Browning's The Ring and the Book is a fascinating but extremely difficult poem to read. Its multiple perspectives upon a single story, one of a fair degree of complexity in itself, hammer at one's powers of concentration and assimilation in an often dizzying fashion. So I'm quite proud of making it almost to the end of Book 5, the bit on which I stalled in my last attempt. This time the villainous Franceschini jumped out of the lines at me, making me wonder just why it was I couldn't conjure him in my previous attempt. That's part of the pleasure of reading something as demanding as this - somehow you can eventually make it work, as if the very act of reading the text is a way of teaching you how to read it.
I'm aiming, probably foolishly, to try and finish the poem before the fasting month begins, simply because I've had it in mind to read some Islamic-themed texts in Ramadhan. This isn't an outright demand of the season but it somehow feels right for me this year. I've got a feeling that if I put The Ring and the Book aside even for a short period I'm going to fatally lose touch with it. It's the continuity that counts with this kind of work. So I'm just off now to do a bit more reading.
Sometimes it's the demands one makes on oneself that make the most sense.
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