Mark Van Doren (1894–1972)

This slim book contains a set of three lectures Van Doren delivered at Emory University in 1956. In a wry and genial manner, Van Doren makes the case that Don Quixote is one of the greatest books ever written.
Of the Don, Van Doren claims, “He is that rare thing in literature, a completely created character. He is so real that we cannot be sure we understand him.” Even someone who hasn’t read the book, but seen illustrations, knows Cervantes has paired him with an unlikely squire, show more Sancho Panza, hardly less memorable than the Don. Van Doren shows how the relationship evolves from master and servant to two friends who love each other.
Van Doren argues, based on Don Quixote’s moments of lucidity and the sagacity of his speeches, that, contrary to the repeated assertion in the book that he is mad, he is, on the contrary, aware of what he is doing. In this reading, the Don’s knight-errantry was a hoax meant to entertain and edify the world. When Don Quixote saw that he’d failed in this, he abandoned the hoax (473).
Similarly, Cervantes misdirects us about Sancho Panza. He is illiterate and seems to have only his next meal and a good night’s sleep in mind. Yet when given a chance to govern a town, he displays a native insight into human nature, to the astonishment of those around him, watching for him to fail.
Van Doren characterizes Don Quixote as two interconnected series: adventures and conversations. It is the adventures that stick in the popular imagination. Van Doren asserts, however, that more is “lost by ignoring the speaker” than the deeds.
Van Doren concludes that Don Quixote “is the most perfect knight that ever lived; the only one, in fact, we can believe.” Rather than achieving his avowed aim of destroying the literature of knight-errantry through satire, Cervantes has saved it. He produced “the one treatment of the subject that can be read forever.” show less

This is not my favorite book of poetry by far: there’s too much god and bees. I did like a few poems in here such as Former Barn Lot (the root of grass “like green fire” I guess), After Dry Weather (vivid imagery), Parent’s Recompense (kind of hit home especially after the last handful of years), I Went Among the Mean Streets, and The Dead Sentry (sort of gruesome, I dig it). I also liked the Comedy, Tragedy, Eternity’s Low Voice, and Cold Beauty quatrains.
There were also about show more three more that I appreciated more a stanza or a few lines than the entire poem. Of these is The Bitterest Things, the last five lines below:
The bitterest is the purest; but mistaken,
Most poisonous. To her, and then to him.
For he is last to know what lavish gold
He vinegared, what water, brackish now,
Is spiderless no more; and that he drinks it. [pg.63]
The third is Oldest Cemetery (not too predictable I hope), again, the last five lines:
It was all childish error, and these stones
But tilt above time’s waste. And whose the bones?
The verses tell. I ponder them, steadfast,
Expectant. No, the end is coming still
For such as these, on this forgotten hill. [pg.93]
Overall, if you like poetry, meh, I might mention this to you but I cannot really recommend this one as most of the poems are just blah. Whenever I came across a longer poem, a full page or more, I groaned. That’s all I have to say about this one.
So home by dark to moth and mouse. [last line from Little Trip, pg.64] show less

23. [That Shining Place] by Mark Van Doren

I haven't read much poetry since my college courses wrapped up years ago, but I do pick up my favorites from time to time - Rilke, Frost, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Dickinson and even contemporaries Jared Carter and Sherman Alexie. Actually...I guess I still do read a bit of poetry....

Anyway, Mark Van Doren's collection, once I got beyond the title (which I liked a lot) and just two or three poems that I enjoyed, but I didn't feel changed by, was a show more challenge to get through. Van Doren's book was published 1969, but was using language as if it were written 100 years earlier. The problem was, I didn't feel any sincerity in Van Doren's work and it seemed like the writing tried too hard. I understand that some of the very best poets would agonize over the right word for days or even weeks, but ultimately, the poems seem natural, they have convey a feeling or emotion in such a way that even something familiar to the reader seems new.

Van Doren's work? Not so much. At least it didn't strike a chord with me and I'm going to be reading through Rilke again to experience poetry that gives me a feeling that I'm being changed as a person when I read it. show less

Originally published as THE NOBLE VOICE, this is a curiously argumentative, sometimes downright pissy set of essays on Homer, Milton, Lucretius, Dante anmd sundry others.Van Doren was a truly great poet himself, though in smaller forms than those discussed here. He was also a legendary teacher. My respect for hios own creations is of-course, undiluted by the reading of thuis book, but that reputation as a great teacher didn't survive. Laying down the law has nothing to to with education, show more either on the printed page or in thge spoken word. For the record, whatever value this book has exists as commentary for those who've already read the works in question. I suspect that someone reading this in preparation for reading the classics will not benefit significantly. show less