More Franklinish Wisdom?

Surly Appeal

Surliness!

Surly to bed
and
surly to rise
makes a man
hellish and selfish
who lies!

"You are what you cheat."

Preying Mantis

If you cheat on your grapefruit diet, your eyes will turn into grapefruit halves, and you will gradually become a preying mantis and gorge yourself on insect parts no matter how much you may pray not to.

But how in the world does that illustrate becoming what you eat, you say?

Hey, I don't make these proverbs up. I just quote 'em. Your job is to fix the meaning!

Rhyme Scheme

A Norange

They reckoned no rhyme for "an orange,"
But reckoned they not with "a norange"!

Peeling Unappealing Apples Or Offering Outrageous Oranges

A Case of Apples and Oranges?

"A little bite of knowledge is a dangerous thing."

Peachy Keen Analysis and Brew!

Forbidden Peach

Rate Beer

Some readers may recall that Salwa Khoddam and I co-wrote an article titled "The Peach in Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' Marvell's 'Garden,' and Eliot's 'Prufrock'" in which we argue the following:

The article investigates the peach as symbol of the forbidden fruit in Milton's "Paradise Lost," Marvell's "Garden," and Eliot's "Prufrock." Milton focuses on the fruit's appearance as "downy," Marvell refers to the peach as "curious," and Eliot worries that to "dare" to eat a peach could disturb the universe. Milton's choice of "downy" fits the peach better than what we would now call an apple. Marvell's choice of "curious" fits the Christian world's long-held belief that curiosity was the vice that led Eve to try the forbidden fruit. Eliot's choice of "dare" fits Eve's having "dar'd" to eat the forbidden fruit in "Paradise Lost," for daring to eat the fruit can disturb the universe, as, for example, Eve's eating did. These three points are supported by context, analysis, explication, connections, etymology, and more. Noted in passing are a few brief references in art and literature to the peach as the forbidden fruit, and these are treated merely to show that such identification is not unheard of. More important are the connections drawn between the fruit in the three poems, for such connections are the focus of this paper.

I'd like to think that this article written by Salwa and me influenced Red Rock's decision to brew a peach-flavored ale, but the article probably had nothing to do with that.

Anyway, for those interested in the work of the spirit, here's a brief description of the "Forbidden Peach" brewing process, along with a few ratings . . .

If there be pineapples, why not peachapples?

PeachApple
And God said, "Cain't have none!"
Image by Vickie Tseng

I attended a conference on Medieval and Early Modern English Studies Association of Korea (MEMESAK) on Saturday and presented a paper with the longest title you ever saw in your life:

The Peach/Apple in John Milton's Paradise Lost, Andrew Marvell's "The Garden,"

and

T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": Etymology and Sin

Here's the opening paragraph:

The "peach" as a symbol in works of the Western imagination has a longstanding tradition of polysemous meanings, much more subtle than its "cousin," the apple. Yet, these two fruits have been conflated in some works of the greatest writers in English literature, as well as in the works of some artists. The peach/apple relationship appears particularly significant in works of three great poets of the English language, representing early modernity and modernity in English literature, far apart in time and aesthetics: John Milton's Paradise Lost, Andrew Marvell's "The Garden," and T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." It also appears in the works of two artists: the Symbolist Georges de Feure and the Surrealist Matthew Skenandore. A study of the etymology and moral/religious associations of these two fruits -- the first two set in a type of an Edenic garden and the third in an arid landscape suggesting the absence of a garden -- supported by an analysis of the paintings of de Feure and Skenandore will illustrate how and why the peach is used in these works as a subtle substitute for the apple, a symbol of Original Sin and other types of transgression.

The paper is one that I co-authored with Salwa Khoddam, of Oklahoma City University, and since she knows more than I do, any and all mistakes are my own.

The paper will be published in the MEMESAK journal . . . after a few cosmetic alterations.

Our Friend, the Ginkgo?

Ginkgo, a Living Fossil?

Wikipedia

Over at the Marmot's Hole, the noble ginkgo tree is being discussed with disgust, so I put in my two cents suggesting the fault is with us humans, not the ginkgo, which has been around since the age of the dinosaurs:

Just for the hell of it, let's write really short, really stupid ginkgo poems:

The ginkgo tree is living proof
that humans don't belong on earth!

Think of it this way - the worse, the better. Like a lot of art these days . . .

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Check out the discussion thread for more amazing things about ginkgoes than the smell they exude!

The Peach as Forbidden Fruit?

Fantasia
Foreboding, Not Forbidden?
Upright Brewing

Yesterday, I posted a link on the Milton List to the above image, labeling it "A Twist on the Eve Motif?" I wrote:

Eve clothed (sort of) and just biting [into] a peach from which music winds serpentine up into the nearby peach tree . . .

One scholar suggested:

If Eve were wearing a slip, it probably wouldn't so tatty!

I posted a rejoinder:

Anyone can slip up now and then . . .

Another scholar wondered if the fruit was really a peach:

I'm not so sure those are peaches, either--they look more like little pumpkins (which, granted, don't grow on trees)--but then, violins wouldn't have been lying in the grass, either--not even broken ones. And Eve wouldn't have looked so common before she bit into the Fruit.

All in all, pretty bizarre.

I rather agreed:

The fruit does look odd, but I checked and made sure that they are peaches.

Another scholar liked the idea of peaches:

Peaches always seem right to me. Apples have settled in as the traditional interpretation, but as many of you likely know there were other candidates among early exegetes, including grapes. There's something cheeky about a peach, though, with that little cleft and all that fuzziness. The taste is also something to die for.

That one, perhaps, prompted Salwa Khoddam to post on our work together:

Jeffrey and I have already written a paper on the apple/peach image as used by Milton, Marvell, and T. S. Eliot. It includes all the motifs and related fruits that you mention. We have submitted our paper for publication and we are hoping that it would by published soon. We'll let you know what happens.

Since the list has a "Jeffrey," I thought I'd better jump in and correct my name:

Lest there be any confusion, that "Jeffrey" would be me, i.e., "Jeffery."

One scholar who has explored the peach image in Milton's Paradise Lost is Robert Appelbaum, in Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections: Literature, Culture, and Food Among the Early Moderns.

I believe Professor Appelbaum subscribes to this list -- at least, he used to.

As for Upright Brewing's own account of Fantasia, just click the image below:

Hmmm . . . doesn't say if the beer comes in bottomless bottles . . .

Late to the Wake . . .

Steve Jobs Proffers Apple

(SF Gate)

My friend Bill Vallicella has already posted this passage from the 2005 Stanford commencement address by Steve Jobs, but I recall being impressed when I first read it back in 2005, so I'm posting it anyway:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

That photo above can serve as an ironic memento mori, an iconic image of a young, healthy Jobs proffering an apple, the logo of his brand before the bite has been taken, before we realize that we are mortal, naked . . . except that from where we stand, we now know for certain the radical contingency of life. I'm late to the wake, but here I stand, knowing that I'll be on time for my own.

I would say, "Requiescat in Pace, Steve," but that somehow doesn't seem to fit a relentlessly restless man like Mr. Jobs, so I'll instead echo his own words and say, "Wherever you are, man, 'Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.'"

Oh, just one more thing: "So long, and thanks for all the Apples . . ."

T. S. Eliot and Prufrock's 'Daring' Peach

T. S. Eliot

Amar Nath Dwivedi

(Google Books)

Today's blog entry will likely interest only me, for I'm merely adding some details about a couple of scholars who have interpreted T. S. Eliot's "peach" in the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" as a reference to the "forbidden fruit" of Genesis.

The text shown in the image above, T.S. Eliot: A Critical Study, is by Amar Nath Dwivedi and was published in 2003. I'm not sure that Dwivedi can be trusted as a scholar, given his interpretation of the famous "ragged claws" that Eliot has Prufrock allude to:

The reference here is to a kind of seagull having rough and rugged claws and running swiftly on 'the floors of the silent seas.' Left with no other options to console himself, the protagonist walks down the seashore dandyishly in his white flannel trousers where he can part his hair to conceal his baldness and 'risk the solaces of a peach' -- the sole forbidden fruit . . . . (page 31)

Can one trust a scholar who has mistaken a crab for a seagull? Or who misquotes the famous "silent seas" line? Or who invents -- or so I gather -- the quote about peach risk? Probably not. But I have to acknowledge the reference to forbidden fruit.

The other scholar might be more trustworthy. Young Min Hyun (현영민) -- in an article titled "T. S. Eliot's Poetry: 'Do I dare to eat a peach?'" -- tells us the following, at least in the English abstract:

T. S. Eliot's impersonal theory of poetry is closely related with his nature of a Catholic, Calvinistic, or Puritanical temperament, which became the basis of his religious and sexual imagination in his poetry. We should bear in mind that his concept of tradition expounded in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is inseparable from his belief in the Christian dogmatic belief in Original Sin, as he explained in After Strange Gods, a lecture delivered at the University of Virginia in 1933.

Eliot interprets the Fall of man as originated in man's sexual passion which is symbolized in the act of eating the forbidden fruit in Genesis. This forbidden fruit is variously featured in Eliot's poetry as a peach in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," or a fig in Ash-Wednesday, or an apple in Four Quartets. Man should continually avoid the bodily desires not to eat the forbidden fruit. To relieve himself from the fear of His punishment, he should continually humiliate himself before God. This religious myth is accommodated to Eliot's impersonal theory of poetry which asks of the artist a continual surrender or self-sacrifice. In Eliot's poetry, women are dismissed as a temptress to be avoided. By cleansing his desires by the burning spiritual fire, man is recreated. Therefore, Eliot's ideal woman is a lady of silences in white and blue dress like Virgin Mary, a lady like Dante's Beatrice, a lady like Poe's Helen or Annabel Lee, whose beauty cannot be defiled by man's animal desires.

His poetic assimilation of his religious belief in terms of sexuality is inherited from the Puritan poetic representation of the abstract and spiritual value in terms of the concrete and sensual image, as seen in Jonathan Edwards, a last Puritan.

This sounds a little more scholarly, if a bit off about Eliot's religion -- was it "Catholic, Calvinistic, or Puritanical"? -- but since the article itself is in Korean, I can't check it on my own. Hyun's comparison of the peach to Eliot's fig and apple will bear looking into, it seems.

I might as well note K. K. Ruthven's article, "The Poet as Etymologist," in Critical Quarterly (Volume 11, Issue 1, March 1969, pages 9-37), which is not about Eliot but which offers the following obscure but intriguing remark:

The word has been potentially ambiguous ever since the peach was a 'Persian apple' (persicum malum) on account of the similarity between malum ('apple') and malum ('evil') . . . .

Unfortunately, I don't have the page number or the context since I'd have to purchase the article.

"Do I dare to eat a peach?"

Peaches

(British Literature Wiki)


I've been blogging on Ben Hale's novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, and focusing upon the peach that served as an apple of temptation for Bruno, enticing him to enter the fallen world of humanity. Bruno even asks:

Did I dare to eat a peach? Indeed I did. (page 13)

He's alluding to T.S. Eliot's poem (nearly rhymes with pomme!) "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in which the appealing Prufrock poses to himself an overwhelming question -- "Do I dare to eat a peach?" -- as Ben himself also explained the other day:

I slipped the TS Eliot joke in there, which fit so nicely . . . .

I noted in that same blog entry that Ben might conceivably have received an obscure influence from Paradise Lost, but I won't go into details on that again right now since the link will supply that argument. Instead, I'd like to think about Eliot's use of the peach. Another Milton scholar and I began to wonder if Eliot were alluding to the forbidden fruit as a peach, possibly also obscurely influenced by Milton. I did an internet search and found in the British Literature Wiki website that one scholar has indeed suggested that Eliot was referring to the forbidden fruit in asking himself if he dared to eat a peach:

While Eliot only briefly mentions the peach in this poem, it has come to be one of the most critically contested images, in terms of deciphering its meaning. In his book, Ascending the Prufrockian Stair, Robert Fleissner dedicates an entire chapter to offering various interpretations of "Prufrock's Peach." Firstly, he considers the idea that the peach, in this context, could be a reference to the Forbidden Fruit of the biblical Creation story. With this interpretation, Prufrock must choose between knowledge and immortality. This struggle fits in closely with Prufrock's constant grappling with his own mortality. In Prufrock's eyes, he has already eaten the biblical fruit and must now heed the consequences: a burdensome awareness of the world around him and his own approaching death.

The footnote identifies the source more fully: Robert F. Fleissner, Ascending the Prufrockian Stair: Studies in Dissociated Sensibility (Peter Lang: New York, 1988). I'll have to try to get ahold of this book somehow. I've searched online without success, finding only one source that explicitly notes Fleissner's thesis about the peach, namely, a review by D.J. Childs, "Eliot Facts" (Essays in Criticism 39.4 (1989), pp. 348-352 ) :

"Professor Fleissner is interested in . . . a typological analysis of Prufrock's peach as forbidden fruit . . . ." (p. 348)

I've only accessed this one page out of the five, so I don't know if Childs has more to say, but I'll be looking into this more, along with another scholar.

Keen for a Peach, Plumbing of the Nectarine: Eve, Bruno Littlemore, and Me . . .

Peaches and Nectarines

(Orange Parade)


Long-time readers of this blog know that John Milton depicted the putatively 'forebitten' fruit -- the serpent, anyway, claimed to have eaten one -- in his great poem Paradise Lost as a peach. A certain annoying citrus fruit online might quip, "Orange you glad it wasn't an apple?" I'd ironically suggest that apple or peach or whatever generic fruit it seemed in appearance, it turned out to be a lemon.

Just kidding. It was a peach for Adam and Eve, just as it was for Bruno Littlemore, who informs his amanuensis of the scientist's offer of the peach that tempted him into the 'fallen' world of humanity:

A peach, Gwen -- he was my serpent and I was his Eve.

The quote, of course, comes from page 12 of Ben Hale's recent novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, about which I blogged several days ago. I asked Ben why he chose the peach rather than the apple, and I learned a great deal about the experiment described in the novel, but I didn't get the specific reason for his choice of a peach, so I asked again:

One thing that's not clear yet . . . why did you choose a peach? Did you independently notice that "downie smiled" in PL fit a peach better than an apple?

Ben replied:

I don't know why it was a peach, honestly. It started as a peach, and then I slipped the TS Eliot joke in there, which fit so nicely I couldn't change it, and then it for some reason became important that it be a peach. I only wish I knew PL that well!

But perhaps Ben knows Paradise Lost better than he thinks if my earlier suggestion was correct:

Ben has at least been reading Milton, or seems to have been if I can take the descriptive clause "releasing into the room the ambrosial aroma" as an echo of Milton's "ambrosial smell diffus'd" (Paradise Lost 9.852).

That clause "releasing into the room the ambrosial aroma" occurs on page 13 of Ben's novel as part of the scientist's method for tempting Bruno into daring to eat the peach. If we look more closely at Milton's rendering of the scene in which Eve herself initiates the temptation of Adam, we see that Ben might have been influenced unawares, as Adam goes in search of Eve:

And forth to meet her went, the way she took
That Morn when first they parted; by the Tree
Of Knowledge he must pass, there he her met,
Scarse from the Tree returning; in her hand
A bough of fairest fruit that downie smil'd,
New gatherd, and ambrosial smell diffus'd. [PL 9.847-852]

That expression "downie smil'd" is part of the evidence that Robert Appelbaum gathers in his persuasive argument that Milton portrayed the forbidden fruit not as an apple but as a peach, thereby clearing the apple tree and impeaching the peach -- fitting tribute from a man named "Appelbaum"! But my point is that the proximity of "ambrosial smell diffus'd" to "downie smiled" might have been subconsciously noted by Ben Hale and could therefore have influenced his initial reason for settling on a peach that was soon "releasing into the room the ambrosial aroma."

But was it originally a peach? The "downie" character of its appearance is emphasized only after Eve's fall. Perhaps it was a nectarine when Eve partook, but became 'impeached' with the incipient fall of nature? Botanically, nectarines and peaches are the same fruit, the difference being due to a recessive gene that results in smooth skin. Or should one reverse the order and say due to a dominant gene that results in downy skin?

Note, by the way, that according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the nectarine is first mentioned in English in 1616, early enough for Milton to be aware of the fruit, though I'm being merely half-serious, for Milton would consider the nectarine just as fallen as the peach.

Georges de Feure - Le fruit défendu: péché as pêche

Le fruit défendu (1895)

Georges de Feure

(MutualArt)

My reading in Ben Hale's novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, has turned my thoughts again toward forbidden fruit and its rare depiction as a peach, which Ben picks up on and works into his story. After reading John Milton's description of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in terms better fitting a peach than an apple, as pointed out to me by Robert Appelbaum (who has written on this topic), I wondered about the possibility of a pun in French on pêche (peach) and péché (sin). I haven't confirmed that such a pun has been explicitly made, not in so many (or so few?) words, but the painting above by the French Symboliste painter Georges de Feure (real name: Georges Joseph van Sluÿters, 1868-1943) looks like a visual pun on Eve's biting of a peach as the original sin. Here's what the catelogue notes at Sotheby's Auction says about this painting:

Among the rare works created by de Feure during his sojourns in Bruges, this work is one of the most unusual for its symbolism and modernism. In the foreground, partially obscured by a floral border, a nude woman, Eve-like, holds the gaze of the spectator and proffers a peach she has already bitten. This fruit and its rich juice evoke the biblical temptation in Paradise, and mankind's ensuing fall from grace.

In the background, in the town streets moves a procession of nude women, dancing, applauding and caressing each other. Some wear black stockings while others brandish smoking amphoras above their heads. In front of them, a group of civil and religious dignitaries wave flags and an incense burner. An old bearded man and two naked boys with linked arms form the vanguard of the extraordinary march.

In creating this provocative work, De Feure was possibly inspired by two historical events associated with Bruges: the procession of Saint-Sang that occurs on the day of the Ascension in commemoration of the relic brought back in 1149 from the Second Crusade by Thierry d'Alsace, Count of Flanders; and a group of Anabaptists brutally persecuted in the sixteenth century. The Anabaptists believed that at the apocalypse, God would baptise them in fire (represented by the smoking amphoras in the composition), and consumed by religious fervor, they ran naked through the city streets. Whatever the veracity of these potential sources, De Feure accentuates the sexual and sensual, using the duality of the concept of blood and the underlying theme of Original Sin and redemption. (Lot 41, George de Feure, Le fruit défendu, Sotheby's 19th Century European Paintings (L09663), November 24, 2009, pages 74-75)

For its own source, Sotheby's cites Ian Millman work on George de Feure, Mâitre du Symbolisme et de l'Art Nouveau (Paris, 1992, p. 89, catalogued and discussed; p. 88, illustrated), which can be found among Google Books here (see Section 4 of the text) . As Sotheby notes, the illustration appears on page 88. Pages 89 and 90 are not shown in the preview, but page 92 (not 89!) is actually the page from which Sotheby gets its catalogue notes, having translated the French. The French original refers to the "pêche" (peach) and "Péché originel" (Original Sin), but does not explicitly note any pun.

Any knowledgeable individuals who might add to this query are welcome to post comments.