my holiday weekend
Hamlet, Hamlet and more Hamlet
Adult relationships form the subject of my fiction - the continual sexuality of the theme attracts some readers and repulses others - but my aim is always literary, the artistry of human relations - and that seriousness interests very few
Erotic Romances collects the short stories of David Cain into one volume. Written with literary aspirations, the stories are light and engaging, with a wide range of characters, situations and styles. And arousingly adult. The 126 stories range from thoughtful, funny, sad and strange, but always naughty. Easy to read, poetic and charming, the Erotic Romances will entertain any adult reader, serious or light.
For what is glory but the blaze of fame,
The people’s praise, if always praise unmixt?
And what the people but a herd confus’d,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar, and well weigh’d, scare worth the praise,
They praise and they admire they know not what;
And know not whom, but as one leads the other;
And what delight to be by such extoll’d,
To live upon their tongues and be thir talk,
Of whom to be disprais’d were no small praise?
—John Milton, Paradise Regained
He has the prettiest songs for maids, so without bawdry,
which is strange, with such delicate burdens
of dildos and fadings, ‘Jump her, and thump her’
—William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
(via echoesofthehour)
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.
—John Milton, Areopagitica
bad poetics
“A cold, dark winter’s night”
This phrase has become, for me, an excellent example of bad poetics because of the redundancy in the language. Winter implies cold. Night implies dark. Poetry is an art of economy. Saying the same thing twice is bad poetry.
“A warm, bright winter’s night,” on the other hand, would be good poetry. Meaning arises from the tension in the language.
A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.
—John Milton, Areopagitica
lauraacrosstheuniverse asked: Hello, I absolutely love the things that you post on your Tumblr. Especially your own, original writing. Have you ever read Tess of the D'Urbervilles? What did you think of it?
Thank you very much for the kind words. This kind of response can make all the difference to me.
I have read Tess of the D’Urbervilles so many times that I named my daughter Tess. The always cynical Hardy creates a perfectly kind and decent woman in Tess and shows how horrible the world can be to someone who behaves the way we all think good people should, while we, the readers, find ourselves advising her to act in a self-serving and less positive way - when Tess finally stops being good, by murdering Alex, we (society) cruelly punish her with execution. Tess shows us our hypocrisy and societal unkindness. I love the way Hardy makes me chastise myself for wanting Tess to be less angelic and more (sadly) human.
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove,
Venus now wakes, and wak’ns Love.
Com let us our rights begin,
‘Tis only day-light that makes Sin
Which these dun shades will ne’re report,
Hail Goddess of Nocturnal sport
—A Mask, John Milton
Beauty is natures coyn, must not be hoorded,
But must be currant, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partak’n bliss,
Unsavoury in th’ injoyment of it self
If you let slip time, like a neglected rose
It withers on the stalk with languish’d head.
Beauty is natures brag, and must be shown
In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities
Where most may wonder at the workmanship;
It is for homely features to keep home,
They had their name thence; coarse complexions
And cheeks of sorry grain will serve to ply
The sampler, and to teize the huswifes wooll.
What need a vermeil-tinctur’d lip for that
Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the Morn?
There was another meaning in these gifts,
Think what, and be adviz’d, you are but young yet.
—A Mask, John Milton
Peace, Brother, be not over-exquisite
To cast the fashion of uncertain evils;
For grant they be so, while they rest unknown,
What need a man forestall his date of grief,
And run to meet what he would most avoid?
Or if they be but false alarms of Fear,
How bitter is such self-delusion?
—A Mask, John Milton
Le Fleurs de Malinov: Isabella
Isabella
by Lord Malinov
~~~
Our producers had determined to stage Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare, one of the strangest of all his plays. The wild boy Claudio is sentenced to death for having sex by the uptight bureaucrat Angelo. Hypocritical and corrupt, Angelo offers to let…
Words about the future are only words about the present
