Six String Nation Elements: Lucy Maud Montgomery's House

Lucy Maud's relatives become emotional when sharing thoughts on the home that was her inspiration.

Russian Quotations, the Wedding Dress & Dorothy in the Land of Anne

Boris Pasternak has made a couple of statements through his great literary work of "Dr. Zhivago" which seem to me to sum up Maud's life in a teaspoon...

"The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can't be forever violated with impunity."

I can't help but wonder about Maud and why it is that she, a voracious reader, never lets the Russian novelists as a factor into her literary life?  (Zhivago was published in 1957, 15 years after  Maud's death,  but there were always the works of other great Russian novelists that abounded during her time).  Could it be that the Russian people with their foreign and intrinsic mysticism would have made Maud feel uncomfortable within the boundaries of her steady Presbyterianism?  Or, perhaps it is simply this:  that for Maud, the Russian
literary geniuses simply walked too close to the razor's edge.

It has always seemed to me that it is exactly what isn't evident in Maud's world that is more telling than what is evident. For instance, the razor cut pages of her journal that pertain to the time of her wedding to Ewan point the way to so much more information than what she leaves in and allows for us to see..   (I always feel a regard for Maud's journals much like the Sherlock Holmes mystery, "The Dog that didn't Bark in the Night.")

Why didn't Maud leave us any wedding photographs of the two of them anyway, or even a photo of her in her wedding dress?  Bridal and wedding issues were so important to her life and stories.

But back to Pasternak and wishing that Maud--always seeking self understanding--- could have found one such as he...                                                                                                                                 

"Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding, rendered speechless by emotion!"

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago - (1890 - 1960)
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Just 60 days (and counting) till I will be picking up my Canon Powershot camera and heading NorthEast to Maud's Magical Island for my first visit ever!

I do wonder if her Island will prove to be any more magical than my own back yard in North Carolina?  Perhaps, after all, this venture will turn out to be much like Dorothy in the Land of OZ.  Perhaps, all  that was ever needed was to click my heels three times and repeat to myself,  "There's no place like home."

Still, this is an Odyssey that has been building up since childhood, and it must be done!

I wonder if there will be traces of Maud Montgomery yet lingering within the green canopied shadows of the hallowed confines of Lover's Lane....?

 More to come....

A Gilded Cage and a Hearkening

(Photo taken at a "Southern Green Gables" on Johnson St., New Bern, NC--May 3, 2010)
This photo taken yesterday of a beautiful flower protected by a fence reminds me in a symbolic way of the life of LM Montgomery. Maud, during her raising up years, was able to develop into a beautiful flower largely due to the protection and puritanical restrictions applied by her prim and proper (and Presbyterian) Grandmother McNeil. The symbolism here is that the beautiful flower is admiring the liberty of the brittle leaves that are able to fly like feathers in the whimsy of the wind.

There is irony in this-- that after Grandmother McNeil passed away and freedom was at hand--Maud remained in the condition of one who is still restrained. She is like a tamed bird who has always admired the freedom of birds in the sky, but when the cage door is opened, she does not realize that freedom is at hand, and thus remains unaware of her real nature of flying free at last....
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Morning along Shore
by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Hark, oh hark the elfin laughter
All the little waves along,
As if echoes speeding after
Mocked a merry merman's song!
All the gulls are out, delighting
In a wild, uncharted quest­
See the first red sunshine smiting
Silver sheen of wing and breast!
Ho, the sunrise rainbow-hearted
Steals athwart the misty brine,
And the sky where clouds have parted
Is a bowl of amber wine!
Sweet, its cradle-lilt partaking,
Dreams that hover o'er the sea,
But the lyric of its waking
Is a sweeter thing to me!
Who would drowze in dull devotion
To his ease when dark is done,
And upon its breast the ocean
Like a jewel wears the sun?
"Up, forsake a lazy pillow!"
Calls the sea from cleft and cave,
Ho, for antic wind and billow
When the morn is on the wave!