The guiding metaphor of classic style is seeing the world. The writer can see something that the reader has not yet noticed, and he orients the reader’s gaze so that she can see it for herself. The purpose of writing is presentation, and its motive is disinterested truth. It succeeds when it aligns language with the truth, the proof of success being clarity and simplicity. The truth can be known, and is not the same as the language that reveals it; prose is a window onto the world. The writer knows the truth before putting it into words; he is not using the occasion of writing to sort out what he thinks. Nor does the writer of classic prose have to argue for the truth; he just needs to present it. That is because the reader is competent and can recognize the truth when she sees it, as long as she is given an unobstructed view. The writer and the reader are equals, and the process of directing the reader’s gaze takes the form of a conversation.
Poor Ophelia. Life wasn’t kind to you. And by life, I mean Hamlet—or rather, Shakespeare, because he’s the one who gave you so few lines to speak, so little personality. Faded, lost, mad, drowned. No wonder painters couldn’t stop painting you—who doesn’t love a tragic ingenue? In the words of your brother: “Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness.”
Your youth and beauty made madness appealing and your virginity made it all the more intoxicating. Artists went wild, turning your tragic character into fodder for their romantic paintings. This (above) is perhaps the best known Ophelia image, pained by John Everett Mills in 1852. It even inspired my own flower-bathing experience.
Gather Ye Rosebuds or Ophelia – John William Waterhouse, 1908.
Here is Ophelia looking alive and rosy, holding some posies. I love the expression on her face here—she looks strong, almost defiant. This painting is titled “Gather Ye Rosebuds or Ophelia,” which references both the famous Robert Herrick poem and Shakespeare’s doomed character for a lit nerd double-hitter.
Ophelia – Arthur Hughes, 1852
While not as famous as many of the other Ophelia depictions, this painting by Arthur Hughes is my personal favorite. She looks so frail and so childlike. Look at that vibrant, sinister, poisonous green! And the cute little toadstool. I find this piece enchanting and strange in a surprisingly modern way (doesn’t it look like it could be by a contemporary artist?). Also, do you ever wonder why Ophelia is always depicted with flowers? It’s not just because she’s a wilted, fragile symbol of femininity…
Ophelia – John William Waterhouse, 1889
Ophelia had relatively few lines in Hamlet, but her madness is marked by gibbering about flowers, herbs, and their meanings. She sings and babbles to her brother Laertes:
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts… There’s fennel for you, and columbines.—There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. We may call it “herb of grace” o’ Sundays.—Oh, you must wear your rue with a difference.—There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.”
The Death of Ophelia – Eugene Delacroix, 1843
There are some modern renditions of Ophelia, but she seemed to be most popular during the mid-1800s, which makes perfect sense. This was a time of Romanticism and Impressionism, of experimenting with new forms while reawakening old stories.
Ophelia – Claire Rosen, 2008
The rich visual language of Ophelia creates an instantly recognizable figure. Who else would be swathed in a white dress, floating in water, surrounded by greenery and flowers? Contemporary artists seem to prefer to photograph Ophelia rather than paint her. It’s an easy shoot to set up, and the results are made all the more dramatic by the literary references. (Plus her fate is really tailor-made for modern feminists, since her madness is predicated by a very real virgin/whore dichotomy set up by her father and her lover. Ouch.)
Admittedly, this last picture has nothing to do with Ophelia, except that it was shot by Claire Rosen (same photographer as the one above) and it is gloriously awesome. Rosen has an entire series of Fantastic Feasts with beasts, as well as a series of fairy tale-inspired images. They’re all lovely. Go take a look.
Every year, my mom gives me a book for Christmas. She gets me other things, too, because my mom and I share a tendency to over-gift, but the book was a constant. As a child, we were often allowed to open these packages on Christmas Eve. We only got one gift early, and it was always, always a book.
I thought this tradition was unique to my family. Turns out, it’s a common practice in Iceland. Books are such a standard present in that cold country that it spurs a surge in publishing in the months leading up to the holiday. This wonderfully literary ritual even has a name: Jolabokaflod, or the “Christmas Book Flood.”
According to this NPR article, Iceland is an extremely literary country. Not only does every Icelander aspire to write a book (hey, me too!) but the average citizen buys more books than the typical American. “If you look at book sales distribution in the U.K. and the States, most book sales actually come from a minority of people. Very few people buy lots of books. Everybody else buys one book a year if you’re lucky,” says Baldur Bjarnason, a researcher who has been following the Icelandic publishing market. “It’s much more widespread in Iceland. Most people buy several books a year.”
Several books a year? Okay, that doesn’t sound like that many, especially to a book-horder like me. But it is a fairly big difference. Literary culture, on the whole, is much more significant in Iceland than in America. Perhaps this explains why so many Icelanders believe in elves (aka the Huldufólk, or “hidden people”). Maybe people who read more fairytales are more likely to believe in them. Or perhaps just reading in general opens your mind to the weird and wonderful possibilities of the world—magic not excluded.
“I loved reading and I wanted you kids to love books,” said my Christmas-crazy mom when I asked her whether she knew about this Scandinavian ritual. “A lot of people have the tradition of singing carols, which is what I did as a kid. Reading books to you kids was something we could do all together.” We’ve never been a musical family (I’m particularly tone deaf, though my brothers aren’t exactly talented in that department either) so reading it was.
There are a lot of holiday rituals I don’t observe. I’m not religious, nor do I imagine that will change (I don’t believe in elves, either, though I sort of wish I did). But a tradition that revolves around giving—and getting—brand new reading material? That’s my kind of Christmas.
Moths! They’re the redheaded stepchild of the butterfly family (no, that’s not science, but it feels true anyway). They’re ugly and furry and yet, in Yumi Okita’s hands, they’re kind of… cute? Cuddly? Fuzzy and warm?
Not since I read A Girl of the Limberlost (a novel by naturalistGene Stratton-Porter published in 1909) have I been so taken with moths. The book tells the story of a young Indiana girl named Elnora who sends herself to school with the money she makes selling insect specimens. She goes into the Limberlost swamp—what a wonderful, fantastical name for a real place!—where she finds all manner of strange flora and fauna.
I think Elnora (again, that name!) would love Yumi Okita’s textile moths. She makes these beautiful patterned winged things from yarn and string and fiber. You can’t tell from these pictures, but the moths are actually huge—each wing is about as big as a hand.
I particularly like these three, but Okita creates insects (and flowers) in all different shapes and sizes. They mimic real life, but they’re infinitely more beautiful than the average brown moth you see dive-bombing a lightbulb. Just look at the patterns! And I’m really loving this particular color scheme right now. Rose and dust and dusty rose and soft browns and warm ivory. See more of her work here.
Check out this amazing illustration, which shows the growth and spread of “Old World” in a properly old school-lookin’ linguistic family tree. Stunning, isn’t it?
As a side note, Finno-Ugric is the strangest language group! I lived in Hungary for six months and learned so little Hungarian—I remember it took me weeks to properly pronounce köszönöm (thank you) and even then, I still preferred to just say the short version (sounds like “kussie”) for fear of embarrassing myself. It’s such a difficult language, and related to so few other European tongues. I always loved to hear it spoken—to me it always sounded twisty and jagged, yet musical, like a piano played too fast. Oh, Magyar. I miss you.
To be fair, I’m also terrible at languages in general, despite being fascinated (a little in love with, honestly) words and their sounds.
Sometimes people email me about products they want me to write about. Usually, to be totally honest, I delete the emails or send them a quick “thanks but that doesn’t fit” note (I’ve been trying to respond to PR pitches more, especially after reading this great piece about gendered work and the public relations business from Jacobin, which made me think twice about clicking delete). But anyway, I was recently contacted by the folks at Instantly Framed, and because I’m an avid instagrammer I decided to try out the app (you can find my Instagram account here… in case you were wondering).
And I’m super glad I did! It took about five seconds to pick a photograph from my phone and order a framed print, which was delivered in two days. While I admire minimalist decor, I’m truthfully a maximalist myself; my apartment is covered in prints and pictures, weird textiles and pointless knickknacks. But I wouldn’t have it any other way (what are walls even for, if not to cover in pretty pictures?!).
Today I hung the above picture on my wall. I took that picture myself (on my iPhone… obviously). It’s the view from the top of Mount Kineo, a mountain that is located on a small island in the middle of Moosehead Lake. Up north, Maine is wild and green, scarcely populated and full of larger-than-life moose that chill out by the water as if they’ve got nothing better to do. (Did you know they have hollow hair, which enables them to swim, despite the fact that they’re big, huge, heavy, actuallykindofscary animals?) I love it up there. I often wish I lived further north, though I know there are few jobs to be had and a lot of economic depression. It’s a hard place to make a living, and though Maine is amazing, it’s still a state with a lot of issues. But I consider myself lucky to live here, and fortunate to have access to so much natural beauty. In the summer, I drive north whenever I can, to camp out at Lily Bay State Park and spend my days soaking in tea-dark lake water.
But I’m getting off topic. This is a cool app. I would never recommend it on my blog if I didn’t really, really like it. So, if you need some new wall art, you should check it out. And if you use the code CIKELLEHER10 you’ll get $10 off your first order (though December 15). Cool, eh?
I fall in love with strangers all the time. Here’s a song by the inimitable Lady Lamb the Beekeeper about that—about people and connecting, and I think, also about missing someone and being overwhelmed by the world. And catching trains. And eating mountains, which is a dream of mine (actually, to be the best afterlife would be one where I became an indigo mountain somewhere lonely and wild).
I also keep finishing that one great sentence—”the kind of high I like is when…”—in my head over and over with different things.
The kind of high I like is when I stay up all night with someone and we’re exhausted in the morning and we still can’t stop talking even though we’re so tired that the world feels a little unreal and we look like hell and just don’t care.
The kind of high I like is when I see someone I was waiting for and they look at me and I get so nervous and I realize again that I really, really like them and I don’t care at all that they made me wait.
The kind of high I like is when I’m almost crying and something strange and funny makes me laugh and I keep laughing until it hurts.
The kind of high I like is when I hear a really great song and it gives me goosebumps on my arms and I play it over and over and soon I don’t get goosebumps anymore but instead I feel it nestle down into my bones and the sound that someone else made becomes mine and it feels so sweet.
I want to share one of my recent pieces (and one of my favorite assignments) from Maine magazine. Last winter, I spent a night driving around in snowcats with the Sugarloaf mountain groomers and snowmakers. As anyone who has worked the late shift knows, there’s something uncanny about the routines we form when everyone else is asleep. The world becomes quiet and intimate, your field of vision shrinks, making everything seem at once bigger and smaller.
This night was like that—full of big machines and big mountains and small, sweet moments of conversation and connection. Vast sublime views and odd little human details: snippets of This American Life played over an iPod, off-record conversations about marriage and love, day-old pizza boxes pushed out of the camera frame.
Even though they wouldn’t let me drive a snowcat (which, given my driving record, was probably a good call), I still had a blast. Here’s the full piece. All pictures by immensely talented photojournalist Fred Field. Words are by me, with quotes from the smart, funny, cool guys who work at Sugarloaf Mountain.
I’ve professed my love for Yayoi Kusama before, but this playful, colorful art installation in Aix-en-Provence just takes it to the next level. It’s like a scene from a utopian fantasy novel, or an adult Dr. Seuss. A quick google search revealed that this Japanese artist was active in the New York art scene at the same time as Andy Warhol—which makes perfect sense, because nothing quite says POP art to me like colorful dots and infinitely repeating patterns (these trees are kind of like a deconstructed Lichtenstein). Her work has been labeled feminist and minimalist, with strong (and pretty awesome) psychedelic undertones. But what really surprised me is that she’s also the author of multiple novels. She’s 84-years-old and a totally badass lady with more talent in her little finger than most people have in their entire bodies. And just look at her:
I get so wrapped up in stories of young people creating amazing things, but often these “prodigy” narratives make me feel unaccomplished. Reading about established artists with long, varied, and interesting careers is the perfect antidote to that ugly, envious tendency. At 84, she’s still creating wonderful things. Life is (hopefully) long and full of wonder. I still have time.
What I’m Reading: Mary Roach’s delightfully morbid, tastelessly funny Stiff. I’ve read Bonk before, Roach’s book on the scientific study of sex, and this one is similar, but I think much better. Stiff is all about cadavers (that word sounds too much like a food item for my taste, yet I like it more than “dead bodies”). How we care for them. How we use them. How we abuse them. In the introduction to the book, she describes the process of becoming so deeply obsessed with a topic that she pursues it for years—despite the fact that many people find her work off-putting and strange and her professional interests disturbing, even threatening. “I’m a curious person,” she explains. “Like all journalists, I’m a voyeur. I write about what I find fascinating. I used to write about travel. I traveled to escape the known and the ordinary. The longer I did this, the farther afield I had to go. By the time I found myself in Antarctica for the third time, I began to search closer at hand.” The world is full the strange and unfamiliar things, and Roach wants to find them, to peer closely at them, to play doubting Thomas and prod at their wounds. Reading this, I was reminded of a quote by essayist Kathleen Hale: “I never look for things to grab me. They just do, and once they do, the obsessions usually continue until I’m so sick of them—or of myself for enacting them—that suddenly, and with a sense of great relief, I’m repulsed.” When I read this passage, I wanted to find Hal and shake her. “You nailed it!” I would yell in her face. “That’s exactly exactly what it’s like!” To be obsessed, to be a voyeur, to be relentlessly curious to the point where you begin to wonder if it’s really healthy—I think maybe that’s what it is to be a writer.
What I’m Admiring: To stay true to theme, I’ve been really digging the work of artist Travis Bedel. He use anatomical imagery as the jumping off point for his intricate collages, turning the human body into a lush and unsettling menagerie. I imagine if one dissected a nymph, or a citizen of Narnia, they might find this waiting inside. It’s a lovely visual depiction of the circle of life (dust to dust and earth to earth and guts to flowers and the worms crawl in and all that) or an eerie reimagining of what lies within. I personally think his work is very pretty, but then again, I consider Stiff light bedtime reading, so perhaps I’m a terrible judge of these things. (If you like his work, you can buy prints online at Society6 and Etsy.)
Katy Kelleher 