Parisian Literary Salon

Tuesday Nights 8-10 PM: Hamlet by William Shakespeare (4 spaces available)

Tuesday Afternoons 2-4 PM: Hamlet by William Shakespeare (6 spaces available)

November/December Salons commence the week of November 13th, registration is happening now. Cost for the Salons is 75 euro for the six week session- this includes all photocopies. If this is your first Salon, you can reserve your place with a 25 euro deposit. If you have participated in a past Salon, your electronic commitment is enough. For more details and queries, please write via the “Contact Me” link above.

Love Like Salt by Lisel Mueller

It lies in our hands in crystals

Too intricate to decipher

It goes into the skillet

Without being given a second thought

It spills on the floor so fine

We step all over it

We carry a pinch behind each eyeball

It breaks out on our foreheads

We store it inside our bodies

In secret wineskins

At supper, we pass it around the table

Talking of holidays by the sea.

I was considering poems for the next Poetry Salon when I came across this exquisite piece. I recently had a conversation with some friends on the nature of love and was awoken again to the many perspectives and possible models of love. As we ascend to the end of Dante’s magnificent vision in Paradise, I am surprised how deeply we struggle to understand the relationship between Beatrice and Dante- and how fundamental that understanding is to the work as a whole even as we consider the architecture of the universe Dante created, his levels of shining souls residing in Paradise, his theological arguments and political concerns.

In Love Like Salt, the careful and economic choice of words (Love is never named in the poem) reinforces the quotidian nature of love. Moving from its precious, ineffable nature in the first stanza directly to the kitchen floor in the second and third, the poem does not attempt to obscure love but by the playing out of the extended metaphor (love = salt), I am brought anew to my occasional thought of the absolute necessity of love in my life- not just as an enhancer, but as life-giving.

Even the final line- that seems to pint to our distraction from the thing at hand, contains within it a further image of the love/salt duo- the holidays at by the sea involve being immersed in the buoyant salty world; again without awareness, without consideration. We are immersed in our love all the time.

Poetry Salon: October 23, 20.00-22.00

After the pure pleasure of the September Salon night, this looks to be a Salon regular feature. My aim is to have the Poetry night occur at the start of the new series. Please sign up by your email commitment and I will send you the specifics including poems as they are determined. The cost is 10 euro and a suggested contribution of a nibble or boisson. I am considering some Emily Dickinson works perhaps to paired (oh, it is so cliché but the contrast brings each into clarity) with Walt Whitman (some stanzas from Leaves of Grass or A Noiseless Patient Spider) along with Louise Gluck or Phil Levine or Sharon Olds…there is so much to choose from! And while I am procrastinating the choice, I must read more poetry every day…

Next Salon series Hamlet starting November13^th

I had a difficult time deciding on this series- but with the approach of the holidays, decided it was time for an old favorite- and I have been missing Shakespeare. Please see the description below and email me to sign up for this Salon. Both the Tuesday afternoon (2-4 PM, location to be announced) and the evening (8-10 PM, 3 ter rue d’Alesia) salons will be Hamlet- a work fundamental to understanding the individual in society. See description below…

Although the future can NEVER be predicted- I am preparing for January The Odyssey and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace.

See you in the pages-

Toby Brothers

Alesian Literary Salon Director

Hamlet

- by William Shakespeare

How does one introduce a play that is already drunk on its own superlatives? For this Salon, I propose we come to study Hamlet afresh, not worrying about whether we see it as Shakespeare’s greatest play ever or whether we stand breathless at the language…but finding within the play that that has so riveted audiences and readers for centuries. I welcome to this Salon those who have never read or seen the play along with those who have memorized entire soliloquies - we will need both perspectives to carefully negotiate our way through the ‘constantly shifting register not only of action but of language’ (Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language, 2000).

What is Hamlet about? Themes include the most precise questions of loyalty, revenge and allegiance, what it means to be human, the role of fate and self-will, the truth of madness- the essences of human experience. The language must stand up to the weight of these themes- we will closely examine the words and structures to decide if it does and if so, how. As I seek to describe the text, I am aware that the terms approximate that of a wisdom tradition. Harold Bloom, one of the twentieth centuries’ most highly regarded and prolific literary critics, puts Shakespeare even more emphatically in the role of deity:

“Shakespeare is my model and my mortal god…Hamlet is part of Shakespeare’s revenge upon revenge tragedy, and is of no genre. Of all poems, it is the most unlimited. As a meditation upon human fragility in confrontation with death, it competes only with the world’s scriptures.” (Harold Bloom, Hamlet, Poem Unlimited, 2003)

As with any other Salon dealing with a dramatic work, we will perform large parts of the text and view various filmed adaptations. If the group feels an extra session is required to complete our study, we will work to find an extra meeting time.