The Boo in Books: Storytelling Magic

Last night I attended a stage production of one of my favourite seasonal reads, Bram Stoker's Dracula, in the form of Jonathan Harker & Dracula, an one man tour-de-force re-enactment of the classic novel. 

I was a little skeptical as to how it would play out  - but no need - the performance was absolutely magnificent, spellbinding even. Better than I ever expected. Because it revolved mainly on the magic premise of authentic, dramatic, impassioned storytelling. 

The stage itself was sparse - the only props a red velvet chair and chaise lounge which would double as coffins and carriages, ships and horses when needed. But it didn't matter. The performance was more than enlivened by the background screens and sounds setting the scenes - from wolves howling under moonlight to the shadowy interior of Dracula's castle, an insane asylum cell, a ship at sea and the rocky outcrops of Transylvania. Each of the many characters that people Stoker's novel were brought to life by actor Gerard McCarthy so astutely with just the basic aid of lighting and accents, that there was no need for costume changes or other actors. Although the production was minimal, the execution was brilliant.

The audience's disbelief was well suspended from the first few minutes when Harker's coach traverses across Transylvania: a land of darkness, howling wolves, superstitious villagers and mysterious coachmen. And from there, the imagination constructed the world of the narrative being told us. We were in the story from the get-go and reluctant to leave it at the interval at which I overheard someone remark: 'I'm a nervous wreck!' -  a testament to the story's (and our storyteller's) captivating power.

The whole performance, which stayed true to the book entirely (a welcome first for a Stoker adaptation) was a triumph. It just goes to show you the power of a good story and a good storyteller. I found myself thinking throughout, if this were a film we were watching, would it be as good? As believable? As atmospheric? As completely absorbing? No way. With movies, there is always a distancing disbelief. A look away from the screen and we know we're in fantasy land. From the moments the credits and score roll we know we are being ushered into make-believe land. But not so with storytelling. It is far more immediate and dramatically direct. Its roots in our culture are too powerful I suppose to dismiss it as mere entertainment. It mimics reality too well. There are truths within storytelling that may prove unfathomable in another medium, but not in spoken word form. It has a special power to hook us.

Stoker's classic gothic tale in all its spookiness in this performance, had taken on new life; or rather come newly to life. I loved every minute of it and even though I knew the plot well and always what was going to happen next, I was in a state of tense suspense the whole way through. There was no straying from the fixation it had - no one left the theatre for a bathroom break during the performance, no one spoke or fidgeted or ate or drank or even moved (now, what movie can claim those feats?). There was one point midway through that I became aware of the suspended state we were in - the simple act of telling a story had submerged us in it. Magic. Like Dracula's victims, we were entranced, unable to look away. 

Dracula itself, the novel, to many, is an outdated Victorian yarn by now, not in the least scary what with all those gory vampiric entities filling up our minds today. But I beg to differ. The horror movie genre relies on shock tactics, on visceral reactions to graphic imagery and violence; the book genre relies more on a building-up of atmosphere, a creepiness that just can't be shaken a long time after reading. It is more affecting in that it is articulated in detail and is open to personal interpretation, which may be far worse than any movie director's. Dracula is one such example. Its creepiness and strangely 'Other' atmosphere is perfectly rendered, enough to rival any modern day piece. The atmosphere evoked at the beginning of the novel, while Jonathan Harker is traveling through a strange land to meet an even stranger person, effectively establishes the setting and feel of the novel:

 "I struck a match and by its flame looked at my watch; it was within a few minutes of midnight. This gave me a sort of shock, for I suppose the general superstition about midnight was increased by my recent experiences. I waited with a sick feeling of suspense. Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road - a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night..."

        

Maybe the creepiest passage in the whole book follows shortly after when Harker, kept against his will in Dracula's castle for a few days, beholds a very strange incident when gazing out his window at night:

"What I saw was the Count's head coming out from the window. I did not see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and movement of his back and arms. In any case, I could not mistake the hands which I had so many opportunities of studying. I was at first interested and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner. But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over that dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings. At first I could not believe my eyes. I thought it was some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow; but I kept looking, and it could be no delusion. I saw the fingers and toes grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a wall..."  

Of course this scene could be rendered by special effects in a film, but runs the risk of appearing silly or ridiculous. But in the book, where everything is taken at face value, where we rely on the narrator (and in this novel, most especially so, since Harker's voice is one of fact and logic, the epistolary structure reinforcing this) the scene comes as a shock, in its otherness and juxtaposition with reality. I don't know about you but it sends a shiver up my spine everytime I read it. And to hear and watch it re-enacted, added a whole new level of creepy. There was no background image for shock effect, just the word themselves carried by an utterly disgusted and fearful Harker were enough to conjure the grotesque feeling this induces. (That's another thing about the performance - Jonathan Harker became more of a presence. We thought more of him as a real person and not just our narrator; in the book he was our eyes and ears, here he was our heart and our hope, our vital link to the familiar.)  

The fact that Count Dracula is not present for the whole middle of the book, lurking in the background as a shadow, literally (and bats, storms and moonlight), mentioned in references and appearing in brief cameo moments recited in letters and diaries - ratchets up the fear factor considerably. We are left to imagine his comings-and-goings and jumpily await an inevitable confrontation.  There is no gore in this book, no gratuitous violence, no jump-out boo moments, but the creepy atmosphere is relentless, set mainly at night and wandering in and out of reality and dreams and different character's accounts.  It all makes for a kind of surreal effect, where the storyteller has whisked us into his world expertly. The letters and diary extracts in the novel give the illusion of reality, helping to create a very believable world. At the end of the show last night, a surprising added fictional extra provided the final slice of reality biting: a letter from Jonathan Harker to Bram Stoker telling his story, hinting that the novel was composed on the basis of this correspondence. For a moment, I could nearly have believed it, ha!

When I was younger, for Halloween enjoyment, myself, my sister and cousin used to scare ourselves by reading horror tales aloud in candlelight. (Reading them ourselves, wasn't near as atmospheric.) There was something about the words on the page being spoken, incantations almost, that brought them more to life, and the goosebumps to our skin. Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' was a frequent favourite, the tense atmosphere bubbling to boiling point when read aloud. I can still, to this day, remember the chills. Perhaps storytelling is a kind of spell then, for there is magic in the result.

 

Another gothic staple that never gets old of course is Edgar Allan Poe's narrative poem 'The Raven'. Now this gloomy piece of gothic grandeur translated to film would never work, but read aloud is quite the spine-tingler. The language, the rhyme and the rhythm all work together to create the mournful beguiling atmosphere. I found a version read by Christopher Lee (posted below) which is perfectly goosebump-inducing. The background music too highlights the dramatic darkness of the scene and eeriness of the setting. Do give it a listen - preferably in a darkened setting. It's the next best thing to Bram Stoker I think.

Happy Halloween!


~Siobhán


*If you enjoyed this post you might also like these previous ones:

 Spooky Reads: Scary or Not?
 Vampires 101

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Confessions of a Bibliophile (Part I)

 

It's September. A perfect month for talking about books, books and more books. 

I've extolled the virtues of reading many times here, but now I want to turn to books themselves.  Because yes, I am a bibliophile, a bibliophile being: a lover of books, one who loves to read, admire and collect books.

I love books. Reading them, collecting them, being next to them, sniffing them, admiring them. Books are an obsession to me. I must have them. I buy at least one every week. (Truthfully, most weeks it's two or three...)  I simply don't feel right if I don't buy one! Even though my to-read pile is approaching dangerous heights, the week is not complete if I don't add to it. And for every book I purchase, I find ten others that I would like to get! It's an endless but enjoyable quest. 

Buying a book never creates guilt, not like say, buying clothes would. Books are just so easy to buy, unlike the physical exertions of buying new garments. Although I am not averse to stylish wearing and a big believer in au mode - fashion builds you from the outside, but books build you from the inside. If you want to invest in a personality, buy books. If you want to furnish your mind, buy books. If you want to nourish your soul, buy books. Who knows how one will transform your life view, shed light on subjects you never even knew existed and present thoughts and feelings to you in a exhilarating helter-skelter of words, new worlds at the flick of a few pages. Kipling was right - words are the most powerful drugs known to mankind.

I love being in the presence of books.  In a strange space I gravitate towards the bookshelves to regain my familiar equilibrium. Houses, schools, workplaces, dentists, doctors. Books okay the space by adding character, warmth, meaning. Books are clues that lives are being lived. Books are signs that people there are not immune to immersing themselves in a bubbling hot-tub of life through literature's lens. 

And what is a bibliophile's favourite place in the world? Why a bookstore of course. Bookstores are hallowed ground to us. Like an oasis in a desert is a bookstore in a busy city centre. You can hush the world for a while by stepping through its doors to a quiet, contemplative sanctuary. A bookstore is the one shop I always find myself hoping to go to, a welcome destination. You don't have to buy - you can happily browse. You will always find treasure. Many's a hard day of mine was softened by the serendipitous discovery of a poem by random selection in a bookshop. It feels like sustenance to drop into a bookstore amidst all other shops.

I could spend hours in a bookstore. I feel I among friends there, inanimate ones yes, but none the lesser. If you listen carefully, you can hear the whisperings of all the great authors on the shelves. It is instantly reviving. I remember who I am there, I remember lots of things I didn't know I'd forgotten. A bookstore is like a museum of life, a magic vault of information, an oasis of calm and certainty, of rapt attention on the world. Where else would you find such a place tell me? 

My favourite place at university was between the literature bookshelves of the library (the James Joyce library of UCD - right).  It was like a church, its many quiet cloisters and corners home to devoted students. The unique hush of an academic library engenders a sense of mighty awe so heady that every time I walked among these shelves the overwhelming feeling  I had was respect - here I was in the presence of greatness. I would often sit there on a stool, or the floor (students are flexible when it comes to reading positions) and wile away an hour browsing and reading. Not always for a pending assignment or the course reading list, just reading in a space precisely and piously made for that very act. In a church you kneel and pray, in a library, you kneel and read. 

Some of the books were like artifacts - old vellum yellowed velvet-to-the-touch pages and big musty dusty hardbacks that felt like holy relics to be handled with the utmost care. Here was a record I always thought, looking around at the towering shelves, hard copy proof, of the human race's attempt to interpret life for centuries. I often think, if ever extra terrestrials come to earth, surely they will be fascinated most by our hugely astonishing feat of noting down our behaviour, every aspect of it, in every way, from time untold in books? If they want to know about us, they have plenty of resources to plunder in libraries. No need for abductions and poking and prodding procedures. You want to know how humans live, who we are? Visit a library. Every iota of life is documented there. 

 

A true mark of a bibliophile I fear is ranking suitors in terms of whether they read or not.  I tried to explain this to a non-reading friend once, her mistakenly thinking it was a trite point, akin to the likes of a petty hobby mismatch. No, NO - reading is much much more than that. Unfortunately, my protests were an instant reaction heart's hyperbole, but now I'm much better equipped to define it. Books are props of life, not of pastimes. They are proof that their owner is someone wholly devoted to living life. To understanding it, delving into it, appreciating it. I will never back down from my prognosis that people who don't read are of a different species to those who do - not inferior, but different in soul structure.  

We fellow readers click better, albeit able to 'read' the other better. We vibrate on the same wavelength. We uphold the right and might of the imagination to transform reality's deadpan stalemate. We believe in stories. In narrative arcs, in subtexts, plot twists, thinking aloud and following our hearts. We talk the same talk. We walk the same meandering, keenly curious, sensitive walk through life. It's only fitting that a life partner is one you would want to match and communicate perfectly with? (Plus I would dearly like somebody with the ability of reading to me in older age.) Ergo, I don't date non-readers. Or, as Haruki Murakami puts it:

To qualify as a bibliophile you must be in love with the physicality of a book. Check. I love the sight of books, I love the touch of of books, I especially love the smell of books - the old musty ones and the liquorice new shiny textbooks. That's why I don't and won't use Kindles. Maybe this is the difference betwen a reader and a true book-lover. For some avid readers, the book is merely an item on which the words are presented. They fold pages, spill coffee on them, sit on them, bend them, fling them, forget them. A Kindle is a happy reprieve to holiday book packing and everyday lugging. But where is the physical magic in a Kindle? A bland computer screen?! No ruffling pages, soft to the touch, imprinted with your thoughts as you turn them? I love that quote floating about Pinterest about how a book changes its appearance when read - it becomes fatter, the pages swollen somehow from absorbing the reader's self. It is as if the reader has breathed life into it and left a little of it there in the process. 
 
No Kindles for me. I love holding a real book in my hands, the hills and valleys of the pages read and to come, the suspense of turning the page, the font, the smell, the feel of the book as it moulds itself to my grip. I love stopping every once in a while to look at the cover and the blurbs, run my fingers over it. I love skimming back to favourite passages, underlining them, sticking a bookmark proudly in a page to mark the achievement of the day. A book's personality is present in its physical make-up, to reduce it to a screen is an act of sabotage. In this digital age would it not be wise to retain something of the traditional mores? An object that has been in existence for years and so carefully wrought? Would the Book of Kells have been so meticulously laboured over if it was to be displayed on a Kindle? Would you rather read Shakespeare on a clinical Times New Roman font screen or a hand-printed vellum edition where the ink has bled into the page, accentuating the heartfelt sentiment of his lovelorn sonnets and making every line resonant with longing? A book is for life, for adorning shelves as it does your mind, a beautiful bundle of art; a Kindle is for a plane ride or a pocket, a bland mechanical package. Tough choice.

And finally I know I qualify for bibliophile status because I see books as friends. As my collection grows I rarely part with old books to make room for the new.  It's like giving away a friend the betrayal is so tangible. I love to be surrounded by books, read and unread ones. They're like insulation I suppose. Against a callous, indifferent world, an empty surrounding. Books beg to differ you see. Books say: everything matters. There are narratives everywhere and everyone is a story unfolding. They fill life with a bustling significance. Books in a home are a must. Who needs wallpaper or carpet even for that matter when you can line every bare space with them? A sanctum of knowledge at your fingertips. Portals to other worlds at every step. 

Other characteristics of a bibliophile: I get very excited when conversation turns to books. I get over-excited at the mere mention of books in general. I religiously read book reviews. I'm addicted to Goodreads. I have an ever-expanding Pinterest board on reading, some of the pins I've shared with you here (Books & Reading if you're interested.) I love quoting from books regularly. I love chattering with people who read. I feel a soul connection to people who share the same favourite books as me. I love sharing and swapping books with fellow readers. I love recommending books. I see a new rave-reviewed book release as an event, a visit to the bookstore as an adventure and Amazon as a wish-granting genie. I find people reading in public to be one of the most attractive, rebellious, eloquent sights ever. I dream of owning a bookstore. I dream of owning more books. Of a home library with levels and ladders. Oh and of course, of one day writing a book, or a few, the way I suppose some people dream of getting married. Yeah, that would be a nice happy ever after. 

 

How about you? Any dear bibliophiles care to share your hysteria? Please do! 

Stay tuned for more book blogs, especially now that we are in the season of reading. 



~Siobhán 

On The Harvest Moon

 

'The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum...' 

~ Ted Hughes, 'Harvest Moon'

The harvest moon is lighting up our skies tonight and a beautiful moon it is.  The 'harvest moon' of course the name given to September's full moon, the moon closest to the Autumn equinox and the moon closest to many a moonlover's heart. 

Why? Well because the harvest moon is more often than not the brightest, biggest moon of the year.  Not to mention the most golden in colour. The harvest moon is the moon that will stop you in your step to pronounce an emphatic WOW. 

Its metaphorical connotations also, are too heady to ignore. This is the moon that oversees the seasonal shift from summer to autumn, the golden goodbye to summer, the watching reaper of the harvest, the light of letting go. Neil Young's popular song 'Harvest Moon' captures these aspects all so well - the end of a love affair is acknowledged under a harvest moon's light - the regret, the lingering love, as well as the acceptance. Reap and sow, reap and sow - the eternal rhythm of the seasons is captured in this one moon.

Lots of writers have fallen under the spell of the harvest moon.  Thoreau captures the dual sense of the moon being one of letting go and looking forward here: 

'In a mild night when the harvest or hunter's moon shines unobstructedly, the houses in our village, whatever architect they may have had by day, acknowledge only a master. The village street is then as wild as the forest. New and old things are confounded. I know not whether I am sitting on the ruins of a wall, or on the material which is to compose a new one...' 

'New and old things are confounded.' The new and the old mix and mingle in a sense of magic of possibility and melancholy of past. The harvest moon is the one that rises at the exact same time as when the sun sets. This is what gives it its orange golden, even sometimes red colour. It embodies both an ending and a beginning. 

Longfellow also alludes to this sense of loss and gain in his poem 'Harvest Moon': 

Harvest Moon - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the Harvest Moon!  On gilded vanes
  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!
  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,
  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!
All things are symbols: the external shows
  Of Nature have their image in the mind,
  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;
The song-birds leave us at the summer's close,
  Only the empty nests are left behind,
  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

Longfellow clearly acknowledges here that 'all things are symbols: the external shows/of Nature have their image in the mind.'  There is a sense of lament at things being 'gone' - the summer and the birds - but also, of things to come, 'the pipings of the quail.'  The tone of loss in the poem is offset by this last line, this curious buoyant sense of new things on the horizon. The harvest moon straddling two seasons, is a symbol, a motif, of the dichotomy of feelings this time of the year arises in us. It is the perfect moon to hang our hopes and regrets on, and as such, especially more meaningful in our consciousness. 

 

Ted Hughes captures the magnitude of the harvest moon brilliantly in his poem 'The Harvest Moon':

The Harvest Moon - Ted Hughes

The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.

So people can't sleep,
So they go out where elms and oak trees keep
A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.
The harvest moon has come!

And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep
Stare up at her petrified, while she swells
Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing
Closer and closer like the end of the world.

Till the gold fields of stiff wheat
Cry `We are ripe, reap us!' and the rivers
Sweat from the melting hills.

Descriptions of the harvest moon as a 'vast balloon' and 'a gold doubloon' are simple but absolutely precise. I'll never forget the first time I saw a harvest moon rising over the hills. It was as if another planet had sailed by. You know in Star Trek and the sci-fi like where you see many huge otherworldly moons in the sky? Well it was like that. Huge and gold and pulsing, or rather 'booming' would be the more appropriate word as Hughes has it here. I just love that line, all regal and declarative: 'The harvest moon has come, /booming softly through the heavens, like a bassoon. /And the earth replies all night like a deep drum.'  It just sums it up doesn't it? Our response to it is automatic, subconscious, ongoing and answering. 

The poem ends with a refrain of the wheat (this is a children's poem by Hughes, but no less for it) - 'We are ripe, reap us!' reminiscent of the whole idea of timing, of things happening in their own time, the natural cycle not just of the seasons but of our emotions too. 

The last poem I'll mention is Carl Sandburg's take on the harvest moon. It encapsulates the mystery and magic of the harvest moon like no other. It too has a sense of the seasonal change - in the midst of the summer roses the approaching red of autumn leaves is 'flagrant' and 'lurks in the dusk'. There is even a mention of death in the poem, 'the gray mocker' but it whispers, under the moonlight as a 'beautiful friend.' And the lovely last line is perhaps a definition of what specific kind of magic this moon has to offer:

'Under the Harvest Moon' -

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

 

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

'Love, with little hands, comes and touches you with a thousand memories, and asks you beautiful unanswerable questions...' Is that what the harvest moon means? Is that what the harvest moon does? Is it a catalyst for love, a motif of love? A medallion of memory? Are these questions beautiful because they are unanswerable? Or are they unanswerable because they are beautiful? And what exactly are these questions the moon arises in us?  

That depends I suppose. Each to their own. But I find myself agreeing with this sentiment. In my experience of the harvest moon, its ability to inspire contemplation on  life, love, time, our place in the universe, yes I think this is true. It's a reflective time of the year, and to reflect is to look back with love, is it not? By the benevolent light of the harvest moon, everything glows warm and gold. 

Well that's what I make of this poem, but to be honest, its mystery remains just that little bit impenetrable. But that's what I like about it. In fact, that's what I love about it. Its magic is resistant to interpretation, to analysis - just like the moon itself really. 

 

Moon Goddess ~ Josephine Wall 

This year's harvest moon is also extra special in that it is a Supermoon, the last of the year's three supermoon. A supermoon is a larger-than-normal-size moon, when the moon appears closer to the earth because of a number of reasons. (You can read about it here: What is a Supermoon?) And here are some amazing photographs of this year's harvest moon from around the globe: The Last Supermoon - The Guardian and Shine on Harvest Moon.

Happy harvest moon musing,

~ Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: Bukowski Wisdom

'There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep. it will make you stride like a tiger...'

I love this line especially from Bukowski's declaration. 'There is no losing in writing...' There isn't. It is beneficial, it is all becoming. Even if you are never published, never famous, writing will still be there, will still re-make you and bring the world into clearer focus. It is a gift, a privilege, a power. It will make you 'stride like a tiger' down the terrain of life (yes.) And although I've never thought about it before, the idea of toes 'laughing' as we sleep is just fantastic. Fingers thrum, heart bebops, brain flicker-flashes when you're on a roll, so why wouldn't toes be laughing too!

For more of Bukowski's tough-guy hard-earned writerly wisdom, click on his name in the Labels below this post. He has a lot to say on the craft and separating the real writers from the just-a-notion ones. All straight-up to-the-point talk. And all of it tried, tested and true. 

~ Siobhán

Summer Shorts: Hello August

 

 “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

~ Natalie Babbitt, 'Tuck Everlasting.'

A short post this, but the above quote is just too good not to share here. I used to think August was the end of summer, nothing but its last dying amber embers. The sliding descent towards the routine of September, a month for kindling regret. Until I came across this quote that is. The reprieve of this first week sounds tantalising, doesn't it? What a wonderful way of looking at it!

I admit I have been largely absent from here for the past few months. A combination of sunny days and other priorities (which have included reading - lots of yummy summer reading!) have been the reasons (not to mention the fact that the longer you stay away - the harder it is to come back.) But I have noticed too that responses to this blog have fallen off considerably. Maybe I need to blog more often. Snazz up my content. Or maybe it is just a seasonal thing... with a quietude falling on the blogosphere.

Anyway, I hope to be more prolific this month. There are just so many things I want to write about! And I hope to maybe hear from some of you then.

Enjoy the last of the summer!

~ Siobhán 

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright...'

Did you know that yesterday was Global Tiger Day? A day designated as of a few years ago to raise awareness for tiger conservation. Sadly, their numbers are dwindling and they are close to the verge of extinction.

Tigers are magnificent animals aren't they? The most admired of all the big cats, they hold a mesmeric fascination for many people, myself included. There's something so mysterious about them, beautiful, intense, and fearsome. They are animals of myth, of metaphor, of meaning, animals of life and death, of great beauty and simultaneously, great terror. 
 

And where can we experience these animals in more detail? Why, literature of course. Nature documentaries tell us the facts about tigers; literature, the myths. Tigers often feature in fiction, majestic in their metaphorical appeal. From Shere Khan in Kipling's classic 'The Jungle Book', to modern day Richard Parker, the shipwrecked tiger in 'Life of Pi', tigers are an intriguing addition to narratives. What I want to do here is mention a few books and poems that I found particularly memorable.

Tigers in Red Weather - Ruth Padel 
"Whatever artist dreamed up the tiger face exaggerated the eyes. White butterfly patches wing up like higher, bigger eyes above surprisingly small real ones of ochre. Black hierogliphics in these patches vary from tiger to tiger. Over his right eye is a blurry black triangle with three crescent moons above. Over the left a worm of black flame."
 
First off, it's poet's Ruth Padel's brilliant part travelogue, part poetic reflection on notes from her journey/quest to Asia to understand more about tigers. The book chronicles the history of tigers in their diverse habitats, ranging from their symbolic importance to cultural influence.  This unique book offers a detailed analysis of the tiger, in its rapidly changing habitat, in culture, in literature and what is most arresting, in the author's own personal life. The chapters are interwoven with a personal narrative arc in which Padel explores her own fascination with tigers and the wild in the light of a bitter break-up. The book strives to answer - explore rather -  the question of why tigers fascinate us, and what this fascination means. It is a book like no other; genre-defying and filled with passion and poetry.  To read it is to delve into the world of tigers: to wade knee-deep in Asian forests, in staggering conservation facts and figures, in fantastic myths and legends (did you know that some Eastern religions revere the tiger as a god?), into the fecund poetry of the wild, and in the process, of the heart. 

The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht

“In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers.” 

This book by debut young author Tea Obreht uses the symbol of a tiger in a most compelling manner.  The novel is set in a Balkan country of modern day, and the story is one about death, in a world marked by old legends and war wounds, love and loss. The tiger appears in the story as a sign of power, of strength, befriending the abused wife of a brutal butcher, the seeming key part in the complex riddle of the plot. It's up to us to interpret it, but what the tiger means is never obvious, it is always changing, like a mirage or a myth from the moment it appears in the novel - escaping from a bombed zoo to lurk in the background of the story, only to appear in crucial moments and hasten the climax of this confusing, yet affecting story. 

Life of Pi - Yann Martel  "Richard Parker rose unsteadily to his feet on the tarpaulin, eyes blazing as they met mine, ears laid tight to this head, all weapons drawn. His head was the size and colour of the lifebuoy, with teeth."Perhaps the most famous and favourite animal in fiction is Richard Parker, the 400lb Bengal tiger that ends up in a lifeboat with sole survivor Pi in this magical realist tale from Yann Martel. The book's original spark revolves on the presence of this character and unlike other fictions that feature tigers, this tiger is a mainstay in the story, not fleeting or lurking, but in the main stage of the lifeboat for two thirds of the novel, up front and scarily personal! Richard Parker is not just a plot device but a fierce frightening character that keeps the pages turning and the suspense wire-tight. If you want to experience a tiger in close-up quarters, read this. And if you want to read a swashbuckling adventure tale with a spiritual centre, read this. And if you want to read a really good book, read this!

 

In poetry, I suppose William Blake's 'The Tyger' (above) is the most well-known poem about tigers, the image of the animal with its 'fearful symmetry' 'burning bright' in the poem a suggestion of the fearful presence and allure of evil. But, I want to turn your attention to some other poems. (You can read  the typescript of 'The Tyger' on my Poem a Day blog today.)The first one by Ruth Padel, 'Tiger Drinking at Forest Pool' is the end result of  her tiger quest, and is found as a preface to 'Tigers in Red Weather'. It is both dramatic and beautiful, just like the animal itself, offering flitting glimpses of the tiger, and in these images, everything it represents. The poem fittingly captures the essence of the tiger as described in her book: mysterious, majestic, mythic.   Tiger Drinking at Forest Pool - Ruth Padel Water,moonlight, danger, dream.                                                                                                      Bronze urn angled on a tree root: one Slash of light, then gone. A red moon Seen through clouds, or almost seen. Treasure found but lost, flitting betweenThe worlds of lost and found. An unjust lawRepealed, a wish come true, a lifelongSadness healed. Haven, in the mindTo anyone hurt by littleness. A prayerFor the moment, saved; treachery forgiven.Flame of the crackle-glaze tangle, amberReflected in grey milk-jade. An old songRemembered, long debt paid. A painting on silk, which may fade.    The second is a metaphysical classic from South American poet Borges, where the tiger begins as a symbol, but then is interrupted by the realisation of its real self, the 'deadly jewel' that stalks the forests in Bengal and Sumatra, as being superior to the one of thought. The poem presents a conflict between the imagiantion and reality, the mind's pursuits as opposed to the physical world, essentially the tension involved in writing - can we writers ever note down life as it truly is? It ends cryptically with the poet talking of the need to find a 'third' tiger, one that is neither symbolic or real, an elusive creature no doubt.  The Other Tiger - Jorge Luis Borges A tiger comes to mind. The twilight hereExalts the vast and busy Library

And seems to set the bookshelves back in gloom;
Innocent, ruthless, bloodstained, sleek
It wanders through its forest and its day
Printing a track along the muddy banks
Of sluggish streams whose names it does not know
(In its world there are no names or past
Or time to come, only the vivid now)
And makes its way across wild distances
Sniffing the braided labyrinth of smells
And in the wind picking the smell of dawn
And tantalizing scent of grazing deer;
Among the bamboo's slanting stripes I glimpse
The tiger's stripes and sense the bony frame
Under the splendid, quivering cover of skin.
Curving oceans and the planet's wastes keep us
Apart in vain; from here in a house far off
In South America I dream of you,
Track you, O tiger of the Ganges' banks.
It strikes me now as evening fills my soul
That the tiger addressed in my poem
Is a shadowy beast, a tiger of symbols
And scraps picked up at random out of books,
A string of labored tropes that have no life,
And not the fated tiger, the deadly jewel
That under sun or stars or changing moon
Goes on in Bengal or Sumatra fulfilling
Its rounds of love and indolence and death.
To the tiger of symbols I hold opposed
The one that's real, the one whose blood runs hot
As it cuts down a herd of buffaloes,
And that today, this August third, nineteen
Fifty-nine, throws its shadow on the grass;
But by the act of giving it a name,
By trying to fix the limits of its world,
It becomes a fiction not a living beast,
Not a tiger out roaming the wilds of earth.

We'll hunt for a third tiger now, but like
The others this one too will be a form
Of what I dream, a structure of words, and not
The flesh and one tiger that beyond all myths
Paces the earth. I know these things quite well,
Yet nonetheless some force keeps driving me
In this vague, unreasonable, and ancient quest,
And I go on pursuing through the hours

Another tiger, the beast not found in verse.  My last choice comes from Wallace Stevens, 'Disillusionment of Ten O' Clock.' In it is the phrase that became the title of Padel's book - 'tigers in red weather.' The association, from a mere mention, is of tigers with the wilder side of life. In the poem they seem to be motifs of the go-getting ambition and passion that lies within us all - that flip side of life that we all hunger after.  Disillusionment of Ten O' Clock - Wallace Stevens The houses are haunted

By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers

In red weather.   It's clear that the tiger is an animal that appeals to all and yet can mean so many different things. What do tigers represent to you? To me it's a fierce kind of freedom, a fearlessness, a wild ultimatum to live, a vibrancy of being alive, a certainty of spirit, a ferocious resolve.  In Life of Pi at one point, with the seas and skies swirling around him, everything in monocolour, Pi notes how his eye and resolve is drawn to the colour of Richard Parker - the same colour as the lifeboat, a vibrant colour of life, of survival, of wanting and fighting to live. There's also that 'fearful symmetry' to tigers that Blake talked of. Padel describes in her book a moment of looking at a tiger's face up close - how excruciatingly terrifying it is, like looking at a 'death mask.' Tigers are intriguingly both beautiful and terrible, a thing of vibrant life and violent death, powerful, yet now, in our modern world, vulnerable. But their power is such that they can mean many things - metaphors, motifs, symbols, allegories.  Do you have the 'eye of the tiger'? Can you unleash the 'tiger inside'? Modern life is filled with such references. As is literature. But sadly, the forests of the world are emptying with tigers.  The 'painting on silk' which Padel's describes,  is beginning to fade. You can read more on tigers plight here: WWF Tiger Day.  ~Siobhán 

Sunday Morning Musing: In Love With Language

 'A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.' 

~  WH Auden

Agree! So in love with language that words stop and start you, that a phrase can stun you and keep you in reverie for days, that the learning and using of language is a privilege, a magic trick, that language is a kind of love, words stars in the blank page of existence. 

In keeping with Auden's point, below are the acclaimed 100 most beautiful words from the English language - to fall passionately in love with. Give or take a few (we all have our own personal favourites) I agree with the list. (But there are so many more that could be added!)

I definitely swoon over all those 'e' words anyway: 'ebullience,' 'effervescent' (actually sounds like it's bubbling doesn't it?!), 'ephemeral' (ahhh), 'evanescent'. (I'd add to those 'elusive'.) Oh and 'gossamer'! 'Halcyon'! 'Mellifluous' (sigh). Just look at those lovely 'l' words, lithe and languorous on the lips. Not to mention 'quintessential'. And the sparkle of 'serendipity'.  But why not end it with 'zenith' or 'zany'? Not to forget 'xylophone'! Ah so many words! I think there could be many more hundreds of words to add to this to make the ultimate list. Not to mention other languages. (French is one that every single word is a singsong delight.) 

Is your favourite word here? If not, do share - fling a word, a star of brightness, into the cyber void! I'd love to hear something ping in this silence of the blogosphere, in which I have many followers, but so few commentators.

Dedicated to all of us in love with language - poets, writers, logophiles, lovers, linguists, readers, raconteurs.

 

~ Siobhán