What a pleasant surprise to hear from you. I thought the heavy lifting of blog posts would be left to me as you get settled following your big move. Not unlike how the heavy lifting was left to me in helping you move. (“I have to become acquainted with the space,” can only hold water as an excuse for so long when it comes to me lugging boxes.)
So hearing from you via the blog is a pleasant surprise indeed.
I am quite concerned about the alarming impact that wheat seems to have had on literary characters of the 19th century. Cereal grains have always carried a lot of symbolic weight. I think it was Homer who wrote (or orally passed down for generations in a form eventually to be transcribed):
“Oh muse, I sing the song of the grain,
wheat of forbidden love, barley of pain.
The oat ever constant, the corn calming and nice
hops ever strengthing, to say nothing of rice.”
Or maybe I misremember. (Notice how I imply a familiarity with the epic poet, Homer. That’s right, buddy, I’ll see your Tolstoy and raise you a Homer.)
Leon has entered the story in my reading as well, and things by 19th century French standards are getting out of hand. First, Leon and Emma B. have a conversation and then Emma feigns weariness from the heat when walking to the village in order to walk by Leon’s side.
Feigning heat weariness must be the 19th century equivalent of “running out of gas” when taking a date home. I imagine Emma thinking to herself after Leon offers her his arm “The ol’ feigning weariness in the sun trick…works every time.”
Well, I am off to read more.
A pain in the grain,
Justin
