That Dome in Air

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Literary Links -- links to on-line book collections, research resources, etc.

LiveJournal	Click here for literature-related entries in my liveJournal.
Intro	Being a graduate student of Literature I have many literary and poetic interests, including Keats, Shakespeare, Jorge Luis Borges, Chaucer, Paul Auster, Gilbert and Sullivan, Isaac Asimov, and Christina Rosetti. For my Master's Thesis I have decided to study the apprehensions of death in Hamlet and Macbeth, although I may drop Hamlet from the running.
Romantics	Of the Romantics I especially enjoy Keats' work. Some people may not know that he died of tuberculosis. Those who do, probably also know that he was himself a trained physician, and was all too aware of his own mortality. This awareness, I feel, lends an especial edge to his writings. His "Ode on a Grecian Urn" takes some of that anxiety regarding death and time and crystallizes it for future generations to behold. The paradox of a thing, idea or event which has been frozen in Time by being painted on the urn, which then loses its humanity and color, and becomes frustratingly unfulfilled--the lovers never embrace, but are always on the verge of embracing. This idea reminds me, also, of "Ozymandias," by Percy Bysshe Shelley: "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair" it says on a stone amidst the ruins of a supposedly once-great civilization--another good poem on the immortality of the written word, whether that be stone, paper, or silicon.
Shakespeare	Shakespeare, as a playwright, is very enthralling to me. He managed to write plays which lost little of their human appeal through the decades. While the language changes, and the references become slightly archaic, the overall spectacle of human behavior and feeling is not lost. In literature, I am mostly interested in the universality of human expression, the common elements of all writings as the product of people with anxieties and concerns which are shared by other people. It is fascinating to know that centuries ago, people had the same fears about death or existence that we (or at least, I) hold regarding human existence and "the measure of a man."
Coleridge	Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn" is the source of the title for my homepage. In undergraduate English classes at UC Santa Barbara, one of my favorite expressions came from that poem: "I could build that dome in air... that sunny dome, those caves of ice". It just became a positive expression of the desire to succeed and endure, and to strike out for that realm which I wanted to make for myself. An especially amusing reference to Coleridge is in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. Adams plays with the historical events leading up to the completion of "Kubla Kahn".
Jorge Luis Borges	Borges combines reality, thought, perception, memory and fantasy in a lovely style which has come to be known by some as "magic realism." Cycles of life and death, rites of passage, and philosophical epiphanies abound throughout his thoughtful and rich works. Labyrinths is a collection of his short stories, in which he explores the theme of the labyrinth in a series of metaphysically-charged journeys into understanding and self-comprehension. "The Garden of Forking Paths" is one such journey; the story tells of a Chinese spy working for the Nazis in England, who seeks to prove his worth to these outlanders, but finds instead that his heritage is very much still a part of his life. He encounters a scholar well-versed in the lore of this young man's ancient ancestor, who disappeared from the world when he vowed to create a perfect labyrinth, having left behind only a confusing book which weaves back upon itself in a series of cyclical stories. Borges' work is very erudite, filled with social, cultural, religious and philosophical references from his lifetime of study and reading.
Paul Auster	Paul Auster's work is somewhat dark, but it comes across as expressing some magic realism, albeit less religious and more existential. There is a strong sense that, while things aren't necessarily pre-determined, they are governed by a mysterious series of cycles and karmic tenets, juxtaposed with what the characters learn about their own identity. "The New York Trilogy" is a group of three stories which share some imagery as well as a common theme of surveillance and identity. They are ostensibly detective stories, but the mysteries ultimately become more of an expression of the detective's own inner journey than of an unsolved crime. The detectives often find that what they had been paid to do has nothing to do with what is really going on, and they must retrace their steps and regain some sense of self-identity as they become more and more enmeshed in things which they cannot quite understand but which resonate with something deep within their soul. Other works--"Leviathan," "Moon Palace," and "The Music of Chance"--provide more stark and disturbing introspectives into their characters' souls, but with the same artful skill with language, character motivation, and imagery. Things take on almost fetishistic importance in each person's inner journey as seemingly ordinary (and usually unfortunate) turns of events become major existential scratching posts as the characters work through exactly who they are and how they have come to be in the place in which they find themselves.

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