Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943)

Brief rumination on the nature of book burning, in the form of a radio play. Highlights the duality of flame as both destructive and renewing, the difference being largely the point of view of the burner. I'm sure that while we view the Nazis as destroyers of intellectual culture via their book burning, they perhaps regarded their work as a renewal of society by eliminating detritus--in other words, the way we feel about ourselves when we busied ourselves burning Nazi materials. Better, show more perhaps, to be uniformly against the burning of books, than trying to decide that some books deserve burning, but not others. That last is a slippery slope of opportunism. show less

This short story opens thus:
“It is not enough to be the possessor of genius - the time and the man must conjoin.”
How much does luck determine our fate in life?

A series of letters follow, from a British general to his sister, a countess. He is convalescing and taking the waters in the south of France in 1788. It’s all “agreeable enough” but:
“There is a blue-bottle drowsiness about small watering places out of season.”

Lost in the epic poems of Ossian, he longs for companionship show more and ends up talking to a small, sallow, corpulent man who has the air “of unsuccessful oddity about him” - proud, but desperately lonely. Locals speak ill of him and his wife. It turns out that the man is also a former soldier, with a passionate, apparently book-based knowledge of India, where the general served, and a detailed and iconoclastic approach to military tactics. They discuss such matters on several occasions, over the other man’s maps, although the general is uneasy by some of what is said:
“’And what is treason?’ he said lightly. ‘If we call it unsuccessful ambition we shall be nearer the truth.’”

Image: Lord Clive (Clive of India) at The Siege of Arcot in 1751, one of the battles discussed by the two men (Source)

Genius

This is two old soldiers pondering the nature of genius, fate, and lost opportunities The full introductory quote is:
“It is not enough to be the possessor of genius - the time and the man must conjoin. An Alexander the Great, born into an age of profound peace, might scarce have troubled the world - a Newton, grown up in a thieves’ den, might have devised little but a new and ingenious picklock.” Attributed to John Cleveland Cotton.

I’m sure you know the saying
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
It’s often illustrated by a line of animals in front of a teacher’s desk and misattributed to Einstein.

Obviously, not everyone is a genius, or even has the potential to be one. Nevertheless, judging others’ achievements by one’s own preferences is just one of the circumstances that can hugely affect outcomes. It’s always nature AND nurture; never either/or.
“Suppose a genius born in circumstances that made the development of that genius impossible.”

Effort may play a part as well:
“In boyhood - I thought genius must force its own way.”

Or what about Roman mythology, which saw genius as the element of the divine in every person, akin to a soul-cum-guardian angel?

Image: Fragment of a fresco of a winged genius from Pompeii (Source)

Epistolary metafictional humour

The excerpts of the letters have apparently been approved for publication by the countess’ family. Some bits are explicitly omitted, including “his personal and unfavorable opinion of Warren Hastings”, French politics, “the possibility of cultivating sugar-cane in Southern France” and “disquisition… on the vanities of human ambition”.

Quotes

• “The Mediterranean is of an unexampled blue.”

• “Only the old lady remained aloof, saying little and sipping her camomile tea as if it were the blood of her enemies.”

• “His eyes, when he talks, are strangely animating.”

• “His eyes were dangerous for a moment and I saw why the worthy Mrs. Macgregor Jenkins had called him a bandit.”

• “He looked at me with his strangely luminous eyes.”

• “His eyes glowed, a beatific expression passed over his features.”

Reading advice

The story is free online (link below), but before you read it:

• At one point, I was wondering if my vague knowledge of the British Raj and Clive of India would be a disadvantage, but it wasn’t.

• This was published in 1937, but focuses on a pair of old soldiers in the 18th century, which is occasionally reflected in the language.

• Although you may guess the "fantastic" element, try not to catch a glimpse of the final page until you get there.

Short story club

I read this in Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature, by Alberto Manguel, from which I’m reading one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 4 September 2023.

You can read this story HERE.

You can join the group here. show less

A remarkable poem. Some of it feels very modern, and other parts seem anachronistic even for the time it was written, but always the poem is unexpected in the way these events and these people are portrayed. This poem is one of the few things I've read about the civil war that transcends the expected and manages to make human again an event that has become almost hopelessly entwined with the apocryphal.

Wow is my response to this incredibly ambitious book-length treatment of the Civil War using poetry in a variety of forms. This is a complex book and I find that it isn't accurately treated in a lot of descriptions of it, especially those that call it narrative and blank verse. Though it has narrative strings, they are broken by multiple perspectives, as well as expository and lyrical sections (making it arguably modern). There is blank verse (his best), free verse, prose, ballads, rhymed show more couplets in tetrameter (his worst), etc. It is primarily a book of many voices and perspectives providing a broad experience of the tragedy of the Civil War.

I discovered this book at my local library and decided I should read it since I have an interest in longer works. Notice I said "should" rather than wanted to. I'm not a history buff, especially not a fan of war stories. Also, when I first cracked the book to get a feel for it, I struck an early saccharine passage about Sally Dupre (who is not so sweet and simple as she develops). Uhg. I suspected there would be a lot of that but thankfully there isn't. Benet also tends to juxtapose more sentimental/saccharine passages against those that are stark portrayals of harsh realities (in fact, some of the juxtapositions are brilliant). Sometimes he uses sing-songy rhymed couplets for subject matter that makes the whole passage ironic.

It amazes me that this book has not been a subject of more serious criticism, but I can guess why. The poetry, though it has stellar moments, is not stellar overall. Some of it could simply have been prose; where meter/rhyme is used, it can be clunky. Though I eventually came to watch carefully when he slipped into couplets for how he was using the form to underscore an event or personality or turn it on its head, I still cringed as I read.

Yet the book is complex and fascinating. It does not take a simplistic or even heroic view of this conflict, which is what I suspected/expected. The men/boys are imperfect, good some days and in some circumstances and not so admirable during others. Not only did I get caught up in the tapestry that Benet weaves, but at the end I would have been happy (were there not already too many books and too little time) to turn around and begin again because I think the second read would have been richer now that I see all he was trying to accomplish--all that he eventually portrays about war, being human, being American, America itself, about being flawed and the outcomes of actions large and small. The book also made me curious about the battles of the Civil War and the key players than I ever have been.

So Wow. Definitely a keeper. show less