My significant otter and I were talking the other day about the oddity presented by the idea that James Merrill had written poetry with the aid of a Ouija board. It struck both of us as a rather ridiculous proposition - just think of how sore your fingers would grow after holding the glass in place for so long! He pointed out something, though, that I thought was rather brilliant, and explains the whole thing quite tremendously. Merrill was, in fact, being led to write The Changing Light at Sandover by the ghost of none other than Shakespeare himself. I have not read the epic, so I cannot attest to its possessing a bard-esque brilliance. However, a bit of beauty is always lost in translation, even from one's own mind to the page. Anyone can be eloquent in their minds. It takes a great man to communicate to others using that same eloquence.
I've been falling behind on the writings already, I'll admit, but I think I'll have more of a chance to catch up now. So I can spend a little bit of time discussing The Rape of Lucrece before I plunge back into my reading again. There is a certain sort of horror, reminiscent of a visit from a certain A. Friend, that keeps you glued to the page even though you know how the ending will turn out. You can't help but wish there was something that you could do to stop the inevitable, but in the end, you are just as helpless as Lucrece was. In a night with "No noise but owls' and wolves' death-boding cries," you may find yourself, as I did, scooting a little further back into your chair as if to hide from Tarquin's insatiable lust. However, one of my favorite parts seemed to go off on its own little tangent. I'll share it in its entirety as I feel my words cannot do it justice.
For men have marble, women waxen, minds,
And therefore are they form'd as marble will;
The weak oppress'd, the impression of strange kinds
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill:
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
No more than wax shall be accounted evil
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
I might have a backwards point of view on this, but I thought it was a rather clever excuse for girls who misbehave. "It's not my fault," we can declare. "He tricked me. I didn't know it was wrong." This isn't half so true for women today. One of the losses we suffered when we decided that we wanted to be on equal footing with men. I could go off on a tangent about sexism and how women actually want men to be sexist even when they claim that they don't. After all, sexism is just the preferential treatment of one sex over the other. Women want to have all of men's rights, but we still want them to hold the door open, buy us flowers for no reason, and pay for dinner. That's sexism if I've ever seen it.
Anyways. It's time for me to take off again. More to come later.
