Men, we are assured, will return to reading when they see their own experiences reflected in the Washington Review of Books.
Links:
In Harper’s, Veronique Greenwood on change ringing:
Change ringing—the art of ringing bells in a continuously shifting order—is an activity “peculiar to the English,” as the novelist Dorothy L. Sayers once wrote. Until the turn of the seventeenth century, English bell ringers either struck the outside rim of a bell with a hammer or swung a rope attached to its clapper. By 1600, churches had mounted their bells on wheeled contraptions, enabling the ringer to fully flip a bell and sound it with more precise timing. A ringer could now pause his bell during its rotation—the bell balancing upside down, its clapper resting against the inside rim—and take turns with other ringers. This innovation opened up greater possibilities for compositions known as “methods” (composers tend to base their methods in mathematical principles such as group theory). Dozens of early methods were detailed in the first book on English change ringing, Tintinnalogia: or, The Art of Ringing, published in 1668 by Fabian Stedman. Soon enough, ecclesiastical practice became secular sport. During the reign of James II, change ringing became a popular form of physical and intellectual exercise; in rural parts of the country, the most impressive ringers were rewarded with a nice hat or a pair of gloves. Since then, change ringing has seen the flourishing of methods such as Beverley Surprise Minor, Reverse Canterbury Pleasure Place Doubles, and Yorkshire Delight Major. Rather than employing traditional musical notation, change-ringing methods are represented by means of a method diagram—a chart of each bell’s individual path—an example of which is shown here.
[Algorithmic composition avant la lettre. (Bells are so different from most other instruments that they tend to call radically different approaches out of composers; I had some notes on this in WRB—Sept. 13, 2025.) —Steve]
Reviews:
In the TLS, A. E. Stallings reviews a new translation of the Odyssey (by Daniel Mendelsohn, April) [An Upcoming book in WRB—Apr. 5, 2025.]:
Mendelsohn also uses the roominess of the line to retain all the epithets, and sometimes to unpack them. These formulae, often compound adjectives, tend to fall in the same place in the line and tend to be coupled with a particular noun: the “wine-dark sea” (an indelible expression introduced into English versions of Homer by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang’s Victorian prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey), “rosy-fingered dawn” (ditto), “Poseidon earth-shaker,” “winged words”, “prudent Penelope,” “immortal Night,” and so on. Occasionally, they appear to be little more than metrical filler from an oral tradition, as in “curved fishhooks” (aren’t hooks by definition curved?), or “single-hoofed” (as opposed to cloven-footed) horses.
In his introduction, Mendelsohn argues for strict repetition in the translation of such formulaic phrases in the Greek, rather than jazzy multifaceted variations. “Rosy-fingered Dawn” (“rosy,” Mendelsohn declares, is too “Edwardian”—though elsewhere he doesn’t mind the Hardyish “twain” or the Housmanian “lad”) becomes Dawn “with her fingertips of rose.” The “wine-dark sea” is trickier. The meaning of the Greek oinopa ponton (which sounds like waves slapping a prow) is less certain: drunken-faced? Burgundy? Mendelsohn opts for “the sea whose face is the color of wine.” It’s less purple than “wine-dark,” but more straightforwardly literal. His bent for the didactic, to spell out, even when it comes to ambiguities, can sometimes lead to phrases that are not “eminently plain and direct.” Aigisthus, who seduces Agamemnon’s wife, then murders him, is described by Homer as “blameless,” a common epithet for a nobleman—the “most controversial single word” in the poem, according to Mendelsohn’s extensive note. What can it mean here, if anything? Is it ironic? Ancient and modern commentators on the poem have tied themselves in knots. His solution, “a man who was not one to blame,” is clarified by his note, but can remain puzzling on the page. (Compare Wilson’s neutral and inconspicuous “well-born.”)
[I always thought the fingers in “rosy-fingered Dawn” were a reference to the streaks of color sometimes in the sky at sunrise (and sunset), as if the sun were the palm and the streaks emanating from it Dawn’s long, slender fingers. I don’t know what fingertips have to do with it.
And while translating the epithets literally has some merit, phrases like “the sea whose face is the color of wine” and “a man who was not one to blame” transcend the infelicitous language of a crib and sound like something out of Housman’s parody “Fragments of a Greek Tragedy”: “O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots / Head of a traveller.” —Steve]
In The New Statesman, John Mullan reviews Stephen Greenblatt’s book about Christopher Marlowe (Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival, September 9):
After the success of The Jew of Malta (anti-Semitic, certainly, and also anti-everything else) came Doctor Faustus, the work that really possesses Greenblatt. He cannot resist finding Marlowe in Faustus. Marlowe invented the intellectually insatiable necromancer because he knew men who were dangerously smitten by the quest for knowledge, especially when it risked undermining religious orthodoxy. He was one of them. Greenblatt takes us into the circle of intellectually audacious men around Walter Raleigh, in which Marlowe mixed. Greenblatt is so smitten with his own description of Raleigh that he cannot help declaring, “Raleigh was the demonic magician, or close enough to make the magician seem real.”
[We linked to an earlier review in WRB—Sept. 10, 2025.
Is “the quest for knowledge” really what Doctor Faustus depicts? The quest for knowledge must be a lot heavier on party tricks than I thought. —Steve]
[The rest of today’s WRB has even more links to the best and most interesting writing from the past few days, as well as Upcoming books, What we’re reading, and going deeper on the state of criticism and other niche interests of mine in Critical notes. Today, from my desk and the desks of other WRB contributors:
Men still are not reading novels
Opened are the double doors of poetic inspiration; unlocked are its bolts.
K. T. on a Poem by Maurice Manning and the subjunctive mood
If you’re interested in any of that, and if you want to support the WRB in making the lifelong task of literacy not take anyone’s entire day, please subscribe below.
And if you’re already a subscriber, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Why not share the WRB with your friends and acquaintances? The best way to support us is by subscribing, but the second-best is by telling your friends about us. —Steve]
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