Commonplace Book

'...One may question whether it were not better largely to forsake our habit of questioning and live more like the creatures. If wisdom lies inside the door of studious thought, madness is also sleeping there; and the mortal who knocks does so at his peril. We may become as gods to know good from evil; but are we sure that happiness inheres in that knowledge?'

from Careless Nature, a piece in The Kinship of Nature by Bliss Carman

Commonplace Book

'...The ancient immemorial joy of a thousand departed Aprils stirs from its lurking sleep in those placid veins of yours, and would lure you away beyond the limits of the town. It is the old spring fret that moved myriads of your fellows long before, and will move others when we are gone. But for the ample moment, the large sufficient now, our glad elasticity of spirit, our rapturous exhilaration of life, are as keen as if they were to be eternal. Indeed, they are the eternal part of us, of which we partake in these rare instants of existence.'

from April in Town, a piece in The Kinship of Nature by Bliss Carman

Commonplace Book

'...Most of all he hated the big bosoms. He took them up and he brought them down, load after load of self-satisfied  big bosoms. They puffed scent and powder at him, the smell of armpits and rubber corsets, and a smell like candles he could not identify. Another thing, they moved slowly, they paused half in, half out, of the lift, they stood in the middle and wouldn't let people in or out, they took their time. He spent all the time shoving big bosoms along, which was hard work because, of course, he must not ever on any account touch a passenger. They didn't mind touching him. They lolloped against him, nudged him with parcels, trod unconcerned on his feet. His brain was hard and tumescent with prolonged exasperation.'

from Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by M. Barnard Eldershaw (Part II)

Commonplace Book

'...if marriage did not readjust the upset incidental to its preliminaries, what a disastrous thing falling in love would be. No serious man would be able to let himself do it. But how interesting it was the way Nature, that old Hostility, that Ancient Enemy to man's thought, did somehow manage to trip him up sooner or later; and how still more interesting the ingenuity with which man, aware of this trick and determined to avoid the disturbance of a duration of affection, had invented marriage.'

from The Pastor's Wife by 'Elizabeth' (Part I, Chapter III)

Commonplace Book

'...A beautiful idleness requires temper and genius; and though people of means may fancy they can compass it, you will nearly always find a discordant restlessness somewhere in their leisure. It is only the artist in life who can afford to be an idler, and you may take it as sober earnest that he is no debauchee of inactivity.'

from At the Coming of Spring, a piece in The Kinship of Nature by Bliss Carman

Commonplace Book

'...Man's creation had gone past him, he was bound on a mechanic wheel and the wheel was due to plunge downward, carrying him with it. All were sated and none satisfied. Civilisation was loaded with an insufferable burden, the wrong sort of plenty. The shoddy replica of everything the heart can desire in the bargain basement. The simulacrum of every human emotion on sale in the cinema. Man's greed enlarged out of all proportion by constant stimulus. The swollen belly of an undernourished child. Competition from being a means become an end. Man building his life in repetitive images from bargain sale to war, from competitive breadwinning to competitive nationalism. Man, shamed and impotent, making sacrifice to the pitiful god of luck, ikon of the hopeless...'

from Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by M. Barnard Eldershaw (Part II)

Six Common Things by EF Benson (1893)

Although this was published in Osgood McIlvaine's 'Short Stories by British Authors' series, most of it isn't really short stories at all. The majority of these are essays, philosophical musings, some of them with vaguely fictionalised backgrounds. There is a small group which are more directly fictional. The overwhelming theme is melancholy and loss. This second book must have been quite puzzling for readers of his first, which had been published earlier the same year, and was a tearingly successful society comedy - Dodo. The pieces range around between loss of a child, loss of a wife, the terribly pathetic conditions of the poor and personal losses seen at a greater distance, those of others in our lives. There are a few which also incorporate a little humour, mainly involving children and animals, which lighten the load considerably. The few true short stories included tend to character study: one of a nurse-governess missing the welcome of a former charge returning home from school, and two of another governess being squashed flat by society's prejudices in the dining room and then later gaining her revenge when she marries well. The big puzzle is the title. I can't find a good reason for it. The phrase is mentioned in the last story as covering the ground of the fifteen which have gone before, so it's obviously not a bibliographic numerical reference. If it's thematic, I'm darned if I can find a clear group of six anywhere. Is it a reference to the seven ages of man, with the last story representing Death, the final one? It's definitely about that, but it's difficult to assemble the others into even vaguely coherent summaries of other stages. The only other option is that the phrase was more commonplace in 1893 than it is now, and refers to - what? A line from a hymn? A song? A poem? A proverb? Anyway, the twenty-first century is unlikely to fall in love with this sad little deeply Victorian book, in fact is likely to dismiss it out of hand. It is minor, but not so dismissable.

The Opinions of Jerome Coignard by Anatole France (1893)

This volume of fictionalised essays forms a companion piece to the author's famous novel of the same year, At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque. The novel's main characters, Abbe Coignard and Jacques Tournebroche, return in a group of pieces which retail philosophical discussions had between them and various interlocutors, usually taking place in a secondhand bookshop in their quarter. Boiled down, Abbe Coignard is the representative of Resignation in its dualist fight with Aspiration. And the reader's response to him will depend largely on their position in that philosophical slipstream. As I tend to the Aspirant side, I find him pretty irritating on the whole. There is an extra dimension lent to this by France's making him the eternal wise answer (no doubting which side he's on!) to all contretemps. The strange infallibility of Abbe Coignard! On the other hand there is no questioning the fun of the journey in terms of the liveliness of the writing - it's light and enjoyable and balanced in pace, and humorous elements are drawn out spiritedly. And the questions raised are involving and tasty. Because the philosophy given creedence by the author through his partiality is not to my taste, I wasn't feeling all that well-disposed toward this... that is, until the last few essays. These form a group of five around the topic of Justice, investigating the issues of wrong and right and how they are conceived societally, the faulty forms we use to distribute ethical power, and, most tellingly, the means we utilize to understand and deliver justice in terms of our ethical conclusions. France uses Coignard as a mouthpiece for purely Christ-ian encapsulations of morality - the attitude of universal forgiveness as it could possibly be applied in this world. I think perhaps what he misses is that Christ wasn't of this world entirely and this huge and constant forgiveness is a very difficult ask in human terms, let alone having humans build it into their worldly systems of justice. The best pieces in the book though, by far.