tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post7689938880716138277..comments2024-03-28T21:32:26.550+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: The Wind in the WillowsBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-21935515088563350642016-08-04T06:11:25.158+01:002016-08-04T06:11:25.158+01:00@MA - Nice verse. @MA - Nice verse. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-74345288236662637222016-08-04T02:09:16.290+01:002016-08-04T02:09:16.290+01:00To a Woman Reading The Wind in the Willows
(by Pet...<b>To a Woman Reading The Wind in the Willows</b><br />(by Peter Kocan) <br /><br><br />Peeping through the door an inch ajar,<br><br />I see you curled-up with your favourite book.<br><br />I wonder where precisely now you are,<br><br />What green, familiar, friendly path you took—<br><br /><br><br />Ignore them, the neurotic and the driven,<br><br />Who’d say your book’s a trivial escape.<br><br />What harm if an imagined land is given<br><br />A simpler ethos and a gentler shape?<br><br /><br><br />What fitter story could a grown-up find<br><br />Than one which makes uncomplicated sense<br><br />Of things like being brave and being kind,<br><br />Of virtues so important and immense?<br><br /><br><br />And just as stories help the young rehearse<br><br />Their courage at the level they can bear,<br><br />They do the same for us—except we’ve worse<br><br />Than boogies in the shadow of the stair.<br><br /><br><br />Our Wildwood is truly dark and deep,<br><br />And no adult who knows it will deride<br><br />The fact you find it comforting to keep<br><br />Ratty and Mole and Badger at your side.Mercurius Aulicushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05130901970855873480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-22837318781014353392016-08-01T22:02:40.585+01:002016-08-01T22:02:40.585+01:00By the way, I make no guarantees that David Stone&...By the way, I make no guarantees that David Stone's illustrations are actually that good. I have been reading a different version since I grew up. My childhood version is lost to childhood.Adam G.http://www.jrganymede.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-27409877037464410292016-08-01T21:49:18.967+01:002016-08-01T21:49:18.967+01:00One of my most cherished--my most sacred--reads. ...One of my most cherished--my most sacred--reads. Sometimes I skip the Piper simply because I cannot bear it and am unfit for society for the rest of the day when I do.<br /><br />Boy-like, I still like the part I liked the most when I was a kid--the eucatastrophe where Badger and Ratty and Mole and, yes, even Toad, set the weasels and the stoats on their ear. But also the descriptions simply of floating down the river. I just now realized that my lifelong ambition of living on the banks of a river probably came from Grahame. But now that I think it, it seems obviously so.<br /><br />Everything you say, @BC, in your reply to David, could be taken straight from my own soul.<br /><br />Btw, my own favorite illustrator is David Stone, simply because that is the version I had when I was young. His big set piece illustration of the retaking of Toad Hall is as marvelous as anything by Rackham or Wyeth.Adam G.http://www.jrganymede.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-3236164580549075282016-07-27T20:11:24.864+01:002016-07-27T20:11:24.864+01:00@David - There is nothing else wike WitW. Perhaps ...@David - There is nothing else wike WitW. Perhaps the closest attempt would be The Little Grey Men by BB - but I tried to re-read this recently and it didn't have the old magic I felt when I read it first; but it may be worth a try. <br /><br />But there are several other fantasy-type books I have been re-reading since childhood/ teen years. e.g. the five books called the Chronicles of Prydain, beginning with The Book of Three - by Lloyd Alexander. The Minnipins (aka The Gammage Cup) by Carol Kendall. The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner. I found all of these in my teens when searching for something like Tolkien and they have all become favourites. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-58310484311218028632016-07-27T14:33:07.556+01:002016-07-27T14:33:07.556+01:00The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is almost unbearabl...The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is almost unbearably moving, possibly too much for some yet it inspired all kinds of hippy nonsense. Like THS and LOTR I read it every few years. Is there anything else like this?David Stanleynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-37593183883881376682016-07-27T10:31:58.921+01:002016-07-27T10:31:58.921+01:00@David - Thanks for that.
Yes, it is a book whic...@David - Thanks for that. <br /><br />Yes, it is a book which touches deeply and in a complex way; its motivations seem raw and visceral, almost agonising; despite the idyllic and pastoral form. <br /><br />It is a feeling I know well in myself - a wanting to be inside and absorbed by those things I most love - yet knowing that it is impossible and cannot be so - in this life. <br /><br />From this I have been largely rescued by Christianity - in recent years, so it is no longer 'the final word' on existence - but the feeling often recurs, and without Christianity (as for KG) it *is* the final word, and therefore joy is also agony. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-74700194545275787542016-07-27T08:51:09.437+01:002016-07-27T08:51:09.437+01:00I was back re-visiting Holywell Cemetery in Octobe...I was back re-visiting Holywell Cemetery in October last, and had no idea of the past (at that point) seven years of St. Cross Church history - not, indeed, until this moment! I'm dumbfounded! - not that church closures are unusual, nowadays... (My last sense of it, in the early 1990s, was where 'Hugo' Dyson's widow, Margaret, went to Church.)<br /><br />There was (still) a good guide map there in the Cemetery - which I had to keep running back to, to get my bearings (my memory of much of it was startlingly false).<br /><br />I was scared off The Wind and the Willows as a child by the illustrations (which I would now probably thoroughly enjoy - Rackham's?) in a handsome edition I was given - and don't think I read it till I was at university (probably in good part urged by Lewis's praise). Enjoying how you have, I don't think I can write accurately about it - about my sense of it; it is wonderful, and dear, in many ways (and I join in basically urging everyone to try it)... and yet, maybe it's that 'neo-paganism' (much as in some ways I deeply love "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn"), there is something, or are things, terribly false, and terribly sad about it. (As I have felt the death of Alastair Grahame as crushingly sad ever since I knew of it.) <br /><br />David Llewellyn DoddsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com