The great thing about Henry VI, Part I

Will have to wait!

Okay. I was going to write today about the brilliant thing in Henry VI, Part I. It was going to be incredibly insightful, and everyone who read it would say something along the lines of, "Wow! I never realized that!" I was planning on exploring the grand theme of unity and disunity, and maybe throw is a few mindblowing thoughts about leadership.

However, I am instead going to a viewing (or whatever the hoity-toity call it) at the National Gallery of Art. I've been invited to see a visiting exhibit about the Hudson River School, which is nice, only I plan to sneak out while everyone is studying the vastness of an Albert Bierstat landscape, or whatever, and go in search of my favorite painter, Eugene Delecroix, who is French and never went anywhere near the Hudson or even the United States as far as I know. The Spouse and I are taking this non-credit course at our alma mater called "The Romantic Age in Art, Literature and Music". The Hudson River School is generally considered part of the Romantic movement, if you like to categorize things, but for me this period is all about the Europeans, and Delecroix is my fave. I bet he could have licked all the Hudson River artists with both hands tied behind his back. I am particularly fond of his The Spirit of War and The Spirit of Peace. I know they have War here in DC at the National Gallery, but I think Peace is located elsewhere. Go ahead and insert your own joke.

After the Gallery gala, we're going to see a performance of Beethoven's 9th symphony at Wolftrap, the National Symphony Orchestra's summer home. Of course, Beethoven was a big inspiration to those artist like Chopin who would go on to be labeled "Romantics". So all in all, a very Romantic day, which of course is nothing like a romantic day. A Romantic day involves the tortured, dreamlike introspection of the creative soul. Sturm und Drang and all that. A romantic day involves introspective lazying about with breakfast in bed and soulful, moonlit drives up the coast. (Hello Spouse! Are you reading this?!?) If you don't know anything about the Romantics and are one of the few slubberdegullions left on this planet with an ounce of curiosity in you, here are a few links I dug up in under 50 seconds: An introduction to Romanticism from Brooklyn College is a pretty uninspiring overview, and Art History:Romanticism is so-so. The good old Wikipedia comes through with a pretty good bit on the music, though.

Anyway, if you like Wordsworth or Goethe or Impressionist painters, or Lord Byron, or Rousseau, or Victor Hugo, or Flaubert, or Chopin or Liszt or Bizet or Schumann or crazy kids like that, then you might really dig learning more about the Romantic Movement. If you don't like any of those things even a little bit, you are a Philistine, and should pay more attention to how much cool stuff there is out in the world, and how much of it you are missing while you pick lint from your belly button, waiting around for the day you die.

It is worth mentioning, given the gist of this here blog, that it was the "Romantic" artists who rediscovered Shakespeare. He had quite fallen out of fashion, when folks like Coleridge started championing him. If you hear about a performance of an opera based on a Shakespearean play, chances are a Romantic (or a later composer influenced by the Romantics) wrote it. I could tell you why the Romantic artists thought Shakespeare was positively the caterpillar's boots, but I'm saving that for a time when I can't thing of anything else to say about the Bard.

I could have, of course, written this entry earlier in the week, but I was busy doing things, many of which were only slightly more productive than picking link from my belly button. I visited with my mom who just had Tommy John reconstructive knee surgery. I made her lots of cookies and played with her giant black dog, Monk. Then I planned a week-long vacation for some friends, The Spouse, and me. This was an incredibly complicated procedure, although a pleasant one, due to a variety of competing desires, constraints and interests. That effort, as one of my friends put it, was "more like constructing a Logic Puzzle than an itinerary". Little do they know how much more complicated I plan on making it! My secret plan right now is to strap a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare to everyone's camping packs, and force them to read and analyze plays by the campfire every night. They will, of course, comply, as I intend to keep all the maps to myself. Through hiking is all about who controls the maps and the water, a fact I don't plan to forget... Naturally, only the friends who are loyal readers of this blog will know enough to check their pack for tomes before heading out, and thus receive a special dispensation, as well as 10 pounds less to trudge over hill and under dale.

But no, that little devious plan of mine is not all I accomplished whilst not writing this blog. I mustn't forget my recent epic painting sessions with the furniture we inherited from The Senator For Whom The Spouse Works. ("For whom doth The Spouse work? He works for Thee..." This has been a Public Service Annoucement brought to you by the United States Congress. God Bless.) My quest to make the wooden office furniture look like it was designed to live in a kitchen has only just begun. And I also whiled away the hours sanding the walls of the lead-paint-encrusted kitchen that will eventually receive the painted office furniture. Life is short, and we all need to seize the opportunity to inhale toxic chemicals while we can.

Also, it has been intolerably hot, in my opinion. Many people who, Godforbid, grew up in DC might disagree, because I suspect the heat will be getting Much Worse. However, The Cat confirms my assessment, insofar as he has begun laying NEXT TO his heating pad, instead of DIRECTLY ON it. This is a major concession from The Cat, aka the Perpetual Endothermic Machine. He deigns his heating pad unpleasantly warm, which means my brain is on fire and the only time I can think straight is in a tub full of cool water.

But The Spouse and I did manage to attend our Romantic Age class this week, even if I didn't manage to hammer out a respectable blog entry. One interesting item from our class: our professor is from Lorraine, in France, and she mentioned how silly it is that people come to Lorraine to see the place where Joan of Arc was burned. Why silly, you ask? Because she was never burned at all! She was a relation to the Dauphin, not a shepherd, and she survived the war and married some rich dude. Both Pucelle and hubby died pretty young of disease, with no surviving children, and are buried in the church in the town in which she was supposedly burnt. It seems everybody in the village knows this, but the burnt-up-martyr routine is good for business, so no one bothers fussing over historical accuracy. In the 19th century when the French and the Church* needed a heroine, someone tried to break up her gravestone so no one could read it, but you can still see "Joan 'La Pucelle'" if you look closely or make a careful rubbing. I have not, of course, been able to verify these facts, but can offer that our professor seems a trustworthy sort. If anyone would like to underwrite my trip to Alsace-Lorraine, I'd be happy to personally investigate further.

So Joan of Arc was not a martyr at all. I can almost hear you now: "Wow! I never realized that!"



*Note - The Church didn't canonize Joan for being burnt; It canonized her for coming to French nuns in visions during the 19th and/or 20th centuries and curing them of terrible diseases, like cancer and such, so It doesn't have to worry about the whole myth or martyr issue. The local tourism business however - that's another story.