So THAT'S what was going on!

[rachelmanija]

There's a funny bit in Biggles Fails To Return in which Ginger, impersonating a Spanish onion-seller in Monaco, shares some bread and an onion with a local. The local nearly spits out the onion, appalled at its sharpness, and asks Ginger where the heck they came from. Ginger is forced to quickly come up with an explanation of why he has English onions rather than the presumably sweeter Spanish ones.

I've been reading books for more than forty years, and this is the first time I realized that when characters take nothing but a loaf of bread and a raw onion as journey provisions, or eat bread and a raw onion for lunch, they're eating something like a sweet Vidalia onion, not the onions that make your eyes water and would be torture to eat whole and raw. I did vaguely wonder why they were always eating raw onions rather than, say, a raw turnip that at least wouldn't be actively painful to eat, but I supposed, without really pausing to interrogate it, that people in times past were so horrendously deprived that eating a raw onion for lunch barely registered!

This made me think about other bits in books that make more sense with context, whether that context is new information, other books, or just more life experience.

In The Once and Future King, the boy Wart, who will become King Arthur, is going on and on about the glory of fighting. Merlyn argues with him, then "seems to change the subject" and asks Wart which he had liked better, the ants or the wild geese. The chapter ends there. When I read the book as a child, I took that literally: Merlyn was frustrated with the Wart and changed the subject.

When I re-read the book as an adult, I realized that the geese were peaceful and didn't believe in national boundaries, and the ants were totalitarian and had the motto "Everything not forbidden is compulsory." Merlyn wasn't changing the subject, he was winning the argument... but the Wart, like me, missed the point.

More recently, I listened to Watership Down on audio, read by Peter Capaldi. I had mixed feelings about his performance, but while listening I suddenly understood something that I never had before, and I must have read that book twenty times.

In the warren of the shining wires, Silverweed recites a poem. It's quite beautiful and initially seems fantastical, with a rabbit asking to accompany the stream and become rabbit-of-the-water, accompany the falling leaves and become rabbit-of-the-earth, accompany the wind and become rabbit-of-the-wind. Finally, he openly asks to join Frith and die. Fiver is horrified at the poem (the others don't understand it) and says it's taking something true (all rabbits must die) and making it into something twisted and perverse (making the pursuit of death seem beautiful).

I always wondered about that poem. The final verse is straightforwardly what Fiver says the whole poem is about, but the earlier verses aren't clearly about death - they seem much more in the vein of other rabbit legends where magical things happen. I had puzzled over it, and finally decided that they're in the real world, so asking to be a magical being like a rabbit of the water or a rabbit of the earth was asking to go to the magical realm after death. But that never felt quite satisfactory to me.

Then, listening to Capaldi read the poem, I suddenly understood. Silverweed is talking very poetically about something that isn't a fantasy or metaphor at all. When he says he wants to go down with the leaves and be rabbit of the earth, he means that he wants to die and have his body decay and literally become part of the earth, and eventually, as it breaks down more and more, the water and the air. No wonder Fiver was horrified!

Have you ever understood things in books long after you first read them?

Comments

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, thank you for clarifying your definition of a proposal.

Then there's something called a "proposal" which puts us into a state we call "engaged to be married"

My definition is: a proposal is a thing you say that commits you to be engaged and puts the ball in the other person's court, such that if they accept, the two of you are now engaged. A proposal can't enter you into an engaged state, because you can't engage someone else, but a proposal can cover your half of the consent, if you imply that engagement automatically follows if the other person says the right thing.

I guess it comes down to, suppose an exchange went like this:

Partner A: "If you're interested in getting married, tell me when and where and I'll show up."
Partner B: "Okay. I choose tomorrow at 2 pm at the church."

Would they be engaged to get to be married tomorrow at 2 pm? In my world, yes: that's proposal + acceptance = engagement. In Juliet's world, maybe not?

Likewise, if "I want to marry you" (or antyhing else) takes place in a context where it can logically be followed by

*pause to indicate ball's in the other person's court*
Partner B: "Okay!" (or some more romantic or formal way of accepting)

and they are thus engaged, that's a proposal in my book. And my "books", literally--hunting through some of my Kindle selection using the search function earlier, I found a number of things the authors called "proposals" that consisted of one person expressing their interest in marriage with implied or stated commitment upon acceptance, then waiting to see what the other person would say.

I think this is where I got the idea that there are many ways to phrase proposals, direct and indirect. At least some English-speaking authors from the States (you are correct) and Britain also use it this way.

If there are some ways of proposing that are socially acceptable for women to utter and others that are not, then sure, I think we're on roughly the same page.

I was extremely lucky to MOSTLY have Shakespeare teachers who were also rigorous in their scholarship of Shakespeare's context

I am delighted on your behalf and wish I'd had literature teachers I clicked with at all! (I had a couple, to be fair, but only in Classics, which is how I ended up pursuing degrees in Classics.)

sometimes those editorial choices were quite sneaky and influential

Ooh, any examples you want to throw our way?

[recessional]

So the one that I remember off the top of my head is Hero's funeral in Much Ado About Nothing: there are certain lines in that scene that almost all editions attribute to Claudio. This only makes sense: these are lines about asking forgiveness and so on, and the whole POINT of the funeral is, of course, that Claudio is required to DO it in order to atone for what he did etc etc etc.

. . . .except none of the original sources attribute these lines to Claudio. He's THERE; he's on-scene. But the lines in the actual primary sources are given to Benedick.

Now as an editor you have to make a choice here. It doesn't seem like it makes sense for Benedick to say these lines (it's most of the beginning of this scene), because Benedick isn't the one who needs forgiveness? And we do have other instances where we have far more clear evidence that this kind of thing is a printer's error: there are a couple of cases where we've got multiple examples of the play that are all "good" copies/versions except that in one of them a line is attributed to someone it makes no sense to attribute it to, and we DEFINITELY have plenty of examples of printer's errors in all kinds of OTHER texts.

So it's PLAUSIBLE that this is a printer's error.

. . . but we don't HAVE any other copies of this particular play. So we have no actual evidence for that. All we have is the fact that it's a bit weird that Benedick would be saying these things instead of Claudio.

The prof that first pointed this out went on to note, however, that it's only weird if you're supposed to see Claudio as a sympathetic and "heroic" character; if you're NOT supposed to see him as kinda shallow and kind of a dick, if you're supposed to see his about-turn on the topic of Hero after her death as genuine remorse. If that's what Shakespeare MEANT you to see, if you assume that, then sure: it makes most sense that this is a printer's error and you reassign these lines to Claudio, who clearly means them.

. . . but that's not the only way to read Claudio, and Shakespeare isn't always inclined to portray his "heroes" in the best light. Claudio IS shallow enough to throw Hero off on the strength of a rumour from someone he doesn't even like or supposedly trust, and without any internal conflict about it, and moreover to do so in public in as cruel a way as possible, because it offends HIM that he might not have a pure bride.

Moreover one of the problems that's really solved by this funeral rite and so on is the conflict between Claudio and Benedick. At this point in the play, they're bound by military brotherhood and comradeship and friendship, but Beatrice has also issued her ultimatum to Benedick: if you love me, you'll do what I CAN'T and make Claudio pay for what he's done to my cousin ("oh God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace").

And reluctantly, he's agreed to do it. The revelation of the whole deception and lie saves Benedick from having to duel his friend as much as it saves anyone else: he's proved himself a worthy suitor for Beatrice (choosing her and her righteous cause over Claudio and his shallowness), and now he's saved from having to (probably, because he's a better soldier/fighter) kill his younger friend. Therefore it's extremely in HIS interests to chivvy Claudio through this whole thing.

We have no other evidence, but who you assign these lines to is going to affect how Claudio is portrayed: is he penitently going through this ritual of apology to Hero's supposed ghost, or is he silently waiting for someone else to get on with it so he can LOOK like he's doing this (so as not to be in conflict with his buddy and, you know, look like a heartless asshole to everyone else in the world) and Benedick is the one prodding him thru, and doing a bunch of it on his behalf?

As an editor, you have to make that decision - and most editions not only decide to give the words to Claudio, they don't even footnote it. Heck even some editions of the First Folio in the original spelling (but as a newly typset thing, rather than a facsimile aka a direct image-copy) "correct" the line attribution without saying.

If you're not lucky with your undergrad profs you don't find this shit until deep into grad seminars, if then. XD

[mildred_of_midgard]

Huh! That is really interesting, I had no idea. Thank you!

If you're not lucky with your undergrad profs you don't find this shit until deep into grad seminars, if then. XD

Yep, and if you're sufficiently unlucky early on, you end up deciding not to pursue literature long enough to even end up in those grad seminars.