Tag Archives: literature

“Mending Wall” by Robert Frost [w/ Audio]

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Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
  That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
  And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
  And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
  I have come after them and made repair
  Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
  But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
  To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
  No one has seen them made or heard them made,
  But at spring mending-time we find them there.
 I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
  And on a day we meet to walk the line
  And set the wall between us once again.
 We keep the wall between us as we go.
 To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
 And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
  We have to use a spell to make them balance:
  'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
  We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
 Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
  One on a side. It comes to little more:
  There where it is we do not need the wall:
  He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
 My apple trees will never get across
  And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
 He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'
 Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
  If I could put a notion in his head:
  'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
  Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
 Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
  What I was walling in or walling out,
  And to whom I was like to give offense.
 Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
  That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
  But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
  He said it for himself. I see him there
  Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
  In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
 He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
  Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
 He will not go behind his father's saying,
  And he likes having thought of it so well
  He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

BOOKS: “The Last Brother” by Nathacha Appanah

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The Last BrotherThe Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Gray Wolf Press

When Mauritius made it onto my shortlist for upcoming travel, I needed to find an enlightening work of Mauritian literature, and this book was prominently discussed as one that might fit the bill.

The book is narrated by an old man telling a story from his boyhood. It is a poignant and riveting tale. The book’s title, The Last Brother reflects the protagonist’s (Raj’s) first tragedy, losing his two brothers in a natural disaster in Mapou, Mauritius. Raj’s family then moved south where his father got work in a prison.

Much of the book revolves around a strange historical event — the imprisonment of a large number of Jews on Mauritius during World War II. These Jews had fled Europe and were trying to make their way to Palestine but were not granted entry because of a lack of acceptable documentation. They were then sent to Mauritius where they were imprisoned in a detention camp.

The reader only sees this event through the relationship of Raj and David. Raj is taken to the prison infirmary after being beaten by his alcoholic father. There he meets David, a Jewish boy in the detention camp. It isn’t until the very end of the book that the author presents the facts of the historic event. I think this is a wise move, allowing the reader only knowledge of what the characters would know (which – as nine-year-olds – is not much.) The late reveal adds to the tension and makes some of the characters’ decisions more understandable.

The last part of the book is a little reminiscent of Huck Finn, except without Twain’s lightheartedness and with a more melancholic and tragic tone and ending, but featuring two young men on the lam for different reasons.

I found this novel to be a potent read and would highly recommend it for readers of global literature — especially if you expect to find yourself in Mauritius at some point.

View all my reviews

“Wang Chuan Village After Rain” [积雨辋川庄作] by Wang Wei [王维]

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Smoke slowly rises from sodden woods;
   Millet 's steamed to feed the fieldhands;
   Egrets fly over foggy paddies;
   Hidden birds sing from lush tree stand.
Mountain hikers study hibiscus,
   Under dewy pines chew sunflower seeds,
   Give mat space to any old traveler.
 Gull and I: wary of each other's deeds.

Original Poem in Simplified Chinese:

积雨空林烟火迟， 蒸藜炊黍饷东菑。
漠漠水田飞白鹭， 阴阴夏木啭黄鹂。
山中习静观朝槿， 松下清斋折露葵。
野老与人争席罢， 海鸥何事更相疑？

Wen Fu 5: “Writing Styles” [文赋五] by Lu Ji [陆机] [w/ Audio]

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Among ten thousand writing styles,
  There's no one standard or measure.
  The styles: many, muddled, and free --
  Form, the unattainable treasure.
 Talent in word-wrangling shows skill.
   Idea conveyance shows craft.
   Writers strive 'twixt have and have not --
   Unyielding in shallow or deep draught.
 An escape artist of fine lines --
   Yet time and space consume in kind.
   Intricacy excites the eye, 
   But frugality soothes the mind. 
 One of few words is not confined.
 Verbose writers drift the Undefined.

The original in Simplified Chinese:

体有万殊，物无一量。
纷纭挥霍，形难为状。
辞程才以效伎，意司契而为匠。
在有无而黾勉，当浅深而不让。
虽离方而遯员，期穷形而尽相。
故夫夸目者尚奢，惬心者贵当。
言穷者无隘，论达者唯旷。

“Chaucer” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [w/ Audio]

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An old man in a lodge within a park;
   The chamber walls depicted all around
   With portraitures of huntsman, hawk,
      and hound,
   And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the
      lark,
 Whose song comes with the sunshine
      through the dark
   Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
   He listeneth and he laugheth at the
      sound,
   Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
 He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
   The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
   Made beautiful with song; and as I read
 I heard the crowing cock, I hear the note
   Of lark and linnet, and from every page
   Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery
       mead.

“Laughing Song” by William Blake [w/ Audio]

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When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
 And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
 When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
 And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

When the meadows laugh with lively green,
 And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
 When Mary and Susan and Emily
 With their sweet round mouths sing 'Ha, Ha, He!'

When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
 Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread,
 Come live & be merry, and join with me,
 To sing the sweet chorus of 'Ha, Ha, He!'

“Poetry Is a Destructive Force” by Wallace Stevens [w/ Audio]

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That's what misery is,
 Nothing to have at heart.
 It is to have or nothing.

It is a thing to have,
 A lion, an ox in his breast,
 To feel it breathing there.

Corazón, stout dog,
 Young ox, bow-legged bear,
 He tastes its blood, not spit.

He is like a man
 In the body of a violent beast.
 Its muscles are his own. . .

The lion sleeps in the sun.
 Its nose is on its paws.
 It can kill a man.

“Crops” by Walter de la Mare [w/ Audio]

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Farmer Giles has cut his rye;
   Oh my!    Oh my!
 Farmer Bates has cut his wheat;
   Och, the thieving hares in it!

Farmer Turvey's cut his barley;
   Ripe and early, ripe and early.
 And where day breaks, rousing not,
   Farmer Weary's cut his throat.

“Down to Jiangling” [下江陵] by Li Bai [李 白]

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I left Baidi amid ochre clouds --
   Crossed a thousand li by day's end.
 Monkeys howled and chased along each bank;
   My skiff slipped past ten thousand mountains.

The original in Simplified Chinese:

朝辞白帝彩云间
千里江陵一日还
两岸猿声啼不住
轻舟已过万重山

Note: this is poem #269 of the 300 Tang Poems [唐詩三百首.]

PROMPT: Reread

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Daily writing prompt
What book could you read over and over again?
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If plays count as books, then most of Shakespeare’s plays. I’ve already reread a number of them (e.g. Hamlet, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)

I’ve read Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a couple times in full (and segments of it many times over) and expect to get to it again. I’ve read Voltaire’s Candide a couple times.

I could definitely see rereading Journey to the West, Water Margin, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but at this point I’m hoping my Mandarin will get good enough to read them in Simplified Chinese.

I’ve read a number of nonfiction texts multiple times — e.g. Sunzi’s Art of War, Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings, Laozi’s Dao De Jing, and Emerson’s Selected Essays.

I’m generally not a fan of rereading books because there is so much awesome stuff out there to be read a first time. For all the reading I’ve done, there is still a massive number of classics that I have yet to touch. Usually there has to be a good reason for a reread, e.g. a new translation that promises to be improved / simplified, the book is just so potent as to still have lessons packed in after the first read, it’s a challenging read and the first go leaves a lot on the table, or — like The Little Prince — its enjoyment-to-time investment ratio is high.