January 17, 2006

Dear Colleague,

    The beginning of a New Year seems a good time to talk of romance, and when it comes to romance there is still none that beats Romeo and Juliet unless it be Tristan and Isolde. Romeo and Juliet speak with the high eloquence of Shakespeare, whereas Tristan and Isolde speak with the ravishingly beautiful and erotically charged music of Wagner.

      I can't quote Wagner for you, but I can quote Shakespeare, although it is hardly necessary, the passages being so well known. Anyway, when Romeo sees Juliet, leaning on the balcony with her hand on her cheek, he says:

    As daylight doth a lamp, her eyes in heaven
    Would through the airy region stream so bright
    That birds would sing and think it were not night.
    See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
    O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
    That I might touch that cheek!

    The one truly erotic line in the above stanza is Romeo's wish to be a glove on Juliet's hand, so "that I might touch her cheek." Compare this image with that in a notorious gay poem, in which one boy yearned to be the saddle of another boy's bike! Now, most readers of "Dear Colleague" will be repelled by this image, cursing the decay of Western civilization since its high point in the Age of Shakespeare. Thinking along these lines made me read Annie Proulx's short story, "Brokeback Mountain," which has been turned into a highly acclaimed movie. The story is about the passionate love between two Wyoming ranch hands. They first met herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain, two macho high-school drop-outs who never dreamed that they could be so addicted to each other that, hard as they tried to quit (including using such devices as not seeing each other for four years, marrying, and begetting children), they couldn't. How did they--how do high-school drop-outs--speak their love? How would a writer capture the intensity of that love without using Shakespeare's elevated language? Annie Proulx does it very well. Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar part after their first idyllic summer on Brokeback Mountain. Here is the scene.

       "Well, see you around, I guess." The wind tumbling an empty feed sack down the street until it fetched up under his truck.

        "Right," said Jack, and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder, then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu