Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

BY

THE INTERDISCIPLINARY SYMPOSIUM

OF

BERLIN

1/4/2020 -- 4/4/2020

In few areas do the people of today feel inferior to their predecessors and ancestors. Paradoxically, or not, the most educated among us are most prone to perceive themselves inadequate in comparison to the scholars of times past. Who has not looked upon the vast sweep of the works of a Grimm or Mommsen -- let alone Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, Mommsen's son-in-law -- and wondered how they accomplished so much so well? 

The Interdisciplinary Symposium of Berlin is pleased to announce a call for papers to be presented at its inaugural conference in April 2020. The topic will be:

Sitzfleischangst 

or 

The Roots of 21st Century Academic Impostor Syndrome 

in 

The Footnotes of 19th Century German Scholarship

Abstracts of no more than 150 words, not counting footnotes*, are to be laid at the feet of the statue of Theodor Mommsen at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin no later than tomorrow morning.

Mommsen's study

*Endnotes strictly forbidden.

Almost the touch was a caress -- TT 4.viii.714

Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee – but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing. 

(TT 4.viii.714)

This paragraph is so remarkable rhetorically that examining it in great detail will repay the effort. Let's take it a sentence at a time.

1. Gollum looked at them. (4)

2. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face.(9)

3. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. (15)

4. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. (28)

5. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee – but almost the touch was a caress. (24)

6. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.(51)

By separating the sentences as I have done, something becomes immediately clear even without counting the words. Five sentences out of the six are significantly longer than the sentences before them. But the sentences do not just get longer. They become more complicated.

The first sentence has a subject, a verb, and a prepositional phrase. The second has the same structure, but by the addition of two adjectives it evokes an archetypal figure of treachery to a benefactor -- 'Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look' (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 1.2.195). The third sentence begins exactly as the first two did (subject, verb, prepositional phrase), but adds a second coordinate clause, with four adjectives in rhythmic alliterative pairs to expand upon the first clause. In doing so, the third sentence answers the suggestion of the second: Gollum's lightless eyes reveal only weariness and age.

The fourth sentence is not just compound, but in its second part becomes complex, using three subordinate clauses ('peering...shaking...as if....') to illuminate the action of its first half. It anticipates the betrayal the reader knows is coming and seems to recapitulate silently the debate Sam overheard in the Dead Marshes.

'Then he came back’, the first four words of the fifth sentence, act like a hinge at the paragraph's center, pivoting the Tale away from treachery, and towards the repentance if not the redemption, which the complex, heavily modified second clause and the blunt, breathtaking third declare to be possible at this instant. The dash before 'but' and the emphatic displacement of 'almost' draw the reader's attention like a manicule to the difference between the 'caress' of Gollum's 'trembling hand' here and the 'long fingers flexed and twitching, claw[ing] towards [Frodo's] neck' at the end of the earlier debate (TT 4.ii.634). Here, too, the betrayal hinted at by the 'interior debate' of the fourth sentence is answered by the 'almost the touch was a caress'.

The sixth sentence sweeps up all the long years of Gollum's life into one astonishingly poignant 'fleeting moment'. It depicts that moment for the reader by means of an exceptionally long and complex sentence in the form of a condition contrary to fact. It imagines a circumstance which did not arise and a sight which was not seen, except by the reader; and yet the reader's vision of Gollum here, echoing Bilbo's vision of Gollum in The Hobbit, feels right and true. Recall that the narrator of The Lord of the Rings is usually Frodo and sometimes Sam, not some omniscient third person. As the narrator tells us, they were both asleep. How then can the reader see this if they did not? (A fascinating question I will address elsewhere.) For the moment we will content ourselves with the thought that the prose here is so rhetorically powerful that it can persuade the readers that they have seen something which, except for the last gesture, no one in the book could have seen or told of. 

__________

Here are a few nice touches to be found in this paragraph.

The first word is 'Gollum', and the last is 'thing', which in apposition with 'hobbit'.

Saying that Gollum was 'shrunken' by the years might be meant to call to mind the Cumaean Sibyl, who shrank as she lived on and on without dying.

The last four words -- 'old starved pitiable thing' -- may be scanned as a spondee, a dactyl, and a spondee, which gives a nice, rhythmic ending to the paragraph, a trick of ancient rhetoric Tolkien will have learned in school.

Review: The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse

The Aesthetics of Nostalgia: Historical Representation in Old English Verse by Renée R. Trilling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

fascinating, clear, persuasive

View all my reviews

Eärendil and Wade's Boat, Or, what do you mean you're not going to tell us the story?

Artwork copyright Donato Giancola

Alan and Shawn over at The Prancing Pony Podcast (which, if you don't already listen to it, why not?) have just published another excellent and fun new episode (# 141, "Starship Trooper") on Eärendil and the poem about him that Bilbo sings in Many Meetings (FR 2.i.233-36).

Crucial to the tale of Eärendil the Mariner is his ship, Vingelot or Vingelótë, without which Eärendil would have been stuck in a port on a western bay where lonely sailors pass the time away talking about their homes. The name Vingelot gives us a tantalizing and frustrating example of how very easily stories can be lost, likely forever.

In Chaucer's Merchant's Tale is a (for us) obscure reference to 'Wades bote' (IV E 1424). Wade, son of Weyland the Smith, evidently had many stories told about him in the Middle Ages, of which virtually all trace has vanished. The boat was named Guingelot, which is even closer to Vingelot than appears at first glance, since in Norman French the word would have been pronounced something like Wingelot or Wingelok (Skeat).

In his 1598 edition of Chaucer Thomas Speight commented upon this line, and Thomas Tyrwhitt in his 1775 edition was scathing about Speight's neglect, as quoted below:

Ver. 9298. Wades bote] Upon this Mr. Speght remarks, as follows: "Concerning Wade and his bote called Guingelot, as also his straunge exploits in the same, because the matter is long and fabulous, I passe it over." Tantamne rem tam negligenter?* Mr. Speght probably did not foresee, that Posterity would be as much obliged to him for a little of this fabulous matter concerning Wade and his bote, as for the gravest of his annotations. The story of Wade is mentioned again by our author in his Troilus, iii. 615. 

He songe, she playde, he tolde a tale of Wade.

It is there put proverbially for any romantic history; but the allusion in the present passage to Wades bote can hardly be explained, without a more particular knowledge of his adventures, than we are now likely ever to attain.

Tolkien, too, had many ideas about the 'straunge exploits' of Eärendil in his ship, the vast majority of which are known only, as with Wade, through comments and outlines (Lost Tales 2.252-277) and some thirty lines of poetry, in which Tuor, the father of Eärendil, is briefly called Wade (Lays 142):

'But Wade of the Helsings    wearyhearted'                     

 Upon which Christopher Tolkien comments (Lays 144):

The likeness of Guingelot to Wingelot is sufficiently striking; but when we place together the facts that Wingelot was Earendel's ship, that Earendel was Tuor's son, that Tuor was peculiarly associated with the sea, and that here 'Wade of the Helsings' stands in the place of Tuor, coincidence is ruled out. Wingelot was derived from Wade's boat, Guingelot as certainly, I think, as was Earendel from the Old English figure (this latter being a fact expressly stated by my father, II. 309).

Why my father should have intruded 'Wade of the Helsings' into the verses at this point is another question. It may conceivably have been unintentional - the words Wada Haelsingum were running in his mind (though in that case one might expect that he would have struck the line out and not merely written another line against it as an alternative): but at any rate the reason why they were running in his mind is clear, and this possibility in no way diminishes the demonstrative value of the line that Wingelot was derived from Guingelot, and that there was a connection of greater significance than the mere taking over of a name -- just as in the case of Earendel.

  

* 'so great a matter [handled] so negligently?'

Review: The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent book, well-written and told in a compelling way. The narrator has a distinct voice and carries the tale in a way that most first-person narrators fail to do. She was interesting in herself, rather than merely interesting to herself. Most first person narrators make me think of Auden's line: 'Oh, miserable wicked me, how interesting I am!' Not Offred, who grows more interesting as her tale goes on, and who in time made me forget the question of how her society came to this point. The last page of her narrative reminded me strongly of the end of Matheson's I am Legend.

I found, however, that the anticlimactic 'Historical Note' that follows immediately afterwards severely lessens the impact of Offred's last scene. For me, it left a powerful moment with the aftertaste of disappointment. I would suggest not reading the 'Historical Note' at once, but let the ending sink in and resonate.

View all my reviews