Suggest a Book for the dissensus book club!

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

Well everyone knows the Devil has all the best tunes - and yet, for all that,

 

luka

Well-known member
I DIDNT ASK TO BE BORN!

"O miserable of happy! is this the end
of this new glorious world, and me so late
The glory of that glory, who now become
Accursed of blessed, hide me from the face
Of God, whom to behold was then my height
Of happiness: yet well, if here would end
The misery, I deserved it, and would bear
My own deservings; but this will not serve;
All that I eat or drink, or shall beget,
Is propagated curse. O voice once heard
Delightfully, Increase and multiply,
Now death to hear! for what can I increase
Or multiply, but curses on my head?
Who of all ages to succeed, but feeling
The evil on him brought by me, will curse
My head, Ill fare our ancestor impure,
For this we may thank Adam; but his thanks
Shall be the excration; so besides
Mine own that bide upon me, all from me
Shall with a fierce reflux on me redound,
On me as on their natural centre light
Heavy, though in their place. O fleeting joys
Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!
Did I request thee, maker, from my clay
To mould me man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me, or here place
In this delicious garden? as my will
Concurred not to my being, it were but right
And equal to reduce me to my dust,
Desirous to resign, and render back
All I received, unable to perform
Thy terms too hard, by which I was to hold
The good I sought not. To the loss of that,
Sufficient penalty, why hast thou added
The sense of endless woes? inexplicable
Thy justice seems; yet to say truth, too late,
I thus contest; then should have been refused
Those terms whatever, when they were proposed:
Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good,
Then cavil the conditions?"
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'm clearing my nose slowly but surely

Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
My girlfriend is part of a book group. They just read a sci-fi novel with a scene in which a Jesuit priest gets bumraped by a giant alien hamster. I think I should be getting suggestions from her for books for us guys, I mean she has a doctorate in literature from Oxford so she must know the good shit.
 

luka

Well-known member
id rather read my own books and talk to myself about them and pretend it's bookclub tbh
 

luka.

Active member
My girlfriend is part of a book group. They just read a sci-fi novel with a scene in which a Jesuit priest gets bumraped by a giant alien hamster. I think I should be getting suggestions from her for books for us guys, I mean she has a doctorate in literature from Oxford so she must know the good shit.

in all seriousness, that's actualy a good idea. which book is it?
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I'd rather read the Canon at my own pace and choosing than some shit book imposed on me by a bunch of fuckers who would ask me "what was your favorite bit?"
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
in all seriousness, that's actualy a good idea. which book is it?

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Read it years ago,can see why it'd appeal to serious lit people. Basically a sci-fi allegory for European first contact w/indigenous cultures (i.e. Jesuit missions). Pretty good on cultural misunderstandings (author has a PhD in some kinda anthro), the hypocrisy of more "advanced" cultures, different kinds of power relations in servitude context. Lots of religious/philosophic overtone. It's faded a bit in my mind as things do but I recall a bit of an Leguin vibe but more visceral. The alien rape is well grisly.

Also sign me up for a reignited dissensus book club. motivation to start reading serious(ish) literature again. how about Beowulf actually? in keeping with the dead boring English canon theme. could do Grendel by John Gardner with it, been meaning to read that for years.
 

luka

Well-known member
Beowulf's in old english good luck with that. i looked at the first page of the seafarer yesterday and i think it's put me off for life. even chaucer seems a bit too daunting at this point. and reading beowulf in translation only takes an afternoon. not really meaty enough.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Back to PL for a moment. I love the sly digs at cardinals and monks. I also love how, considering Milton was a Christian and a Puritan at that, he makes Satan come across like a total dude.
 

luka

Well-known member
woops! asked me to read this. he loves it. anyone else care to read it?
FUNERAL MUSIC
William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk: beheaded 1450
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester: beheaded 1470
Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers: beheaded 1483

1

Processionals in the exemplary cave,
Benediction of shadows. Pomfret. London.
The voice fragrant with mannered humility,
With an equable contempt for this world,
‘In honorem Trinitatis’. Crash. The head
Struck down into a meaty conduit of blood.
So these dispose themselves to receive each
Pentecostal blow from axe or seraph,
Spattering block-straw with mortal residue.
Psalteries whine through the empyrean. Fire
Flares in the pit, ghosting upon stone
Creatures of such rampant state, vacuous
Ceremony of possession, restless
Habitation, no man’s dwelling-place.


2

For whom do we scrape our tribute of pain—
For none but the ritual king? We meditate
A rueful mystery; we are dying
To satisfy fat Caritas, those
Wiped jaws of stone. (Suppose all reconciled
By silent music; imagine the future
Flashed back at us, like steel against sun,
Ultimate recompense.) Recall the cold
Of Towton on Palm Sunday before dawn,
Wakefield, Tewkesbury: fastidious trumpets
Shrilling into the ruck; some trampled
Acres, parched, sodden or blanched by sleet,
Stuck with strange-postured dead. Recall the wind’s
Flurrying, darkness over the human mire.


3

They bespoke doomsday and they meant it by
God, their curved metal rimming the low ridge.
But few appearances are like this. Once
Every five hundred years a comet’s
Over-riding stillness might reveal men
In such array, livid and featureless,
With England crouched beastwise beneath it all.
‘Oh, that old northern business …’ A field
After battle utters its own sound
Which is like nothing on earth, but is earth.
Blindly the questing snail, vulnerable
Mole emerge, blindly we lie down, blindly
Among carnage the most delicate souls
Tup in their marriage-blood, gasping ‘Jesus’.


4

Let mind be more precious than soul; it will not
Endure. Soul grasps its price, begs its own peace,
Settles with tears and sweat, is possibly
Indestructible. That I can believe.
Though I would scorn the mere instinct of faith,
Expediency of assent, if I dared,
What I dare not is a waste history
Or void rule. Averroes, old heathen,
If only you had been right, if Intellect
Itself were absolute law, sufficient grace,
Our lives could be a myth of captivity
Which we might enter: an unpeopled region
Of ever new-fallen snow, a palace blazing
With perpetual silence as with torches.


5

As with torches we go, at wild Christmas,
When we revel in our atonement
Through thirty feasts of unction and slaughter,
What is that but the soul’s winter sleep?
So many things rest under consummate
Justice as though trumpets purified law,
Spikenard were the real essence of remorse.
The sky gathers up darkness. When we chant
‘Ora, ora pro nobis’ it is not
Seraphs who descend to pity but ourselves.
Those righteously-accused those vengeful
Racked on articulate looms indulge us
With lingering shows of pain, a flagrant
Tenderness of the damned for their own flesh:


6

My little son, when you could command marvels
Without mercy, outstare the wearisome
Dragon of sleep, I rejoiced above all—
A stranger well-received in your kingdom.
On those pristine fields I saw humankind
As it was named by the Father; fabulous
Beasts rearing in stillness to be blessed.
The world’s real cries reached there, turbulence
From remote storms, rumour of solitudes,
A composed mystery. And so it ends.
Some parch for what they were; others are made
Blind to all but one vision, their necessity
To be reconciled. I believe in my
Abandonment, since it is what I have.


7

‘Prowess, vanity, mutual regard,
It seemed I stared at them, they at me.
That was the gorgon’s true and mortal gaze:
Averted conscience turned against itself.’
A hawk and a hawk-shadow. ‘At noon,
As the armies met, each mirrored the other;
Neither was outshone. So they flashed and vanished
And all that survived them was the stark ground
Of this pain. I made no sound, but once
I stiffened as though a remote cry
Had heralded my name. It was nothing …’
Reddish ice tinged the reeds; dislodged, a few
Feathers drifted across; carrion birds
Strutted upon the armour of the dead.


8

Not as we are but as we must appear,
Contractual ghosts of pity; not as we
Desire life but as they would have us live,
Set apart in timeless colloquy.
So it is required; so we bear witness,
Despite ourselves, to what is beyond us,
Each distant sphere of harmony forever
Poised, unanswerable. If it is without
Consequence when we vaunt and suffer, or
If it is not, all echoes are the same
In such eternity. Then tell me, love,
How that should comfort us—or anyone
Dragged half-unnerved out of this worldly place,
Crying to the end ‘I have not finished’.
Geoffrey Hill
 
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