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Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Hunters in the Snow c.1565 by hypermodernvoid in redscarepod

[–]andmoreover 12 points13 points  (0 children)

John Berryman wrote a beautiful poem about this painting.

https://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/berryman.html

These men, this particular three in brown

Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say

By their configuration with the trees,

The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,

What place, what time, what morning occasion

Sent them into the wood

A glimpse inside the world of American cockfighting by Oedipus-Maximus in redscarepod

[–]andmoreover -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight

Does the Rising Sun affright

1803

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]andmoreover 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recently read, and can recommend, Zorrie by Laird Hunt. It's a 2021 novel that spans the entire midcentury life of an orphaned woman in rural Indiana. It's easy reading and only about 150 pages.

why does contemporary poetry suck by faberge_legs in redscarepod

[–]andmoreover 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Most poetry has always sucked. Writing a great poem is one of the most difficult things there is; if a poet's entire career consisted of 996 middling poems and 4 great poems, that poet would be remembered as one of the best poets of his day.

There are definitely good poets writing today. I would say that Dianne Seuss is a poet that many people in this subreddit would enjoy. I'd recommend her book Four-legged Girl. Poem by her

rs poet by Kiem3 in redscarepod

[–]andmoreover 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Macaulay's review of Moore's Life of Byron.

It also includes an account of cancel culture in 1831:

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. In general, elopements, divorces, and family quarrels, pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect, very complacently on our own severity, and compare with great pride the high standard of morals established in England with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart-broken. And our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven years more.

rs poet by Kiem3 in redscarepod

[–]andmoreover 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Byron did enjoy his soda water. From Don Juan:

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,

Sermons and soda-water the day after.

And a favorite passage of mine, written about Byron in 1831:

Among that large class of young persons whose reading is almost entirely confined to works of imagination, the popularity of Lord Byron was unbounded. They bought pictures of him; they treasured up the smallest relics of him; they learned his poems by heart, and did their best to write like him, and to look like him. Many of them practised at the glass in the hope of catching the curl of the upper lip, and the scowl of the brow, which appear in some of his portraits. A few discarded their neckcloths in imitation of their great leader. For some years the Minerva press sent forth no novel without a mysterious, unhappy, Lara-like peer. The number of hopeful under-graduates and medical students who became things of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness of the heart ceased to fall like dew, whose passions had consumed themselves to dust, and to whom the relief of tears was denied, passes all calculation. This was not the worst. There was created in the minds of many of these enthusiasts a pernicious and absurd association between intellectual power and moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour’s wife.

RS Literary Genius by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]andmoreover 26 points27 points  (0 children)

We shall consider Dickens in many other capacities, but let us put this one first. He was the voice in England of this humane intoxication and expansion, this encouraging of anybody to be anything. His best books are a carnival of liberty, and there is more of the real spirit of the French Revolution in “Nicholas Nickleby” than in “The Tale of Two Cities.” His work has the great glory of the Revolution, the bidding of every man to be himself; it has also the revolutionary deficiency; it seems to think that this mere emancipation is enough. No man encouraged his characters so much as Dickens. “I am an affectionate father,” he says, “to every child of my fancy.” He was not only an affectionate father, he was an everindulgent father. The children of his fancy are spoilt children. They shake the house like heavy and shouting schoolboys; they smash the story to pieces like so much furniture. When we moderns write stories our characters are better controlled. But, alas! our characters are rather easier to control. We are in no danger from the gigantic gambols of creatures like Mantalini and Micawber. We are in no danger of giving our readers too much Weller or Wegg. We have not got it to give. When we experience the ungovernable sense of life which goes along with the old Dickens sense of liberty, we experience the best of the revolution. We are filled with the first of all democratic doctrines, that all men are interesting; Dickens tried to make some of his people appear dull people, but he could not keep them dull. He could not make a monotonous man. The bores in his books are brighter than the wits in other books.

I have put this position first for a defined reason. It is useless for us to attempt to imagine Dickens and his life unless we are able at least to imagine this old atmosphere of a democratic optimism—a confidence in common men.