Found an excellent article by Michael Knox Beran entitled In Defense of Memorization. And after reading it I took 15 minutes to memorize Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I’m finding that “She Walks in Beauty” is not sticking very well in my mind. Perhaps it’s because the poem didn’t really mean anything to me (emotionally) when I started memorizing it — I just chose a poem and got to work. With “Stopping by Woods,” however, there’s a particular setting of the poem to music that I heard as a child and still lingers somewhere back there in my memory, so it was really easy to memorize and it’s sticking quite well. Does this mean I should only memorize poetry I love? I suppose so, and in the case of poetry which I’m not familiar with, I can read it over and over again first to get acquainted and then decide if it’s worth my time to memorize it.

For the C.S. Lewis Society meeting on Monday, we read “The Weight of Glory” (the essay itself, that is, not the whole collection of essays). It’s amazing. Where to begin? I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so I’ll just quote my two favorite parts:

I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you — the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.

This ties in quite well with the heaven feeling I talked about a few days ago, hitting it right on the head.

And at the end of the essay, this rather famous quote:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare…. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

Ah, I love C.S. Lewis’s words. FYI, we’re reading “The Inner Ring” and “Membership” for next week.

Today in my History of the Book class we made paper. A local guy, Rob Buchart, runs his own fine-book press and makes the paper and so he showed us how it’s done. He took the fibers (shredded rags beaten to a pulp, basically) and stirred them into a vat of cold water, then took a mold (a rectangular wooden frame with horizontal and vertical metal lines to provide structure) and put the deckle (an empty wooden frame) on top of it. Dipping it into the vat and pulling it back out again, he gently shook it in a few directions to help the pulp settle on the mold and drain it. Off to the side he had some felt rectangles, and he took one, sprayed it with some water to dampen it, removed the deckle from the mold, and then pressed the mold onto the felt in a rolling motion to release the paper onto the felt. And then he covered it with another piece of felt to let it dry. We all got to do it, and on Thursday the professor will bring our paper to class. Mmm. Someday, when I have a more permanent residence, I want to start a printing press in my garage and make my own paper and everything else (or at least as much as possible). The only problem is money. It’s always money. ~sigh~

Last night I memorized Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty”:

She walks in beauty, like the night
     Of cloudless climes and starry skies
And all that’s best of dark and bright
     Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
     Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
     Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
     Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
     How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
     So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
     But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
     A heart whose love is innocent!

After watching Willoughby recite a Shakespearean sonnet by heart in Sense and Sensibility last night, I’ve been taken with the idea of learning poetry by heart. So I started with the scriptures this morning, memorizing part of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-34). Good stuff. I’ll continue doing that in the mornings, and at night I’ll tackle various poems (the shorter ones at first, but I do want to build up to where I can retain some of the longer poems).

Why? As a writer, I believe that one can’t write well unless one reads well. When one comes across a striking passage, what better way to make it one’s own than to memorize it? I’d rather be known for quoting Wordsworth and Longfellow than for quoting Adam Sandler and Friends. (And it’s tempting to launch into a full tirade against the woes of modern pop culture, but alas, now is not the time. Soon, though, soon.) When the words of the poets are part of me, I feel fuller, richer, more alive than before. It’s great.

From the blog of the American Chesterton Society, this bit by Chesterton on journalism:

“Nothing looks more neat and regular than a newspaper, with its parallel columns, its mechanical printing, its detailed facts and figures, its responsible, polysyllabic leading articles. Nothing, as a matter of fact, goes every night through more agonies of adventure, more hairbreadth escapes, desperate expedients, crucial councils, random compromises, or barely averted catastrophes.

“Seen from the outside, it seems to come round as automatically as the clock and as silently as the dawn. Seen from the inside, it gives all its organisers a gasp of relief every morning to see that it has come out at all; that it has come out without the leading article upside down or the Pope congratulated on discovering the North Pole.”

Came across this great quote in chapter 12 of Jane Eyre:

It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions beside political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

I agree wholeheartedly. And while I certainly don’t hold with many of the values espoused by the radical feminists, I do believe that women are great and wonderful and should be treated with equality (but this doesn’t mean that men and women are the same or should be treated so — far from it). In fact, being of the gentlemanly sort who subscribe to the old idea of chivalry, I prefer putting women up on a pedestal and giving them honor. Quaint and old-fashioned, perhaps, but it’s vastly satisfying. Even something as simple as opening a door for a woman makes my day. It’s nice to be nice.

Dare I admit this? I felt like a movie tonight, so I rented Sense and Sensibility from the campus bookstore. (Covertly, of course, because as a guy — especially alone — it’s not the sort of movie you want to be caught holding.) That’s confession #1. My second confession is that I loved the movie and even cried a little at the end. Okay, it’s out. Phew. Whoever decided that guys can’t cry should be voted off the island. It certainly was a movie that would really appeal to girls — at least judging by my limited understanding of the fairer sex and the workings of their minds and hearts — and I can also see why most guys wouldn’t really be interested in it.

Anyway, I’d thought about reading the book first, but I’m still reading Jane Eyre so I decided to go ahead with it. Eventually I’ll read the book and report on it, but even if they’re different (which I’m sure they are, to some extent), here’s my philosophy on movies-from-books: movies and books are separate and distinct art forms, and so it’s okay for there to be differences. I’d rather have a well-done movie that changes a few things than an amateur film that sticks to the book 100%. If there’s something in the book that you absolutely love, well, just read the book again. It’s not that hard.

Now I just have to catch the six-hour Pride and Prejudice and the new Keira Knightley version (which hopefully will come out on DVD soon because I rarely go to the theaters). And get started on War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov…

Yesterday a friend asked me why I like C.S. Lewis so much. Good question. And good questions deserve thoughtful answers, so I’ve been thinking about it since then and have come up with the three biggest reasons:

1. Heaven. How can I describe this? There’s a feeling in Lewis’s books — particularly in the Chronicles of Narnia and in The Great Divorce — of “further up and further in,” of a next life where things are greater and grander and more solid than they are here on earth — so much so that this life is a mere shadow of the next (thus Shadowlands). Reading Lewis’s books fills me with a wistful longing for that land beyond the sunset. (On a side note, the song Into the West from the Return of the King soundtrack is amazingly beautiful and captures a lot of this feeling.) I suppose you could call it the land of dreams, except that the dreams will be real and even better than we could possibly have imagined. That’s the heaven I’m looking forward to.

2. His explanations of things Christian. Lewis had a knack for taking things that pass underneath our noses — usually bits of human nature or doctrine, often small but rarely inconsequential — and crafting ingenious and memorable descriptions that pierce to the very center of the thing and ensure that it will never slip away without our notice again. And some of his Christian imagery is just incredible. Take, for example, this quote from Mere Christianity: “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” Or this: “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell” (The Great Divorce, Preface).

3. His love of books. This wasn’t why I first started reading Lewis, but when I got to Surprised by Joy and discovered how much he read — how deeply and how broadly — he became my literary role model. If you have the chance, check out some of the collections of his letters — they’re full of his comments about the books he was reading at the moment. Delicious stuff.

P.S. If you’re interested in C.S. Lewis quotes, check out Wikiquote’s page on him.

I’m not doing so hot at posting in here regularly, am I. I’m still reading Jane Eyre and The Silver Chair and How to Read a Book, along with the usual textbooks. It’s been getting harder to find time for extracurricular reading, but I’m determined to keep at it. I think that once I get Translating Scripture to the press, I’ll have more time (but then again I really need to be working on Beyond).