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Top 5 tips to spotting a real estate scam
With stunning professional photos to a great price, house-hunters can easily fall victim to fraudMarch 30, 2015 11:38
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Turkish Airlines flight declares emergency, diverts to Casablanca
Abraaj raises $1.3 bln for African investment funds
Dubai airport passenger traffic rises 5.3 pct in Feb
UAE's Al Noor Hospitals 2014 profit rises 36 pct on more outpatients
UAE drafting law for 100 pct foreign ownership of firms
Oman's Bank Dhofar gains board approval for 45 mln rial rights issue
Oman Air says orders 20 Boeing 737s; to double fleet by 2020
Qatar February trade surplus shrinks 47.5 pct y/y
Qatar's bourse says plans rights issue trading
Soccer-Xavi close to deal with Al Sadd, says Qatari club
Brent crude rose above $122 on Wednesday, snapping two days of losses, in line with gains across broader financial markets on expectations that cheap loans from the European Central Bank will spur buying of riskier assets.
February 29, 2012 1:47 by Reuters
Asian stocks firmed and the euro held its ground as markets expect European banks to borrow about $670 billion from the ECB later in the day.
Front-month Brent rose 84 cents to $122.39 a barrel by 0727 GMT, after sliding $2.62 on Tuesday to settle at $121.55. US crude gained 44 cents to $106.99 a barrel. The contract slipped $2.01 to settle at $106.55.
"Today, the market is getting ready for the ECB announcement, and is reacting to the dollar," said Ric Spooner, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.
"Overall, there is further upside potential because the market is relatively tight. There is spare capacity, but not a vast amount, so any disruption could cut into that buffer."
The dollar index slipped 0.17 percent. A weaker greenback makes dollar-denominated assets such as crude cheaper for holders of other currencies.
Brent is recovering from a fall, and is poised to rise more than 10 percent this month, the highest monthly gain since February 2011, on concerns over Iranian supplies.
US benchmark crude is on track to gain 8.6 percent in February, the highest since October last year.
Brent rose to near 10-month highs last week after the UN nuclear agency said Iran has sharply stepped up its uranium enrichment drive, but prices fell in the first two days of this week on fears the rally may strain the weakened economies of some European countries, and spread to the world.
There is further scope for oil to retreat even after Wednesday's gains because prices rose too fast, Spooner said.
"What we are seeing today is more of a repositioning ahead of the ECB announcement," he said. "There is scope for markets to correct further after the significant rise we saw recently."
Oil may also be under pressure following comments from Energy Secretary Steven Chu that the United States is considering a release of oil from its strategic reserves.
The United States last tapped into its reserves in 2011 in coordination with other Western nations when Libya's oil production dropped because of war and prices surged. The Obama administration is under pressure to release stocks again because tensions with Iran have propelled oil markets.
South Sudan's announcement that a major rebel group with alleged links to the Sudan government had signed an amnesty deal may help ease concerns over supply.
"Reports of a truce between South Sudan and rebel groups may have removed some of the geopolitical risk premium from the market, particularly for Brent, but concerns still remain regarding Iran's slowing exports," analysts at ANZ said in a report.
South Sudan has halted oil output following a dispute with its northern neighbor.
Brent will fall further to $120 per barrel, as indicated by a rising channel, while US oil will extend losses to $105.13, according to Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao.
But uncertainty over supply from OPEC producer Iran and rising demand from China have put a floor on prices, in addition to a slower-than-expected increase in crude stocks and a fall in gasoline inventories in the United States.
US crude stockpiles rose by 521,000 barrels in the week to Feb. 24, compared with analysts' expectations for a 1.1 million barrel build, according to the American Petroleum Institute. Gasoline inventories fell 916,000 barrels, the data showed, compared with forecasts for a 300,000-barrel rise.
Japanese factory output rose more than expected in January to 2.0 percent and firms expect further gains, increasing confidence that demand is stabilising and manufacturing is set to return to where it was before last year's natural disasters. (Editing by Himani Sarkar)
Iran to accept payment in gold from trading partners
February 29 2012
HSBC Private Bank scaling down in MidEast
February 29 2012


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Bellagio 5693
Right behind the famous Fountains of Bellagio, this luxury Las Vegas Strip hotel and casino offers an upscale day spa, multiple dining options and elegant rooms with marble private bathrooms. There are 58 people looking at this resort. More
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Whitney Peak Hotel 37
At the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, this non-smoking, non-gaming hotel is next to the Arch in downtown Reno. Guest rooms include free Wi-Fi. Lake Tahoe is 37 miles away. More
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The Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino 4510
This 5-star Italian-themed Las Vegas Strip resort features spacious guest rooms, 19 international restaurants, a state-of-the-art casino and 5-acre pool deck. There are 26 people looking at this resort. More
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Silver Legacy Reno Resort Casino 110
Located a 5-minute walk from Reno Amtrak and 3 miles from Reno-Tahoe International Airport, this Nevada hotel provides a free airport shuttle, a casino and spa. There are 2 people looking at this resort. More
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Circus Circus Reno 149
This Nevada hotel is in downtown Reno. The hotel has a free airport shuttle service. This hotel features a casino, 6 restaurants and daily shows. There are 2 people looking at this resort. More
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John Ascuaga's Nugget 217
This Sparks casino hotel is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This 4-star resort features free airport shuttle services, nightclub, and 8 restaurants and bars. There are 7 people looking at this resort. More
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Marriott's Grand Chateau 1 & 2 2237
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ARIA Resort & Casino at CityCenter Las Vegas 5672
Set on the Las Vegas Strip, this upscale resort features a 150,000-square foot casino, 16 restaurants and on-site entertainment. There are 22 people looking at this resort. More
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Wynn Las Vegas 2490
This luxurious resort hotel on the Las Vegas Strip has a full-service spa, oasis-style pools and a variety of exclusive brand name shops. There are 21 people looking at this resort. More
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Encore at Wynn Las Vegas 1839
Right on the Las Vegas Strip, this 5-star hotel and casino is next to Fashion Show Mall. It features luxury accommodations, 5 on-site restaurants and an award-winning spa. There are 6 people looking at this resort. More
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Saddle West Casino Hotel RV Park 32
On Highway 160 in downtown Pahrump, Nevada, this hotel is a 5-minute drive from Pahrump Valley Winery. It features an on-site restaurant, a casino, and an outdoor pool. More
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MGM Grand 5377
On the Las Vegas Strip, this elegant resort is home to the famous Garden Arena concert and sports venue. A casino and tropical-inspired pools are also available. There are 48 people looking at this resort. More
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Best Western Airport Plaza Hotel 32
Just 3 miles from the Reno Sparks Convention Center, this hotel offers a free 24-hour shuttle service to/from Reno-Tahoe International Airport. It features a restaurant, game room, and putting green. More
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The Palazzo Resort Hotel Casino 1421
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Judge rejects BofA settlement
Trial ordered over Merrill Lynch bonuses
The SEC and the Justice Department have tended to accept settlements from companies "without drilling down to find out who the culpable parties were."
JAMES COX, Duke University law professor
NEW YORK — A federal judge yesterday rejected a $33 million settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bank of America, saying the SEC's accusations of inadequate disclosure by the bank over bonuses paid at Merrill Lynch must now go to trial.
Separately, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office is preparing to file charges within the next couple of weeks against several high-ranking executives at Bank of America, claiming they failed to disclose details about the acquisition of Merrill, the New York investment bank, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
The ruling in the SEC case comes one month after the agency and Bank of America thought they had put a thorny issue behind them, and leaves the SEC with the task of mounting a case against BofA over one of the most sensitive issues of the financial crisis — executive pay on Wall Street.
The SEC announced last month that it had settled its civil charges against BofA, which agreed to buy Merrill last year, without the bank admitting or denying guilt in the case. BofA has said it didn't violate disclosure rules.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff held up his approval of the settlement, however, and ordered the SEC last month to explain why it didn't pursue charges against specific executives at Bank of America over the accusations.
Rakoff, in his ruling, found that the settlement "suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: The SEC gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger, the bank's management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth."
Cuomo's office is likely to file civil charges against the executives over their role in failing to alert shareholders to mounting losses and accelerated bonus payments at Merrill, said the person, who requested anonymity because no charges have been filed yet.
The Attorney General's Office has also questioned whether Bank of America failed to tell shareholders about its consideration of backing out of the deal and mounting write-downs at one of Merrill's mortgage-lending subsidiaries.
Both the Attorney General's Office and Rakoff have questioned whether the bank knowingly hid details about the acquisition from shareholders ahead of a vote to approve the deal.
After receiving additional statements from the SEC and BofA last week, Rakoff ruled yesterday that the proposed settlement "cannot remotely be called fair," and ordered that the case go to trial beginning Feb. 1.
"We disagree with today's ruling," Bank of America said in a statement, adding that the bank would consider its legal options. The SEC said in a statement that the agency believes the proposed settlement "properly balanced all of the relevant considerations."


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Enron? Nader Is Glad You Asked
For all of his current Green trappings, Nader still pours enormous energy into the thankless work of "inserting a spine into the Democratic Party." Rare is the conversation in which Nader does not settle into a fierce rant about his disappointment with a party that no longer seems capable of mustering the righteous indignation he remembers coming from its previous generations; his comments are peppered with references to former California Congressman John Moss, former Oregon Senator Wayne Morse and other now-gone legislators. "If Democrats were saying the kinds of things that we are saying about Enron, this scandal would be blowing wide open," he says. "But they are not saying much, are they? That's how bad it's gotten: They cannot even seize an issue like Enron."
Nader's fury with the Democrats can bring out his poetic side: "They have decided to risk losing through cowardliness, rather than to risk winning through valor." But it can also get the best of him. The weakest sections of Crashing the Party recount, often at great length, the slights Nader and his campaign suffered at the hands of Democrats and progressives he once worked with: folks like Representative John Conyers Jr., onetime "Nader Raider" Toby Moffett and Gloria Steinem. In a book that is thick with engaging anecdotes and optimistic outlines for a renewal of citizenship, these pages read bitter. "I wanted to show how totally inflexible most of the Democrats in Washington are, and how they haven't learned a single lesson," says Nader. "There are exceptions, like Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney and Jesse Jackson Jr. They're saying, 'Look, we're going to lose more voters if we don't change course and adopt a more progressive agenda.' But they're not getting anywhere, nowhere at all." He adds, "The corporate Democratic grip of the Democratic Leadership Council is absolutely ironclad."
Nader criticizes the Democrats for allowing the Bush Administration a free hand not just on military issues but on domestic matters since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Republicans, he says, have treated the war as "manna from Heaven, a perfect excuse for drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, tort deform, fast track, corporate welfare," while Democrats like Senate majority leader Tom Daschle have looked at Bush's high poll numbers and decided to give him whatever he wants. Says Nader, "Bush has used the war to advance a domestic policy that is all about increasing the strength of the commercial militarists, the autocratic ideologues and the corporate greedhounds. He has attacked our civil liberties. For this, he is praised by Democrats? It's amazing."
In Nader's view, if Democrats fail to challenge Bush aggressively, not just on Enron but on a host of issues in coming months, they could destroy the party's prospects for years to come--guaranteeing the loss of the Senate and the House this fall and the presidency in 2004.
The only prominent Democrat who Nader seems to believe offers the party any chance for redemption is Russ Feingold, the maverick senator from Wisconsin who cast a lonely vote against the Bush Administration's antiterrorism legislation. Feingold is a rare Democrat who consistently says things like, "Ralph Nader is talking about issues Democrats should be talking about." But the mutual admiration goes only so far. Nader rejects the idea of backing a Feingold run for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. "I'll say a lot of good things about him, but we're not trying to build the same party," he says.
For now, Nader says, he is determined to beef up the Greens. "The failure of the Democrats to fight Bush on most of the major issues has created a vacuum that can be filled by a party that is willing to take a stand. And the Greens have taken a stand in their positions--on civil liberties, on the bombing of Afghanistan," says Nader, the party's 1996 and 2000 presidential nominee. "Greens have been calling on senators who took Enron money to recuse themselves from the investigation. Do you think Democrats would ever do that?"


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Sign Of The (Wisconsin) Times: Gov. Scott Walker For President
There's a Republican presidential primary next Tuesday in Wisconsin. But as the accompanying photo taken by NPR political correspondent Don Gonyea in Delafield, Wisc. suggests, a lot of Wisconsinites have other political matters on their minds.
As Don writes in an e-mail:
"Note that the recall coming up on June is the big political story here. Not Tuesdays presidential primary."
This Bloomberg News story makes a similar point. The controversial Republican governor who angered Democrats and organized labor by enacting legislation that withdrew collective bargaining rights from public unions, is in a statistical dead heat according to a Marquette Law School poll with two potential Democratic opponents — Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk.
Meanwhile, the same poll gave Mitt Romney a healthy lead over Rick Santorum ahead of the April 3 primary.


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Results 6 to 8 of 8
August 24th, 2013 09:21 PM #6
I love the Song of Ice and Fire series! I love the books so much that the show was boring to me. lol I saw Angelopolis in BAM today, but I wasn't sure about it.
Current loves:
thomasina louise, percival hugh
. ∙ ˙ . ∙ ˙ ✶ . ∙ ˙ . ∙ ˙
♥ ❝Words have meaning and names have power.❞
August 24th, 2013 09:57 PM #8
August 25th, 2013 01:21 PM #10
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, hear, hear! He has named the majority of his characters so eloquently (just some of my favourites: Illyrio, Renly, Valarr, Victarion, Viserys, Margaery, Rhaenys, Visenya, Aelinor, Alysanne).
Jo Rowling is also a really good namer. Though having been a Potter-geek ever since I first read The Philosopher's Stone, I do connect most of the names she's used in the books with Harry Potter, but they're great nevertheless.Zelia • Twenty • Film and royalty connoisseur • I have a film blog and one about royalsExporting old Danish names as well as Greenlandic names and sibling names
Henry Ásgeirr Edmund • Amaury Charles Théoden "Theo" • Alexander Adelin Lórien "Sasha" • Asa Edouard Ivik
Cosima Ingrid Zenobia "Mimi" • Agatha/Anna Ivalo Galadriel • Asta Catherine Françoise • Gaia Margaret Undómiel
GPs: Atticus Aksel Inigo • James Valdemar Eärendil "Jem" • Aviaaja Cleopatra Hero "Avi" • Fabiola Agnes Lúthien


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Submitted by willworkforfreedom on Fri, 02/17/2012 - 19:00. Permalink
I have tried numerous times to sign up for the phone from home program and I never get my password in my e-mail. I have checked my spam folders and sent numerous e-mail to the campaign. Nothing... any ideas?
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Quality Suites
1501 Gibson Blvd
Albuquerque, NM 87106
Phone: (505) 245-7363
Fax: (505) 245-8316
Entertainment Venues
»The Musical Theatre Southwest
Musical Theatre Southwest is one of the original movie theaters in Albuquerque. Today, the older, yet well preserved movie house opens its doors for concerts, festivals, plays and various performing arts. The Frank Peloso Performing Arts Center is an extension of this theater, transforming this venue into an active art house. This is a haven for budding artists, entertainers and musicians from the local and international level. Ticket prices are usually modest with varied times from show to show.
»Isotopes Park
Catch a ballgame (and maybe even a foul ball) at Isotopes Park. Designed in true retro style, this ballpark is home to the minor league Albuquerque Isotopes. The park evokes nostalgia to the 1940s and 50s and is one of the best stadiums in minor-league baseball.
»University of New Mexico Arena (The Pit)
University Arena is the home of New Mexico men's and women's basketball. The Pit, which was built in a 37-foot hole on Albuquerque's southeast mesa, is one of college basketball's most famous and recognizable buildings.
»ABQ Sunport Great Hall
Ideal for Music and concerts, the ABQ Sunport Great Hall suits best to everyone especially travelers as it is located within the Albuquerque International Sunport.
»South Broadway Cultural Center
South Broadway Cultural Center was established to promote and imbibe culture of Albuquerque. It provides encouragement and explores diverse forms of arts, ranging from visual to literary. Be it ballets or Flamenco or Belly Dance, you can view all forms of dances here by amateurs as wells as professionals. Ensure that you book in advance to avoid last minute hassles.
»Aux Dog Theatre Nob Hill
Located in Albuquerque's most vibrant neighborhood within walking distance of UNM, the Aux Dog Theatre is dedicated to producing new and classic stage works with a cutting edge attitude. The Aux Dog also houses an art gallery and presents the productions of some of the city's finest troupes like The Dolls, a treasured Burque theatrical ensemble. The 505 Film Series showcasing the best in underground films takes place during June and January.
»Bank of America Theater
One of the many entertainment venues of the National Hispanic Cultural Center of New Mexico, this theater is primarily a film theater. A screen 19 feet high and 26 feet wide is available for film and video screenings. Apart from that, small musical concerts and theatrical presentations are possible at this intimate venue, as the screen is movable. The venue is becoming increasingly popular for Hispanic-themed and Spanish-language films.
»The Albuquerque Journal Theatre
Within the Roy E. Disney Center for Performing Arts, is The Albuquerque Journal Theatre. The overwhelming architecture of the place has won the theater accolades and awards, thus making it suitable for a variety of events. It seats 691 people, has a 1,700 square feet performance area and three levels of seating, viz, orchestra, mezzanine and balcony. Great care and detailing has gone into the making of the theater, that is visible from the elaborate architectural fineness. The performance area is padded with rubber beneath the wooden floor to allow comfortable movement to the dancers. The theater is a premier performance venue within the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
»Salón Ortega
Salón Ortega is a banquet facility in the National Hispanic Cultural Center, located within the History and Literary Arts building. It's perfectly suitable for buffets, receptions, lectures and parties. During spring and summer months, the room can be extended to the central courtyard as well. Wooden-columned ceiling and wooden floor with chandeliers make the space spectacularly different from the other venues in the Center.
»Wells Fargo Auditorium
The National Hispanic Cultural Center's small Wells Fargo Auditorium seats 97. The mini-space makes it ideal it for lectures, films, training and reading sessions and so on. This theater is a part of the Roy E. Disney Center for Performing Arts, smaller than The Albuquerque Journal Theatre. However, technically this space is equally well-equipped as the other facilities in the center. Many of NHCC programs are held over here as well.
»Plaza Mayor
National Hispanic Cultural Center offers this huge outdoor events venue that has a capacity of 2,000 people. This is an open air space like an amphitheater or a mini stadium, suitable for the presentation of concerts, festivals and fairs. The Plaza Mayor is a popular venue for celebrations and events throughout Albuquerque. Although not as swanky and high-tech as the other venues of the center, this place holds a charm of its own
»The Outpost Performance Space
If you're growing tired of those stuffy, high-end live performances that you are obliged to applaud whether you liked them or not, here's an alternative. This is a small, intimate auditorium that operates through member support and box office revenue. Despite the small budget, this organization is able to book awesome talent from across the state for performances that range from jazz, classical and Native American music, to theater, poetry, and children's programs. The house is normally packed with a casual, and sometimes formal, audience. Check their website for schedules.


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- Studio: New Line Cinema
- Release Date: Nov 10, 2000
User Score
Mixed or average reviews- based on 76 Ratings
User score distribution:
Positive: 34 out of 76
Mixed: 12 out of 76
Negative: 30 out of 76
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Nov 16, 2011FUCX THESE CRITICS, This is FUXCING HILARITY !!!!...........................................................................................................
May 3, 2012Fantastic, this one of my new favorite Sandler movies, it's hilarious constantly throwing hilarious moments at you and the supporting cast is hilarious, Adam Sandler, as in all his other movies, gives an outstanding performance, and is has a sweet love story thrown in, I'm not cool with it's interpretation of hell, but it fits the movies style, this is a must watch for Sandler fans.
Mar 21, 2011This movie is funny as hell. Adam Sandler does what he does best which is comedy. I thought this was funnier than any other critic suspected. The critics are always hating on Adam Sandler comedy such as Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison. Those are great comedies. So screw off critics.
It's a clever idea bogged down in sophomoric sloppiness. Sitting through it doesn't feel like eternal damnation, but it's not exactly heaven, either. It's a $9.50 tour of adolescent purgatory.
Full of kerplunkingly unfunny jokes and ex-"Saturday Night Live" cast members turning up to do shtick.
Though it's debatable whether Sandler is squandered or just supremely annoying here, the film's flaws aren't entirely his fault.


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I've made two big mistakes previous to Omega Ranch. I am now having trouble defeating Namir because I picked up the chip at LIMB and now my augs have been shut down. My health bars are not ful. Could hardly find any health packs at Omega Ranch. Should I continue trying to defeat Namir or replay all the way back to the Harvesters.
Having trouble with Namir
- waterproof9
- Member Since: April 28, 2012
- Posts: 403
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- MTNDewVoltage
- Member Since: April 28, 2010
- Posts: 237
- Forum Posts: 237
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#2 Posted by MTNDewVoltage (237 posts) -
I did pretty much the same thing. You can beat him by grabbing a laser rifle and a heavy machine gun. Run to a corner on the outer ring of sculptures and wait for Namir to show up and start sniping you with his plasma rifle. Once he does that, just snipe back from cover with the laser rifle. He won't change position as long as you two keep this up, and eventually he'll die. You may next want a tuturial on how NOT to punch your screen after your upcoming encounter with Megan. that skank. Hope it helps.
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By Jef With One F
The 10 Biggest Rockers Living in Texas
By Rocks Off
By Chris Lane
By Angelica Leicht
By Corey Deiterman
Drake Returns to Warehouse Live
By Brando
By Angelica Leicht
6 Bands No One Noticed Broke Up
By Corey Deiterman
Journeying from noise-rock roots to clavinets and duets, Blonde Redhead has found a home on the lush label 4AD, and its latest material reflects that influence. Guitars are muted, bass is still a thing of the past, and Kazu Makino's keening vocals float on zephyrs of strings, upper-register keys and bittersweet melodies.
Live, the band is certain to create its signature sexual and musical tension. Erotic interludes between Makino and guitarist Amadeo Pace bring mesmerizing, nearly tantric songs like "Pink Love" to life. And the more poppy and charismatic album closer, "Equus," may help to bridge the band's past and present sounds. Makino's screeches mix with less plodding guitar, and the puddles left by the frequent stop-starts radiate with the teardrops of a damaged lover.
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Rimlatches With Locking HandlesPosted in advice, locksmithing, security on November 28th, 2014 by The Locksmith Comment
It's time to warn folks again about the perils of a rim latch locks where there is a keyway in the handle as well as there being a keyway on the ouside, in the barrel (or cylinder).
It's quite reasonable to assume that this keyway in the inside handle has something to do with making the lock secure. And in a sense it does. But probably not in the sense you think.
The main purpose of the inside keyway is to lock the handle so that you can't get out. Locks that come with keyways on the inside normally automatically deadlock the bolt without your having to anything other than shut the door. The Yale PBS locks and the top-of-the-range ERAs do this.
Althought it's rarely the case in London, there might be main doors with only one lock. Long, long ago in less paranoid times this one lock may well have been a simple "night latch". And if someone has broken in the back, they can then simply walk out of the front, with your television. However, if you've locked this lock's handle then they can't. Many doors today, however, have a deadlock as well as a latch lock; and that makes a locking handle redundant. In fact, they are usually more of a menace than a help.
A client the other day had just moved into a new flat and assumed that to make the door secure they had to use their key on the inside handle of the latch lock. It didn't help that the deadlock wasn't working*. The previous occupants hadn't ever done this and the new occupants didn't know that their poor key copy happened to be capable of locking the handle, but incapable of unlcocking it again. So they got locked in. And on the third storey that's no fun; in fact it's downright dangerous.
* It's depressingly common for landlords to say of the deadlock – the "second lock" – 'Oh, that's never worked'. Well you shouldn't leave it at that. Get them to fix it. Without a second, dead lock, you can't properly secure the door when you go out, you probably aren't covered by your insurance, and you may be tempted to lock yourself in.


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Arbuta Arms
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Contact for details (410) 698-6550
Accepts Electronic Payments, Emergency Maintenance, On Site Maintenance, On Site Management, Playground
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Property Details
Affordable 1 & 2 Bedroom Apartments in a Convenient Location!
Arbuta Arms offers more of what you're looking for! Handsome brick buildings are home to roomy one and two bedroom designs. Each floor plan boasts numerous features like beautiful hardwood floors, large eat-in kitchen or separate dining room, exceptional closet space, central air conditioning, individually controlled gas heat, pre-wired for cable TV and much more. Add a location only a few miles from Baltimore and beyond, and Arbuta Arms is your ideal new home choice. Please call for an appointment today.
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Our lease terms are: 3-12 Months. (Please note that lease terms may vary, are subject to change without notice, and are based on availability. Inquire with property staff for complete details).
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Orlando V.
The over all rating is my satisfaction with the size of the master bedroom and living room. The geografic voca Read Moreci?n, almost strategic, for work, study & family. With security or controlled access it could rate an excellent! I enjoyed my time there.
December 28, 2013
Arbuta Arms Resident
Great layout for the 2 bedrooms apts. Really great location overall it was great EXCEPT for the maintenance pe Read Moreople and the PITTY leasing office staff. Atleast back in 2008-2010 it was horrible staffing. But the apartments overall was great.
December 27, 2013
jamie e.
The main issue that I have with this complex is that they could keep our buildings cleaner. However, maintenan Read Morece does an excellent job at responding to any problems that I have had, which have been few since my apartment is in good condition
December 24, 2013
Arbuta Arms Resident
The staff were really nice. Rodents were a serious issue. I made many calls for the exterminator! The trash pi Read Moreck up was terrible. Often, the trash would be all over because it was filled quickly> Management complained stating it was the home owners in the neighborhood and refused to add another dumpster; therefore, the renters suffered. Did I mention the rodent problem?
December 14, 2013
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Home » NewHampshire.com » Outdoors » Waterfalls
Mourners remember Pinkerton student
Hundreds of mourners streamed into the Peabody Funeral Homes and Crematorium to bid farewell to Ross, of Derry, who died from injuries he suffered in a New Year's Eve crash. The parking lots near the funeral home were filled to capacity, and mourners could be seen pausing to hug each other in the fading twilight.
"I'd only known him a year, but he was my best friend," said Thompson Upham-Davis, 16, of Chester. "And everybody he knew, he put a smile on their face. He was a great kid."
"All I know is he worked hard at whatever he did and was really good at his job," Upham-Davis said.Upham-Davis didn't suffer life-threatening injuries in the crash. Another passenger in the car, Johanna Morse, 16, of Derry was initially listed in critical condition at Tuft's Medical Center. Her condition recently improved to serious, according to a hospital spokesman.
"I remember him being a good kid," Powers said.
The team won the freshman championship that year, beating Londonderry.
A private liturgy of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Derry.
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Review: Romeo and Juliet movie remembers plot, forgets Shakespeare
Modern-day dialogue might have been forgivable if the acting was any good, but it isn't.
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Romeo and Juliet
Starring Douglas Booth and Hailee Steinfeld. Directed by Carlo Carlei. Opens Oct. 11 at major theatres. 102 minutes. PG-13
The latest version of Romeo and Juliet may be based on the most misguided premise ever to come out of a story meeting: it brings us Shakespeare's tale of two star-cross'd lovers, keeps it in Renaissance Italy and then eliminates 98 per cent of Shakespeare's words.
No, I'm not making this up, gentle reader, although — as anyone who has ever sat through the play knows — the plot of Romeo and Juliet, with its tricky potions, missed messages and improbable coincidences, is much the worst part of it, all of which we suffer through for the delight of Shakespeare's sublime language.
So what do screenwriter Julian Fellowes and director Carlo Carlei do?
They shoot it on locations all over Italy, with everyone in appropriate period doublet and hose — but somehow it still manages to seem a travesty of the original, which updates like Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing and the 1996 Baz Luhrmann Romeo and Juliet never did.
The major culprit here is Fellowes. After a long career as an actor, in which he mainly played smarty-pants roles, he evolved into becoming a screenwriter with a gift for smarty-pants dialogue.
This sort of thing worked for Gosford Park. It works on Downton Abbey. What it doesn't do is work as a replacement for William Shakespeare.
Here's just one of literally hundreds of examples. When Lady Capulet is trying to persuade her daughter Juliet to marry Paris, she delivers an exquisite 16-line speech on how to find the good in any man, ending with "So shall you share all that he doth possess/By having him, making yourself no less."
In Followes's hands, it's cut to the terse, "See if you can be happy with him," while the Nurse utters lines that the Bard never dreamed of, such as "I must say you have good taste in men."
This might have been forgivable if the acting was any good, but it isn't. Douglas Booth is a handsome fellow, in a mushy-peas kind of way, but Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar-nominated for True Grit, neither looks appealing nor acts with any distinction here.
Followes leaves in some of the most famous lines ("But soft, what light through yonder window breaks," "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?") but they only draw attention to the inferiority of the rewrites.
I suddenly realized that Fellowes has one secret weapon: Maggie Smith. That superb actress makes all of his tuppence ha'penny witticisms sound sublime.
I do wish, in fact, she had been playing Friar Lawrence instead of the lumpish Paul Giamatti. When he raises a lecherous eyebrow over Romeo's evening with Juliet and says, "I pray you were not playing Satan's game," I nearly leapt out of my seat and fled the theatre.
Then I imagined Smith saying it and smiled. If you are forced for some reason to see this film, imagine Dame Maggie saying every line and you might, maybe, possibly enjoy yourself.
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From Coneheads to Crystal Head: Dan Aykroyd wants you to try his vodka
NAPLES - How's this for a Saturday Night Live skit?
A guy sets off on a cross country tour to promote vodka in a clear bottle shaped like a skull. On the way he talks music, movies, comedy and a little golf. He even checks out reports of a UFO and offers to party with the aliens.
For SNL veteran and screen star Dan Aykroyd, it's not a bit. He's really doing it, traveling from coast to coast pushing Crystal Head Vodka, a libation he and a friend first envisioned just two years ago. The tour is headed to Naples Monday with a stop planned at ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, 6425 Naples Blvd., from 4 to 6 p.m.
Aykroyd tells the story, repeated no doubt at every stop of the tour, of his fascination with the legend of the 13 crystal heads. Of how seven are in the possession of individuals and museums, found in locations as far flung as the Yucatan Peninsula and Tibet. Of how modern science can't determine exactly how they were made and the idea that they are of extraterrestrial origin. While today we may regard the skull of a symbol of death, in other cultures around the world it has life-affirming properties. It is widely seen as a repository of knowledge and power. "It's a statement of our common humanity," Aykroyd says.
He shares that fascination with artist John Alexander. One day Alexander came up with the idea of creating a bottle based on the legend. Aykroyd, busy with film and music projects, his own winery and his family, told Alexander to work on it and bring something back.
Before he could turn around, Alexander had sketched out his idea for the bottle. Aykroyd was immediately taken with the work, but he knew it couldn't be a wine bottle. "The only thing to put in this was something clear. We've got to do an unadulterated spirit," Aykroyd told Alexander.
Thus the idea of Crystal Head vodka was born.
Aykroyd and Alexander teamed with a Canadian distillery to make their concept vodka as pure as possible. The water comes from Newfoundland off Canada's east coast, far away from modern pollutants. "It's a throwback to another world. It's like a part of Ireland broke off and floated over," Aykroyd says.
Sweet corn, rather than hopper corn, is used as the primary grain. There's a laborious quadruple distillation process and multi-stage filtering, once through Herkimer diamonds, which, according to New Age belief systems, embody positive energy and good will. The diamonds come from upstate New York, an area with a high level of "unexplained aerial activity," Aykroyd said. They reject the additives and flavorings other makers use, counting on the sweet corn to give it its described, "creamy and slightly sweet finish."
The brand is nearing 1 million bottles sold, at about $50 a bottle. Aykroyd says he's personally signed 30,000 at events like the one planned for Naples. The present tour has taken him from San Francisco to Houston and Dallas. "It's fun. I like to meet people and see what they think (of the product)," Aykroyd said.
As the story of Crystal Head Vodka suggests, Aykroyd has an abiding interest in matters of spirituality, mysticism and extraterrestrial life.
He's also the possessor of a pedigree in humor that few can match, dating back to the original SNL cast in 1975 and carrying into the new millennium. He transitions easily between the many faces of Dan as he looks back on his career, looks forward to his stop in Southwest Florida, and surveys today's comedy, music and movie scenes.
Asked if his Naples event might really be cover for an investigation into recent UFO sightings around Isles of Capri, Aykroyd states flatly that he's not aware of such sightings. Most of the recent UFO activity has been around Pensacola, as far as he's aware. But if the Mutual UFO Network is on it — a representative of the group held a town hall meeting at Isles of Capri Tuesday — then the matter is in good hands, he said.
"They do real investigations," he said of the group, praising the expertise of its founders in fields of science and aeronautics. They're willing to dismiss claims of alien ships as hoaxes or known phenomena when the evidence dictates. "John Schuessler (MUFON's director from 2000 to 2006) is not some nut out of the woods. They're very realistic."
That having been said, if there are aliens hovering around Collier County, Aykroyd would love to meet them. "I hope they come out (to the bottle signing). I might as well start them drinking."
By introducing John Belushi to early blues recordings then teaming with him to make "The Blues Brothers," Aykroyd almost single-handedly brought a whole generation to the music at the root of rock and roll. He's still listening to blues, with names like Sharon Jones, Larry McCray and the Imperial Crowns filling his iPod. And yes, it's OK for even an old bluesman to have an iPod.
The blues is very much alive as a music genre but it mostly lives on the concert and festival circuit, not getting much airplay on radio or space in record stores. Aykroyd is in his 18th year hosting the syndicated House of Blues Radio Hour, promoting the art form. "It's our mission from God to sell tickets and keep people coming to the shows."
Likewise he stays close to his roots when it comes to comedy. SNL is still the cutting edge, in his estimation, listing cast members Fred Armisen and Will Forte as among the best comedic talents working today.
Will there be a Ghostbusters III? "It looks very good. A year ago I couldn't have said so," Aykroyd said. Screenwriters have produced a draft and he's added 50 pages of notes. "I'm really happy to be back in the trenches working on something real. The premise is good, the story is good. It looks promising."
Aykroyd's ill-conceived appearance in the disastrous Caddyshack II earned him a Razzie in 1989 for Worst Supporting Actor. Did the experience sour him on the sport that so permeates Naples?
"That movie could have ruined anybody's taste for golf," he admits, adding that if you see him around a golf course, chances are he's tinkering on a golf cart, yet another of his hobbies.
Aykroyd's been doing the promotional junket thing since Jimmy Carter was president — and Aykroyd was impersonating him on stage — but he says there's something different this time.
"In my time I've toured behind some bad movies. Movies you're selling on Wednesday and you know it's going to be dead by Friday. It's a lot more fun riding a winner," he said. "I've made movies, made TV, made music. I think I've done a pretty good job putting something in people's eyes and ears. Now I'm putting something on people's tongues. This is the next level of vodka."
Which of Aykroyd's characters would make the best spokesman for Crystal Head?
Without a doubt, Beldar Conehead. "He would be able to consume mass quantities without it affecting him. He could drink anyone under the table. He'd be the man," Aykroyd said.
Who knows, maybe the little green men from Isles of Capri would join him for a drink.
Connect with Brent Batten at www.naplesnews.com/staff/brent_batten


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Scholarship and integrity: Matthew Arnold's "The Scholar-Gipsy" and Anita Desai's "Scholar and Gypsy".
From their medieval beginnings, universities were essentially religious institutions. It is no surprise, then, that the crisis of religious faith, which found expression in nineteenth-century Europe, provoked a parallel need to question and redefine the function and purpose of universities. John Henry Newman's The Idea of the University (1852) is a famous example. But I propose to argue here that Matthew Arnold's poem "The Scholar-Gipsy" published in 1853, is a reassertion of the value of the university every bit as passionate and cogent as Newman's, though leading in a diametrically opposing direction. And Anita Desai's short story "Scholar and Gypsy," (1) published in 1978, offers a perspective on how these debates match up to the realities of the late twentieth century. A close reading and comparison of these texts by Arnold and Desai, from different centuries and different continents, is not only mutually illuminating, but can also shed light for our own time on the issues raised.
Poet and Critics
Arnold was moved to write "The Scholar-Gipsy" by an anecdote he found in Glanvil's Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661), which he summarises early in the poem:
The story of the Oxford scholar poor, Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain, Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door, One summer morn forsook His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore, And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood, And came, as most men deem'd, to little good,. But came to Oxford and his friends n.o more. (2)
Writers, artists, musicians, critics, and readers have also been moved by Arnold's version of the story ever since; it is one of the most frequently-discussed poems in the language. And, as David Rampton notes, discussion has centred almost entirely on the "quasi-human figure" (4) of the Scholar-Gipsy himself, to the exclusion of much else, as holding the key to the poem's meaning and value. A very broad range of interpretation has been drawn from Arnold's creation by critics. For Lionel Trilling, the Scholar-Gipsy is "imagination, impulse, and pleasure" and "he is what virtually every writer of the modem period conceives, the experience of art projected into the actuality and totality of life as the ideal form of the moral life" (14). Clinton Machann's reading is close to Trilling's, describing the Scholar-Gipsy as "the 'best' self, as distinct from the 'ordinary' self' (37). G. Wilson Knight sees him as symbolising "areas of wisdom and faculties of the mind neither tapped nor respected by the western tradition" (58). And for Alan Roper, he embodies "faith in the existence of a supernatural power" (221). In contrast to these inspiring claims, F. R. Leavis believes that the character of the Scholar-Gipsy offers merely "a holiday from serious aims and exacting business" and symbolises "Victorian poetry" itself, "unable to be in essence anything but relaxed, relaxing and anodyne" (30). And for David Riede, he is merely a "wanderer" whose story demonstrates that,pace Keats, "literature cannot point to 'Truth'" (147).
These are hugely diverse readings, and represent only a fraction of the scores of interpretations that the figure of the Scholar-Gipsy has attracted. But all of these commentators--admirers and detractors alike--spend most of their time discussing the connotations and implications of the word "gipsy" and those parts of the poem that embody and expand them. The word "scholar' in the poem's rifle, and those parts of the poem that develop its resonance, tend to be overlooked. And the significance of the other two protagonists: the narrator and the ever-proximate university is all but ignored This poem evokes, in some of the greatest poetry of the nineteenth century, two quite separate journeys of discovery--that of the Scholar-Gipsy and that of the narrator--in order to establish their respective relationships with the third protagonist, the university. What follows is an attempt to present a more balanced reading of the poem, taking account of both sides of the Scholar-Gipsy persona, and also of the significance of the narrator and the setting. I believe that in this way we can more nearly approach Arnold's own intentions and preoccupations in writing the poem. I will firstly indicate what I see as its most significant elements, and then attempt to synthesise their significance.
On the Edge
The Scholar-Gipsy "roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood ... But came to Oxford and his friends no more" (ll.38-40), Arnold tells us. But in the very next lines, this seemingly absolute closure is qualified:
But once, years after, in the country-lanes, Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew, Met him.... (ll. 41-43)
They talked together; then "he left them, and return'd no more" (1. 51). Again, we have that final, haunting phrase "no more"; yet the Scholar-Gipsy is again seen, repeatedly, in the countryside around the university. It is as though he would like to leave Oxford and return "no more," (3) but is always drawn back to its orbit. He has "roam'd the world," and could presumably go or stay anywhere within it, but is constantly pulled back, not to the university or to his former friends and fellows, but to the natural world around it. He is to be found on the edge; never within Oxford, but always within sight of it. The poem's narrator follows the Scholar-Gipsy's example and roams the same woods and hills.
The opening lines evoke a timeless pastoral world, going back to Virgil and beyond, that the narrator inhabits; until at the end of the third stanza, Arnold locates these hills and fields precisely: "And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers" (1.30). The narrator believes that he too has seen the Scholar-Gipsy: "And I myself seem half to know thy looks" (1.62), though his words are doubly qualified by "seem" and "half." He devotes his life to a "quest" (1.10) to find the Scholar-Gipsy and substantiate his evanescent perception. The relationship between the two characters, the Scholar-Gipsy and the narrator who seeks him, is central to an understanding of the poem's meaning, and has not been fully explored.
"Arts to Rule as They Desired"
Nor have the Scholar-Gipsy's reasons for living within the orbit of the university, rather than anywhere else in the world, ever been satisfactorily explained. When his former fellows ask him about his life since leaving Oxford,
... he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew, His mates, had arts to rule as they desired The workings of men's brains, And they can bind them to what thoughts they will. 'And I,' he said, 'the secret of their art, When fully learn'd, will to the world impart; But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.' (ll. 44-50)
He is still a scholar, then, in search of knowledge, and plans to "impart" his findings when the work is complete. But this is, of course, a radically different type of knowledge from conventional academic learning. Wilson Knight, noting the derivation of "gipsy" from "Egypt," and the Hindu origins of the Romany race, convincingly equates the "arts" of the "gipsycrew" with "the esoteric schools originating from the East" (57). But Wordsworth's great challenge in The Prelude, to seek "Knowledge not purchas'd with the loss of power!" (Book V: 1. 449) is every bit as apposite, and reminds us that dissatisfaction with rational learning was very much a part of the Romantic agenda that formed Arnold's sensibility.
Here, I think we need to remind ourselves of the connotations of the word "gipsy" in English culture. Arnold's phrase "gipsy-crew," with its echoes of Coleridge's "ghastly crew" (1.340) in "The Ancient Mariner," as well as the proverbial "motley crew," is part of a long tradition. When Shakespeare wishes to depict the disillusion with Cleopatra that drives Mark Antony to suicide, he has him say:
O, this false soul of Egypt! This grave charm, Whose eye becked forth my wars and called them home, Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end, Like a right gipsy hath at fast and loose Beguiled me to the very heart of loss. (Act IV: Sc. XII, 11.25-29)
This passage, and indeed every reference to gipsies in the play, illustrates vividly the profound suspicion with which Englishspeaking culture has viewed gipsy people. Cleopatra clearly has "arts to rule" the "workings of men's brains," but she uses them "like a right gipsy" to betray Antony, the Roman caught between the forces of Western power and status and Eastern intrigue and pleasure. The Scholar-Gipsy, on the other hand, seeks to acquire and master these "strange arts" (1. 135), not for any underhand or personal motive, but in order to "impart" them to "the world." He will remove the secrecy and suspicion from them, so that all people may benefit from their exercise. And in his portrayal of the ScholarGipsy's aim, Matthew Arnold will radically reappraise the old East/West polarities and prejudices.
The aim is clear enough, then; but the means of achieving it is far less so: "But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill," the Scholar-Gipsy tells his old friends. This becomes a refrain in the narrator's mind: "waiting for the spark from heaven to fall"; "Thou waitest for the spark from heaven!" (ll. 120 and 171). But this waiting is far from passive; it takes the form of an alert, rapt contemplation of the natural world: "Children," the narrator reminds the Scholar-Gipsy,
Have known thee eying, all an April-day, The springing pastures and the feeding kine; And mark'd thee, when the stars come out and shine, Through the long dewy grass move slow away. (ll. 107-110)
He avoids noisy, crowded places, choosing "shy retreats" and "retired ground" (ll. 70-71) to await the spark from heaven. In this respect, Arnold again draws on the high Romantic agenda. Coleridge, for example, in the poem "Frost at Midnight," bemoaned his own childhood confined in "the great city," seeing "naught lovely," and promised that his newborn child would "wander like a breeze" in the natural world, and so learn "that eternal language, which thy God/Utters" (ll. 52, 53, 54, and 60-61). Nature here is not merely a place of rest and solace, but a means of reaching divine reality. Matthew Arnold's "waiting for the spark from heaven" is very much in this tradition.
The Scholar-Gipsy does still occasionally communicate with people, but not verbally. The "Maidens" who "dance around the Fyfield elm in May" (ll. 82-83), for example, sometimes see him:
Oft thou hast given them store Of flowers--the frail-leaf'd, white anemony, Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer eves, And purple orchises with spotted leaves-But none hath words she can report of thee. (ll. 86-90)
Evoking these encounters inspires some of Arnold's finest poetry, subtly using every poetic device to create a rare fusion of sound, pace, image, and meaning: musical, incantatory, yet sharply precise. "Through the long dewy grass move slow away" and "Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer eves" are unforgettable. And the presence of "dew" in both lines is not coincidental.
"And Thou Hast Climb'd the Hill"
It is noticeable that Arnold places each episode of the poem precisely within a month or season, moving through spring, summer, and autumn. The climax of the poem, exactly half-way through, is set in mid-winter. It is the apex of the work formally, thematically, and topographically, bringing together the three protagonists: the narrator, the Scholar-Gipsy, and the university, in a crucial encounter which repays close attention:
And once, in winter, on the causeway chill Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go, Have I not pass'd thee on the wooden bridge, Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow, Thy face tow'rd Hinksey and its wintry ridge? And thou hast climb'd the hill, And gain'd the white brow of the Cumner range; Turn'd once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall, The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall-Then sought thy straw in some sequester'd grange. (ll. 121-30)
The phrase "line of festal light" strongly suggests the great mid-winter festival of Christmas, and the name "Christ-Church" does nothing to contradict this association. The Scholar-Gipsy walks away, then, not only from warmth, good cheer, and humankind, but also from the celebration of the event that for Christians is "the spark from heaven": the birth of Christ (They of course would write "Heaven"; in this poem it is always a lower-case "heaven"). Christianity began in a pastoral setting, with a birth in a barn, attended by animals and shepherds; by the mid-nineteenth century, Arnold suggests, it was more at home in the grand Hall of one of the wealthiest Oxford colleges. It is the outsider, the Scholar-Gipsy, who is in touch with those natural, pastoral roots, and sleeps on straw in a "grange ." But at this crucial, climactic point in the poem, the ScholarGipsy is also confronting the university, of which Christ Church is an abiding symbol. He "turns" in order "to watch" the lights of the Great Hall through the snowstorm, and then moves on; is this a rejection of the university, or is he reassuring himself that it is still there, close to hand for when he is ready to "impart" his new knowledge? And the narrator witnesses this encounter. At first, he is unsure and interrogative as before: "Have I not pass'd thee... ? "' but when he comes to the climactic moments there is no uncertainty: We move from question to statement, the narrator's doubts finally vanquished by affirmation. He has achieved his "quest" and we hear no more about it in the poem. It is a great, moving moment, the high point of"The Scholar-Gipsy" in every sense. (4)
"This Strange Disease of Modern Life"
Up to this moment in the poem, the journeys of the two personae have been complementary: The Scholar-Gipsy roamed the countryside around Oxford waiting intently for "the spark from heaven," and the narrator roamed the same woods and hills in search of the Scholar-Gipsy. But after this great climax, the narrator understands that although the ScholarGipsy's journey will continue as before, his own is over. The contrast and the realisations that go with it are bitter: The Scholar-Gipsy fled human society "early... with powers fresh, undiverted to the world without" (ll. 161-62). He is free from "the sick fatigue, the languid doubt" (l. 165) that oppresses the narrator and others like him:
... we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds. (ll. 171-74)
Knowledge without power, in other words. Most commentators have assumed that the "we" with whom the narrator identifies is humankind in general. But this reading cannot be sustained beyond the next stanza:
... we suffer! And amongst us one, Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne; And all his store of sad experience he Lays bare of wretched days. (ll. 182-86)
Given that the whole action of the poem takes place within sight of "Oxford's towers," and the weight of the phrase "intellectual throne," there is little doubt that the narrator's first-person plural refers to the scholarly community of the university. They are all afflicted with "this strange disease of modem life/With its sick hurry, its divided aims,/Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts" (ll. 203-05). (5) The narrator now understands the Scholar-Gipsy's reluctance to re-enter human society until he has perfected the "arts" to heal it: If he did, he too would become sick with "mental strife.., grow old at last, and die" (ll. 22230), and all hope of redemption would be lost with him.
The narrator urges the Scholar-Gipsy, "Fly hence, our contact fear!" (1. 206), underlining his message with the two similes which end the poem: Dido turning away from Aeneas in Hades (ll. 208-10), and the 'Tyrian trader" turning away from the Greeks (ll. 232-50). Wilson Knight points out the East/West conflict inherent in each of these figures of speech with great skill; but it is also worth noting how Arnold has modified the connotations of the word "gipsy" by the end of the poem. The traditional polarity between Western and Eastern ways of thought, which we saw early on, has, by the end of the poem, been reversed--the East being here a symbol of probity and hope; the West of decay and decline. In this respect, Arnold aligns himself with the nineteenth-century reappraisal of Romany culture which had begun in earnest with George Borrow's The Zincali (1841).
"The Letter Killeth" (6)
"The Scholar-Gipsy" is, I believe, a poem about knowledge. When Arnold uses the epithet, he has a very clear meaning in mind: not, as most commentators have supposed, a man who was once a scholar, who stopped being one in order to follow a "gipsy-crew." This interpretation can only be sustained by misreading or ignoring large parts of the poem. Arnold's creation is a scholar who leaves the university to roam the world with the gipsies, in order to learn their "strange arts" and then return to the society of men and share the radically new knowledge he has perfected. He never stops being a scholar, then. After his travels with the gipsies, he never wanders far from Oxford, keeping its towers in sight; what can we draw from this, if not an intention to publish, in the broadest sense, his perfected knowledge at the university, as a first step towards imparting it to the world?
Arnold's notion of a radically new knowledge which has the power to regenerate humankind is, as we have seen, an integral part of the high Romantic agenda which Wordsworth and Byron, in particular, spread across Europe and beyond in the nineteenth century, and which informed the sensibilities of so many artists, musicians, and writers. In this, Matthew Arnold is no exception. Wordsworth's proclamation of "Knowledge not purchas'd with the loss of power!" is very much the progenitor of the Scholar-Gipsy's "project" (l. 199), and, in this sense, the poem is as much about power as it is about knowledge: The aim is nothing less than the regeneration of mankind, as it was with Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley at their most confident. "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world," Shelley wrote famously in 1821, and worked in the full confidence that his work could contribute to a social regeneration (Wroe 308-09, 324, 333).
What is new in Matthew Arnold's vision of knowledge, as it is expressed in "The Scholar-Gipsy," is the idea of the university, where this new knowledge can be disseminated and used for the benefit of mankind. Where the Romantic poets had relied on poetry alone to regenerate society, Arnold looks to poetry with scholarship, to the Scholar-Gipsy, with the university as the center from which this new knowledge will spread. This is Arnold's contribution to the Romantic debate about knowledge: His deep love of the city, university, and surrounding countryside of Oxford informs "The Scholar-Gipsy" on many levels. But his unflinching analysis of the "strange disease of modem life," that afflicts the scholarly community as much as other walks of life, leaves no room for sentimentality. His hope is that the university he loves can one day be the center and starting point for the regeneration of mankind that formed the backbone of Romantic aspirations.
"O Life Unlike to Ours!"
Where does this leave the modem scholar who reads the poem, the lover of ideas attracted, as so many are, by its very rifle? What are we to make of this text that conjures a perennial figure of hope and regeneration through scholarship, and then tells us that contact with us would kill him off, and all hope with him? I have argued here that the setting of the poem--the university of Oxford and its surrounding countryside--is as important in its way as the two main personae. And it is in the relative positioning of the two characters within this setting that the core of the poem's meaning resides, I believe. In the person of the Scholar-Gipsy, Arnold offers us an ideal of the scholar: acutely able, single-minded, in intimate touch with the creative processes and cycles of the living world, untainted by the compromises of social life and career, unwaveringly committed to the betterment of his species. And this Scholar-Gipsy's place, at least for the moment, is outside of the university: Contact with it, Arnold argues, would destroy him. Arnold's scholarly ideal is, he concludes, impossible to sustain in "modem" Oxford. The university is the center of gravity of the Scholar-Gipsy's orbiting, but until he has perfected the "arts" to regenerate it, he must avoid it.
In stark contrast to this ideal, in the person of the narrator, Arnold offers us the reality of the scholar's predicament as he sees it. The narrator seeks an ideal to guide his life, but the revelation of that ideal, in the poem's climax, brings with it the realization that it can never be attained by the narrator or his audience, born, as we are, already tainted with "this strange disease of modem life" (1.203), subject to the insidious "repeated shocks, again, again" that "exhaust the energy of strongest souls" (ll. 144-45). But he is desperate to keep the Scholar-Gipsy alive and flourishing: "our feverish contact fly!" (1. 221), he pleads, and urges him to "freshen" the "flowers" of his thought with the "dew" of nature's reality (ll. 218-19). The epiphany of the poem's climax reveals to him not only that he cannot wholly emulate the Scholar-Gipsy or follow him any more, but also that the thought of him, free and untainted, must be kept alive. This image--this Platonic ideal--directs his life: He has to accept and engage with reality as he finds it, but a part of his mind remains on the edge with the Scholar-Gipsy, providing a perspective and standard for all he does. This, I believe, is what Arnold wants us to take from this poem: a re-thinking of ourselves as scholars, and of our relations to the communities and institutions within which we work. We cannot but engage with them in order to function as scholars. The ScholarGipsy's complete freedom and autonomy are not an option for us. But they are an essential touchstone if our work is to retain its intrinsic significance and purpose, its "unconquerable hope" (l. 211), to use Arnold's phrase; I would use the word "integrity."
Anita Desai: Integrity and Disintegration
Anita Desai is one of those lovers of ideas who have wrestled with Arnold's poem and used it as a touchstone. Born in 1937 in Mussoorie, India, to a Bengali father and a German mother, brought up and educated in Delhi, Desai is quite literally an embodiment of the meeting of East and West. Although it is her third language, after Hindi and German, English "was always my literary language, my book language," she told Maya Jaggi in 1999: "I worked hard to bend the English language to bring in the sounds and tempo and rhythms of spoken languages around me, which are part of my world too. With English you can, it's so flexible and elastic" (Jaggi 3 and 6). But she is aware that the choice of English as her medium largely determines her subject-matter: "You're always having to select, to acknowledge your limits; you write only about those parts of life that have been affected by English" (Jaggi 6). In this crucial sense, then, the meeting points of East and West are always her subject.
Desai's considerable reputation rests chiefly on her novels, which have provoked extensive critical discussion. Her short stories, which have been relatively overlooked, merit closer attention (Sharrad et al. n. pag.). The story "Scholar and Gypsy" epitomizes many of her abiding themes and concerns. It was first published in Bombay and London in the 1978 collection Games at Twilight. English reviewers hailed the collection as "absolutely first-rate" (Lee 21). Ian Stewart noted Desai's "distilled clarity of writing" (120), while Victoria Glendinning asserted that "she writes an extraordinarily delicate, lucid English which puts many English writers to shame" (973). It was not just the prose that found favor, however, but the content too; "the volume's profound theme is the tension between convention and exploration," as Hermione Lee suggested (21).
All of this is in stark contrast to subsequent critical reaction published in India. Shiv K. Kumar criticized both Desai's "laboured prose" and her pretensions to profundity: "insipid details are invested with the dimensions of dramatic significance, and long involuted sentences are coaxed into suggesting psychic complexity" (204). Kumar even called into question the intellectual honesty of Desai's invocations of Arnold, writing of "'Scholar and Gypsy,' with its unmistakable overtones from Matthew Arnold's much anthologized poem 'The Scholar Gypsy' [sic] (coy plagiarism?)" (Kumar 205). Evelyn Damashek Varady, while admiring the immediacy and vividness of Desai's "street scenes and pastoral vistas" in "Scholar and Gypsy," criticizes the dialogue as "anachronistic" and unconvincing, and the attitudes that Desai ascribes to her heroine Pat as "outdated" (197-98). In the reading that follows, I will indicate my own position within this broad spectrum of critical response, and explore the thematic and structural parallels with Arnold's poem.
The last and, by far, the longest story in the collection, Desai's "Scholar and Gypsy" offers a critique of late twentieth-century Western scholarship and culture by oblique comparison with Arnold's nineteenth-century critique. On one level, this story of the disintegration of a marriage can be read, and its ironies savored, without any knowledge of Arnold; but the more deeply we know "The Scholar-Gipsy," the more subtle and devastating does Desai's "Scholar and Gypsy" become.
The story is set in India in the nineteen seventies, but the main characters are a young American couple. The other ten stories in Games at Twilight have just one protagonist; it is central to the meaning of "Scholar and Gypsy" that it has two. David is an ambitious university scholar, "charming and socially graceful" and "of Long Island upbringing" (130), while his wife Pat is a country girl from Vermont, who "only went to high school and stayed home after that," as she reminds him (113). David comes to India, with Pat in tow, so that he can complete his sociology thesis. In Bombay and Delhi, they go to parties given by intellectuals, and the young man is in his element: "David attracted people like a magnet--with his charm, his nonchalance, his grace" (109). But Pat is completely overwhelmed by the dizzying heat, by the poverty in the streets, and by the people at parties:
The guests all wore brilliant clothes and jewellery, and their eyes and teeth flashed with such primitive lust as they eyed her slim, white-sheathed blonde self, that the sensation of being caught up and crushed, crowded in and choked sent her into comers where their knees pushed into her, their hands slid over her back, their voices bored into her, so that when she got back to the hotel, on David's ann, she was more like a corpse than an American globe-trotter. (109)
When she tries to voice her feelings to David afterwards, about how "primitive" the people are, he is unreceptive. He wants "to share his views with her" (110), and is clearly unused to Pat airing hers! Desai's irony is finely pointed in this scene: David laments '"Here I was, disappointed at finding them so westernized. I would have liked them a bit more primitive--at least for the sake of my thesis" (110). Pat is suffering from the kind of culture shock very normal in people who leave their own environment for the first time, for a very different one. David, on the other hand, seems oblivious to the differences, "striding over the coconut shells and betel-stained papers and the fish scales and lepers' stumps" (108). With that shocking final phrase, Desai shows us that David's initial ability to cope is based on an inability to perceive and respond to any feelings or needs beyond his own. His "nonchalance" begins to seem a less appealing trait; Desai uses every connotation of her words with skill and precision, building a profound cumulative effect beneath the irony and humor.
Before they came to India, Pat had had little by way of feelings or opinions to express. This, one suspects, together with her "fragility" (130), good looks, and diffidence, constituted her chief attraction for David. Here she is different, and so are his feelings for her:
"But you can't let climate get you down, dear," David said softly, in order to express tenderness that he hardly felt any longer, seeing her suffer so unbeautifully, her feet dusty, her hair stringy, her face thin and appalled.... He had never imagined she could be a burden--not the companion and fellow gypsy she had so fairly promised to be. (112)
David's affection is superficial, then, based on her looks and readiness to follow his lead and enhance his image of himself as scholar-gypsy. His terms of endearment for her--"dear" and "my girl" (116)--are those of a father or elderly mentor rather than a young lover. (7) As soon as she no longer flatters his vanity, his tenderness evaporates. But
Pat's affection is no more substantial, based more on a lack of any alternative life-plan of her own than any particular feelings for David. On both sides, the experience of India reveals the inadequacy of the relationship and the motives that brought them together: The bond between scholar and gypsy begins to fall apart on first contact with the East.
In a detailed analysis of Desai's fiction, Sunaima Singh argues that her typical female character has her "whole being ... wrapped up tightly by the expectations of others," while her "male protagonists" are "indifferent and unconcerned about their wives' sentiments and desires" (75, 124). Usha Pathania asserts that Desai examines the universal tragedy of "temperamental incompatibility" (22). (8) between men and women. Pat and David illustrate the truth of these diagnoses: They may be American, but their relationship is essentially no different from those of the Indian couples Desai portrays in her novels. (9) This, I believe, is a crucial point: Her portrayal of human relationships transcends racial stereotypes, just as her choice of character avoids the obvious; she is "repeatedly drawn to 'failures and wrecks' as characters," Jaggi notes (4). As we will see, Pat and David illustrate the aptness of this statement too.
The emotional gulf between them is thrown into stark relief in a scene portraying yet another party, at the house of Sharma, a "Delhi intellectual" (114). Here, Desai's flair for combining ironic, mocking wit with deeply serious implications is at its most acute. There are the usual types present, including "the inevitable longhaired intellectual--either journalist or professor--who sat crosslegged on the floor and held forth, abusively, on the crassness of the Americans, to David's delight and Pat's embarrassment" (114). But they also meet Sharma's wife, a "new type" for Pat, "a genuine social worker, trained," rather than a sociologist intellectual of the type David cultivates. The next day she takes Pat to see some of the children she works with. Afterwards,
She [Pat] thought of the way the child at the hospital had smiled after the doctor had finished painting her burns with gentian violet and given her a plastic doll. It had been a cheap, cracked pink plastic doll and the child had smiled at it through the gentian violet, its smile stamped in, or cut out, in that face still taut with pain, as by a machine. Pat had known that face would always be in pain, and the smile would always be cut out as by the machine of charity, mechanically. (115)
The memory of the pink, caucasian doll given to a suffering Indian child conveys the inadequacy and insensitivity of "the machine of charity" to Pat's, and the reader's mind, with a force that makes it difficult to erase. Her feelings for her husband may be superficial, but there is no doubting Pat's capacity for deep feeling. Significantly, David and his intellectual friends are not present at the hospital.
"And Thou Hast Climb'd the Hill"
When Pat returns from the hospital visit deeply shocked, David panics to see that her eyes, once "so blue," are fading. '"We'd better go to the hills for a while,' he said: he did not want murder on his hands" (115). They take a gruelling three-hundred-mile journey by bus through a sandstorm. And as they climb into the hills, battling with the sand that "buried passengers and seats" (115), the roles are abruptly reversed. Pat is revived by the cooler climate of Manali, the apple trees and cattle remind her of home. Suddenly, she is in her element, and it is David who flounders, terrified by the precipitous roads and tom from his accustomed urban-intellectual environment. There is worse to come:
'Jesus,' David said in alarm, 'the place is full of hippies.' Pat looked at the faces they passed then and saw that the crowd outside the baker's was indeed one of fair men and women, even if they seemed to be beggars. Some were dressed like Indian gurus, in loincloths or saffron robes, with beads around their necks, others as gypsies in pantaloons or spangled skirts, some in plain rags and tatters.... 'Why,' she said, watching one woman with a child approach an Indian couple with her empty hand outstretched, 'they might be Americans!' David shuddered. (118-19)
This is too much for David. He delights in "long-haired intellectuals" criticizing his country: This is his notion of how intellectuals should behave, and of course it threatens nothing. But to see his countrymen and women rejecting the Western way of life (whose values David never questions) and begging from third-world people is deeply distasteful to him; still more disturbing is the notion that Americans might have something to learn from Indian people and their culture.
And this is precisely the direction in which Pat's new zest for life in India is taking her. While David, with no intellectual company worthy of his attention in Manali, stays indoors and works on the thesis that "had begun to seem totally irrelevant" (129), Pat explores the woods and temples around the small town and begins to feel, like the hippies, that she can find something of fundamental value here. When she tries to explain her change of heart to David,he "clicked his tongue like an impatient pedagogue" (128), and would not listen to her plans for them both to join a hippy commune:
'I met some folks who live in a commune.., and I had coffee with some of them--' 'Sure it was coffee?' he snarled and, turning his back, hurled himself at the typewriter with such frenzy that she could not make herself heard .... What she had planned to say to him was put away, like an unsuccessful gift. (132-33)
David has steadfastly refused to take the slightest notice of his new surroundings in India. In the end, they force themselves upon his attention, in the form of an aging bus radiator which explodes in his face and temporarily blinds him. Indians rush to help him, "blinded, scalded, being dragged through the streets by strangers, madmen, all laying to carry him, all babbling as at a universal holocaust" (134). He awakens to the sound of"a blessedly American voice.... He was the American mission hospital doctor but to David he was God himself on an inspection visit mercifully timed to coincide with David's accident" (134-35). But if we are thinking of Saul's temporary blindness on the road to Damascus and are expecting a great epiphany, we are in for a disappointment: David leaves the hospital with his handsome face covered in gentian violet for the bums, like the child Pat had seen in the Delhi hospital, but otherwise, again like the child, nothing fundamental has changed. The truth of this is borne out by his subsequent, and final, exchange with Pat back at the boarding house. David is angry and abusive,
but she continued calmly that she was sure to find, in the end, something that could not be found on the cocktail rounds of Delhi, Bombay or even, for that matter, Long Island, but that she was positive existed here, in the forest, on the mountains. 'What cocktail rounds? Are you trying to imply I'm a social gadabout, not a serious student of sociology, working on a thesis on which my entire career is based?' 'Working on a thesis?' she screeched derisively. 'Sociology? The idea of you, Dave, when you've never so much as looked, I mean really looked, into the soul, the prana, of the next man--is just too,--' she spluttered to a stop. (137)
Pat cannot express herself in the way that David can, but there is little doubt where the author's sympathies he in this denouement. Pat strides off to her commune in search of Nirvana, "bag and prayer beads in hand" (138). David, like Mark Antony before him, is abandoned by his woman; but this modern lover is not about to fall on his sword: "If the truth were to be told, he felt greater regret at having to arrive in Delhi with a face like a painted baboon's than to arrive without his wife" (138).
Scholar-Gipsy or Scholar and Gypsy?
The European and American hippies who flocked to India in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s were a manifestation of a much larger counterculture, evolved by a younger generation of Westerners who rejected the mores and values of their elders, and sought alternatives. I have argued elsewhere that this search involved a reappraisal of other cultures, particularly those of India and Africa, which their European and American elders had patronised and belittled for centuries as part of a colonial, supremacist mindset (Cook 140-42). I argued in the same chapter that the counterculture was in many ways a rediscovery of the great search for alternative values of the Romantic movement. With these two points in mind, I would suggest that Anita Desai's choice of time, place, and character for her fictional exploration of the resonance of Matthew Amold's poem, its ideas, and values, for the late twentieth century, is uncannily apposite. I will now explore the main features of this resonance between poem and story.
Consciously or unconsciously, Anita Desai echoes precisely the journey made by Arnold's two human protagonists: the Scholar-Gipsy and the narrator. David, who likes to think of himself as a Scholar-Gipsy figure, journeys to India in search of material for the thesis that will launch his career, with Pat, whom he likes to think of as a "fellow gypsy," in his wake (112). Both narratives begin in the heat of summer, and in each case the two travelers climb to higher ground and a colder climate, where crucial discoveries are made, and after which the two cease to travel together. This parallel framework allows us, perhaps invites us, to make direct comparisons: Where Arnold's Scholar-Gipsy's aim is the regeneration of humanity, with the university as its center, David's is the furtherance of his university career; where one needs nature, solitude, and "retired ground" (1.70), the other craves the city, society, and parties; where one is single-minded in pursuit of his one great aim, the other doubts the relevance of his work even as he does it. And where the Scholar-Gipsy becomes a disciple of the "gipsy tribe" and devotes himself to learning their "strange arts" (1. 135), David refuses to take in his Indian surroundings, relying steadfastly on traditional American values.
The more closely we read "Scholar and Gypsy," the more clearly we see how wide of the mark Kumar's suggestion of"coy plagiarism" is. At every stage, Desai's story reminds us of the scholarly ideals of Arnold's poem (without any intention of claiming them as her own), only to underline how far, and how ludicrously, David falls short of them. And at the climax of the story, his and Pat's change of roles is not simply a matter of mood: It is she who, like the Scholar-Gipsy, recognizes that she has something to learn from the East, and is prepared to leave her previous life in pursuit of more satisfying values. She, not David, inherits the Romantic quest for new understanding: the "Nirvana" she seeks is comparable to the Scholar-Gipsy's "spark from heaven." It is she who experiences some form of epiphany in the cool hills of Manali; David learns nothing there. He, like Arnold's narrator, returns to the bustle and futility of "modem life" (1. 203). Hermione Lee's suggestion that Desal's "profound theme is the tension between convention and exploration" has clear relevance here. And while Desai gleefully points out the contradictions and inconsistencies of the Western hippies, they do in the end seem infinitely preferable to David, whose complete confidence in his own, and his country's, rightness are shown to be founded on the shallowest of illusions. He is the epitome of Arnold's modern scholars:
Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd. (ll. 172-75)
If Matthew Arnold's "The Scholar-Gipsy" is all about integrity, Anita Desai's "Scholar and Gypsy" is all about the lack of it. The rifles of both works contain the seeds of their central meaning. By fusing the two concepts of "Scholar" and "Gipsy," and their connotations, into an epithet, Arnold prefigures the poem's plea for scholarly integrity. By using the words "Scholar" and "Gypsy" in her title, Desai gently nudges readers who know Arnold's poem; but by keeping the words separate, when we are expecting them yoked together, she prefigures the disintegration of the relationship between Pat and David, and of the qualities and values that the two words represent. Desai's modern tragi-comedy seems worlds away from the Romantic idealism of the nineteenth century and its poets. But a story about disintegration and the lack of integrity can still embody a passionate plea for integrity. I believe that Desai's story does embody such a plea, no less than Arnold's poem.
Works Cited
Arnold, Matthew. Arnold: Poetical Works. Eds. C. B. Tinker and H. F. Lowry. London: Oxford UP, 1969.
Borrow, George. The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain. Teddington: Echo Library, 2006.
Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, ed. Coleridge: Poetical Works. London: Oxford UP, 1967.
Cook, Peter. "Go Ask Alice: The Image of the Child in the Sixties Counterculture." Eds. Jennifer Harding and Pat Pinsent. What Do You See? International Perspectives on Children's Book Illustration. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2008. 140-48.
Desai, Anita. Games at Twilight and Other Stories. London: William Heinemann, 1978/Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1978. Page references are to the Vintage reprint, London, 1998.
Glendinning, Victoria. "Mood Indigo." Times Literary Supplement (September 1, 1978): 973.
Holmes, Richard. Shelley--The Pursuit. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974.
Jaggi, Maya. "A Passage from India." The Guardian (June 19, 1999). <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/1999/jun/19/books.guardianreview11>.
Kumar, Shiv K. "Desai's Games at Twilight:. A View." Ed. Ramesh K. Srivastava. Perspectives on Anita Desai. Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan 1984. 203-07.
Leavis, Frank Raymond. The Common Pursuit. London: Chatto and Windus, 1952.
Lee, Hermione. "Philosophical Guerrillas." The Observer (August 13, 1978): 21.
Machann, Clinton. Matthew Arnold: A Literary Life. NY: St. Martin's P, 1998.
Pathania, Usha. Human Bonds and Bondages: The Fiction of Anita Desai and Kamala Markandaya. Delhi: Kanishka Publishing House, 1992.
Rampton, David. "Back to the Future: Lionel Trilling, 'The Scholar-Gipsy,' and the State of Victorian Poetry." Victorian Poetry 45.1 (Spring 2007): 1-15.
Riede, David G. Matthew Arnold and the Betrayal of Language. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1988.
Roper, Alan. Arnold's Poetic Landscapes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1969.
Shakespeare, William. Antony and Cleopatra. Ed. Richard Madelaine. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
Sharrad, Paul et al.. Bibliography of Criticism of Indian Literature in English (19701990). <http://www.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@arts/ documents/doc/uow019498.pdf>
Singh, Sunaina. The Novels of Margaret Atwood and Anita Desai: A Comparative Study in Feminist Perspectives. New Delhi: Creative Books, 1994.
Stewart, Ian. "Recent Fiction." Illustrated London News (October 1978): 120.
Travers, Martin. European Literature from Romanticism to Postmodernism: A Reader in Aesthetic Practice. London and NY: Continuum, 2001.
Trilling, Lionel. The Opposing Self." Nine Essays in Criticism. NY: Viking P, 1955.
Varady, Evelyn Damashek. "The West Views Anita Desai: American and British Criticism of Games at Twilight and Other Stories." Ed. Ramesh K. Srivastava. Perspectives on Anita Desai. Ghaziabad: Vimal Prakashan, 1984. 194-202.
Vaughan Williams, Ralph. An Oxford Elegy. John Westbrook (speaker), Jacques Orchestra, Choir of King's College Cambridge, cond. Sir David Willcocks. EMI CD No. 7243 5 67221 2 5, 1999.
Wilson Knight, G. "The Wilson Scholar-Gipsy: An Interpretation." Review of English Studies 6.21 (January 1955): 53-62.
Wordsworth, William. The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind (Text of 1805). Ed. Ernest de Selincourt. London: Oxford UP, 1969.
Wroe, Ann. Being Shelley: The Poet's Search for Himself. London: Jonathan Cape, 2007.
* I am most grateful to the editors of this issue of Alif Ferial Ghazoul and Robert Switzer for their help and advice.
(1) Arnold chooses the spelling "gipsy," while Desai opts for the more current "gypsy"; I have followed the author's spelling in each case.
(2) Arnold, "The Scholar-Gipsy," ll. 32-40. Subsequent quotations are identi fied by line references in parentheses. All quotations are from Tinker and Lowry, 255-62.
(3) The phrase "no more" recurs yet again in 1.81.
(4) The composer Vaughan Williams recognizes the climactic nature of these words in his Oxford Elegy, a setting of words from "The Scholar-Gipsy" and its companion poem "Thyrsis," and sets this passage to powerful, dramatic music. See Vaughan Williams, track 8.
(5) Arnold's sense of the corrosive nature of"modem life" is echoed across nine teenth-century art and literature. George Sand, for example, in the Preface to her novel Indiana (1832), writes that "the powers of the soul exhaust themselves in the bitter struggle with the realities of life" (qtd. in Travers 98).
(6) "Not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," Corinthians 2, Chapter 3, Verse 6.
(7) Varady suggests that Desai's dialogue is "out of place" in the mouths of modem young Americans "raised in a society where bikinis and Playboy pin-ups are as common as Coca Cola" (198). But I feel that this criticism misses the point: It is precisely through this choice of vocabulary and phraseology that Desai offers us insight into Pat's and David's marriage. Neither David, with his Long Island pretensions to sophistication and old-world charm, nor Pat, with her sheltered, conformist upbringing, would have confessed to any interest in Playboy pin-ups! Their fragile, doomed relationship is aeons away from Varady's stereotype of the raunchy, broad-minded American couple.
(8) Pathania's second chapter, "Dissonance and Despair" (11-53), is a search ing study of the theme.
(9) The parallels between Indian and American family lives are explored more fully in the novel Fasting, Feasting (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999).
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