Purple Bullfinch Redux

[purplebullfinch]

Breakfast before the Men’s Championship.

Honoring the Brit who won three consecutive Wimbledon titles in the 1930s, in a very un-Wimbledon non-white color.

[purplebullfinch]

Many thanks to @juliansummerhayes for recommending this riveting account of the long gestation and eventual publication of a modernist landmark, a book that uses the history of the poem’s composition to illuminate the complicated working relationship between Eliot and Ezra Pound and the wider constellation of writers around them, Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and others.

What I enjoyed most was the way the book brings the post–Great War literary worlds of London and, to a lesser degree, Paris so vividly to life: a small, brilliant, often difficult circle of artists arguing, collaborating, and reinventing literature in the aftermath of a conscience-shocking tragedy. An engrossing biography not only of a poem, but of the cultural moment that made it possible.

Thank you, friend.

[purplebullfinch]

It’s (Arthur) Fery Friday!

#SW19

[purplebullfinch]

It was decades ago now, but I once got to visit the AELTC, Wimbledon.

Someday hope to make it to Melbourne for AO, to complete my own Grand Slam tour.

[purplebullfinch]

Chilling tonight, with this quintet’s first release as Return to Forever.

Recommended, of course.

Doesn’t seem like “Dark Side of the Moon,” or Zep’s “Houses of the Holy” could’ve been released in the same year, 1973, but they were.

Suppose @serpentinesheldonserpentine was spinning Roxy Music’s “For Your Pleasure.”

[purplebullfinch]

Happiest of birthdays to the indispensable @causticgrip.

[purplebullfinch]

“Yes, that’s the finale.”

Rousing aerial display at the Club to close out a sunny, steamy Fourth.

Came in first loser in the mixed-doubles Pickleball tournament…to my wife and her partner (she won’t play alongside me, as I “don’t try hard enough…you know, you could be really good, if you’d take it seriously”). Like I’d ever hear the end of it, if we’d’ve beat them.

After two hours of play on a fry-an-egg-on-it hot hard court, sat around drinking on the tennis terrace, before moving the party to the pool, where I got a bit underserved, so went home to let the puppy out, while the group were off to exercise their competitiveness on the croquet courts.

Had some thunder and heat lightning, but it never rained, so the barbecue and fireworks went off without delay.

Looking forward to a day of Wimbledon and FIFA World Cup.

Hope y’all had a safe and restful holiday, and maybe said a prayer of gratitude for how good we all have it.

[txtokenman]

[purplebullfinch]

Sophie is an immediate reblog. If only she’d stopped at the first line; well, one can dream…anyway: Happy Birthday, USA.

[purplebullfinch]

Had a couple-three weeks of rain, but now a week-or-so of unrelieved heat; these ping-pong purple globe amaranth just don’t care.

[purplebullfinch]

A trend surely to give @serpentinesheldonserpentine the vapors.

#beta male ascendancy

[purplebullfinch]

Harry Kane being Harry Kane!

Extraordinary performance by the Captain.

[purplebullfinch]

“‘Someday My Prince Will Come', taken at a gliding waltz, is the most unmistakeable echo of Jarrett's debt to Bill Evans, and Jarrett's long and progressively intensifying solo on the title track after an elegantly twirling 'Autumn Leaves' is one of those breathtaking improvised accumulations for which the pianist is so revered."

— John Fordham, The Guardian (2003)

[purplebullfinch]

A Tumblr friend from across the pond recently recommended an engrossing and illuminating work of nonfiction. Coupled with my anticipation for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film adaptation of “The Odyssey,” it has drawn me back into the deep waters of James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

Returning to the ‘Nestor’ episode, I’m struck again by Joyce’s irony. Homer’s Nestor is the archetypal wise counselor, sought out by kings and heroes alike for his seasoned judgment. Joyce’s Mr. Deasy, by contrast, is his inversion: a pompous, self-satisfied bigot whose unsolicited opinions are quietly endured by Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego, with barely concealed contempt.

Joyce’s satire works because headmaster Deasy possesses certainty without wisdom, convinced of both the correctness of his judgments and their value to others. Yet Homer’s Nestor was not revered because his counsel invariably produced successful outcomes; indeed, his advice often preceded disaster, including the chain of events that culminated in Patroclus’s death at Hector’s hands.

For the Greeks, aretē, virtue or excellence, was fundamentally a quality of character rather than a tally of results. Wisdom was measured by the soundness of one’s judgment, not by the accidents of fortune.

Joyce understood a distinction that our own “bottom-line-up-front” age too often forgets: wisdom and success are not synonymous, and confusing the two impoverishes both literature and life.

[purplebullfinch]

Late morning walk around the neighborhood, along the Bay, with an influencer…of me, at least.

[purplebullfinch]

“It's hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its challenge.

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.

But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.

This makes it hard to plan the day."

— E.B. White, NYT, July 1969

[purplebullfinch]

Warning that parties of bridesmaids are about…one assumes.

[purplebullfinch]

Y’all stress too much.

Remember that “The Waste Land,” written in the wake of the moral monstrosity of the mechanized killing of The Great War, closes on a note of hope.

In the final section, “What the Thunder Said,” we are implored to live a life of charity (Datta) and self control (Damyata) in sympathy for the suffering of our fellow man (Dyadhvam), not one of solipsistic isolation or existential estrangement.

And in its concluding benediction, we are reassured: Peace, peace, peace.

Here, Eliot references the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Philippians (4:6-7), encouraging believers to release their burdens and to trust in the intrinsic peace of God’s presence, a foundation of steadfastness in times of seeming chaos:

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”