Washington Irving

The Pocket University entry for 1 January is a passage from Washington Irving, an autobiographical account of his visit to the home of, and time spent with, Sir Walter Scott.

For me it is revealing whenever a glimpse is given that our iconic literary figures are, after all, human under the mystique of their literary reputations.  In this 23 page passage for today's reading, Irving describes Scott at home, surrounded by wife and children, dogs, a cat, and generally presents a homey, comfortable view of Scott and his home life.  Irving and Scott walk about the nearby area, and Irving shares his impressions of the Scottish countryside and people.

I have read nothing by Scott.  I have a 12-volume set of the Waverly novels I picked up in a book sale a few years back.  If Waverly, Ivanhoe, or Rob Roy were assigned reading in high school, and at least one of them probably was, I did not read them.  After the reading for today, I spent an hour or a little more on the internet reading up on Scott, where i learned a great many things I previously did not know.  This happens to me a lot.

I have a strong liking for a song, Ave Maria, which is frequently associated with a Catholic Prayer of the same name.  I have MP3s of several versions of this song with the Catholic Prayer verbiage in English and Latin, and several versions sung in German as well.  I don't speak German, and I sorta thought the German versions were translations of the Catholic Prayer.

Boy was I wrong. 

Thinking about it now, it does seem odd that someone would translate the Catholic Prayer Ave Maria from Latin (or English even) into German, and then produce so many versions of it.  I probably should have investigated before now.

Scott wrote a poem, the Lady of the Lake, published in 1810, which was then adapted into a 7-song cycle by Franz Schubert.  One of the songs in the cycle, number 6, is "Ellens dritter Gesang" (Ellen's Third Song), wherein Ellen (the lady of the lake) sings a prayer to the Virgin Mary.  This is the original song whose melody I know as Ave Maria.  The 7-song cycle was published in 1825, it is Opus 52.  It turns out a bunch of other people like the melody as well, and since the Schubert song begins with Ellen singing the words "Ave Maria", it evidently made sense to adapt the Catholic Prayer to the Schubert melody (and record a hundred versions of it).  It is a common misconception that Schubert arranged the music specifically for the Catholic Prayer.  It is the misconception I would have had, had I realized Schubert composed the music.

One of the things that struck me in Irving's comments on the Scottish countryside, was his reaction to how the countryside looked.  Irving had preconceived notions of what the countryside would look like based on the romantic poetry he had read from Scott.  Irving's notions were of course drawn from his own experience of the countryside in the northeastern United States around where he grew up, and he was distressed to see the Scottish countryside as grey, unadorned with trees, etc.

Don't we all carry untested, and inaccurate, preconceptions drawn from our own experience?

I think the only thing by Washington Irving I've read is Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but even that may have been an abridgement meant for a child.