submitted by David Oberholtzer, Edmonton AB
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Classical Pursuits – David Copperfield – A Morning with Dickens
“You’re going to the heat of Toronto to discuss Dickens?”
I leave the hotel and face the heat marching up Bay Street, meeting those soldiers of commerce and banking, government and the law (perhaps Traddles is on his way) and I find the room. My book is naked – no little stickies or bits of paper to indicate special passages. I cannot remember any of the characters. Why did I come?
The instructor arrives and begins with a most tantalizing questions – not a Rosa Dartle question at all – and we are off. The ideas start to flow – why did Dickens decide to write in first person? What effect does that have on credibility? Who do we feel sympathy for in the book -(Dora deserves the hammer!)? Passages are read out, little bits of the life of Dickens emerge, different takes on marriage, love, secret Victorian lust – all spin the morning away and we are off to a wonderful lunch.
To cleanse the palette I tried an afternoon with Iain Scott – the Olympics of Opera – the first day we saw tobogganing in an opera of Strauss, a long jump form Britten, and for the finale the vocal gymnastics of Ms.Bartolli.
Would I come again – of course.
