If This Be Magic and Shakespeare in translation: some further thoughts

 1/ When asked whether we know a writer if we only read them in translation, I suppose most people would say either yes or no. I think it depends: I think some but not too much is lost if we’re talking about Jane Austen, Trollope, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Fielding, Balzac, Zola, Molière…; but Nguyễn Du in translation is no longer Nguyễn Du and I’d say the same about Shakespeare, Melville, or Wodehouse; and I can’t help feeling that I don’t really know Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, or Ovid. 

There’s a reason that non-Russians name Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Chekhov as the greatest Russian writer, whereas Russians say Pushkin. 

That doesn’t mean we reject everything in translation. We look at different translations; we do what we can. Am I going to learn ancient Greek? No, I have no gift for languages. To read as widely as I aim to do, I need translators, for whom I’m forever grateful. I’m just saying that sometimes we do lose a lot: Wodehouse’s comic genius is in the phrasing, so what do we have when his sentences are now rephrased by someone else? It’s something to keep in mind. 

2/ In my previous blog post about Daniel Hahn’s If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, I wrote: 

“When people read or watch Shakespeare in translation, his poetry is lost but his other qualities—his metaphors, his range, his characterisation and psychological insight, his examination of power and politics, his understanding of human nature, his sense of pacing and understanding of drama, and so on—are still there. When I read Racine, I suspected that much of his greatness was in the French alexandrine verse that got lost in translation.” 

Glad to later find Hahn making the same point in his book: 

“… Jean-Michel cited this distinction to explain why we see so few plays by Racine staged in English—he’s a writer for whom language is everything. A play like Bérénice has very little plot— ‘it’s all music, it’s all language.’ It’s a beautiful literary play, but Racine never wrote anything as generously, theatrically user-friendly as A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” (ch.32) 

The plays of Racine are all talk talk talk. 

If we leave aside the ancient Greek plays (different tradition of drama, with lots of singing), I have noticed that sometimes a long speech in someone else’s play is just the author writing poetry, whereas long speeches in Shakespeare are usually either rhetoric (a character trying to persuade another, which moves the plot forward), or a soliloquy (which depicts a character’s stream of thoughts). Spanish Golden Age playwrights, except for Lope de Vega, very often write those long speeches which neither move the plot forward nor do anything for characterisation (I’m looking at you, Tirso de Molina—what’s the point of that four-page speech about Lisbon?). The closet plays of Seneca, or Goethe’s Faust, have many passages and scenes that I know wouldn’t work well onstage. 

Shakespeare and Molière are performed widely around the world—in translation—because they understand theatre so well, having such a great sense of pacing and tension and pitch and dramatic effects (I once saw a bad production of Othello which still managed to make me tear up at the end).  

I’ve also noted that some of the playwrights who do well onstage in translation wrote in prose: Chekhov, Ibsen (except for some early plays)… Different beast, then. 

3/ Daniel Hahn’s book makes me have immense respect for translators of Shakespeare into other languages, and I do think many of the examples—the choices, the solutions to the problems inherent in translating Shakespeare—are brilliant. But at the same time, the book reinforces my view that Shakespeare is best appreciated in English, that I’m glad to read and watch his works in the original, and that it’s silly to call for a translation of his plays into today’s English. 

(Yep, over the years I’ve encountered lots of philistines who think readers of Shakespeare in translation have an advantage over us). 

When a translator finds a clever solution for a joke or a pun in Shakespeare, it might be funny (and the translator deserves an applause), but that joke or that pun is not Shakespeare’s. Hahn also explores many other problems and not everything gets a neat solution. What do you do when Shakespeare plays with the coexistence of Latinate/ Romance and Germanic words in the English language? Or when he marks an accent or regional dialect? Or when he includes words from another language? Or when he includes words from the target language itself (i.e. what does a French translator do with the French passages in the plays)? And if you make a choice between domestication and foreignisation, how far do you go and where do you draw the line? 

The translator is thus the second author. 

Hahn raises a million questions—sometimes there’s a brilliant answer, sometimes there’s no neat solution—and the book gets one to think more deeply about Shakespeare and about the art of translation. One aspect I’ve never considered, for example, is that a translator of Shakespeare tries to think about beats, rhythm, and rhyme, which is challenging enough if some languages (such as Italian or Greek) have longer words than English does, but things could be even further complicated by accents: a play translated by a Brazilian might end up losing some effects in the mouth of a Portuguese actor, as they pronounce syllables differently.

4/ This is interesting: 

“Just as everyday English carries idioms drawn from our own greatest canonical translation, the 1611 King James Bible (and its more quietly influential predecessors), so translated Shakespeare looms large in other languages, phrases from his work inflecting people’s speech.” (ch.37) 

I like that. 

(Does this happen in Vietnamese? I have no idea). 

“We readers can become attached to [translations] in just the same way, and it’s hard to imagine the validity of alternative interchangeable versions. Just recall the stories that mattered most to you as a kid, when some of the strongest bonds were formed. For me, those books included classics that were definitely not called ‘Gretel and Hansel’ or ‘Cindergirl’, Lindgren’s Pippi Longsocks, Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘Small Mermaid’.” 

In Vietnam, some titles of classics—Giấc mộng đêm hè (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Bắt trẻ đồng xanh (The Catcher in the Rye), Đỉnh gió hú (Wuthering Heights), Cuốn theo chiều gió (Gone with the Wind), Tội ác và trừng phạt (Crime and Punishment), and so on—have become so iconic that retranslated titles would flop, or new translators don’t bother. It’s like Dostoyevsky’s Братья Карамазовы: since Constance Garnett, everyone has called it The Brothers Karamazov even though some later translators (such as Ignat Avsey) translated it as The Karamazov Brothers. 

We become attached to translations: I love Constance Garnett’s translations of Chekhov (still going through the 13 volumes); Aylmer and Louise Maude’s versions of Tolstoy are dear friends, including their War and Peace (revised by Amy Mandelker), though now the Anna Karenina copy I keep is by Rosamund Bartlett; I suspect I’m also attached to Robert Fitzgerald’s translations of Homer, which is why I (unreasonably) stick to Akhilleus when everyone else says Achilles, and so on. 

If This Be Magic is a very good book—a celebration of Shakespeare and a celebration of translators—and it’s certainly one of the books I’ve enjoyed most this year. 

On Sense and Sensibility (2026)

I suppose I’m part of the problem.  

“Why do they keep adapting Jane Austen a zillion times instead of Frances Burney?”, I asked. And yet I went to see the new Sense and Sensibility (and might even see the new Pride and Prejudice). It is—I’m going to be frank—an unnecessary and mediocre film.    

But let’s start with the positives. I like Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor. Everyone agrees that the 1995 film by Ang Lee is (more or less) perfect, but most people would agree that the 36-year-old Emma Thompson, though wonderful, is a bit too old for the role, yes? Daisy Edgar-Jones is 28 and can get away with playing the 19-year-old Elinor, and I think she conveys well the restraint and reticence and pain of the character. Fiona Shaw is brilliant as Mrs Jennings, often a scene-stealer, and I have no complaints about George MacKay as Edward Ferrars. The young audiences (that the film targets) would probably love that couple. 

The film however has two major problems. One is Esmé Creed-Miles, who is dreadful as Marianne. The new Sense and Sensibility fails to capture the bond between the Dashwood sisters, and fails to convince the audience (I mean me) that in the end Marianne is developing her feelings for Colonel Brandon, both of which I think are because of the actress. 

The other flaw is in the writing (Diana Reid) and directing (Georgia Oakley). When the trailer came out, lots of people commented on the historically inaccurate hair and costumes—where are the bonnets, why do they wear their hair down, why does everything look so drab and miserable in films these days, and so on. But the film is even more erroneous and George Oakley doesn’t seem to understand—or doesn’t care—that Jane Austen’s world is governed by strict rules for social conduct and this is a fundamental part of the novels. Oakley’s characters do many things that would never have been considered acceptable in Regency England. Why does Willoughby lift up Marianne during a dance, and later carry her in front of everyone at the ball? Why does Elinor run through people at the party, drawing people’s attention to herself and her sister? Why does Marianne shout “Willoughby!” and question him and make a scene in front of Miss Grey and in front of everyone at the party? Why do Colonel Brandon and Willoughby have a duel right in front of the house, where they can be—and are—seen by the Dashwoods? Why does Edward Ferrars discuss with Elinor his engagement to Lucy Steele? (The circumstances of the engagement are also changed). Why does Elinor speak of her feelings first, in the end? Some people may not care (like those numerous film reviewers I read who did not mention these changes), but I do. One critic even complained that the new adaptation fell flat as Oakley didn’t drag Austen’s novel into the present (why should filmmakers?), but this is not the Regency: the dialogue may not be modern but the behaviour is—all these things I mentioned are not the way Austen’s characters behave.  

There are other things. I don’t like Colonel Brandon in the film, though it’s mainly because of the writing rather than the actor Herbert Nordrum. Some of you won’t like that Mr Palmer is for some reason played by Eliot Sumner, who is female, which takes one out of the story or is at least distracting (especially if you go see the film with someone who doesn’t know the story). 

(Incidentally there are a few nepo babies in the film: Eliot Sumner is the daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler; Esmé Creed-Miles is the daughter of Charlie Creed-Miles and Samantha Norton, who’s in Nolan’s Odyssey; Frank Dillane, who plays Willoughby, is the son of Stephen Dillane and Naomi Wirthner. Whom did I miss?)  

As for cinematography and production design, you can tell from the trailer: there are some nice shots but the film looks dull and drab. 

Overall, it’s not a disastrous adaptation like the 2022 Persuasion or ridiculous like the 2026 Wuthering Heights, but it’s not good. 

I should watch Ang Lee’s film again. 

Shakespeare in translation [updated]

1/ A Shakespeare fan never runs out of things to read. 

I’ve been enjoying If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation by Daniel Hahn. 

When the Royal Shakespeare Company commemorated the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, they had a sketch in which a bunch of (famous) Shakespearean actors argued about where to put the emphasis in “To be or not to be, that is the question”—the first “be”? the second “be”? “or”? “not”? “to”? “that”? “is”? “question”? In one chapter of If This Be Magic, Hahn listed (and briefly discussed) 15 different translations of the line into Spanish. 

A translator has to think about meaning, double meaning, ambiguity, tone, register, the constraints of language, the choice to make when a word in the source language is ambiguous but has to be one or the other in the target language, etc.; a translator of Shakespeare also has to think about verse form, rhyme, rhythm, metre, sound, speed, emphasis, performance, dramatic effects, puns, jokes, wordplay, homophones, etc. Much is lost in translation but also much is gained, Hahn argues (though of course he would say that, as he’s a translator himself). It’s a thought-provoking and fascinating book, and I like that he’s funny. 

(My only regret is that the book doesn’t discuss Vietnamese; it also doesn’t include Norwegian, but I’d make do with Danish).  

A similar book about translations of Homer (into English) would also be interesting, though of course I would understand it less as I can’t read Homer in the original.

If you like Shakespeare and/or language and translation, read If This Be Magic. 

2/ Is Shakespeare in translation still Shakespeare? I tend to think not. But it’s a fact—an interesting fact—that Shakespeare is one of the few playwrights who hold the global stage very well in translation. If we compare French dramatists, Molière is performed widely in many languages around the world—I have read Molière as translated by 5-6 different people and he’s always a hoot—but Racine doesn’t have the same appeal. When people read or watch Shakespeare in translation, his poetry is lost but his other qualities—his metaphors, his range, his characterisation and psychological insight, his examination of power and politics, his understanding of human nature, his sense of pacing and understanding of drama, and so on—are still there. When I read Racine, I suspected that much of his greatness was in the French alexandrine verse that got lost in translation.

Shakespeare in Swahililand by Edward Wilson-Lee is also an interesting read by the way. 

3/ I suppose I don’t need to tell you what I think about translating Shakespeare from English into (today’s) English. 

Have you heard of Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Retold by James Anthony? Let me ruin your evening/ morning. 

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29: 

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my out-cast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate.

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the Lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at Heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,

That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.

James Anthony’s rewriting: 

What awful luck! I’ve been humiliated,

And so I sob alone for no one cares;

Not even God hears I’m infuriated;

Only my mirror duplicates my swears.

I wish I could be far more optimistic,

With ample friends who’ve got so much to say,

Like writers, thinkers, anyone artistic

Who’d help me look on life a different way.

Yet when I’m in despair, with self-made scorn,

I fondly think of you, then thoughts deploy,

Just like a warbling songbird marking dawn,

Alleviating pain with songs of joy.

For when I dream of you, my heart grows rich;

If offered wealth, I would decline to switch.

Ugh. 

Addendum: I suppose I could (and should) say that Daniel Hahn’s book is less about Shakespeare—whether Shakespeare is still Shakespeare in translation, why he has held the world stage so well for hundreds of years, and so on—than about the art of translation and the creativity of translators. The idea is essentially, this is what Shakespeare wrote and what he was doing, and these are the constraints of the language, so what do the translators do with it? 

Thơ Hồ Xuân Hương về phụ nữ

Hồi trước, tôi đã gom lại một mớ bài thơ tục của Hồ Xuân Hương. Nhưng Hồ Xuân Hương tất nhiên đâu chỉ viết thơ tục. Giờ gom lại một số bài về phụ nữ.

 

Bánh trôi nước

Thân em vừa trắng lại vừa tròn,

Bảy nổi ba chìm với nước non.

Rắn nát mặc dầu tay kẻ nặn

Mà em vẫn giữ tấm lòng son.

 

Thương thay phận gái

Thương thay phận gái cũng là người

Nỡ bỏ xuân xanh quá nửa đời

Ông Nguyệt nỡ nào trêu quải mãi

Chị Hằng khéo nhẽ éo le thôi

Hoa còn phong nhụy ong ve vãn

Gió đã phai hương bướm tả tơi

Quá ngán thợ trời ghê gớm bấy

Xuân xanh được mấy chút thương ôi

 

Thương ôi phận gái

Thương ôi phận gái cũng là chồng

Ghét bỏ nhau chi hỡi Nguyệt ông

Rồng tắm ao tù từng phận tủi

Mưa gieo xuống giếng uổng lòng mong

Xót thân hoa nở song lầm cát

Thẹn mặt trần ai đứng giữa vòng

U hẳn tiền nhân sao đấy tá

Thôi đành một kiếp thế cho xong

 

Lấy chồng chung

Kẻ đắp chăn bông kẻ lạnh lùng

Chém cha cái kiếp lấy chồng chung

Năm chừng mười họa hay chăng chớ

Một tháng đôi lần có cũng không

Cố đấm ăn xôi xôi lại hỏng

Cầm bằng làm mướn mướn không công

Nỗi này ví biết dường này nhỉ

Thời trước thôi đành ở vậy xong

 

Thương

Há dám thương đâu kẻ có chồng,

Thương vì một nỗi hãy còn không.

Thương con cuốc rũ kêu mùa Hạ,

Thương cái bèo non giạt bể Đông.

Thương cha mẹ nhện vương tơ lưới,

Thương vợ chồng Ngâu cách mặt sông.

Ấy thương quân tử thương là thế,

Há dám thương đâu kẻ có chồng...

 

Không chồng mà chửa

Cả nể cho nên hoá dở dang,

Sự này có thấu hỡi chăng chàng.

Duyên thiên chưa thấy nhô đầu dọc,

Phận liễu sao mà nảy nét ngang.

Cái tội trăm năm chàng chịu cả,

Chữ tình một khối thiếp xin mang.

Quản chi miệng thế lời chênh lệch,

Chẳng thế nhưng mà thế mấy ngoan.

 

Thân phận người đàn bà

Hỡi chị em ơi có biết không

Một bên con khóc một bên chồng.

Bố cu lổm ngổm bò trên bụng,

Thằng bé hu hơ khóc dưới hông.

Tất cả những là thu với vén

Vội vàng nào những bống cùng bông.

Chồng con cái nợ là như thế,

Hỡi chị em ơi có biết không?

 

Hồ Xuân Hương 

Lúc nào đó chắc phải nhìn thử mấy bản dịch tiếng Anh xem thế nào.

7 Greeks: Translations by Guy Davenport

The first thing I’m gonna say is that I don’t particularly like reading poetry in translation (look, I don’t even read much poetry in the original). However, Tom (Wuthering Expectations) gave me this book because of my fascination with the ancient Greece, so here we go. And it’s interesting.   

Artilochos 

A bigger problem than reading in translation is that we don’t have the poems in their entirety—only fragments. Artilochos seems good though. 

There are some interesting bits about war. 

3 

Let him go ahead. 

Ares is a democrat. 

There are no privileged people 

On a battle field. 

184 

In the hospitality of war

We left them their dead 

As a gift to remember us by.

My favourite bits are the dirty, raunchy ones. 

11 

Like Odysseus under the ram 

You have clung under your lovers 

And under your love of lust, 

Seeing nothing else for this mist, 

Dark of heart, dark of mind. 

36 

He comes, in bed, 

As copiously as 

A Prienian ass

And is equipped 

Like a stallion. 

96 

To engage with an insatiable girl, 

Ramming belly against belly, 

Thigh riding against thigh. 

These horny poems make me think of Aristophanes. 

Sappho 

I have read Sappho before, in the Penguin translation by Aaron Poochigian. I know she’s important and highly regarded, but can’t say I have any strong feelings about the fragments I’ve read. 

I suppose I like these: 

15 

Desire has shaken my mind

As wind in the mountain forests 

Roars through trees. 

65 

I

Percussion, salt and honey, 

A quivering in the thighs; 

He shakes me all over again, 

Eros who cannot be thrown, 

Who stalks on all fours

Like a beast. 

II 

Eros makes me shiver again

Strengthens in the knees, 

Eros gall and honey, 

Snake-sly, invisible. 

213 

I 

The moon has set, and the Pleiades, 

It is the middle of the night, 

Hour follows hour. I lie alone. 

II 

The moon has gone 

To her Endymion 

The Pleiades

Their seven lovers please. 

Since Esperos glistened 

And the moon rose red

I have listened 

Alone in my bed. 

Alkman 

Judging by these fragments, the poems of Alkman (or Alcman) aren’t raunchy like the poems of Artilochos, nor erotic like Sappho’s.  

4 

There is the god’s revenge. 

Happy the man of calm mind 

who weaves his day 

unweeping. But I sing

the light of Agido: I see 

her as the sun, which she, 

Agido, calls 

to shine, its witness. 

But I may not 

praise or blame her. 

Our mastersinger

must come first, 

as in a field

the sleek, galloping 

stallion, 

winner of races, 

stands apart, 

as if seen in a dream. 

I like that image. 

7 

And is not Hagesikhora, 

the fine-ankled, ours? 

Does not she keep close to Agido? 

She honors the feastday. 

Hear them, gods, 

gods whose ends they fulfil. 

O choirmaster, 

I am a mere girl, 

I sing like the rafter owl, 

yet I sing

to welcome the goddess of the dawn, 

the queller of pain, 

the Hagesikhora has led us 

the lovely way to peace. 

Anakreon 

Guy Davenport has a rather interesting section in the Introduction talking about the real Anakreon versus a group of poems by imitators that “inspired and was imitated so beautifully by Belleau, Ronard, and Herrick” (it wasn’t discovered till the 19th century that those poems were not by Anakreon). 

The fragments in this book are by the real Anakreon. 

I like a few. 

19 

In the month of Posideion, 

When the clouds are fat with rain, 

Wild storms bring us Zeus. 

20 

Can myrrh rubbed on a chest 

Sweeten the great round heart inside? 

33 

I climb the white cliff again 

To throw myself into the grey sea, 

Drunk with love again. 

53 

And now my hair is thin and white, 

Grizzled the locks above my ears. 

Youth’s gone, and with it, all delight. 

My teeth are going with the years. 

What time remains is short and sweet. 

Therefore I often cry and dread 

Dark Tartaros where I shall meet 

In dreary rooms the weeping dead. 

For Hades’ house is dark, and black

The downward road, the hateful way, 

Unwilling and with no way back, 

Downward ever, and there to stay.

Who says the ancient Greeks were alien? Who says we can’t relate to their writings? 

Herakleitos 

Better known as Heraclitus, he’s a philosopher, not a poet like the previous ones in the collection. His central ideas are the unity of opposites, and change (everything is constantly changing, becoming). 

Ovid may have been influenced by him? 

21 

One cannot step twice into the same river, for the water into which you first stepped has flowed on.

I didn’t know that line was from an ancient Greek! 

65

At night we extinguish the lamp and go to sleep; at death our lamp is extinguished and we go to sleep.

101 

Sea water is both fresh and foul: excellent for fish, poison to men. 

Diogenes 

Another philosopher. I don’t particularly care for his writings. 

There are just some funny lines. 

17 

How proud you are of not being proud, Plato says, and I reply that there is pride and pride. 

58 

I’m turning that invitation down: the last time I was there, they were not thankful enough that I came. 

Herondas

Herondas (or Herodas) was a poet who wrote “mimos, or mime played by a single maskless actor taking all the parts, probably in city squares of an afternoon or on small stages in wine shops”, notes Guy Davenport.  

I have nothing to say, as I just find them strange—unlike any drama I’ve read. Judging by Herondas and Aristophanes, the ancient Greeks seem to like bawdy jokes. 

My favourites in the collection are Artilochos, Anakreon, and Herakleitos. 

Cecilia: “I have ever since felt ashamed of my own discernment”

1/ Look at the defence of novels in Northanger Abbey: 

““I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss——?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language…”” (ch.5) 

All that praise for Cecilia is deserved. Frances Burney’s characters are all distinct and full of life; and compared to the characters in her first novel Evelina, the ones in Cecilia are more complex—they are capable of surprise. My main complaint is that even though Burney doesn’t place a shallow, selfish, and materialistic character at the centre of the story (like Undine Spragg in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country), we still have to spend so much time with airheaded people and listen to their vapid conversations—imagine being constantly in the tedious company of Caroline Bingley or the Bertram girls—I think Austen learnt from Burney’s faults. But at the same time, Burney is more ambitious than Austen: Cecilia and Camilla are both over 900 pages; and her novels depict a larger world, different classes and different environments—these aren’t “two inches of ivory”.  

The highlight of Volume I is the masquerade scene: fascinating, full of mystery and excitement, rich in meaning. In Volume II, one of the highlights is the characterisation of Mr Belfield, one of Cecilia’s suitors—Frances Burney removes some layers and reveals more underneath—she has deep psychological insight and I think the story of Mr Belfield elevates the novel into something more than a comedy of manners. 

2/ As I wrote in the previous blog post, after the death of her uncle, Cecilia moves into the house of Mr Harrel, one of her guardians, and gradually she realises that her childhood friend Priscilla—now Mrs Harrel—has become someone different. 

She says to Mr Monckton: 

“I cannot but own that my esteem for her, even more than my affection, has lessened almost every day since I have been in her house; but this morning, when I ventured to speak to her with earnestness, I found her powers of reasoning so weak, and her infatuation to luxury and expence so strong, that I have ever since felt ashamed of my own discernment in having formerly selected her for my friend.” (B.3, ch.3) 

Cecilia is handsome, clever, and rich, but her power of discernment is dreadful—she is similar to Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse—the novel is closer to Pride and Prejudice however, as Frances Burney lets us see Mr Monckton’s calculations and Cecilia’s blindness, instead of using the free indirect discourse to make readers see things through the heroine’s biased perspective, as Jane Austen later does in Emma.  

“He quitted her, therefore, with unusual satisfaction, happy in his power over her mind, and anticipating with secret rapture the felicity he had in reserve from visiting her during the absence of the family.” (B.3, ch.8) 

Cecilia is not only a novel about a beautiful heiress being pursued by seven men (!)—Frances Burney also explores manipulation and the evil of having power over someone else’s mind—in this, she goes further than Jane Austen. 

3/ I have complained about the frivolous characters in the novel. If we compare Cecilia to Anna Karenina, which is also over 900 pages, or War and Peace, which is 1,200 – 1,400 pages, Tolstoy has a few characters who think deeply (even if we disagree with them), and writes many interesting conversations and discussions about various subjects; Frances Burney tells us but doesn’t depict the stimulating conversations between Cecilia and Mortimer Delvile or Mrs Delvile, but she meticulously depicts all the trivial and insipid talks in high society, which can be trying at times (even if one admires her ability to capture their voices and some of the characters are funny, such as Miss Larolles or Mr Meadows). 

I have other complaints. One irritating thing is that there’s a misunderstanding between Cecilia and Mortimer Delvile that gets dragged out—whenever an opportunity to clear it comes up, they get interrupted—you can see Frances Burney deliberately drag it out for nearly 170 pages. 

Another thing is that Cecilia is so naïve and gullible to the point of being stupid. I’m glad she’s not a Mary Sue, but you don’t fully realise how stupid she is and how much of a “thorough scoundrel” Mr Harrel is—to use Mr Monckton’s phrase—till you convert the amount of money she gives him to today’s money. It’s shocking! 

However, Frances Burney is undoubtedly a great writer. She depicts very well the selfishness and recklessness of Mr Harrel—you don’t doubt that people such as Mr and Mrs Harrel exist. One of the things Burney explores in Cecilia is the obsession with appearance, the obsession with appearing rich and high-class and fashionable: we see that in almost everyone in the high society of the novel, but the extremes are Mr Belfield, and Mr and Mrs Harrel—even when they’re near death, or on the verge of destruction, they remain fixated on how they appear to the world. It’s very well-done. 

“… the rest of the house was very differently employed; feasting, revelling, amusements of all sorts were pursued with more eagerness than ever, and the alarm which so lately threatened their destruction, seemed now merely to heighten the avidity with which they were sought. Yet never was the disunion of happiness and diversion more striking and obvious; Mr Harrel, in spite of his natural levity, was seized from time to time with fits of horror that embittered his gayest moments, and cast a cloud upon all his enjoyments. Always an enemy to solitude, he now found it wholly insupportable, and ran into company of any sort, less from a hope of finding entertainment, than from a dread of spending half an hour by himself.” (B.5, ch.3) 

That is especially good. 

Cecilia: “Cecilia was much concerned to find her so unmoved”

1/ Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782) have a few things in common: both are about a young country girl’s experience in London; both feature a heroine who is naïve and trusting but otherwise perfect, chased by multiple men. The two novels are however very different, mainly that Evelina is about 500 pages and Cecilia is over 900 pages; Cecilia is more mature; and at this point, Frances Burney has dropped the conceit of letters—Evelina is an epistolary novel—and writes a comedy of manners, which makes it closer to the novels of Jane Austen. 

Look at her prose: 

“But the principal figure in the circle was Mr Belfield, a tall, thin young man, whose face was all animation, and whose eyes sparkled with intelligence. He had been intended by his father for trade, but his spirit, soaring above the occupation for which he was designed, from repining led him to resist, and from resisting, to rebel. […] And now, with little business, and that little neglected, a small fortune, and that fortune daily becoming less, the admiration of the world, but that admiration ending simply in civility, he lived an unsettled and unprofitable life, generally caressed, and universally sought, yet careless of his interest and thoughtless of the future; devoting his time to company, his income to dissipation, and his heart to the Muses.” (B.1, ch.2) 

These sentences are the kind that we could find in Jane Austen. 

“Mortimer Delvile was tall and finely formed, his features, though not handsome, were full of expression, and a noble openness of manners and address spoke the elegance of his education, and the liberality of his mind.” (B.2, ch.6) 

Like Austen, Burney is not particularly interested in physical descriptions. 

Austen’s fans would like Burney as they are in many ways similar: both are not very visual writers; both write comedies of manners; both are funny and witty, with a talent for capturing characters’ voices, and so on. One can see the influence. But Burney depicts a different world—the world of the upper class, the world of fashion, the world of dissipation. Whereas Austen often depicts middle class women on the brink of poverty (except for Emma Woodhouse) and in need of marriage, Burney depicts the opposite in Cecilia: Cecilia Beverley is an heiress, and the central conflict of the novel is that she not only has to ward off bad suitors who are after the money, but, according to the will, she can only marry a man willing to change his last name to Beverley. 

2/ Having lost her uncle, Cecilia comes to stay with her old friend Priscilla—mostly called Mrs Harrel throughout the novel—as Mr Harrel is one of her three guardians. The high society Frances Burney mocks is similar to the one in Vanity Fair, or in the novels of Edith Wharton. It might get tiresome after a while to read pages and pages of partying and dissipation and callousness and gossips and hypocrisy—it’s like watching vapid people on reality TV—but I like Burney’s depiction of Cecilia’s amazement and disappointment upon realising that a friend of her childhood has become a different person. 

“She found her insensible to friendship, indifferent to her husband, and negligent of all social felicity. Dress, company, parties of pleasure, and public places, seemed not merely to occupy all her time; but to gratify all her wishes.” (B.1, ch.4) 

One of the best parts of Volume I is the masquerade chapter, partly because it’s something different, partly because Cecilia and we are to guess who’s behind the masks, partly because Frances Burney references Shakespeare and Cervantes and mythology, and most importantly, because some characters reveal their true selves whilst hiding behind disguises. 

“The author of the former disturbance was now the occasion of the present: the fiend, having vainly traversed the room in search of Cecilia, stumbled accidentally upon Harlequin, before he was freed from the relicks of his own mischief; and unable to resist the temptation of opportunity and the impulse of revenge, he gave vent to the wrath so often excited by the blunders, forwardness, and tricks of Morrice, and inflicted upon him, with his own wooden sword, which he seized for that purpose, a chastisement the most serious and severe.

[…] And then, after artfully playing sundry antics under pretence of still supporting his character, with a motion too sudden for prevention, and too rapid for pursuit, he escaped out of the room…” (B.2, ch.3)   

A character who seems like a good guy and whom Cecilia sees as a good guy dresses up as the Devil, which he—in some sense—is. This is what I mean when I say Cecilia is more mature than Evelina: in Burney’s first novel, the characters are rather straightforward and they are (generally) what they seem; in Cecilia, the characters are not always what they seem. 

I suspect that the masquerade will later turn out to be significant, in the sense of playing a symbolic role like the ha-ha scene in Mansfield Park. 

3/ I should clarify that when I wrote “tiresome” earlier, I meant that some of the characters were frivolous and empty-headed—the novel itself is not boring—Frances Burney knows how to captivate one’s interest and often introduces new characters or new environments. Like Austen, she has a strong ethical sense, but like Austen, she has wit and a light touch and a sense of humour—she’s not moralistic or heavy like George Eliot, nor harsh like Edith Wharton. 

In later blog posts, I’m hoping to have more interesting things to say and not mention Jane Austen. 

A few sonnets I like from the 16th and 17th centuries

I’ve never been much of a poetry person. I thought Shakespeare would be my gateway into poetry, but no. Or rather, I do like dramatic and epic poetry—it’s lyric poetry that I struggle with, except for Shakespeare’s sonnets and some poems here and there by Donne, Milton, Keats, Tennyson, etc. I like stories, that’s the thing, and I like characters (my love for Shakespeare’s sonnets is possibly because I read them as part of a sequence, and there are characters). 

Anyway, that’s why I picked up The Oxford Book of Sonnets, to try to get into poetry. Here are some sonnets I like from the 16th and 17th centuries that were not by Shakespeare (in the same order as in the book).  

Edmund Spenser 

Amoretti LXXV

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalise;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”

“Not so,” (quoth I) “let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

Amoretti LXXVII

Was it a dream, or did I see it plain,

A goodly table of pure ivory:

All spread with junkets, fit to entertain

The greatest prince with pompous royalty.

’Mongst which there in a silver dish did lie

Two golden apples of unvalued price:

Far passing those which Hercules came by,

Or those which Atalanta did entice.

Exceeding sweet, yet void of sinful vice,

That many sought yet none could ever taste,

Sweet fruit of pleasure brought from paradise

By love himself, and in his garden placed.

Her breast that table was so richly spread,

My thoughts the guests, which would thereon have fed.

Sir Philip Sidney 

Astrophil and Stella 39 

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,

The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,

Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low.

With shield of proof shield me from out the press

Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw:

O make in me those civil wars to cease;

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,

A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,

A rosy garland and a weary head:

And if these things, as being thine by right,

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,

Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.

Samuel Daniel 

Delia 45 

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,

Brother to Death, in silent darkness born:

Relieve my languish, and restore the light,

With dark forgetting of my cares, return;

And let the day be time enough to mourn

The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:

Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,

Without the torment of the night’s untruth.

Cease dreams, th’ imagery of our day-desires,

To model forth the passions of the morrow;

Never let rising sun approve you liars,

To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain;

And never wake to feel the day’s disdain.

John Donne 

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements and an angelic sprite,

But black sin hath betray’d to endless night

My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die.

You which beyond that heaven which was most high

Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,

Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might

Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,

Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.

But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire

Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,

And made it fouler; let their flames retire,

And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal

Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;

All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes

Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,

For if above all these my sins abound,

’Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace

When we are there; here on this lowly ground

Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good

As if thou’hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurped town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

William Habington 

To Castara. Upon Beauty

Castara, see that dust, the sportive wind

So wantons with. ’Tis happ’ly all you’ll find 

Left of some beauty: and how still it flies,

To trouble, as it did in life, our eyes.

O empty boast of flesh! Though our heirs gild

The far fetch Phrigian marble, which shall build

A burthen to our ashes, yet will death

Betray them to the sport of every breath.

Dost thou, poor relic of our frailty, still

Swell up with glory? Or is it thy skill,

To mock weak man, whom every wind of praise

Into the air, doth ’bove his centre raise.

If so, mock on. And tell him that his lust

To beauty’s madness. For it courts but dust.

John Milton 

Sonnet 19 

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Sonnet 23 

Methought I saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,

Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,

Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.

Mine, as whom wash’d from spot of child-bed taint

Purification in the old Law did save,

And such as yet once more I trust to have

Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;

Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined

So clear as in no face with more delight.

But Oh! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Aphra Behn 

Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died Before

This little, silent, gloomy monument, 

Contains all that was sweet and innocent;

The softest prattler that e’er found a tongue,

His voice was music and his words a song,

Which now each listening angel smiling hears,

Such pretty harmonies compose the spheres;

Wanton as unfledged cupids, ere their charms

Has learned the little arts of doing harms,

Fair as young cherubins, as soft and kind,

And though translated could not be refined,

The seventh dear pledge the nuptial joys had given,

Toiled here on earth, retired to rest in heaven, 

Where they the shining host of angels fill,

Spread their gay wings before the throne, and smile.

In praise of Satoshi Kon

It was last year when I discovered Satoshi Kon. He’s now one of my favourite directors, and guess what, you should watch his films too, even if you’re prejudiced against anime (as I was). 

Perfect Blue (1997): First one I saw and still my favourite. The film is about a member of a Japanese idol group who leaves the music industry in order to pursue an acting career. She soon finds herself stalked and threatened by an obsessive fan unhappy with her decision to leave the group (I don’t think you would want to join the Japanese showbiz after this); as things escalate and gruesome murders take place, she slowly loses her grip on reality (like Lady Macbeth). It’s a serious film and a great film, blurring the line between reality and fantasy and fiction—three layers. Black Swan clearly got ideas stolen from Perfect Blue, but Perfect Blue is much better. 

Millennium Actress (2001): Two documentary filmmakers come to interview a famous actress decades after her retirement from the film industry and she tells them about the love of her life. On a personal level, I don’t like the film as much as the other three by Satoshi Kon (as I find her love story stupid); but on a technical level, it is an impressive film as Kon again blurs the line between reality and cinema. I also like that Millennium Actress references Kurosawa, Ozu, etc.  

Tokyo Godfathers (2003): This one is quite unusual as it’s a comedy drama and (largely) realistic. Three homeless people—a middle-aged alcoholic, a trans woman, and a teenage runaway—find an abandoned baby in the trash on Christmas’s Eve and set out to find the parents. With such a storyline and such a set of characters, it could easily become sentimental and corny, but it isn’t—it’s funny and moving and the characters are full of life. Roger Ebert calls it “a story that will never, ever, be remade by Disney” (which should appeal to some of you). Might watch it again at Christmas.

Paprika (2006): His last film. A group of scientists create a device that allows people to view someone else’s dreams. The device however gets stolen and shit happens—people lose control of their minds and dreams merge and nightmares flood into the real world. Do I understand Paprika? Not the Jungian and Freudian ideas, no. But it’s a fascinating film nevertheless, and the rich and colourful and utterly bizarre dreamworld of Paprika makes me realise how drab and boring dream sequences in most films are. I can’t decide if this one or Perfect Blue is Satoshi Kon’s greatest film. 

Online I’ve come across some people who think literature is a greater art form than cinema. I don’t agree. I think they’re different art forms with different ways of telling a story and different strengths. Cinema can do certain things that literature (or some other art forms) can’t—when a film is like a dream, or when it blurs the line between reality and fantasy and fiction—we see that in Ingmar Bergman, we see that in Federico Fellini, and we see that in Satoshi Kon. 

Pity he died so soon.