Sansan: The Problem I Want To Have
I picked up another work of poetry this weekend. I read a lot of poetry these days, that's why so much of my Sansan notes are from poems.
I picked up some books by Galway Kinnell. Now he's as famous as a modern poet can be, so I was intrigued by the challenge of trying to digest his literary greatness. I like that he writes in the vernacular, but I ( Read more... )
I picked up some books by Galway Kinnell. Now he's as famous as a modern poet can be, so I was intrigued by the challenge of trying to digest his literary greatness. I like that he writes in the vernacular, but I ( Read more... )
So why do I love him, and why I would like to see them together?
I think some/most women have weakness for bad men that can change. We want to be the ones that changes them. This helpless, romantic part of ourselves wants to be that one who makes them better. We may not be this naive in reality, and usually we avoid those violent, brutal men- but we fantasize about it. And somehow Sandor is a personification of that fantasy. He is brutal and full of anger, but he can't hurt her. He would protect her, let the whole world burn, kill for her. He's dangerous for everyone but her. And we have weakness for that.
Also, they are not that different. Some of their deamons are quite alike. The loss of innocence.
When Sandor got his scars he was playing with a wooden knight - now isn't that just a perfect metaphor? He believed in all those song that he hates now, and that was the price he paid. And then his brother becomes a knight. Quite brutal reallity check.
Sansa too lived in her fairytale, in love with a perfect prince, supposed to be a queen someday. And suddenly she realised that it's all wrong, that it's not as it was supposed to be, as the songs said it would be. They both were naive children, just a foolish little boy and girl dreaming of knights and ladies, and they learned the hard way.
They are so different and somehow so alike at the same time.
(sorry for any misspellings and grammatical mistakes)
From Poland with love;p
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Yes, Sandor is incredibly fascinating, I love that tension between his words, his bearing, his actions. The Sansa/Sandor relationship has a compelling dynamic. Ive never been so obssessed before as I have with both these books and in particular this pairing. I dont think Sandor's a good man nor do I think he even regrets his past misdeeds except as they relate to Sansa but without him I wouldnt ship them so hard. I especially love fanfics that refuse to woobify him, that address who he is honestly, warts and all.
They are different and yet the same, ying and yang, complementary opposites. Lol, I even wrote a smutfic about it called 69!
Thanks for adding me as a friend. Might I suggest an LJ comm for you? Sansa_Sandor is where a lot of book Sansan fans hang out. Much more active than SansaXSandor which has suffered from a lot of infighting.
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I have
http://www.amazon.com/Vita-Nuova-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140449477/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339489829&sr=1-1&keywords=9780140449471
and it's good-the complete work with an excellent introduction.
whilst I own this
http://www.amazon.com/Selections-Canzoniere-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199540691/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_4
I would actually recommend this
http://www.amazon.com/Petrarch-English-Classics-Francesco-Petrarca/dp/0140434488/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1339489661&sr=8-10&keywords=Petrarch
since it seems to be much bigger and therefore has a greater range of Petrarch's works.
(though it does seem to be out of print and therefore ridiculously expensive, so maybe any translation of all of Petrarch's canzoniere will do)
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Thanks for the suggestions. Any particular excerpt you'd like to share? I haven't any Dante or Petrarch. One of the barriers that prevent me from loving certain poets is their cultural inaccessibility. I feel like I need to know a lot more about the Bible in order to understand some of the older poets' metaphors.
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Interestingly they have surprisingly few biblical references (which makes sense given that Medieval people weren't all that biblical).
Start with "La Vita Nuovo" for sure, Dante actually explains the context which inspired him to write the poem, making it a great primer for understanding poetry. I haven't read the Divine Comedy, and honestly it looks way too long, especially since the whole point is "Dante bags out his obscure political enemies in Florence"*
*who are of course only remembered today because Dante bagged them out in the Divine Comedy.
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I'm reading the reviews of La Vita Nuovo on amazon and a central theme that emerges is how little Dante actually knew Beatrice and yet how he worshiped her. I struggle in my own writing not to have Sansa too Mary Sueish, where she's just absolutely perfect, not just physically (that's why I have remark on how she's a great ruin in old age), but spiritually as well. Not that I think the aspiration for virtue is something to scoff at, but I think great goodness and/or great beauty is such a male fantasy and a burdensome one that no woman can live up to, only fall from.
Its not just any male fantasy, its the fantasy of a particular type of man - the naive man. Czelaw Milosz wrote that "what has no shadow has no strength to live" - this quote came to me as I was reading the reviews of La Vita Nuovo and the grief Dante felt when Beatrice, neither his wife, nor his lover, nor his sweetheart, died at age 24. And how sad it was that Dante loved this woman he only meet twice in his life and yet never wrote a single poem about his wife who gave him three children. He's like the subject of Baudelaire's poem "Which One is Genuine" which is about how the poet trapped himself, "tied to the grave of the ideal," over the love of a woman (who of course, died young) named Benedicta who "when one looked into her eyes one wanted nobility, glory, beauty, all those qualities that make us love immortality."
I guess the deification of a human woman is not romantic to me and that so many reviewers think it is romantic I find myself a little nervous approaching it.
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But it is the apogee of courtly love poetry, and in many ways the beginnings of modern western poetry.
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