Foreign Correspondence: Literature Guide
by
Mo
Disclaimer: The X-Men and Alpha Flight belong to Marvel. The movie belongs to Fox. Hotmail belongs to Microsoft. Belarus is an independent country and belongs to its citizens, mutant and otherwise. Bryn Mawr is a private women's college founded in 1885. It belongs to the women, mutant and otherwise, who have lived and learned there for the past 116 years. The Miami Herald is a real newspaper but AFAIK has never had an Adam Greenfield on staff. I do feel like Scott and Logan are a little bit mine since I've been borrowing them for so long.
"Foreign Correspondence" is my fifth and final series of stories based on the X-Men movie and pairing Scott and Logan. Scott Summers (in this incarnation) is: a mutant superhero, really good at giving blow jobs, a funny guy with a joke for most any occasion, and an English teacher. So the stories are full of quotes from poems and other literature, primarily reflecting Scott's literary interests. The following gives a little information on the works quoted as well as urls to read the complete works, where available. As was the case for the other literature guides, this document contains spoilers for the series and should be read after reading "Foreign Correspondence."
Poems
William Blake. "Jerusalem". (sometimes just titled "From Milton" to avoid confusion with Blake's longer poem by the same title). This brief poem contrasts the England Blake knew, full of "dark Satanic mills", with the ideal society as represented by the biblical Jerusalem. The poet recounts a legend that Jesus traveled to England during the period of time not covered by the gospels and tries to imagine Christ in modern (i.e. early nineteenth century) England. He pledges himself to creating a new Jerusalem "in England's green and pleasant land." Blake uses warlike imagery in describing the quest for a new society, which is part of why the poem appeals to Logan, although it's the new society elements that appeal to Wendy. Arthur suggests that Wendy will be quoting the poem to Adam before the week is out. Read the poem at http://www.bartleby.com/236/62.html
Robert Burns. Two poems by Burns are quoted in this series, both by Scott.
"Man Was Made To Mourn: a dirge" has the line 'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." Scott quotes from that when he is telling Logan how shaken he is by what was done to Sasha, momentarily forgetting that Logan suffered similar treatment in the Weapon X program. The poem is available many places, including:http://www.robertburns.org/works/55.html
"To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough" is a light-hearted poem containing the oft-quoted line: "the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley." Scott cites it in apology for not having been more involved in the preparations for the Belarus mission. You can read the poem at http://www.robertburns.org/works/75.html
John Donne. "To His Mistress Going to Bed".Scott's brief quote in praise of nakedness comes from this Donne poem. He quotes it when saying how much he likes looking at Logan naked. Read the whole poem at http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/elegy20.htm
Mikhail Lermontov. "The Sail".Sasha and Kolya are both enamored of Lermontov's poetry and thought it strange that Jean-Paul was unfamiliar with Lermontov and Pushkin, two leading Russian nineteenth century poets. Adam briefly quotes this Lermontov poem, saying that like the sailor in the poem he is searching in foreign lands but doesn't know what he is looking for.
Read the poem at http://www.kulichki.com:8105/poems/Poets/ml/Eng/ml_1.html
This url has it in English translation, with a link to the original in transliteration with buttons to press to switch to Cyrillic print.
A good site for the poetry of Aleksander Pushkin is http://www.pushkin.on.net/core.html
William Shakespeare. Sonnets 27, 28 and 29.Three Shakespearean sonnets are quoted in this series and Scott and Logan also briefly discuss the circumstances of the sonnets' authorship. The first 126 of the Shakespearean sonnets are written to a young man, known to scholars as the "Fair Youth" by contrast with the "Dark Lady" of the later sonnets. The identity of the Fair Youth, also known by the initials W.H., has been subject of much speculation over the years. Many of the sonnets are passionate love poems and they speak longingly of being far from one's lover. Scott quotes two of those in his emails to Logan. He also mentions feeling incredulous that there are still scholars who don't think that Will's relationship with the Fair Youth was a sexual one. Logan agrees with him. I, too, think it takes an amazing amount of denial of what one is reading to see the relationship as non-sexual. I would probably express myself more as Scott does than as Logan does on the subject, though. Still, I think "only a total idiot would think he wasn't fucking that guy" is an appropriate and characteristic expression for Logan's first (and perhaps last) foray into literary criticism.
In addition to the mentions in email, Scott refers to Sonnet 29 (which begins "When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes") in the final segment of this series. This is a sonnet that was featured in an argument Logan and Scott had in "Canadian Nights". Scott, more comfortable now with being open about his sexuality, says at the end of Foreign Correspondence that he's no longer feeling so disgraced.
The sonnets are widely available online. Here are the urls from the Bartleby site for these three:
Sonnet 27 http://www.bartleby.com/70/50027.htmlSonnet 28 http://www.bartleby.com/70/50028.htmlSonnet 29 http://www.bartleby.com/70/50029.html
Plays
William Shakespeare.
The Merchant of Venice. The phrase "love is blind" comes from this play. Scott quotes it when he has lost his glasses, saying he prefers not to be blind himself.
Othello. The description of a couple being a "beast with two backs" while having sex comes from the first act of Othello. Iago says it of Othello and Desdemona.
All of Shakespeare's plays are available, in a variety of formats, at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/shakespeare/works/
Novels
Sinclair Lewis. It Can't Happen Here. A "what if" novel of a fascist revolution in the U.S., it is among Lewis's more biting commentaries. Scott tells Logan that he is trying to convince his students that the mutant cleansing of Belarus can't happen in the U.S. but he is unsure himself. I could not find this book online, although Project Gutenberg has collected two other Lewis novels: Babbit and Main Street. It is also, at least according to Amazon, out of print. It should be available, though, in any large library.
Eleanor Porter. PollyannaThe title of this story of the young girl who looks on the bright side has entered the language, meaning someone who is unduly optimistic. Logan calls Wendy "Pollyanna" for thinking that Amnesty International will help the mutants. She says she thinks she is being realistic and tells of Amnesty's previous history on human rights violations based on sexual orientation (true, btw). The Project Gutenberg version of the book is at http://sailor.gutenberg.org/etext98/plyna10.txt
Antoine de St. Exupery. Le Petit PrinceThis charming children's book is delightful both for its language and its childlike illustrations. Wendy quotes a line from it to Jean-Paul about seeing clearly only with the heart. It's sort of the antithesis of the Shakespearean "love is blind" quoted elsewhere. The book is widely available on line. Here are a couple of sites to read it either in the original French or in English translation.
http://galeb.etf.bg.ac.yu/mp/mp/pp.html - French
http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/frames.html - English
Other
Hannah Arendt. Eichmann in Jerusalem.Political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt subtitled her groundbreaking book on Eichmann's trial "the banality of evil." The book was controversial when published for its almost benign portrait of Eichmann, whom she saw as personifying a kind of passive form of evil. History, though, has been more kind to her and her phrase and the concept behind it have entered the English language. Scott and Logan talk about how it could be applied to the Belarussians who are torturing and killing mutants or to the benign-seeming leaders of the Weapon X project. Arendt's book does not seem to be available online, but would be easy to find in most bookstores and libraries. An interesting site on Arendt is at http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/arendt.html
James Boswell. Life of Johnson.Eighteenth century Scottish writer Boswell is best known for his classic biography of Samuel Johnson. Scott offers to write Logan's biography, saying "I'll be Boswell to your Johnson." Logan jokingly pretends to misunderstand him but makes clear later that he knows what Scott meant and that he would like Scott to try to write a narrative of his life. Boswell's biography of Johnson is widely available. The Project Gutenberg edition can be found at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1564
Plato. Symposium.This dialogue was featured in "We're Not What You Think" and makes an appearance in this series. Scott and Logan see their relationship as reflective of the Platonic ideal of an army of lovers. Often referred to as "Literature's most famous dinner party" Symposium consists of a bunch of people at a party discussing the true nature of love. The "army of lovers" piece comes from Phaedrus's speech in Symposium, which talks of male couples who would go into battle together. Phaedrus says that such an army would always win because the combatants would be braver in battle for not wanting to disappoint one's lover through a show of cowardice. Logan tries to convince Scott to let Warren go on the Belarus mission with Laura, saying that the concept of an "army of lovers" could equally apply to them. Also potentially of interest in Symposium is a myth that tries to explain why some people are sexually attracted to members of their own sex and others to members of the opposite sex. Like Scott, I like the Jowett translation. It can be read at http://plato.evansville.edu/texts/jowett/symposium.htm
Voltaire. Dictionnaire Philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary)Eighteenth century French writer Voltaire (pseudonym of FranÁois-Marie Arouet) is probably best known for his highly satirical Candide. Jean-Paul quotes Voltaire on love, from the Dictionnaire Philosophique. The entire dictionary is online, in both English and French, at the following sites.
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volindex.htm - Englishhttp://www.voltaire-integral.com/00Table/table.htm - French
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