And as we know, Mary, we are of a people to whom the doors were once fatally shut in the U.S. at a critical time. It's been national shame, among others, ever since.
Pope was stronger than his contemporaries gave him credit. To fight off the vicious bacterial infection of spinal tuberculosis, for that is what Pott's disease is, for so many years requires a strong immune system.
I wonder if Pope and his grotto was the inspiration for Francis Hodges Burnett's 'The Secret Garden's. The uncle in that story has Pott's disease and his garden retreat has been locked away for years.
Thank you, Holly, fro that insight. I've always regarded Pope as mentally strong, but I hadn't thought of his immune system in that light. And an intriguing potential link between The Secret Garden!
It is one of those things that many people miss about the chronically ill, that they are fighting deadly conditions, constantly near death, and it requires enormous strength and endurance to keep fighting, day after day, year after year. Pope did not even have the opportunity for antibiotic treatment for his TB.
The enclosed garden (hortus conclusis) had a long tradition as an actual garden style or feature, and as a literary device. I suspect Pope’s walled garden was one of many inspirations.
I've always enjoyed these lines from Ben Jonson's "To Penshurst" (a country estate in England). Here the walls seem to be about inclusion, not exclusion.
Neither garden nor grotto, I escape to my kitchen, and immerse myself in breads and cakes and muffins and crepes. Not so artistic, not so literary, but creative, I tell myself. And thus I am attracted to making beautiful and tasty food, mentally far away from the suffering of the ugliness and foolishness of the world.
Now, I will mix some writing and music, into the joy of cooking :).
There's something to be said about shutting out the world, retreating, but at some point, we need to reemerge and face the world. Thank you, Jeffrey for sharing your gifts.
So much of this essay hits close to home. Those six lines: every word resonates. “Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor’d; Light dies before thy uncreating word.” That pretty much sums up my thoughts upon looking at the New York Times headlines in the morning, something I rarely do these days.
I’ve noticed that my neighbors are tending their gardens as they never did in the past. (I am not, to my shame.) I think it’s a way of claiming beauty as a means of survival. (Doesn’t hurt that we’ve had a lot of rain.) I also think that people are creating inviting landscapes as a gesture of friendship. We are desperate for community. A very different response from Pope’s.
Nothing, however, compares with the guy in the White House who paved over the Rose Garden and added patio tables with umbrellas. I think they’re striped.
Thank you, Jeffrey, for sharing your dog days’ observations and your mind’s wanderings with us. Your writing is always nuanced and surprising; erudite and deeply personal. A joy to see where you take us. And in 40 degrees Celsius! I just looked up the conversion: 104 Fahrenheit. Yikes. I’d be blasting the air conditioner night and day.
Wise words in a great balance of history, literature and current events. Unfortunately, I doubt if the rabble rousers today read much. I'm going to restack this in an effort to spread good words: if only one other person reads it, and causes them to think beyond hateful rhetoric, it will be worth it.
Thank you, Holly. Of course, the situation you described so vividly in some of your recent essays was one of the many things on my mind as I wrote this.
Jeffrey, learned and literate friend, your subtlety is not of this age, yet for all time. An especially rich post across its many parts (what pretenses does Johnson not cut through?), with the very ending for the time.
Thank you, Jay. You’re the kind of reader that all would want but few (myself included) perhaps deserve. Your comments help me to keep writing despite… (gestures world with hand).
For another perspective on societal collapse, I came across this essay today, which I think might interest you. Not sure it really holds up overall, but there are some interesting nuggets to be found in it: https://aeon.co/essays/the-great-myth-of-empire-collapse
How interesting. I just became aware of Kemp and his new book myself the other day, started looking into his Cambridge Center. Beginning the essay now.
A thoughtful essay, Jeffrey. The linked essay about Pope’s Potts Disease, strikes me as only marginally less disableist than the outrageous things people said about and to him at the time. The ‘ugly laws’ in the US were only finally overturned in the 1970s, without the power structures that enabled them ever being properly dismantled. With the recent rise in eugenic rhetoric it is almost as difficult now as it was for Pope. And pop culture has always leaned on the ‘twisted body, twisted mind’ stereotype. Sigh. Thank you for drawing some delicate through lines.
I meant no criticism of you, Jeffrey! I imagine there are only so many articles to refer to. Rather I was musing on ‘advances’ (& withdrawals). Things hit different once you’ve experienced some disability yourself.
Wonderful essay. When I would rant and call for some drastic law to remedy an injustice, my historian husband would caution me that I might not feel that way if (insert my current bête noire of the right) were in charge of the execution of that law.
He has been gone for almost nearly 10 years, but oh my, he knew his history and how easily 'good law' can be turned evil by evil men. I miss him, but he would have been in mental pain everyday living through these past 10 years in the US. No country for rational men.
I hope you get some relief from the heat, it must be brutal
Thank you, Maureen! Thre's always been something about the contrast between the supposed smooth surfaces of Pope's Augustan verse and the visceral everyday life of being a Catholic with a disability in those unforgiving times that has fascinated me. In fact, I don't find Pope's poetry to be the empty but perfectly formed vessel that was the gist of some criticism of him by later poets. There are plenty of rough edges to engage our feelings.
Pope shut the door on the world; here in Tokyo I shut the door on the sun and the heat, like you. The city keeps pressing on outside, but for a moment it's nice to claim a pocket of shade and quiet for ourselves.
What a wonderful read. I find myself often contemplating the tension of participation in the world. It feels at times so violent and at others so vital. I also work within the disability industry and witness how harsh the world still is to those 'strangers'.
So needed to be said today in the US: "In other words, the doors that we shut on others could easily be shut on us."
I think it needs to be said in many places, Mary! Thank you for reading!
And as we know, Mary, we are of a people to whom the doors were once fatally shut in the U.S. at a critical time. It's been national shame, among others, ever since.
Pope was stronger than his contemporaries gave him credit. To fight off the vicious bacterial infection of spinal tuberculosis, for that is what Pott's disease is, for so many years requires a strong immune system.
I wonder if Pope and his grotto was the inspiration for Francis Hodges Burnett's 'The Secret Garden's. The uncle in that story has Pott's disease and his garden retreat has been locked away for years.
Thank you, Holly, fro that insight. I've always regarded Pope as mentally strong, but I hadn't thought of his immune system in that light. And an intriguing potential link between The Secret Garden!
It is one of those things that many people miss about the chronically ill, that they are fighting deadly conditions, constantly near death, and it requires enormous strength and endurance to keep fighting, day after day, year after year. Pope did not even have the opportunity for antibiotic treatment for his TB.
The enclosed garden (hortus conclusis) had a long tradition as an actual garden style or feature, and as a literary device. I suspect Pope’s walled garden was one of many inspirations.
"The blushing apricot and woolly peach
Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach."
I've always enjoyed these lines from Ben Jonson's "To Penshurst" (a country estate in England). Here the walls seem to be about inclusion, not exclusion.
To Penshurst | The Poetry Foundation https://share.google/qfW7OgpPQntxaTPan
I adored Penshurst when I visited back in ‘01 when my in laws were based in Kent. It is a very welcoming garden.
Interesting re question about Burnett's book.
Neither garden nor grotto, I escape to my kitchen, and immerse myself in breads and cakes and muffins and crepes. Not so artistic, not so literary, but creative, I tell myself. And thus I am attracted to making beautiful and tasty food, mentally far away from the suffering of the ugliness and foolishness of the world.
Now, I will mix some writing and music, into the joy of cooking :).
Thank you, Yi! Baking seems very creative to me, as someone who can cook but not bake.
Ah, did I hear a future collaboration idea? 🤔😆
😊
Baking requires precision and imagination, just like art. Your family's very lucky to enjoy your creations!
They have also had the “fortune” to eat all my beginner’s errors! lol
There's something to be said about shutting out the world, retreating, but at some point, we need to reemerge and face the world. Thank you, Jeffrey for sharing your gifts.
Thank you, Lani. Sometimes the wish to shutter oneself away is overwhelming. But you're right, we need to emerge at some point.
So much of this essay hits close to home. Those six lines: every word resonates. “Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor’d; Light dies before thy uncreating word.” That pretty much sums up my thoughts upon looking at the New York Times headlines in the morning, something I rarely do these days.
I’ve noticed that my neighbors are tending their gardens as they never did in the past. (I am not, to my shame.) I think it’s a way of claiming beauty as a means of survival. (Doesn’t hurt that we’ve had a lot of rain.) I also think that people are creating inviting landscapes as a gesture of friendship. We are desperate for community. A very different response from Pope’s.
Nothing, however, compares with the guy in the White House who paved over the Rose Garden and added patio tables with umbrellas. I think they’re striped.
Thank you, Jeffrey, for sharing your dog days’ observations and your mind’s wanderings with us. Your writing is always nuanced and surprising; erudite and deeply personal. A joy to see where you take us. And in 40 degrees Celsius! I just looked up the conversion: 104 Fahrenheit. Yikes. I’d be blasting the air conditioner night and day.
Wise words in a great balance of history, literature and current events. Unfortunately, I doubt if the rabble rousers today read much. I'm going to restack this in an effort to spread good words: if only one other person reads it, and causes them to think beyond hateful rhetoric, it will be worth it.
Thank you, James. I guess all of us who write think of having that one reader we can reach in some way.
Oh that temptation to shut the door and let the world rage.
Thank you for the reminder of what that might mean for us.
Thank you, Holly. Of course, the situation you described so vividly in some of your recent essays was one of the many things on my mind as I wrote this.
Jeffrey, learned and literate friend, your subtlety is not of this age, yet for all time. An especially rich post across its many parts (what pretenses does Johnson not cut through?), with the very ending for the time.
Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine !
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All.
Thank you, Jay. You’re the kind of reader that all would want but few (myself included) perhaps deserve. Your comments help me to keep writing despite… (gestures world with hand).
For another perspective on societal collapse, I came across this essay today, which I think might interest you. Not sure it really holds up overall, but there are some interesting nuggets to be found in it: https://aeon.co/essays/the-great-myth-of-empire-collapse
How interesting. I just became aware of Kemp and his new book myself the other day, started looking into his Cambridge Center. Beginning the essay now.
It would be interesting to hear your views on it.
A thoughtful essay, Jeffrey. The linked essay about Pope’s Potts Disease, strikes me as only marginally less disableist than the outrageous things people said about and to him at the time. The ‘ugly laws’ in the US were only finally overturned in the 1970s, without the power structures that enabled them ever being properly dismantled. With the recent rise in eugenic rhetoric it is almost as difficult now as it was for Pope. And pop culture has always leaned on the ‘twisted body, twisted mind’ stereotype. Sigh. Thank you for drawing some delicate through lines.
Thank you Michelle, for your own thoughtful comments and I'm sorry for the poor choice of reference about Potts Disease.
I meant no criticism of you, Jeffrey! I imagine there are only so many articles to refer to. Rather I was musing on ‘advances’ (& withdrawals). Things hit different once you’ve experienced some disability yourself.
Wonderful essay. When I would rant and call for some drastic law to remedy an injustice, my historian husband would caution me that I might not feel that way if (insert my current bête noire of the right) were in charge of the execution of that law.
He has been gone for almost nearly 10 years, but oh my, he knew his history and how easily 'good law' can be turned evil by evil men. I miss him, but he would have been in mental pain everyday living through these past 10 years in the US. No country for rational men.
I hope you get some relief from the heat, it must be brutal
Thank you, Leslie, for sharing that touching tribute to your husband. And yes, rational minds are taking quite a hammering these days.
At least the temperature has eased here in Tokyo.
I admire your combination of beautiful writing and erudition, Jeffrey, especially here where it is prompted by August's "dog days."
Thank you, Maureen! Thre's always been something about the contrast between the supposed smooth surfaces of Pope's Augustan verse and the visceral everyday life of being a Catholic with a disability in those unforgiving times that has fascinated me. In fact, I don't find Pope's poetry to be the empty but perfectly formed vessel that was the gist of some criticism of him by later poets. There are plenty of rough edges to engage our feelings.
I had somehow never absorbed that Pope was Catholic. Thanks for this!
You're welcome, David.
Pope shut the door on the world; here in Tokyo I shut the door on the sun and the heat, like you. The city keeps pressing on outside, but for a moment it's nice to claim a pocket of shade and quiet for ourselves.
I feel lucky that I get the chance to enjoy the shade and quiet when I want.
The need for retreat seems more acute than ever.
So timely, Jeffrey
Thank you!
What a wonderful read. I find myself often contemplating the tension of participation in the world. It feels at times so violent and at others so vital. I also work within the disability industry and witness how harsh the world still is to those 'strangers'.
Thank you, Evelyn. Yes, both violent and vital, a good way to sum up the world.