Book Review: X Out of Wonderland by David Allan Cates

To everybody the world may occasionally seem unreal like the scenario of a fairy-tale or a dream because something unusual and improbable is happening. The situation may even be so dumbfounding that those living it behave like sleepwalkers or automatons for a while. Unshakable optimism and absolute trust in a person, a system or even an idea can produce a similar effect because they often distort the view of things to allow seeing them as desired instead of as they are. The novel X Out of Wonderland by David Allan Cates surrounds a protagonist who was taught to believe firmly and unquestioningly in the forces of the global free market and in its power to provide the best for all. Even when misfortune strikes him hard all of a sudden leaving him jobless, homeless and without the most intriguing woman that he just met, he endures everything without losing faith.

Poetry Revisited: Knights and the Dragon by Robin Hyde

Knights and the Dragon

(from The Desolate Star and Other Poems: 1929)

I found no dragon, and the maid,
His prey, was dead these many years
And slumbered in a little glade
Of purple flowers, bright with tears.
They said all mortal swords must fail
Against the necromancer-thing
That dimmed her beauty as a veil,
And hid her tresses’ glimmering.
The pluméd (sic) knights would come and go
About her gates; but none was bold
To seek the icy, mocking foe
That stole away her white and gold,
Her purple flowers filled with dew.
There in the dusk, I knew the truth—
This dragon was the locust, who
Had eaten all her leaves of youth.

Robin Hyde (1906-1939)
New Zealand poet

Book Review: Cyclops by Ranko Marinković

Most legendary creatures are archetypical manifestations of certain aspects of human nature, good or evil, and the myths surrounding them represent a general idea of the world, i.e. of how it came into being and of how it works. Classical education made many of them household names and so, they found their way quite naturally into literature as allegorical figures or less easily explainable symbols. With World War II threatening to spread to Yugoslavia, the protagonist of Cyclops by Ranko Marinković sees himself doomed to end as helpless prey of the man-eating one-eyed giant Polyphemus from Greek mythology. Like other young men he must expect being called up any time, but although patriotic, the intellectual hopes to avoid national service systematically reducing his body to bones and skin. He wanders through Zagreb daydreaming and yearning for the woman he loves without hope or drinks heavily with friends.

Back Reviews Reel: September 2015

In my reviews of three years past, I evoked classical love as well as a modern dystopia starting my tour in Japan and returning there via New York and Germany. Confessions of Love by Uno Chiyo centres on a doomed love in Tōkyō of the 1920s. About 30 years later and thousands of miles east, the famous protagonist of Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote frequents well-to-do circles to find a husband to give her the happiness and glamour that she yearns for. In futuristic Germany of The Method by Juli Zeh, on the other hand, a woman who lost her brother finds herself prosecuted by a relentless State for letting herself go. The protagonist of The Changeling by Ōe Kenzaburō, the recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature, takes to imaginary conversations with his late youth friend and brother-in-law on the other side with the help of tapes.

Poetry Revisited: That Bright Chimeric Beast by Countee Cullen

That Bright Chimeric Beast

(from Black Christ and Other Poems: 1929)

That bright chimeric beast
Conceived yet never born,
Save in the poet's breast,
The white-flanked unicorn,
Never may be shaken
From his solitude;
Never may be taken
In any earthly wood.

That bird forever feathered,
Of its new self the sire,
After aeons weathered,
Reincarnate by fire,
Falcon may not nor eagle
Swerve from his eyrie,
Nor any crumb inveigle
Down to an earthly tree.

That fish of the dread regime
Invented to become
The fable and the dream
Of the Lord's aquarium,
Leviathan, the jointed
Harpoon was never wrought
By which the Lord's anointed
Will suffer to be caught.

Bird of the deathless breast,
Fish of the frantic fin,
That bright chimeric beast
Flashing the argent skin,—
If beasts like these you'd harry,
Plumb then the poet's dream;
Make it your aviary,
Make it your wood and stream.

There only shall the swish
Be heard of the regal fish;
There like a golden knife
Dart the feet of the unicorn,
And there, death brought to life,
The dead bird be reborn.

Countee Cullen (1903- 1946)
American poet, novelist, children's writer,
and playwright of the Harlem Renaissance

Book Review: The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch

Fairy-tales, legends and myths have always been key sources of inspiration for writers. Among the most striking examples of this doubtlessly count the plays credited to William Shakespeare, but there must be countless others who during their careers borrowed more or less generously and palpably to varying degrees from them. In the 1960s, it seems to have been fashionable to write novels with titles referring to a mythological creature that symbolises the protagonist. The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch is one of these. At its centre is a young woman resigned to living like a prisoner on her estate in a remote part of Ireland. Her almost complete passivity pains the newly arrived governess (or rather lady companion) who finds out about the tragic events that made her husband shut her up and who is determined to give her amiable mistress back freedom as well as the joys of real life.

Poetry Revisited: A minha estrella! – My Star! by Marianna Angélica de Andrade

Bookish Déjà-Vu: Splithead by Julya Rabinowich

All kinds of bizarre, often magical creatures from fairy-tales and ancient legends inhabit the minds of people young and old everywhere on the planet. There are figures of light that use to enjoy great popularity because they are associated with the good and said to bring happiness along with luck. The nightmarish ones, on the other hand, seem to have krept directly from hell to spread evil and misfortune. Consequently, people fear and avoid them as best they can. A thought-eating and soul-sucking head without body from the rich treasure of Russian myths that is hardly known outside its cultural context is the title-giving creature in Splithead by Julya Rabinowich that I picked as a bookish déjà vu. As a seven-year-old the narrator leaves Leningrad of the 1970s with her parents and finds herself newly planted in Vienna where she and her family are having a hard time striking roots.
Read my review »

Poetry Revisited: The Sphynx by Alfred Douglas

The Sphynx

(from The City of the Soul: 1899)

I gaze across the Nile; flamelike and red
The sun goes down, and all the western sky
Is drowned in sombre crimson; wearily
A great bird flaps along with wings of lead,
Black on the rose-red river. Over my head
The sky is hard green bronze, beneath me lie
The sleeping ships; there is no sound, or sigh
Of the wind's breath, — a stillness of the dead.

Over a palm tree’s top I see the peaks
Of the tall pyramids; and though my eyes
Are barred from it, I know that on the sand
Crouches a thing of stone that in some wise
Broods on my heart; and from the darkening land
Creeps Fear and to my soul in whisper speaks.

Alfred Douglas (1870-1945), full name Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas
British author, poet, translator, and political commentator