A to Z 2026: "A Tragic Fragment" (All villain as I am...) by ROBERT BURNS!? (~1786)

Link

Bonus: 

I really respect this guy's beard.

Summary: I may be a bad guy, but at least I'm not oppressing all of society.

Commentary: (Long ramble on organization at the bottom.)

Returning readers from two years ago may remember my unending hatred of Robert Burns (Eliot's favorite, or at least most featured, poet). The irony of picking one of his poems to start the month is vaguely amusing.

Someone could make a play at turning this into an 18th century villain song, I think. "Sure, I murdered and stole more than anyone else... EXCEPT THE REAL VILLAIN, THE KING!" We'll have Simon Templeman do it. Or Tim Curry.

The lines are mostly (depending on how you over/under pronounce certain parts) 10 syllables.  You can read it in Iambic Pentameter (unstressed-STRESSED x5) I guess, but it doesn't seem to flow that well for me. I don't think there's any particular rhyme scheme.

There's not a ton of flowery poetic language here. I don't think that children is necessarily literal in, "I view the helpless children of distress," but invoking children is effective.

Similarly, "Ev'n you, ye hapless crew! I pity you;/Ye, whom the seeming good think sin to pity" is more general than a crew of sailors, but it gives some imagery. 

The social commentary is pretty straight forward, God/society harms more people than even the worst individual villain. It's a fair message, and communicated well enough.

All in all: Fun, readable, and reasonable social commentary. 4/5 on the poem scale (much less judgy than the traditional classics scale.

Plan for this run is fairly simple:

1. Grab the first line index and pick a poem.

2. Read it, and try not to be a hater.

3. Attempt to do poetry analysis both technically (meter and rhyme and stuff) and artistically (imagery, theme, etc.)

4. Mini Review

One thing that's nice about this round is I can find most of the poems just by searching the titles online. Normally, I have to cross reference different PDFs and stuff.

I think I'm going to focus on one poem a day, so that I actually have to look at/think about it, rather than speed running 3 or 4 like I normally would for short pieces.

I'm pleased by the relatively loose definition of "poem" the index uses, including things like poetic monologues in the plays.

I'm not checking authors or anything before I grab the poems, so we'll have to see if there are any interesting trends.

I wrote my wife a letter tonight.

 You should all go write more letters. Very classic thing to do.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 21 (Closing out Part 3, and wrapping up)

1984 in a nutshell. Part 1 good. I think when people reference 1984 it's 90% stuff from Part 1.

Part 2 is one third Orwell sneaking in an essay, one third shitting on Julia, and one third everything else. The argument is that Winston is preconditioned from his horrible facist society to hate women (and thus he's nasty to Julia), but I don't know that I buy it. Julia is, factually, a bad character. She's super devoted to Winston (a loser) and kind of brainless.

Part 3 is mostly the same scene (that mostly just repeats Part 1) over and over.

All told, I think you could keep most of Part 1, and cut Parts 2 and 3 down to a single chapter each and improve it tremendously. Part 1 is really good. Everyone should read it.

In the end, the most important quote is:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

1984 is about how authoritarians, both on the left and right, deny basic reality. As soon as you give them that toe hold, you've already lost. Marcus Aurelius was right, you have to hold truth above everything else.

 I was on a plane today (and the chapters were short) so pretty easy to close out the end. I've got a couple days to fill before I hop into A-Z. Might dip into the other blogs.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 20 (3.4)

 At this point, things are pretty repetitive.

 'If I wished,' O'Brien had said, 'I could float off this floor like a soap bubble.' Winston worked it out. 'If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.' Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' 

That's the best quote in the chapter, but it's not illustrating anything that hasn't been 10 times before. Winston continues to almost (but not quite) break. 

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 12 and Close Out

 Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 12 

Bonus:

Summary: WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE AND BE FORGOTTEN!

Commentary: 

 If then, now that you are near your exit, setting behind you all other things, you will hold alone in reverence your ruling part, the spirit divine within you; if you will cease to dread the end of life, but rather fear to miss the beginning of life according to Nature, you will be a man, worthy of the ordered Universe that produced you; you will cease to be a stranger in your own country, gaping in wonder at every daily happening, caught up by this trifle or by that.

Live to succeed, not avoid failing.

Not a ton of comments on Book 12, so I'm just going to jump into the final overview.

I've said it several times, but the basic issue with reading all of Meditations is that it's really repetitive. Some minor variant of "memento mori" is probably in there, on average, every other page.

Again, that's not MA's fault, since the whole thing is basically just his journal, not a text book or whatever.

As a philosophy, I think stoicism is decent. You're gonna die, live up to your virtues, worry about yourself (it's all you can do) is all good advice. I don't think I'd hand someone the whole text as a way of learning it though.

If I was going to construct my own 5FSOB I think I'd probably just excerpt whatever section presents the whole thing the best (11.18?) and call it a day.

Projectwise, I learned not to get in the middle of too many different multi-part things at once. And not to try to paraphrase every line.

I'm gonna finish up 1984 next, then I'm into poetry for April.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 11 Part 5 (19-39)

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius translated by George W. Chrystal (~180) Book 11 Part 5 (19-39)

Bonus:

This is dedication right here.

Summary: Listen to smart people from the past.

Commentary:

21. He whose aim in life is not always one and the same cannot himself be one and the same through his whole life. But singleness of aim is not sufficient, unless you consider also what that aim ought to be. For, as there is not agreement of opinion regarding all those things which are reckoned good by the majority, but only as regards some of them such as are of public utility; so your aim should be social and political. For he alone who directs all his personal aims to such an end can reach a uniform course of conduct, and thus be ever the same man.

I don't think it's what he meant, but this definitely sounds like, "commit yourself to being (vaguely) good, and don't change it, ever."

Most of the rest is MA acknowledging smart philosophers from the past. I think T5FSOB selections strike a good balance between listening to smart people in the past, and still acknowledging current advances.

Casually Completing Classics: 1984 Part 19 (3.3)

 A couple important distinctions in this chapter:

1. "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power."

I think we often feel the need to give people/characters a reason to want to be evil, controlling assholes. Sometimes, they're just evil, controlling assholes for its own sake.

2. "The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred."

Being a hater is so much easier than being creative and tolerant and all those other things. Leaves more time for POWER. Also, they want to "abolish the orgasm."

3. "It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide."

I think Winston is right. Eventually, the whole miserable pile will collapse. Either because it can't maintain itself any longer (can you really motivate enough people this way to build a long term sustaining society) or because some challenge arrives that (in its diminished capacity) it can't face.