I’m having fun trying to be a stenographer, capturing the snippets of Bella playing with the figures in the nativity set. I can’t see what she’s doing. She’s on the other side of the Christmas tree. I have no idea who is supposed to be talking at any given time.
I really can’t make a coherent story out of it. I can’t at all follow what’s going on in the story in her head. But it is fascinating getting the little flashes.
“So what do you have?”
“Myrrh.”
“All right you can have some myrrh. Just put it in right there.”
“I’m just getting them food. They’re hungry. Here, lambs, here’s some food.”
“Aw, the lambs are kissing and kissing each other. He hugged her… What’s the matter, Dear?”
“Good Christian men rejoice, spirit heart and voice. And glory and glory and glory.”
“Time for church. Ding-a-ling.”
“Oh little boy. Let me hold your hand.”
“They found his treasure. That’s nice.”
“I’m going up to the front. Do you want to hold my hand. I’m going to be at the back before the Mass is going to start. You’ll be in the pew with your Dadda. All right dear? Right here at the back of the Church.
We’re going to have a party afterwards. And I’m going to be baptized? Yes you are. Are you coming to Mass? Can you take the boy so he just doesn’t freak out? All right, he said, in his kind way. “
“All the other children could not believe their eyes.”
“All the holy innocent ones have to go up to the front.”
“Mary woke up and saw no people.”
“We all have to sit in different pews. We’re sitting near the door. Then the little girl saw that she could go in. I can’t go in she said to the person. I don’t have a gift. All right I’ll go get something special. I can bring this with me, she said. Now I can come in she whispered. I have to get over the roof. Now I can give you the gift. The he took the gift.”
“This will be a sign of peace. I can bring my lambs a gift, she said. My lamb wants to go to church. Can I bring her to church? Yes, said the priest.”
“The sheep scampered.”
Listening to her at play made me smile. I thought it might make someone else smile too.
It is funny to see this this evening. In another life, I wrote a graduate seminar paper on Eliot’s use of the yew tree in The Four Quartets and elsewhere. It is a densely complicated image (aren’t they all?), and I do love those lines, though I must admit I haven’t thought of them in a few years.
Celeste,
Do I sound like an uber geek if I say I’d love to read that paper? I did my big undergraduate project on Eliot my junior year. I spent almost a year immersing myself in all things Eliot and can’t count how many times I read and re-read all of his poetry and most of his prose too. I think I’m about due for a re-read of The Four Quartets. They’ve been calling to me.
Ha—not an uber geek.
I will gladly send an e-copy your way if you’d like, though I’m not sure you’ll get much from it! The class was really intriguing though: Dante and the Modern Poets. We read “the master” alongside Heaney, Eliot, and the like. I took it as a “breadth requirement” class, so it wasn’t in my field of study (I was doing Renaissance drama), but how can you resist a juxtaposition like that course promised? 
Sounds like a very cool class. I wouldn’t be able to resist it either.
I think that we read both The Divine Comedy and The Wasteland in our second Literary Traditions course along with Beowulf and I can’t remember what else. (The University of Dallas has a core curriculum and there’s a four semester literature sequence.)
I’m guessing for Heaney you read Station Island?
I had a four-semester class like that during my undergrad as well. Loved it!
Yes, Station Island. Eliot, Heaney, and someone else, though I can’t for the life of me remember who, and most of my books from grad school are sadly boxed up right now (we’re in a rental). Pound, maybe? Anyway, I liked Eliot best, though my experience of him before that seminar had been limited.
One of the best parts of the class was that my teacher chose bilingual versions of the Divine Comedy for our booklist. I happened to be taking Italian concurrently, so I was able to do some reading of Dante in the original, which was a blast.
If you ever find the books or remember who it was, let me know. You’ve got me curious as to who else would have fit with Dante and that group.
I think I like Eliot best too. He’ll always be my favorite. Though I do love Heaney.
I’d enjoy a bilingual edition of The Divine Comedy. I don’t know Italian well; but I spent a semester in Italy and so know a smattering. (That plus quite a few years of Latin and French means I might be able to work though quite a bit of the Italian.)
Anyway, if you do have a copy of that paper you could send my way, I would like to give it a glance. I’m feeling a need to dive into Eliot again but feel like I also need a nudge to give my brain some traction on the material. I’ve read it so many times that sometimes I tend to just gloss over the real strangeness of the lines, if you know what I mean.