Penelope, Who Really Cried

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Penelope Unravelling Her Work At Night, 1886
by fabric artist Dora Wheeler, 1856 - 1940
(daughter of Candace Wheeler)
for Associated Artists (New York City, 1883–1907)
There are many beautiful depictions of Penelope, loyal wife of the wandering Ulysses, who weaves by day and unravels by night, buying time until her husband reappears. I've chosen the above rendering because, as a silk weaving sadly becoming undone with time, it seems so appropriate; but, in truth, I've picked it primarily because I cannot find the picture that I really want.

What I'm looking for is the "Study for The Nights of Penelope," that once hung in the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame. I admired it many times during the 1980s and often required my students to view it, as did others, according to archived course outlines. Had I looked more carefully, I might have seen that it was on loan from somewhere in Ohio, but the thought that it was not part of the permanent collection never crossed my mind . . . until I visited recently in hopes of seeing it once again.

Not only was it not on view in the Snite, but it has thus far eluded me on the web as well, aside from this former catalog entry, confirming its existence --

STUDY FOR "THE NIGHTS OF PENELOPE," 1865
Pierre-Paul Leon Glaize (French, 1842 - 1932)
oil on canvas
On loan from Mr. and Mrs. Noah L. Butkin
L1980.059.017
-- and a passing reference in a late 19th - century guide to artists and artworks, vaguely establishing the whereabouts of the final version somewhere in Brussels.

Two other intricate interior paintings by Pierre-Paul Leon Glaize, are similar in setting and detail to what I recall of the small "Study for The Nights of Penelope," though both of these appear more light - hearted in tone than the subject of long - suffering Penelope, weary and vigilant.

The Sandal Makers

and

The Bird Charmer

Also by Pierre-Paul Leon Glaize
La Femme de Soldat

This heroine, determined in stance yet subdued in hue also brings to mind the nocturnal vigil that Leon Glaize captures in his "Nights of Penelope" . . . if only I could see it once again!

To accompany the numerous paintings of Penelope, there are also many poems. My favorite, as so often happens to be the case, is by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her poem is about Penelope waiting for Ulysses to come home -- but also, in my interpretation, about any of us whose arms are getting tired and whose necks are getting tight from waiting for that better world to come. It can wear a body out. In this almost - sonnet, she describes the "ancient gesture" of wiping the corner of your eye with the corner of your apron; it could just as likely be a handkerchief perhaps or a Kleenex, but the apron places Penelope in the heart of the home, the oikos. Not that she does a lot of cooking -- mostly, it's weaving. As subtly as Leon Glaize, Millay implies a constellation of gestures: hands busy at the loom; arms stretched for relief above one's head; rubbing a stiff neck with one hand while clinching a tired back with the other; bursting all at once into tears; and finally the silent weeping, discreetly wiping the tears away.

"An Ancient Gesture"
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,— a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried. (ellipses in original)

In this next brief poem, Parker's message is similar -- Penelope really cries; Ulysses steals the show. Penelope waits courageously; Ulysses gets the kudos.

"Penelope"
by Dorothy Parker

In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.

Another favorite of mine is the self - composed Penelope envisioned by Wallace Stevens. As I mentioned last month on my daily blog ("Blue Moon, Blue Heart"), this contemplative Penelope wants nothing that Ulysses "could not bring her by coming alone." No diamond rings, no fancy pearls, no souvenirs from afar or treasures from the deep. Her essential exercise is meditation.

"The World As Meditation"
by Wallace Stevens

J’ai passé trop de temps à travailler mon violon, à voyager. Mais l’exercice essentiel du compositeur — la méditation — rien ne l’a jamais suspendu en moi … Je vis un rêve permanent, qui ne s’arrête ni nuit ni jour.
~ Georges Enesco
It is Ulysses that approaches from the east,
The interminable adventurer? The trees are mended.
That winter is washed away. Someone is moving

On the horizon and lifting himself up above it.
A form of fire approaches the cretonnes [curtains] of Penelope,
Whose mere savage presence awakens the world in which she dwells.

She has composed, so long, a self with which to welcome him,
Companion to his self for her, which she imagined,
Two in a deep-founded sheltering, friend and dear friend.

The trees had been mended, as an essential exercise
In an inhuman meditation, larger than her own.
No winds like dogs watched over her at night.

She wanted nothing he could not bring her by coming alone.
She wanted no fetchings. His arms would be her necklace
And her belt, the final fortune of their desire.

But was it Ulysses? Or was it only the warmth of the sun
On her pillow? The thought kept beating in her like her heart.
The two kept beating together. It was only day.

It was Ulysses and it was not. Yet they had met,
Friend and dear friend and a planet's encouragement.
The barbarous strength within her would never fail.

She would talk a little to herself as she combed her hair,
Repeating his name with its patient syllables,
Never forgetting him that kept coming constantly so near.

A few more to look at:

"Penelope"
by Carol Ann Duffy

A poem in which Penelope, "self-contained, absorbed, content, / most certainly not waiting," stitches the story of her own life into the tapestry and, somewhat shockingly, licks her "scarlet thread /and aim[s] it surely at the middle of the needle’s eye once more."

"Penelope's Song"
by Louise Gluck

In Gluck's "song," Penelope sends her "little soul" to the top of the spruce tree to watch our for Ulysses -- with a warning: " . . . shake the boughs of the tree . . . carefully, carefully, lest / His beautiful face be marred / By too many falling needles." Pine needles, yes; but also an allusion to Penelope's handiwork? How interesting that both Duffy and Gluck portray or suggest that Penelope is sewing with a needle rather than weaving . . . and those needles can be dangerous!

"Ulysses"
by Robert Graves

The prolific Robert Graves is always worth noting, especially when it comes to Classical Mythology. Here he catalogs the complicated romantic liasons of the "much - tossed . . . love - tossed" Ulysses.

"Calypso's Island"
by Archibald MacLeish

A beautiful love song from Ulysses to Penelope. His words are addressed to the immortal nymph Calypso, who offers him the possibility "To hold forever what forever passes, / To hide from what will pass, forever." But he chooses his mortal wife, "a woman with that fault / Of change that will be death in her at last!" He leaves Calypso's charmed paradise for the isle of Ithaca where Penelope "wears the sunlight for awhile."

"Penelope for her Ulisses sake"
by Edmund Spenser

For Spenser, the tapestry represents his quest for romance. He is the weaver, like Penelope, but also a suitor. Unlike the opportunists who pursue Penelope, his love is pure; yet even so, it is unreturned. His beloved unweaves his suit with a single word, a mere look.

"Ulysses"
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

And lastly, Tennyson's tour de force, filled with so many memorable and oft - quoted lines. In this poem, despite his advanced age, the ever - restless Ulysses charts out yet another adventure. No matter that he is only recently reunited with Penelope after twenty long years; he does not intend to stay put.

Lines 1 - 7: "It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees.

Line 12: . . . always roaming with a hungry heart

Lines 18 - 23: I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

Lines 31 - 32: To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

Lines 50 - 53: Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

Lines 56 - 70: Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world
. . . my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die. . .
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

************************
Penelope, 1849
by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (1829 - 1908)

Penelope, like Ulysses:
"Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

************************

P.S. One more that I must add in full . . .
with grateful thanks to my friend and professor Jim Barnes
(and to Maureen E. Doalles for this blog post).
Ithaka 2001

Hope all your Ithakas are good ones.
-Cavafy

Seems ages on the hill above the rocky point
I have kept my eyes on the horizon where sky
drops to sea. No sign of any ship I do not
recognize, just the ragtag worn-out fishing fleet
about to sink. No single sail grabbing the wind
and fifty men at oars to tell us you are back.
This is no Ithaka now you would own up to,
your old wife mad, your queer son gone, your dog
years dead. The old men gathered here like the food
and wine, but do not give a hoot about the place.
You might as well have gone down in the fishy sea:

this is no Ithaka you would want to rule. Still we
hope for your long return, the foolish old friends of
the foolish king who went away to war for fear
of losing what we have lost anyway, although
you, somewhere landbound or adrift on the deep, still
may dream of coming back to stony Ithaka,
to a faithful wife and infant son. Wherever
you are, I send you these heavy words on a wind
that has treated us all badly: there is little
use for you to come back home old and mortified.
Ithaka is not the Ithaka it was. For god's

sake, be strong. We have grown even older hoping.
Perhaps you have found another Ithaka elsewhere
in the wide world, a soft and welcome country that
nourishes you in a way we never can again.
I wish you well, but I must keep on hoping that
you will come back again. You could teach us a way
at least to cope with the thing that has befallen
us. The tourist's shops and the garish touring boats
prosper, but they are in the hands of foreigners.
The breeding cattle prized by Philoitius bankers
in Pylos hold for the debts Penelope incurred.

The suitors had no staying power when the booze
ran out. No one manned the presses nor tended vines.
Pirates from Samos got the last of goats and sheep
when we tried to take the herds across to Argive
lands. Hardly any of us are left who give a damn
about the state. I am here every day, though hope
runs thin. I know you will return sometime. It is
no Ithaka to brag about. Hope you will bring
our salvation in some form. Yellow gold would help
and medicine that would somehow cure all the pain
of mind and body. We are ill in Ithaka.

By Jim Barnes
Published in The North American Review
and also in Visiting Picasso, 2007

At the Clavier

THE CLAVIER
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~
Clavier = a variety of keyboard instruments,
including harpsichords, pianos, organs, and virginals.

The Music Lesson (c. 1662–1665)
aka Woman Seated at a Virginal
aka Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman

by Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675)
Vermeer's "The Music Lesson"
explained by Meryl Streep

This post contains all of Goethe's suggestions for a good day:
"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song,
read a good poem, see a fine picture
and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words."

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) ~

Firstly, a fine picture -- as seen above & below:

Susanna and the Elders (1751)
by Pompeo Batoni (1708 – 1787)

and to follow -- a little song,
a good poem, a few reasonable words.

Secondly, the song:
Click to hear
"The Well-Tempered Clavier" (1722)
by J. S. Bach (1685 - 1750)
explained by Karen Rile


Thirdly, the poem:
A hard one to grasp back in the 1970s, and still
many mysteries of perception to grapple with

Peter Quince at the Clavier
I
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna:

Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb

In witching chords, and their thin blood

Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.

II
In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned--
A cymbal crashed,
And roaring horns.

III
Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side;

And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.

And then, the simpering Byzantines,
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

IV
Beauty is momentary in the mind —
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body's beauty lives,
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of Winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.

Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scrapings.

Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise. (1915)

by Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)
Set to music: by Dominick Argento


Fourthly, a few reasonable words
from blogger Ira Fader,
bringing Stevens' poem into the 21st Century


Fifthly, fun - fact movie tie - in:

In Galaxy Quest, Tim Allen's character plays a character named Peter Quincy Taggart. That character is named after the character from Midsummer Night's Dream, Peter Quince, who was the leader of an incompetent acting troupe made of skilled laborers.

Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, August 28th

Between now and then, read ~ more Stevens on FN & QK
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blogs
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

The Conscious Being of the House

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"The house was quiet . . .
part of the meaning, part of the mind . . ."

The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

by Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)

********************
More memories
of 443 as shared by a previous resident,
Robert W. Topping (1925 - 2009)

Young Bob Topping
on Tricycle & Bicycle
Click to see more photos from the Topping Era

Please enjoy Bob's childhood recollecions,
interspersed with a few current - day photographs:
"The kitchen was a nightmare for a kitchen designer. It had two huge windows and the remnant of a chimney on the south wall; two doors,an exit and a door to the rather generous pantry on the west wall; a door to the dining room and one to the living room on the north wall (not to mention the north wall had an offset); and the east wall had doors to the basement and a back stairway to the second floor. All of those obstacles left barely enough room for a kitchen cabinet, a sink, a refigerator, and agas range, though somehow Mother seemed to make it all work. She produced a lot of goodies in it, as did my sisters, and sometimes even my father. He could produce a tasty meatloaf with a half pound of hamburger, a week's supply of lefovers from the refrigerator, and a couple of cups of stale bread crumbs from the bread drawers. I recall one meatloaf he made with leftovers that included leftover meatloaf. Haha!

"Upstairs, off the main hall, were three bedrooms: the south room occupied by my sisters, the north "study," occupied by each of us five brothers at various times, and the east room of my parents. Off the east room was a smaller room, called an alcove, which included two sizeable clothes closets and a dormer window as well as a white iron crib. It was the room which served a nursery for all four of mother's children. It was "my room" until I was about four or five. I had my "stuff" in a lower drawer in one of my parents' high - boy chiffoniers.

"The bathroom had two small walk - in closets, a clawfoot bathtub, and a large sink surrounded by a marble top and splashback, and also a dormer window, giving any occupant of the toilet a fairly grandiose western sweep of our backyard, garage, and Littleton Street beyond.

"The third floor -- we called it the attic -- was wide open until Daddy built two larger dormer style rooms with beds in each. That is where my brother Dale and I slept when we got older. In the Depression years, my folks took in students from time to time, and they lived on the third floor. They helped my mother with housework or did chores in the yard for room and board. I remember only two of those students, Louis and Ezra, the latter a French horn player in the Purdue marching band. My father may have been partial to horn players; both he and Grandpa Topping had played baritone horn in the Kanawaka Township Band back in the 1880s.

"The garage, by the way, was built by my father from the lumber he salvaged when he dismantled the barn that sat at the rear of our rather generous yard. I never saw the barn; it was torn down long before I was born, but it was not unlike others that still existed on our neighbors' properties when I was a tyke running about the neighborhood. Remember -- barns were the garages of the nineteenth century; horses were the principal means of transportation and barns supplied not only their housing but a place to store buggies, tack, and horse "fuel": hay and oats. *********************

One of the Topping boys
in front of the new garage
that Dad built

A view of the garage in foreground (looking east to west)
with the northbound neighbor's barn in the background
[frosty garage windows & fenceposts]

A panoramic view (left to right) of:
1. neighboring garage to the south
2. 443 plus big barn with hayloft
3. additional outbuildings to the north

"My father and mother were foragers; both had been farm kids when the pursuit of foodstuff was a daily, mainstream activity. Even the squirrels which abounded in our neighborhood, buried walnuts all over our yard. The yard was dotted with fruit trees my father planted: Montmorency cherry; several varieties of apple; pear, peach, even an apricot tree. The vegetable garden area which replaced the barn included a strawberry patch, a lengthy row of rhubarb, blackberry bushes, and even a gooseberry bush which today is probably an endangered if not extinct species. If you ask someone if they've ever eaten gooseberry pie, and they reply (with relish) that they have, you know they must have been born before 1932.

Topping Garage, Back of House, New Garage built in 2005

"Along the north line next to the neighbor's rapidly deteriorating barn was Father's pride and joy: A Concord grape arbor which produced neither wine -- heaven forbid! -- nor even canned grape juice, but case after case of twenty-four glass jars each of the finest, clearest grape jelly that my mother could produce or that I have ever tasted.

"The jars of grape jelly were stored in our "fruit cellar" together with mother's pickle relish and canned peaches plus a seemingly endless supply of mincemeat which she and Daddy produced every fall from the ripened apples of a half dozen trees. There were also Ball Mason quarts of pie cherries picked from four or five trees by us kids. I remember it as one of the first family chores I engaged in."

Mincemeat!
A tradition we have carried on during our years at 443
-- except that ours is made from homegrown green tomatoes!

Additional House Posts
Talented Residents
Renovations
Christmas Fencepost
Vintage Fenceposts
Property Line
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, June 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ 443 Photos: "Historic" & "Current"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com