Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: essay

  • Taking it like Edgar Allan Poe in Criticism

    It is hard to digest criticisms. Sometimes, it can plunge your inspiration, motivation, and determination to a gaping crevice of diffidence. But then in a tweak of mind to see a reality favorable to the growth of the mind,  it is mentally stimulating to receive constructive criticisms  in the form of thoughtful, intelligent comments on any of your work because it gives you a chance to see how others think about subjects or things you see in different and usually interesting ways. Edgar Allan Poe took even tougher stance on criticism:”In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.”

    They might be disagreeable to your own opinion. In my case, reading a reader’s comment on my work is a form of information processing, giving me an opportunity to learn new things – also known as consilience, the unification of the understanding of one one principle and that of another – thus creating a synthesis of new viewpoint.

    In light of the above, I find some of the comments I have received on my book reviews that I have so far published concurrently on Amazon.com scintillating in their contexts according to the individual weltanschauungs. I try to respond to such comments on my reviews only if they are legitimately sound, thought-provoking, and thoughtfully composed even if the commentator disagrees to my points of view, such as the following one I received from my past book review on Breakfast at Sally’s by Richard LeMieux,  a book on homelessness based upon the author’s own brief spell of living in his car with his canine companion until witness to humanity was finally manifested to them. Poe was right. In response to any feedback that does not read affably favorable, my confidence should be ironclad, my conscience armed with reason clear and just even with dissenters.

    xenia10 days ago
    We are NOT all responsible for homelessness in this country. As is evident from this book, many people are homeless because they have untreated substance abuse problems, many are veterans who were deserted by government agencies which are supposed to help them, some have mental health issues, and some all of the above. There are also some, like Richard, who were quite irresponsible in life while they had very comfortable living, and did not have enough common sense to think about “rainy days”. Also, let’s not forget that one of the greatest causes of homelessness in this country is the breakup of the family, yes, divorce and people just “leaving” and everyone pretty much thinking just of themselves and their own “happiness” and not willing to sacrifice for other members of the family.
    (MY REPLY)
     

    Thank you for reading my review and leaving me your comment thereon. My agreement and disagreement to your opinions on homelessness are as follows:

    Yes, you are right in pointing out that there are substance abusers, neglected veterans and family members, and the mentally afflicted who become homeless against their will. But some of the homeless are the middlings who used to eke out a living by working hand to mouth without long-term job security despite their willingness to work at a low wage.

    Apropos of your point on a weakening family value, the big issue of our society is a dissolution of a family, which is the basic unit of any civilized society. Accordingly, my assertion of collective responsibility as members of this society ensues from the increasingly prevalent disintegration of families without moral obligations and ethical standards.

    What I mean by our collective responsibility is , therefore, our disregard for losing touch with the values that keep families and a society together. As for Richard, if his children would have asked him to move in with them, he would not have been homeless. Yes, he was responsible for himself in the first place, but he did not have to be homeless should his children give him a helping hand. Let’s not forget what Mother Teresa of Calcutta said: “Charity begins at home.” Hope this helps.

  • The Brilliant Legacy of the Mycenaeans: Ancient Greece’s First Advanced Civilization

    The Mycenaeans: The History and Culture of Ancient Greece's First Advanced CivilizationThe Mycenaeans: The History and Culture of Ancient Greece’s First Advanced Civilization by Charles River Editors

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Before Homer wrote about the fearless warriors and extraordinary heroes enshrined in the temples of the Olympians in Iliad and The Odysseys, there were a people of invincible spirits and adventurism on a par with those of the characters – The Mycenaean, the torch-bearers of a great Aegean civilization in the Pre-Classical Greece existing from 2000 to 1200 BC, whose bravery and enterprising minds inspired Homer to pay tribute to them as immortalized in the two great Classical epics in the history of western civilization. Accordingly, The Mycenaeans: The History and Culture of Ancient Greece’s First Civilization by Charles River Editors takes us to look back on the Mycenaean culture in the Pre-Classical era when these ancient ethnic Greeks ruled the Aegean Sea as the maritime power and left their indelible marks on the posterity of the Classical Greek culture.

    The Mycenaeans, the first Greeks, were never unified under a central state and were a collection of several kingdoms. Influenced by the earlier Minoan civilization (2000-1450 BC) at Knossos, Crete, the Mycenaean adapted the Minoan art and religious practices and developed them to their highest expectation of militaristic and cultural ideology. For example, the Mycenaeans developed Linear B Script, which was the writing system comprising hieroglyphics, used between 1450 and 1100 BC especially in Knossos and Pylos, the corporate headquarters of the Late Bronze Mycenae. The letters were mostly written in clay tablets largely concerned with documenting economic transactions of the palace administration and various business transactions. In fact, the Linear B Script, preserved as the oldest Greek writing system, indicates that the Mycenaeans were the linguistic and ethnic ancestors of the Classical Greeks.

    In addition to transcribing economic activities Linear B Script also lets us glimpse into the belief system of the Mycenaeans with the names of the deities they worshiped, such as the head of the Pantheon and Poseidon, the god o f the seas whom the Mycenaeans paid special due respect for their being sea-faring people. The Mycenaean reverence for Poseidon is worth noting because it betokens the importance of the Mycenaean as the maritime power of the Aegean Sea as well as the most of the Mediterranean Sea. They eclipsed the Minoans and their Aegean neighbors in terms of open sea trade by establishing trade routes with the islands of Sardinia and Sicily as well as the Libyan coastline and importing more goods than exporting, such as grain from Egypt and metal from Cyprus and Anatolia to make weapons.

    With respect to artistic and cultural historiography of the Mycenaeans, the art of burial practices entailed the Minoan influence assimilated into the Mycenaean of their own accord, which was akin to the fashion of Hellenism, the spread of the Greek culture through enculturation by Alexander the Great centuries later. Likewise, after then conquest of Crete, the Mycenaeans continued to employ many of the Minoan artistic traditions one of which was burial practices and their beliefs in afterlife as expressed in the Hagia Triada Sarcophagus on the island of Crete. Made in a Minoan style under the rule of Mycenaeans, it depicts scenes of funereal game held in honor of a fallen warriors and dead kings, consisting of the following athletic events as part of the ritual:

    • Chariot Race – Popularized by the Hittite and the Egyptian as a symbol of power and prestige; powered by 2 to 4 horses carrying a team of 2 to 3 men. The Hittite had 3 men – a driver, a shield bearer, and a warrior- while the Egyptian simply had 2 men – a driver and a shield bearer. The Mycenaeans would most likely to have either of the styles, though not manifested.
    • Armed Combat – conflated with the Hittite sport
    • Boxing – popularized by the Minoan and developed by the Mycenaean

    In fact, the actuality of the aforesaid athletic sport events is alluded in Homer’s Iliad, suggesting a Bronze Age tradition of funerary games in Greece with vivid descriptions of the games to honor the slain Greek warrior named Patroclus, which were all coordinated by Achilles. However, contrary to the nude events of the Classical Greece Olympics, which were the offspring of the Mycenaean funereal games, the competitors in the funereal sport events wore loincloths called “zoma.”

    The demise of the Mycenaean Kingdom resulted from several factors one by one in a period of times, including the invasion of the Sea Peoples and the emerging of the Dorian in the north, all of which represented the end of the Mycenaean Age, coinciding with the collapse of the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East, where the Mycenaeans played an important role as a formidable trade partner with the Egyptian. Notwithstanding the fall of the Mycenaeans as the major sea power in the ancient Bronze Age, the brilliant legacy of the Mycenaean culture still thrives in; (1) the form of Linear B Script, the oldest writing system of the Greek language before the adoption of the Phoenician alphabet system many centuries later; (2) the belief system in which Zeus and Poseidon were first recorded in the writing tablets and revered with due respect; and (3) the initiation of  the sparks of the organized athletic events developed into the Olympic Games in posterity. It is this ingenuity imbued with the spirit of adventure and the policy of engagement in adopting cultural traditions of other people that exemplified themselves among other Pre-Classical peoples, which is something we in the modern time should adopt as well, so that our posterity can benefit from what their ancestors learned and experienced, for it also becomes our legacy of heritage and culture to pass it down from generation to generation.

    저장

  • The Romans as close as you can be

    Life in Ancient RomeLife in Ancient Rome by Lionel Casson

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    There was a time when all the roads led to Rome that lasted approximately 1,500 years ranging from the era of B.C. to that of A.D. It was from this Roman world where the art of politics was crafted and exemplified; it was also from this grandiose empire where Christianity gained ground and dispersed Christendom/Christianity to Urbi et orbi. However, what piqued me most was the key phases of life in the Roman world; what life was like in the various spectrum of society, ranging from the slave to the aristocrat? How different was the life in the Roman world from the life in our modern world? This book by the erudite historian Lionel Casson presents elegant sketches of such aspects of the Eternal City, particularly during the first and second A.D.

    Although Rome was the center of the Empire, its strength came from its provinces. For instance, the grain, wine, and oil came from Egypt, France, and Spain. The businessmen who traded such goods were largely provincials, so were the army recruits. Moreover, even slaves could achieve upward social mobility once they became freed through manumission which granted them Roman citizenship. In fact, it was this practice of incorporating into the state the communities it claimed and the populace it governed by bestowing upon them citizenship on the whole. To illustrate, Horace, the famous Roman poet, was a son of a freed slave who later became a wealthy farmer. Felix, who threw St. Paul in a jail, was himself a freed slave who rose above the planes of his melee. These nouveau citizens joined the citizen body and contributed their labor to the society.

    Most girls married between the age of twelve and fifteen, and they must possess a dowry. If her husband died, or the couple divorced, it was returned, except a portion for the raising the children by the husband and penalty in case of her misdemeanor. No dowry, no husband in this paterfamily society. Also, the common law marriage was accepted, such as in the case of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor ruling Rome from 161 A.D. to 180 A.D. After his wife died, he lived with the daughter of his wife’s business agent as concubine. An upper-class woman could have a lover of humble status, even including a slave.

    There are lots of other interesting facts that will surprise the reader with a feeling of closeness to these citizens of the Eternal City because they were not much different from the citizens of the modern world in many ways; the scenery changes, and the people change, but the human nature does not change as long as the humankind exists.

  • Facing Unpleasant Facts by George Orwell

    Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays (Before Orwell)Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays by George Orwell

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Eric Arthur Blair, better preferably known as George Orwell, wrote a series of essays that dealt with the subject matters close to the human life in the manner of a journalist with heart. This book is a definitive anthology of Orwell’s essays contributed to various magazines and newspaper that will invite the readers to the Orwellian world of reality as he saw and he liked.

    Orwell was capable of perceiving the absurdities of reality and truths masqueraded by ornamented political euphemism to obfuscate the masses for unscrupulous intentions. Of all his essays, “Why I write” is a paragon of his fineness as a great essayist. In the essay, Orwell provides the readers with sage guidelines for a writer, one of which is a choice of the subject matter that should be determined by the age a writer lives in. Such advice links with Leo Tolstoy’s view on great work of art to be closely related to the ethos of the time it is made. That is, a writer is unavoidably influenced by the ethos of the time he lives against his willful struggle to escape from solid reality.

    Orwell asserts that a writer should discipline his temperament lest he should be stuck at immature stage or depressive mood. A writer should think straight so that he can write clearly. This shows Orwell’s belief in writing not as a platform for babbling about his egoistically driven existential dilemma of daily life, for consuming his energy into such self-induced woes and pains will kill the creative spirit in him, the very impulse to express himself as he truly is. To my delight, Orwell further expounds 4 motives for writing as follows:

    (1) Sheer egoism: desire to be regarded as clever and much to be talked about. Writers are vain in the fact that they do want to be individuals, not compromising with the social conditions of reality. Writers can be egotistical and vain because of their elitist attitude toward the opinions of others and general opinions of the public, but are less interested in monetary reward.

    (2) Aesthetic enthusiasm: desire to beautify arrangements of words in pleasing manner by using a plethora of flowery words and rhythmical rhymes.

    (3) Historical impulse : desire to record historical facts of the time to pass the written records for the use of posterity.

    (4) Political purpose: desire to direct the world in a specific direction in order to influence people’s views on society in such direction as it should be

    The readers may find Orwell’s credo in writing rather anachronistic and dogmatic in consideration of the time the essay was written (1946). However, what rings the bell is the recognition of impulse to write as a sublime human act of expressing himself in connection with the time and society he lives in because as Aristotle put, “Man is a political animal.” This collection of Orwell’s poignant, honest, and witty essays will guide the readers into the mind garden of Orwell where moral obligation and the psychological facts are differentiated as pointed out in “Such, Such Were the Joys” and  where there is a pleasant, family-friendly pub called “The Moon Under the Water” with a privilege to appreciate Orwell’s brilliant display of language facility and power of facing unpleasant facts in his own words.

  • Travel with Charley in search of America by John Steinbeck

    Travels with Charley: In Search of AmericaTravels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Mr. Steinbeck’s intention of his travel with Charley, his old poodle, in Rocinante, a noble camping truck named after Don Quixote’s horse, was two folds: first, his innate wanderlust had grown bigger as his age advanced. He defied the senility of mind and body as a man who could still be a manly husband to his wife and function as an able-bodied man in society; second, Mr. Steinbeck wanted to see America as he had known on a personal level and to ascertain what could define true American identity and character. What he experienced in his own eyes across the land was part rhapsody of begone days he used to remember and part treatise on American national characteristics. Mr. Steinbeck was indeed a Don Quixote in his pursuit of finding America as portrayed in his novels and as remembered in his memory. But most of all, Mr. Steinbeck was a quintessential American writer in his tough-guy demeanor tinged in the narrative who had a deep affection for his country despite its foibles and imperfections.