Lines Written in Early Spring*

Today happens to be the birthday of William Wordsworth (born 1770.) He is one of my favorite poets (although I am sure Byron, Shelley, and Coleridge would not be impressed with me for saying so.)

When I was in the eight grade, our "reading" teacher (because English still focused on grammar and spelling at that point) did a whole section on poetry. We had to memorize several poems of our own choosing to recite in front of the class, and we had to create an illustrated anthology of poems on a theme. It was around that time that I really began to take an interest in poetry. This was definitely spurred on by the soundtrack to the tv show "Beauty and the Beast", which had a significant number of tracks of Ron Pearlman reading poetry. (I loved the first two seasons of that show.)

The general public probably know William Wordsworth best for his poem, Daffodils, which begins:

I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

But I prefer his poem about the city, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802:

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Several years ago, a film called Pandaemonium about the friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge was released. John Hannah played Wordsworth, and Linus Roche played Coleridge. It isn't particularly historically accurate, but I thought it was entertaining (even though it makes Wordsworth out to be a competitive jerk who spoiled Kubla Khan for Coleridge.) I liked it on principle because I think that it is important to make films about people who create art.

*Lines Written in Early Spring is another poem by Wordsworth

"It is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame."*

First off, a big congratulations to the UCONN men's basketball team on their third NCAA championship!!! Well done, Huskies! I am looking forward to enjoying a proper bedtime now that the "hoopla" of March Madness is over. (pun intended - WAH WAAAAH!)

Right, **SPOILERS** ahead, although as the book was written 164 years ago, if you don't know this story by now, well...you probably aren't reading this blog anyhow.

On Sunday, "Miss Post" and I saw Cary Fukunaga's film of Jane Eyre. Before we went, I rewatched a couple of old versions of Jane Eyre (the Samantha Morton/Ciaran Hinds one and the Toby Stephens/Ruth Wilson one) for comparison's sake. The Zefferelli version with Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt is permanently imprinted in my mind, so I didn't need to rewatch that one.

I liked the new version a lot, and it has a lot of good things going for it: great cast, gorgeous costumes (I want Jane's paisley shawl from the end), amazing scenery, and a beautiful score by Dario Marianelli, who did the score to Pride and Prejudice (2005). The film was very moody, and I felt it did a great job capturing the bleakness and solitude of living on the moors of Yorkshire. I thought that the cast also did a great job of conveying their loneliness, their longing, and their inner passion in the face of a repressive and (at times ambiguously) moral society.

Mia Wasikowska (who was brilliant in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland) strikes the perfect balance between Jane's shy, proper reserve and her inner passion. Sometimes adult Jane gets played a little too wishy-washy for my taste (Morton), but Wasikowska does a great job with this. Michael Fassbender's Rochester is sheer intensity, with a fierceness and cruelty to his wit. (Stephens played the part more sardonically; Fassbender is just mean.) When he is first introduced, he is definitely unattractive in his unlikeablity, but he starts to soften as the movie unfolds. The two leads have a good chemistry together (I had read some reviews stating otherwise). In particular, in the scene where Rochester gets Jane to help him with Mason after the attack, I felt like they were no longer two individuals, but a team. (Yay, Team Rochester!) Judi Dench was a very likeable Mrs. Fairfax, and Jamie Bell was very serious as St. John Rivers (I was concerned about the casting of both of those parts. Bell was perhaps a little too serious.) The Rivers' part of the story didn't get truncated the way it has been in other versions, which was good. It is as an important part of Jane's development as the red room and Lowood School.

My biggest complaint: by keeping to a 120 minute running time (with credits), things got cut, and because of that, some parts of the story moved far too fast. I find it interesting that they didn't add in even 10 minutes of incidents in the development of Jane and Rochester's relationship, which was shortchanged. A key part of the novel is Rochester's baiting of Jane, or, as Miss Post and I put it, "I love you so much; I am going to tell you that I am marrying someone else. Are you jealous? Are you miserable? APRIL FOOL!!"

I feel that 2011's Jane Eyre is to 2005's Pride & Prejudice as 2006's "Jane Eyre" is to 1995's "Pride & Prejudice". A beautiful piece to be sure, but an incomplete realization of the novel. The core audience for this movie will sit and watch a six hour miniseries on PBS or BBC video; they'd sit for 10 more minutes in a movie theater. (Even with the person who was sitting next to me doing her best impression of Catherine Morland reading The Mysteries of Udolpho. Lady, it wasn't that scary. Seriously.) I definitely will be adding this one to my collection, and I also think that a second viewing on the big screen might be in order.

*My favorite line of Jane Eyre (the imagery just gets me):

"Because, I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you- especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me."

"That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet"*

The weather has been so gloomy and rainy the last two days. I could use a little floral pick me up, and I thought I'd share (well, as much as I can on the internet.) These blooms were all in the Mable Ringling rose garden in Sarasota, FL.





*Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

Difficult choices

So over on Facebook, PBS is having a Masterpiece "March Madness" to celebrate Masterpiece's 40th year on television. (Huzzah for Masterpiece!!) They have created brackets, and viewers/fans vote every day on one of the pairings to advance their favorite characters from over the course of the 40 years.

Yesterday's bracket: Mr. Darcy vs. Mr. Rochester. Are you kidding me? How are you supposed to choose between Mr. Darcy and Mr. Rochester? That is just MEAN!!! How can a reasonable person make that choice (pretending, of course, that I am a reasonable person)? I first did "eenie, meenie, miney, moe" and then ended up voting for Mr. Rochester because he was trailing.
I think that Mr. Darcy vs. Heathcliff would have been a much more interesting match-up. (I would be voting for Mr. Darcy, NATURALLY.) It would be interesting to see who would be voting for Heathcliff, especially if it were Tom Hardy's Heathcliff. ;-)

In that train of thought, I wanted to mention that I bought myself Kate Beaton's Bronte sisters picnic tee shirt recently. (It is super soft and fits really nicely.) The joke was totally lost on Sisters K & B. I think it is brillant. I might wear it to the next meeting of book club.

Building on the whole "Heathcliff" thing, do you remember the Kate Bush song Wuthering Heights from the 1980s? If you do, you might appreciate this. British funnyman/actor Noel Fielding did a lip sync cover of the emo "red dress" video for the song for Red Nose Day 2011 on BBC One. I was laughing so hard at this the other day that I started to cry.

"Seven years passed, I stopped going to Paradiso Perduto, I stopped painting. I put aside the fantasy and the wealthy..."*

Last week, I was on vacation on the Gulf Coast of Florida. My family has been vacationing in Sarasota for the last 25+ years, but this year marked my first visit to John Ringling's (of Ringling Bros. circus fame) fabulous winter home, Cà d’Zan.

Built in the Venetian Gothic style in 1924-25, Cà d’Zan (which means "House of John" in the Venetian dialect) is both a relic and a reminder of a time when American opulence was at its pinnacle, and the wealthy tried to outdo each other by recreating the splendor of European palaces in American settings. Sitting right at the edge of Sarasota Bay and certainly as stately as any of the "summer cottages" in Newport, RI, Cà d’Zan is considered to be the "last of the Gilded Age mansions."

The house went through an extensive restoration within the last ten years, and it is simply splendid. The grounds include Mable Ringling's rose garden (the most outstanding American public rose garden of 2006), the "Secret Garden", and some fascinating banyan trees. Also on the property is the John & Mabel Ringling Museum of Art and the Circus Museums. You could easily spend the whole day there.







*If Cà d’Zan looks familiar to you, perhaps you recognize it from the Hawke/Paltrow version of Great Expectations. It was Anne Bancroft's house in the film!! (Quote is from the movie...)

"Top of the mornin' to you..."

"...and the rest of the day to yourselves." (Irish people don't really say that. But it is okay to say on St. Patrick's Day.)

Don't forget to wear your green! Happy St. Patrick's Day to one and all, even if you are only Irish in your heart (and, in that case, especially so)!!!

"The lighthouse lifts its massive masonry, A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day."*

My old co-worker often spoke about the beauty of Nobska Light. (She used to have a photo of it as the desktop on her computer.) I finally got myself to Woods Hole this weekend and took some shots of the lighthouse. My trusty driver (AK) and I decided to drive the bike route through Falmouth rather than take the main road (Rte. 28), and it was such a nice drive (although Sister B would have motion sickness within the first five minutes - LOTS of twists and turns.)

When we left to go down to WH, it was sunny; by the time we got there, it wasn't. Shortly after we left, the sun reappeared. But it didn't make it a bad day for taking pictures. The clouds looked really cool with little bits of light peeking through. Added bonus: we were the only ones there!





I now have eight lights in my New England lighthouse photo collection!


*from The Lighthouse by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow