On the end of Hamlet

"Nothing is resolved: there has been only prodigal death, of which the required one - Claudius's - is without catharsis. We do not know who the Ghost was, or whether he is now at peace, or whether Gertrude knew about her second husband, or how else Hamlet could have fulfilled himself - only that we could have done no better with his difficulties than he has. Denmark, once powerful, has been reduced to a client of Norway - largely through the activities of Hamlet. But of course his meaning is not contained by these circumstances, far from it. His body is to be taken, in a final pun, 'to the stage', a place of display and honour, with a sense of permanence, facing the sky. As the play closes on a single half-line of practical instruction and the lights go down on Hamlet, the frailty of his life, the permanence of his spirit, and above all his extraordinary enquiries, begin their long ringing in the ears. "

- Michael Pennington, 1996, Hamlet: A User's Guide, pg. 150. An excellent, insightful book on the great play, written from an actor's perspective (and a good actor's one at that).

maddened by the sound of harps...

"It is just because the main foes in Beowulf are inhuman that the story is larger and more significant...[The story] glimpses the cosmic and moves with the thought of all men concerning the fate of human life and efforts; it stands amid but above the petty wars of princes, and surpasses the dates and limits of historical periods, however important. At the beginning, and during its process, and most of all at the end, we look down as if from a visionary height upon the house of man in the valley of the world. A light starts - lixte se leoma ofer landa fela [that light shined over many lands] - and there is a sound of music; but the outer darkness and its hostile offspring lie ever in wait for the torches to fail and the voices to cease. Grendel is maddened by the sound of harps."

- Tolkien, 1936, "Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics", a once much-studied lecture. The echoes of a beautiful, most un-scholarly music can be heard behind this piece of academia; the same music, much amplified, would later haunt a masterpiece. Yet who in 1936 knew to look for the Beowulf-author's heir in the figure of a modest, obscure professor?

"Why ought people do what morality requires? The honest answer, I think, is that they ought to do it only if they care about the well-being of others; wish to live in harmony with them; want to avoid a life likely to be solitary, nasty, brutish, and short; are moved by examples of good lives; and are repelled by examples of evil ones. Such people are the friends of humanity. Humanity also has its enemies, and that is what evildoers indifferent to the moral "ought" are. It is important to bear in mind that evildoers are not mere backsliders who lie, steal, or cheat, but people whose actions cause monstrous harm. They do not just violate moral limits, but reveal a depraved attitude toward them. They are the sort of people who snatch an old woman from her deathbed in order to burn her alive, like the crusaders; who enjoy a cozy lunch between two bouts of mass murder, like Stangl; and who incite a mob to dismember and cannibalize live victims on mere suspicion of political dissent, like Robespierre. To think of such evildoers as enemies of humanity is not too strong a condemnation and to treat them as such is well deserved. ..."

- from John Kekes' (2005) The Roots of Evil, Cornell University Press, pg. 198. A well-argued book, sobering, clear-sighted and unromantic, although perhaps Kekes pays too little heed to  psychopathy as a disease. Not least among the book's virtues is simply being a university-press book that is actually readable.

For information sake

"...Aretino's dialogues are of additional literary interest for serving as the model for such works as L'Escole des Filles (1655), which appeared in English as The School of Venus (1688). It was the French version of this "novel" - consisting mainly of a discussion of sexual matters by two girls, Fanchon and Susanne - that was purchased on February 8, 1668, by His Majesty' Secretary of Naval Affairs, one Samuel Pepys. He characterized it as "the most bawdy, lewd book that I ever saw," and for this reason procured it "in plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it." The next night, after consuming "a mighty good store of wine," he retreated to the privacy of his chamber, where he read the book "for information sake," then proceeded with the burning, "that it might not be among my books to my shame."

- from Hugh Rawson's enormously diverting Wicked Words.