Prospero's Books

To dream all the time

Writer's Blog has posted this photo of a window display at New York's Henri Bendel. (Click the picture for a larger image.) The display is said to be inspired by a quotation from the French novelist Marcel Proust:

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

Come in! Wander around!

The Museum of Lost Wonder, Prospero's Books' 2006 Book of the Year, has a wonderful animated tour on its Web site.

I could live there.

Come in! Wander around! Push buttons!

City and forest

Last weekend, I met for the first time a regular reader of this blog, Jay, who tactfully reminded me that I hadn't posted for two weeks. My excuse was that I had just finished the first two weeks of a very busy semester. But that's no excuse, especially since my students are giving me so much to write about.

In my "Conversations with Shakespeare" course, which I've subtitled "Shakespeare, Systems, and Intertextuality," we began last week reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, along with a couple of essays on the play and a couple of introductory chapters from books on systems theory. I offered two pairs of premises:

1a. The universe is composed of systems: physical, chemical, biological, cultural. Stars, starfish, star chambers, and starships are all systems.

1b. Artworks can be seen as systems: cultural systems that emerge from, and reflect, biological systems, social systems, and other cultural systems. As Hamlet says, art holds “a mirror up to nature.”

2a. Systems are integrated, indivisible.

2b. Successful literary texts, like other artworks, are integrated, indivisible. Aristotle called this integrity “unity of action.”

In his book General Systems Theory, Lars Skyttner writes:

Through the constant interaction between system and environment, environment affects systems and systems in turn affect the environment. When it comes to social systems, this interaction is especially pronounced. Its scope is suggested in the following pairs:

Living system

• Society
• We
• Self
• Ego
• Mind
• Consciousness

Environment

• Nature
• Them
• The other
• Id
• Body
• Subconsciousness (64)

Skyttner could have been talking about the two interrelated worlds of city and forest that provide the setting for A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play reminds us that "civilization" exists within a larger system of which we're often unaware. In leaving the day world of the city and entering the night world of the forest, Shakespeare's lovers and amateur actors descend into the "uncivilized" dreamworld of their subconscious and discover deeper truths about themselves.

Ulysse

From my friend the Montane Vole (forwarded from his friend Michael) comes a link to a hauntingly beautiful French homage to Joyce's Ulysses. Be sure to have your stereo audio on, and explore the Flash site with your cursor and your left and right mouse buttons. I'm sure I haven't yet reached the depth of the artwork.

If you know anything about the site, I'd love to hear from you.

A local habitation and a name

The highlight of my weekend in Baltimore--besides seeing my daughter, of course--was attending a special viewing of several very early editions of Shakespeare's plays (the first and fourth folios and several quartos) in the library of Evergreen House, owned by Johns Hopkins University. The viewing had been arranged for the cast and crew of the current Baltimore Shakespeare Festival production of A Midsummer Night's Dream--as well as several hangers-on like me.

Examining the First Folio reminded me of the power of symbols, in this case the power of our alphabet, and the words and sentences formed from it. I was struck by the fact that every Shakespearean performance I've ever seen (and at this point in my life I can boast that I've seen live performances of every one of the plays) was decoded from the little black marks in that book.

As I stood surrounded by the actors whose performance I'd seen the evening before, I realized that the author of that book--in collaboration with generations of theatre artists--had truly (in the words of Theseus in the Dream) given "to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."

From Midsummer Madness to St. John's Day

Tonight's performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream by the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival* was entertaining, with a strong cast. Especially notable, for me, were Mindy Woodhead, who played Titania with sexual passion, and Dana Whipkey, whose Francis Flute found it within himself to play Thisbe's death scene with high and moving seriousness. The setting of the performance, in the "Meadow" at Baltimore's Evergreen House, was enchanting.

Dramaturg Robyn Quick's program notes mentioned an interesting juxtaposition of dates that I hadn't thought of before. If Midsummer Night was celebrated in England as a time of misrule and madness, it was followed immediately by the Feast of St. John the Baptist, with its theme of repentance. She cites scholar Anca Vlasopolos in noting that

this play ultimately moves from a night of misrule to the light of a holy day in which the characters are brought into harmony with each other and with the rest of society.

This production honored that interpretation by ending the play not just with trickster Puck's epilogue but also with a song by the whole cast--fairies, "mechanicals," and nobles alike--surrounding, and threading through, the outdoor audience, with glowing lanterns.

(*As I've done before in discussing the BSF, I'll disclose that my daughter, Casey, is its development director.)

Portals to the sacred

On her site, Portals to the Sacred, artist and therapist Emily Meek offers a striking collection of images, on such themes as the labyrinth, the mandala, and dreams. As the site says, "her dreamlike images capture visions of our relationship to the sacred, offering us an opportunity to reconnect with Soul and to remember who we are."

The appropriate image in this post, reproduced with the artist's permission, is "Tempest in the Soul." As always, you may click on it for a larger version.