It's been a bit quiet around here this week. I've found that when I want to blog I can't and when I can I don't want to. Funny how that works. I've also had a lot on my mind lately which has put me into a prolonged dull and unexciting mood. I'm anxious to be rid of it and to get things moving in that direction some friends and I are having a Jane Austen movie marathon tomorrow night. We'll be watching the four titles pictured below. My friend who is hosting has never seen the "Pride and Prejudice" mini-series. I've told her she's in for a treat! I can't wait!

photo source

Do you have anything fun planned this weekend?

Songbook of delightful proportions

I am an avid user of the inter-library loan system my town library is part of. Last week while searching the databases I came across the CD pictured on the left. Oh my! "Jane Austen's favourite vocal music, collected and copied out in her own hand," the cover reads. Inside, the liner notes go on to say, "Music and the social status it expressed was an integral part of Jane Austen's life. Her novels are replete with details of domestic musical activities. Accounts of public concerts and private balls as well as music programs with hired musicians fill her letters. A dedicated amateur herself, Austen ordinarily played at the pianoforte at least an hour a day before breakfast from the 8-book music collection now preserved in her home at Chawton. For nieces and nephews she practiced 'country dances,' a number of which appear in her collections. Austen painstakingly copied and bound music that especially interested her."

I simply cannot stop listening to these arrangements or express how they make me feel. Perhaps it is because of the charm they possess being several hundred years old, or because Jane admired them so. I can sit around all day and read Jane's novels over and over, but listening to songs that she enjoyed throughout the duration of her life supplies a more personal connection than printed words on a page can. And I like that.

Photo: Amazon.com

Weep You No More Sad Fountains

This clip features Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility singing "Weep You No More Sad Fountains," a beautiful and anonymous poem collected by John Dowland in the 1600s. The poem was put to music by film score composer Patrick Doyle for Emma Thompson's 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's beloved novel. Can I just tell you, I LOVE THIS MOVIE! I have watched it more times than is probably healthy for a person. I never seem to get enough! I watch it when I am feeling a little down or when I'm feeling happy and just need a Sense and Sensibility fix. I'll have it playing in the background while I busy myself with other things or at night as I drift off to sleep. Each time I sit in admiration of the direction, musical score, costumes, and the characters. Oh, the characters! A few years ago I purchased the soundtrack and it is quite often my daily car companion. "Weep You No More Sad Fountains" and the song Marianne sings toward the end of the film, "The Dreame" (lyrics by poet Ben Jonson), are performed by opera singer Jane Eaglen. What a voice! To further channel my inner nerd, I recently borrowed Emma Thompson's screenplay & diaries of the film from the library. I've never read a screenplay before, so I figured my first might as well be one of my favorite films. I'll leave you now with the lyrics to "Weep You No More Sad Fountains."

"Weep you no more sad fountains;
What need you flow so fast?
Look how the snowy mountains
Heaven's sun doth gently waste.
But my sun's heavenly eyes
View not your weeping,
That now lies sleeping
Softly, softly, now softly
Softly lies sleeping.

Sleep is a reconciling,
A rest that peace begets.
Doth not the sun rise smiling
When fair at ev'n he sets?
Rest you then, rest, sad eyes,
Melt not in weeping,
While she lies sleeping
Softly, softly, now softly
Softly lies sleeping."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged..."

I have spent the better part of my summer immersed in Austen. Anyone who knows me knows of my admiration and appreciation for the literary works of this fine lady. I have devoted many an hour to film and television adaptations of Jane's work, scouring libraries for copies of those which I had not yet seen. Shorter intervals of time have seen me tearing through the pages of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. I simply could not put them down. I have yet to read Mansfield Park and Emma, er, begin Emma again - I had started it once several years back, but never finished it for one reason or another. Ahh, but this summer I have reveled in the sweet, playful affection Henry Tilney bestowed upon Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey and claimed Anne Elliot of Persuasion as my favorite of all Austen heroines. I found myself relating to Anne in many ways; however, I am not suffering of a lost love eight years in duration. I will admit to my total girlishness by sharing that the rekindling of Anne and Captain Frederick Wentworth's romance is by far my favorite of Austen's plots (that concerning Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars of Sense and Sensibility is an extremely close second). The letter that Wentworth writes to Anne in Chapter 23 gets me every time. Every single time.

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W."

"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."

Even now my insides are squealing with joy. Calm down, E, you know it isn't real, but... but...!! Is it silly of me to be so delighted in a proclamation of literary love? To take refuge in a world that exists now only on paper peppered with wit and satire?

My answer is "no."