added delight.

---L.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I misunderstood! All right, I have to see your posts on the writing. Hee.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

That's just cruel!

[larryhammer]

Which, my reading this, making you read about my reading this, or the putting of maidens on the marriage mart?

---L.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Making us read about you reading this, with quotes.

I'm entirely too fond of Regency romances to protest putting maidens on the marriage mart, though I wouldn't like it much in practice.

[larryhammer]

Are you suggesting this tag contravenes the Geneva Convention?

---L.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Be careful. I know where to find Beowulf in ballad stanzas.

[larryhammer]

Oo! Do share.

---L.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Ok, I misremembered -- it wasn't ballad stanzas, per se, just "ballad-like stanzas." They are... excessively chipper. It's Beowulf. Which I think you know is about as chipper as a lead balloon.

But haughty Hunferth, Ecgláf’s Son
Who sat at royal Hróthgár’s Feet
To bind up Words of Strife begun
And to address the noble Geat.

The entire thing is available in Google Books. (http://books.google.com/books?id=TK6gkxrjR-YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=wackerbarth+beowulf&source=bl&ots=81WweWowuA&sig=b_AXufYmXb-yN4DNbuICqJb3jow&hl=en&ei=zlPTTIDOFMP-nAfdlcTXBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)

(P.S. My most recent journal entry is a translated riddle, which may amuse.)

[larryhammer]

Oh boy -- tetrameter couplets + randomly interpolated trimeter lines to create broken AABCCB patterns in the rubble. Just what Beowulf needed!

Or not.

That is indeed exceedingly odd. I can sort of see what the translator was thinking -- it is, after all, a heroic lay. And yet. And yet.

---L.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, yes.

In the poor man's defense, I think it was the first full verse translation ever.

Sharon Turner did some verse translation, but I don't think he got the whole thing. It's not quite as...inappropriate, but it isn't exactly good.

ETA: Missed a word.

[larryhammer]

Now I'm wondering what a translation into full ballad measure would be like. Complete with ballad mannerisms. Not sure I'm up for even attempting such a thing myself ...

---L.