Last night, 8/27/20, [now a while ago], Mary and I watched the 1987, Norman Jewison romantic comedy, Moonstruck, with Cher and Nicholas Cage, among others. Romantic Comedy, especially Shakespearean romantic comedy, is my favorite literary genre, and Moonstruck is an excellent modern production.
What delights me about the movie is the way in which the full, bright moon itself becomes a central character in the unfolding action of the story. Also present throughout is Puccini’s tragic opera, La Boheme, playing at the Met, and which the lovers, Ronnie and Loretta, as well as Loretta’s father, Cosmo, and his mistress, attend. Then there is Dean Martin’s famous song,That’s Amore, as a theme song about romantic love.
MORE MOONSHINE: the following is an Eliot poem that, like Prufrock, delights me. The movie treats the moon in—I would say—the traditional way; the moon in the movie is a real, substantial image of romantic love. In the poem, however, the CG is continually trying to deny that reality, trying to dismiss the notion of love and romance, put out the serious light of the moon and deny its function as an image so that he can bed the young lady. What’s delightful about the poem is that the lady, “she,” continually asserts her presence (and humanity) and brings him to the point where he must take the relationship to a new level of meaning. “Are we then so serious?”
At this point he must either answer, it seems to me, “Yes” or “No.” She will not be just a sexual object for him! There’s a renaissance poem, “They flee from me who sometime did me seek,” where a similar experience is explored.
I’ve had the movie note since last summer; poor health (and laziness) had slowed me down a bit, so that I didn’t copy the Eliot poem until today. (5/11/21)
‘’CONVERSATION GALANTE” (T.S. Eliot)
I observe: “Our sentimental friend the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester John’s balloon
Or an old battered lantern held aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress.”
She then: “How you digress!”
And I then: “Someone frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine, music which we seize
To body forth our vacuity.”
She then: “Does this refer to me?”
“Oh no, it is I who am inane.”
“You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute—“
And— “Are we then so serious?”
The real question for the literature and life (being) is what does the moon truly mean? On the one hand it’s an object in our sky bearing human footprints; on the other it’s an image that points beyond itself, as real images do. See too The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare, of course.