I just watched Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet with my thirteen year old son, and we both enjoyed it so much. I last viewed it when I was a Freshman in high school, nearly forty years ago. I recall being very moved by it, but doing my best to keep my enthusiasm for it hidden from my classmates. I still have many lines from it committed to memory thanks to my ninth grade English teacher.
In viewing it now: my goodness what an amazing production. The costumes, the sets, the locations, the cast are all superb. This has got to be one of the best film versions of a Shakespeare play ever made. One of the things I found quite arresting was the duel scene; the sweat and dirt and grit and athleticism of the cast made it feel startlingly real. The same is true of the passionate desperation with which Romeo and Juliet fall for each other. Completely reckless and irresponsible, as the young so often can be.
There’s the beauty of the language, of course–my son remarked with surprise at several points in the play, when he realized where some famous quote came from: “A plague on both your houses!” “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” “Parting is such sweet sorrow.” On and on it went. Only in reading and seeing these plays performed do you get a true appreciation of how magnificent they are, and how much of our culture owes a great debt to Shakespeare.
I found this tragedy terribly sad as a fourteen year old, so upsetting that I didn’t much want to watch it or read it again. I have read it a few times since then over the years, but now that I have children of my own, the story was far more wrenching to me. When you’re young I don’t think you really know just how inexperienced and innocent you are. The passage of time and a different perspective have made this play much greater in my eyes.
Each day is a chance for a new start. Today I wish to reflect on all the amazing things I’ve been blessed with: firstly and most important, I have a beautiful, amazing family that brings me no end of joy and laughter. We have everything we need. I get to work as an educator and try to help others. I have so many lifelong friends that are like an extended family to me. Every day is a blessing and I’m so lucky to live the life I do, which is so full of outstanding people.
As I get older, I think that perhaps we need to start each day recounting such blessings and being grateful for them. Times may be difficult, but many have lived through such times, and a shift in perspective may help us weather this and one day come out for the better. So I wish anyone reading this, no matter what your road, all the best, and may your days be full of happiness and joy.
“i thank You God for most this amazing day”
e.e. cummings, 1950
i thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any—lifted from the no of all nothing—human merely being doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
T.S. Eliot was born September 26, 1888, 135 years ago. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, first published in June 1915, is a groundbreaking work that left me floored when I first encountered it as a young man. Wonderful, evocative, elegaic, just beautiful. I committed much of it to memory and read all of his work, which I revisit often.
I’m not going to parse the poem here; many learned scholars have done so over the past hundred and eight years. What I will say is that as an eighteen year old, I read this poem and was deeply moved. It was not like any poem I’d read before. Among many memorable images, Eliot writes:
“I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.”
I think this and much of this work speaks for itself and needs no intermediary. I knew as a teenager what Eliot was getting at, felt it in my soul, and still remember that unsettling, exciting moment, and feel it just as keenly over thirty years later.
Happy reading, my friends.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question … Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!” My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!” Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all— The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair! It is perfume from a dress That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep … tired … or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head grown slightly bald brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Christopher Tuthill 