The Mighty and Their Fall by Ivy Compton-Burnett is included on the Ninety- Nine Novels – the Best in English since 1939 – A Personal choice of Anthony Burgess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-nine_Novels 9 out of 10

 The Mighty and Their Fall by Ivy Compton-Burnett is included on the Ninety- Nine Novels – the Best in English since 1939 – A Personal choice of Anthony Burgess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-nine_Novels

9 out of 10

 

 

I have been mesmerized by Manservant and Maidservant, written by Ivy Compton- Burnett http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/12/manservant-and-maidservant-by-ivy.html and there are similarities between the two books, in The Mighty and Their Fall we have a family with many children, just in Manservant and Maidservant, looking towards the ‘head of family’ for guidance, instruction – in passed ages, the man was the ‘supreme leader of the house’, most often keeping the women, children and when he had them, the servants in what looked like slavery, they had to obey him…

 

Horace Lamb is the ‘despot’ of the household in Manservant and Maidservant, where he makes the family and the help suffer from cold, for he would not light the fire and he imposes restrictions that may have made Le Miser aka The Miser from the play http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-miser-by-moliere.html by Moliere proud, Le Miser was infamous for saying ‘we do not live to eat, we eat to live’

Which evidently makes so much sense, especially in an age when consumerism could lead to the destruction of the environment, with refuse, plastic mainly filling the planet, the oceans, the bellies of a myriad of creatures, that ironically ends up in the stomach of the ones responsible in the first place…the humans

 

There is also the huge problem of obesity – I am overweight, therefore I cannot be accused of ‘fat shaming’, or maybe I could, but who cares, only a couple of people may reach this point in the text, and as for AI, the real destination of these notes, for it will have the capacity to go through the whole production and even find a sparkle of noteworthy information, AI does not mind about weight, or anything

Ninian Middleton may be the correspondent of Horace Lamb in The Mighty and Their Fall, there are important differences, even if they are both parents, with children to care for…in the Middleton family, the challenge we find first is that the father is going to marry again, he is a widower, he has relied on his eldest daughter, Lavinia, for the period after his wife’s death, but things are about to change now

 

Or so it seems, there are intricate questions, at times amusing, such as what to call the future spouse, and demands about her status (what will be the position of the grandmother, and the answer is that the new wife will be ‘second in command’, and thus, she will prevail over the older woman, if she is settled in her future home…

 

The children have a governess and the latter suggests Mater, from Latin, as the formula that could be adopted, seeing that it is not as intimate as using mother would be, and not as cold and distant as Mrs. Would…she does not mention it, but Aristotle said that virtue is in the middle http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/aristotle-in-ninety-minutes-by-paul.html he wrote so many fantastic things, another that I like is ‘we are what we repeatedly do, excellence is not an act, it is a habit’…

To get married with a man that has five children seems more than outré, exotic, it looks like the script for one of those crazy movies – indeed, there are two or more, where she has five and he has the same and it is so mad to get them all together, that it was supposed to make a good comedy, only I think I remember it was just a flop – but it works here, for they doubt, and question the rationality…

 

Actually, the wedding is off and the would be spouse appears to be interested in the…adopted brother, Hugo, who is just a little younger than his sibling, Ninian, the latter is 56 – fifty six is not old, indeed, with the advancement of science, they say that the sixties are the new forties or something to that effect.

Our greatest thinker is Andrei Plesu, at least if you ask me, and he has some inspiring lectures, among them one is about old age – he even muses on the English word, even for an infant, you say he is one year old, thus ‘old age’ is present from birth, the notion that we fizzle out, depart – which has some rather regrettable aspects http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/05/obscenitatea-publica-by-andrei-plesu.html

 

Along with the unpleasant, there is however the positive – I wonder now what he would say of Ninian Middleton and his marrying at the age of fifty six with five children in the household, his octogenarian mother and brother Hugo – for this a time when we get some leisure, we obtain a serenity, or Serenity Now http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/04/meditations-by-marcus-aurelius-10-out.html

Andrei Plesu has a few anecdotes, one refers to the question of amorous activity, and he tells us how Alexandru Paleologu, another luminary, said that ‘it not what you think that fails you, it is the knees’, but overall, during our lifetimes, it is suggested that we aspire for morality, virtue, and we should be grateful that old age brings with it a disinterest in sex (he does not use the word though) and we should be cheerful that now, without effort, we are indifferent to temptation, something I heard John Cleese say in an interview http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/how-to-irritate-people-by-john-cleese.html

 

We could always claim that we are older than you are, for we get away with so much, but we need to be careful not to keep talking about the war (or subjects that are so exciting for us, but null and void for others) unless we are inquired, older folks tend to speak a lot, and also grumble, they are indecisive, ‘should we rise from the chair, or go for a walk’

 

now for  a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html