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larryhammerMore intellectual archeology. This copy of Palgrave's Golden Treasury is from 1951, a reprint of a 1906 Everyman's edition with a supplemental section of Victorians. By the inscriptions, it had at least three owners before me, two of whom, named B. Waters and Peterson, made marginal lecture notes. (The third is traced only by the flyleaf inscription
I don't know exactly when I bought this -- I'd thought late undergraduate, but the stratigraphic annotations date to early grad school, showing early steps toward analyzing craft and how form affects content. Also, I was ready to argue with Keats: I found "The Realm of Fancy" "defensible" but not its companion poem. Wordsworth gets slagged off for his supposed natural diction. I noted without further comment that in "To the Night," Shelley personified "day" as female but "Day" as male (though the capitalization of my edition is not matched in Bartleby's online text). Go me.
Other comments are more puzzling. How on earth did I happen to know that "Henry's holy shade" was Henry VI, founder of Eton? And what was I thinking in labeling this Keats a "ballad, nearly"? Total lyric. One that I'm more impressed by now than then. And then there's the cryptic "This should be longer: WHY?" next to "Admonition to a Traveler." Why, indeed.
Other potshard glosses reveal a pedant and a prude in action. Thus, annotations detailing the omissions and rearrangements of Palgrave's version of Crashaw's "Supposed Mistress" (including title change!). A prior reader responded enthusiastically to Campbell's Romantic argument for polyamory, but I did not -- while acknowledging the versecraft was good. At least I apparently had fun analyzing the metrical gymnastics of "When the lamp is shatter'd."
What strikes me most, digging through the anthology now, is just how limiting Palgrave's definition of "best original Lyrical pieces" is -- not just in form and genre as acknowledged in the Preface, but also subject and tone. The only optimistic poems allowed in are superficial love lyrics and patriot pieces; anything with real thought is pessimistic and stoical. It's of a piece with the critical mindset that defines tragedy as inherently higher in value than comedy -- but that is for a rant, not an excavation. Suffice to note that Palgrave's selection is as incomplete as an archeologist's collection from his time -- all golden masks and painted tombs walls, without the broken dolls and iron cloakpins of daily life. A Schliemann of poetry, if you well.
---L.
- Write Dad about salary
I don't know exactly when I bought this -- I'd thought late undergraduate, but the stratigraphic annotations date to early grad school, showing early steps toward analyzing craft and how form affects content. Also, I was ready to argue with Keats: I found "The Realm of Fancy" "defensible" but not its companion poem. Wordsworth gets slagged off for his supposed natural diction. I noted without further comment that in "To the Night," Shelley personified "day" as female but "Day" as male (though the capitalization of my edition is not matched in Bartleby's online text). Go me.
Other comments are more puzzling. How on earth did I happen to know that "Henry's holy shade" was Henry VI, founder of Eton? And what was I thinking in labeling this Keats a "ballad, nearly"? Total lyric. One that I'm more impressed by now than then. And then there's the cryptic "This should be longer: WHY?" next to "Admonition to a Traveler." Why, indeed.
Other potshard glosses reveal a pedant and a prude in action. Thus, annotations detailing the omissions and rearrangements of Palgrave's version of Crashaw's "Supposed Mistress" (including title change!). A prior reader responded enthusiastically to Campbell's Romantic argument for polyamory, but I did not -- while acknowledging the versecraft was good. At least I apparently had fun analyzing the metrical gymnastics of "When the lamp is shatter'd."
What strikes me most, digging through the anthology now, is just how limiting Palgrave's definition of "best original Lyrical pieces" is -- not just in form and genre as acknowledged in the Preface, but also subject and tone. The only optimistic poems allowed in are superficial love lyrics and patriot pieces; anything with real thought is pessimistic and stoical. It's of a piece with the critical mindset that defines tragedy as inherently higher in value than comedy -- but that is for a rant, not an excavation. Suffice to note that Palgrave's selection is as incomplete as an archeologist's collection from his time -- all golden masks and painted tombs walls, without the broken dolls and iron cloakpins of daily life. A Schliemann of poetry, if you well.
---L.