Recasting the Romance of the Rose _ and other literary conceits ...

Recasting The Romance Of The Rose [and other ['literary'?] 'conceits'].
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'Originally' (always some doubts about 'orginality') written in 'vernacular' '13th century' (always some doubts about 'dating') French(ish) (always some doubts about 'language') by
Guillaume De Lorrris (more male than female) (early 13th century)
Jean De Meun (more male than female) (later 13th century - probably died about 1305)
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Prose translation into late 20th century English by Frances Horgan (spelling?) (a translator more female than male, I take it, judging by the first name) first published 1994 - Oxford World's Classics series)
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Chaucer (more or less):
... scholars and lay people were all agreed ... the guy was a crackpot ...
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TSE[l[l]iot[t] (spellling?): 'Humans cannot stand too much reality.'
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TSE: ''After the event He wept.
He promised "a new start."
I made no comment.
Why should I resent?''
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Saturday 17_03_2007
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What happens in [a] 'romance'? ... elements of the real world are taken and ... one way or another 'transformed' ...
Everyday realities are 'departed from' - in some ways 'transcended' - but never left behind completely ...
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In the real world, today, the first caller of the day, at about 9.30 in the morning, was the young woman - whose name (in my own hung-over-drink-be-fuddled state) I could not remember - from across the road, cadging a cigarette for her partner/husband. She was dressed in a white dressing gown.
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And when she had combed her hair carefully and decked herself out in her finest clothes, her day's work had just begun.
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(Lady Idleness) '... to excite the desire of the featherbrained males, she had ...'
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Back-bearings ...
'Heraclitus Society' stuff ...
From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Thu Jun 27, 2002  2:14 pm
Subject:  Re: B-Grade Stuff
Facing apparent checkmate - or worse, perhaps, stalemate - or just
dying of terminal loneliness and frustration - do you resign to get
it over with? or just go through the motions until the whole process
(which can seem to be mostly beyond your control) comes to an end of
some sort?
Sooner of later the pieces and the board will crumble to dust, and
the dust will scatter, and no one will be able to tell that a game of
chess was ever played where the board and pieces once were ... and no
one will ask who played it, or when it was played, or where it was
played, or how it was played, or why it was played ... and the small-
scale seeming events will not seem to matter then, and will not even
be known about as an event then ...
... but traces will remain ... and consequences will still be
reverberating widely ...
And when I resign and go into a torpor ... which can last months,
even years ... I do eventually wake up again ... to find that I had
not resigned after all ... and to find that, to my surprize, some
progress seems to have been made after all [of course that might be
an illusion ... or wishful-thinking] ... and I think: well maybe soon
it will reach a more satisfying resolution ...
... and then I think: that is some fucking hope ...
But when it just seems like a matter of waiting .. and enduring for
the sake of endurance .. there does not seem much point in struggling
on ... there has to be more recognitions and fellowship-sharing
feedbacks to make it seem more worth it ... otherwise it seems like a
futile exercise ...
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From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Sat Jun 8, 2002  4:34 am
Subject:  Jane Makeover
Riverland is full of all sorts of fashions ... and girls who would
make natural models ... which is why we sent out own special
correspondent little Ms June Makeover to investigate a local
modelling course.
It started as a typical Saturday morning. It finished with her legs
aching, a £13 parking ticket, and a new-found image with a veneer of
sophistication.
She had rolled out of bed, splodged some make-up on to her barely
open eyes and bowled down to the Pat A. Cake Agency for a one day's
intensive grooming and self-improvement course.
The other girls were immaculate, most of them wanted to be models,
and most of them were about 15 years younger than her.
'Never mind,' said Pat, immaculate blonde, and former Ms Great
Britain, 'this course is about confidence, that's what we're here
for.'
Jone had always fancied herself as a kind of down-market glamour
kitten with tousled appeal. Someone once told her she had cheekbones
like Bo Derek. Nothing else, just the cheekbones.
When Pet started out with make-up she knew she was kidding herself.
Off came the stuff Jine'd only just put on. The lines and shadows
under her eyes that Jene'd always thought interesting came under
attack.
And there was more. Deportment - sitting, walking, taking off a
jacket, entering a room, ascending and descending stairs (models do
it sideways). They paraded in front of the huge mirror, with Pit
intoning 'Heel-ball of foot, heel-ball of foot'.
Over lunch they chatted.
Pot has all kinds on her books - glamour girls ('a bit of class'),
fashion girls, children ... and 30-something-year-olds who are in big
demand with the advertizers who need 'ordinary' looking people the
punters can identify with.
'The children are great, but some of them have very ambitious
mothers,' she said.
'One lady rang the other day and said "I'm having a baby in three
weeks, can you put it in your books", which I thought was taking it a
little far.'
She conceded that modelling work was tough, and sometimes she
accompanies her girls to make sure they don't fall into the wrong
hands.
'You get a photographer who says "You're fat, get out", which really
knocks you. You have to develop quite a thick skin,' said the last
woman in the world anyone would dream of calling fat.
In the afternoon, the utterly charming Irony Washername, herself a
model, arrived to tell about grooming.
Everything from interviews, sitting down, shaking hands, to waiting
for a bus, and choosing clothes.
'It hurts to be beautiful,' Irene said, with a beautiful smile. 'But
remember, you're as good as you think you are.'
At the end of the day Jane asked Put what her chances were in the
modelling world. 'Fantastic!' she said - and they both collapsed with
laughter.
The rest of the world watched out for them.
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From:  "philtal_uk" <philtal_uk@y...>
Date:  Tue Jun 4, 2002  10:15 am
Subject:  Re: inclusive consciousness
ADVERTISEMENT
The festive glass mug was a bittersweet little souvenir or a terrible
year, which perhaps was not so terrible. Time will tell, or will
turn bad to good and good to bad and back to good again.
Time is the best teacher, but kills all its students.
And will I leave you behind?
Yes, no doubt, eventually.
And will you leave me behind?
Yes, no doubt, eventually.
Convention.
It perhaps all comes down to convention, which changes with time.
One day all seemed to rest on little.
Is all still on little?
Maybe.
Dully time will tell, perhaps.
A little.
A. Little.
A Capitalization and a point makes a name of a relative concept.
Big Al Little.
A contraction of Alison's name, which, in full, is suggestive of sons
and sunny days and sundry other matters.
And the `big' addition (though it is only three letters) seems to
make a mockery of her, but then literally, she is little in some ways
and big in others.
And she is good with questions.
`For the flowers-to-be, thankyou?' she wondered.
Yes, I think-feel, is the answer - whether we ever get to see them
together or not.
I say it in various ways myself so often and I witness others saying
it so often in varying ways: `I feel that I love you more than I feel
that you love me.' And that is always a troubling mismatch of
feeling. But when the flow of feeling is reversed, when it feels as
if the other might have more love for you than you can return, then
that is troubling too.
Dense networks of under-requited loves …
… he loves her but she does not love him enough because she loves
another him more but then he does not love her enough because he
loves another her more and …
…
The good news is that each person is linked eventually to someone who
could love them deeply, if not purely, and whom they could love
deeply, if not purely …
The bad news is that the potential well matched lovers do not always
meet up at the right time and place …
`Buck up!'
And with those words dawn began and the queen dressed me in sea-cloak
and shirt while she slipped on a loose, glistening robe, flimsy, a
joy to the eye, but not in itself, only in combination with her, and
round her waist she ran a brocaded golden belt and over her head a
scarf to shield her brow and …
Thus prepared and thus invigorated by the sight of her, I strode
through the hall to stir up the rest of my company, hovering over
each with possibly winning words: `Up now! No more lazing away in
sleep, we must set off and change the world, the signs are showing
the way.'
And each person I woke looked at me sceptically, knowing, or at least
sensing, that I did not entirely believe what I was saying, but also
sensing that I had more than a little faith in it, enough at least to
stir some into some positive action perhaps.
`Up now!'
`Buck up!'
`Sleepers awake!'
… roused by the shouted imperatives and by the tread of marching men -
who seemed rather directionless (and were all the more potentially
dangerous because of that) - he lept up with a start at dawn … but he
was still so dazed and confused that he forgot to climb the ladder
back down from his high slumbering place…
… and so, headfirst, from the roof he plunged …
… fortunately the fall was not fatal, but it did stun him enough to
delay activity further …
… he paused …
… he pondered …
… he …
The lustrous woman continued, never pausing: `Let not lack of a pilot
concern you, no, just set a course and spread you sail wise, then sit
back and the wind will speed you on your way.'
I went on my way to where a stark crag loomed where two rivers
thundered down to meet. I noted it with interest but not too much
alarm.
Later the sun sank and the roads of the world grew dark. As I had
been following a wandering course, this did not seem a significant
change.
But throughout the long night, time and again, an immense weight had
to be wheeled up a hill until further upward motion proved impossible
…
and it tumbled down to the plain again.
And when daylight came again, some were on their feet, others were
seated, and many were clustered around, as if expecting something.
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Much fine 'romantic' stuff was written in Heraclitus Society with Ms Little in mind.
But lest 'we' forget ...
I have now (early 2007) come to 'dismiss' her as a 'fascist war-monger'! ('Yikes!' 'Not blooming likely!')
And in 'Heraclitus', it was Clare wot got the 'dedication' based on the Romance Of The Rose:-
(de) Meun (for Clare)
… then morning came, and from my dream at last I woke.
(Some word-play - as ever with me! - in the '(de) Meun' ... suggesting 'demeaning' and all that ... and in the back of my mind a little snippet from a letter from Clare in which she had said something on the lines of 'and my heart is with the gutter press'! ... and associations from that ...)
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(Such is the stuff of 'composition'?!)