So since we’ve got a lot of folks interested in classic lit/great texts here in the Knitting Circle, please indulge my curiosity (in the tags or copy and respond/bold):
“Deseo decirle que ha sido el último sueño de mi alma… Desde que la conocí, me turba el remordimiento que no creí ya vivo y he oído voces, que creía silenciosas, que me incitan a recobrar el ánimo. He tenido ideas vagas de volver a esforzarme, de empezar de nuevo la vida, de arrojar de mí la pereza y la sensualidad y volver a la abandonada lucha. Pero todo eso no es más que un sueño, que no conduce a nada y que deja al dormido donde estaba, aunque deseo decirle que estos sueños los inspiró usted.”
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world cantell, what it is like to be alive. All I’ve ever wanted to do is to tell that. I’m not trying to solve anybody’s problems, not even my own. I’m just trying to outline what the problems are.”
Mr Bertie is a stinky sneaker of a teacher. He told Daddy about my low grades, and now I am the lazy bun and total shame on all my bun kin. NO SIMS, NO SWEETS, and NO LIFE until I read all those books. Ow! I’m buried alive under the library! I feel like yelling at him, “I’m fifteen! Too old for reading Dickens. I have too much adult staff to deal with.” Well, mostly sewing dresses for my dolls and playing Sims, but the adult potential is there, I sense it!
He left me locked in his study with THREE books as big as bricks and the laziest bum Tom to guard my studying. Luckily, my cat is more interested in his own tail to catch rather than reading about dirty, smelly London streets. I read five pages of Oliver Twist and felt like puddling in the nasty gutter. Is that what they want me to learn from the author?
It’s nothing new. My life is FULL of nastiness, i.e.:
1. That ugly under-the-skin pimple on my forehead will never face the light of day but brood in the labyrinths of my brains for the next twelve years.
2. If I don’t read one million pages on how hard it is to live in Dickens’ head, I may never see the light of day either.
3. I am having a test in six days and I’m certain Mr Bertie is going to fit in the most sadistic questions to watch us suffer, like Oliver Twist did.
4. And I don’t even have a tail like Tom’s to play busy till the Kingdom comes. Ow!
Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an ironhanded and a grinding despotism! Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!
Hard Times, Charles Dickens (1854)
The work of the American photographer Lewis W. Hine (1874-1940) has always looked so Dickensian to me. Half a century later, things across the Atlantic weren’t very different to Dickens’ novels. Yet, it’s even more scary (and shameful) the fact that today child labour is still a reality in some countries (not to mention the social conditions).
Btw, there’s an exhibition in Madrid that I’m very excited about devoted to Lewis Hine. Go if you have a chance!
“Now, this is a soldier’s song, see? You don’t look like soldiers but by the gods I’ll see you sounds like ‘em! You’ll pick it up as we goes along! Right turn! March! 'All the little angels rise up, rise up, all the little angels rise up high!’ Sing it, you sons of mothers!”
The marchers picked up the response from those who knew it.
“How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high? They rise headsup,headsup,heads up–” sang out Dickens as they turned the corner.
Vimes listened as the refrain died away.
“That’s a nice song,” said young Sam, and Vimes realized that he was hearing it for the first time.
“It’s an old soldier’s song,” he said.
“Really, Sarge? But it’s about angels.”
Yes, thought Vimes, and it’s amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It’s a realsoldiers’ song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
“As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,” he said. “I’ve seen old men cry when they sing it,” he added.
“Why? It sounds cheerful.”
They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You’ll learn. I knowyou will.
Rupert Murdoch is like Ebenezer Scrooge, if Scrooge had just decided to ignore the life lessons learned from his ethereal travels with the Christmas spirits, and instead continue plundering and hoarding his way through life, waging war on happiness until his dying day.
hello classic lit fandom i am about to say something insane
ok hear me out. magwitch x havisham. i warned you that it was insane
anyway crackship between two old people who are unique flavors of crazy with major trust issues at least partially to blame on the exact same guy (compeyson) who have both spent a looong time locked up in one place (voluntarily or otherwise) and are questionably stable at best. she’s already raising his kid. they’re both a weird kind of rich (beer and sheep, respectively). they both had shitty exes. he killed her ex and she would totally crab rave about that if she knew. havisham would have to get over her hates-all-men mindset and magwitch would have to become slightly less of an opossum but it could work. and by work i mean they’d either bite each other’s heads off or become two peas in a weird old person pod. pip and estella’s weird uncle and wine aunt. fix each other or make each other far worse
It was hot (like 33c) and I was confused and bored. I was walking along a very scenic route when I found legit the poshest nicest garden with loads of shade. I was reading a very good book (tale of two cities) and was like heyyyyy. Nice shade.
And so my heat oppressed brain decided it would be a good idea to sit in this fact ass garden and read…. turns out… people don’t like strangers in their garden. And so this angry posh guy shouted at me like I was some animal from the window. Obviously. I ran off. But hey. RUDE.
