Quote of the Day (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on the Perilous ‘Dreamful Ease’ of Languishing)

“Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.” —English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), “The Lotos-Eaters” (1832)
 
This poem, inspired by an episode from Homer’s Odyssey, came to my attention through an article last year by The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim. The piece likened the situation of Odysseus and his men to the phenomenon of “languishing” experienced by so many during COVID-19.
 
The metaphor may have seemed appealing at first glance, with its sense of losing a purpose-driven life. But the strange creatures that Odysseus encounters were slothful and blissed-out from consuming narcotic-like fruits and flowers—more like the hippies of the ancient world—rather than the anxious people working at their computers over the past two years.
 
Moreover, Odysseus’ purpose was to get home, to Ithaca; the purpose of the COVID-anxious population since the start of the pandemic has been to stay home, until the danger abates.
 
One year after Swaim’s article, the United States is at a different stage of the pandemic, with many having returned to offices. But the life many of us remembered no longer exists, any more than Odysseus' circumstances did after 20 years away from Ithaca.

Last year, psychologists and economists hoped that, with the development of vaccines, Americans could progress from “languishing” to “flourishing.” But that has not quite come to pass.
 
And who knows? Despite the protests of politicians like New York Mayor Eric Adams, some restrictions from the first year and a half of COVID-19 might be put in place again, if the current surge continues. 

In that case, a different poetic metaphor for our time will need to be found—one that takes full account of the “dreadful past” that Tennyson, at this early stage of his career, so marvelously evoked.

Movie Quote of the Day (“O Brother Where Art Thou?” on a Bizarre Fate)

Delmar O'Donnell (played by Tim Blake Nelson) to Ulysses Everett McGill (played by George Clooney), watching a reptile emerge from the shirt of their comrade: “Them syreens did this to Pete. They loved him up and turned him into a horny toad.”—O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), written by Joel and Ethan Coen, directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (uncredited)

Is O Brother Where Art Thou? really “based on The Odyssey?” as the Coen brothers claim? After all, they created a movie called Fargo which had nothing to do with that city, and that was not, contrary to their opening credits, “based on a true story.”

Okay, look for resemblances between Homer’s crafty returning soldier-voyager Odysseus and the Coens’ McGill, leader of an escaped chain-gang trio; between Odysseus’ wife Penelope and McGill’s impatient spouse Penny; and between the sea creatures who try to lure Odysseus and his men to their doom and the bewitching brunettes by the riverside (in the image accompanying this post) who do the same thing to McGill, Pete and Delmar.

But if you can’t identify all the little points in common between the epic and the film, just remember what a goof the movie is, how truly bent the Coen brothers’ saga is. If McGill leads his group (who, along the way, become singing sensations as the Soggy Bottom Boys) because he’s the one “with the capacity for abstract thought,” as he tells Pete, it’s only by comparison with his two dimwitted colleagues.

Chuckle at McGill’s invariable response to fresh catastrophe, as axiomatic as Laurel and Hardy’s “another fine mess”: “Damn! We’re in a tight spot!” Glory in the oddball idioms (McGill and his wife, he explains, “are gonna pick up the pieces and retie the knot, mixaphorically speaking”). Grin till you’re silly over the inspired cascades of lunacy (e.g., Delmar doing his best to “protect” his metamorphosized friend, even in restaurants, till they can find someone to change him back).

Oh, and the sirens? Though embodied onscreen in the form of Mia Tate, Musetta Vander and Christy Taylor, their beguiling voices belong to Emmy Lou Harris, Allison Krauss and Gillian Welch (who has a walk-on as a Soggy Bottom Boys customer).