qualia

 Qualitative critique of Spanish meter is almost non-existent.  It struck me too that most people in the literary field today would not even have the kind of response that Saintsbury has to Shakespeare's verse.  

I thought of a poor young man I met once in Spain, a native speaker of English, who would read iambic pentameter aloud by stressing the strong syllables strongly and resorting to a sing-song rhythm.  I think of a student in grad school with me who couldn't tell when blank verse was blank verse, literally could not scan it.  

Metrics is largely concerned with establishing what the rules are. In this sense it is not qualitative at all.   

Dream

 There was an anti-Trump movie everyone was talking about. I didn't want to see it because I was afraid I would be irritated by the smug condescending people I thought would be talking about him. I was outside in the lobby of the theater, having seen only the first five minutes. I wanted to hold on to my own brand of anti-Trumpism without this interference!  

A colleague came and wanted to borrow my hat. Then we lost sight of him. Later, it was clear he had gone somewhere else. I thought I would eventually get the hat back. 

There was a bird with distinctive markers flying around. It allowed us to get close. I realized that the bird had a pink sticker of Snoopy on his back. I was asking my friend T to help me identify the bird. The other colored markings seemed to be part of the bird, not attachments like this sticker.  

Saintsbury on Shakespeare

 

"The lines rise, fall, sweep, wave, dart straight forward, are arrested in mid-air, insinuate themselves in serpentine fashion as if in sword-play against an invisible adversary."

History of English prosody, vol 2, p. 52. 

Dream of a family

 We were connected somehow to a family with many members. The main father figure had had three wives, and adult offspring of all them were around in a large house where the family gathering took place. These are not people known to me in real life, though a few real life people were in attendance as well.  My knowledge of the family and their relationships was detailed in a way that seems improbable upon waking from the dream. At one point, the patriarch, "John," was wearing a blindfold as I spoke to him.  

My mother was at the party too. I had brought her from afar, and wanted to introduce her, but this did not happen. Later, I learned that she had made plans with others, new found friends from the party.  

Two dreams or one?

Two interconnected dreams. Thomas was explaining to me a book he was writing, debunking several theorists. He was going to do Foucault, but not Derrida, because Derrida was "self-refuting" anyway.  

A woman was teaching me various intricate rhythms.  One was called  be-thalymidian or something and was played using an instrument of the same name of the size and shape of a pencil. I struggled to remember the spelling of the word as I was waking, so I could look it up and see if it was real.  

Somehow, the instruction I was receiving from these two people was mutually complementary. I needed to learn both things at once.  

Orwell's defense of Shakespeare (against Tolstoy)

 Tolstoy says that Shakespeare is a bad writer.  You can't really prove that Shakespeare is good; it would be a waste of time. But Tolstoy cannot prove he is bad either. What you have to say is that readers experience Shakespeare as being excellent, and have for some time.  Withstanding the test of time is evidence of his worth as a writer, according to Orwell.  That seems more substantial than any one person's judgment.  So Orwell takes as the question, not whether Shakespeare is good or not, but why Tolstoy is motivated to argue in this way in the first place.  

The canon can change. Orwell says there could be time when Shakespeare no longer seems like a good writer. I would argue, though, that it will not change by argument or by fiat. Tolstoy's judgment has had absolutely no impact on Shakespeare's reputation, despite Tolstoy's own place in the canon. Even if a few people happen to be convinced by the argument, it still would still be wrong, simply because it flies in the face of the facts of literary history. 

Upper middle bogan

 I was watching this Australian show (title in the title of this post). The idea is two families connected by adoption. The upper middle class people (doctor and architect; doctor is a woman whose birth mother is a drag racer).  One episode in particular is a great lesson on Bourdieux's cultural capital.  

The birth mother gives the doctor a knock-off designer purse. The real one would cost thousands, and this one is 25 or so. The doctor can't be seen with the knock off, so she goes and buys the real one. But she ends up not being able to tell them apart.  Meanwhile, the snooty adoptive mother defends the artistic integrity of one of the sons in the drag racing family, who is being exploited by a shop keeper. She arranges a gallery show for him, even though she despises his cartoonish art. 

Meanwhile, the husband, the architect married to the doctor, finds out that his favorite shirt has become the uniform at the local coffee shop. He gives away all his shirts because he wants a more unique look, opting for a black t-shirt look. The men from the drag racing family rescues his shirts from the donation bin and starts wearing them. The architect notices that all the people at the gallery opening are wearing black t-shirts. The children make fun of their architect father.   

These three plots are woven together in something like 26 minutes.  The tone is comic and good natured. Everyone is allowed to be themselves, with the foibles typical of their class position. The humor comes with the endless friction between two cultures, and doesn't end up mean-spirited.