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You are here: Home / Travel / Or Hear Old Triton Blow His Wreathed Horn

Or Hear Old Triton Blow His Wreathed Horn

February 25th, 2013 by Sallie Bingham in Travel 1 Comment

1.5kviews {views}

TritonThe beach here in southern California brings many thoughts to my mind, some of them more melancholy than I would wish: how lost I feel, at times, l without the panoply of nineteenth century quotations that enfolded me as a child, when memorizing poetry was my punishment, rather gladly endured, for various forms of misbehavior. The alternative was my mother’s high-heeled satin mule, a surprisingly effective weapon on my bare bottom.

There’s a great risk in waxing nostalgic for the good old days which were not good and are not even old, as Faulkner was quoted as saying about the past in the south: rampant discrimination, racism in all ifs most virulent forms (my parents’ generation freely used the term nigger), focused and powerful distrust of women generally and of powerful woman particularly, which will be one of the themes of my next book, a biography of Doris Duke.

But what has been lost is valuable, too, since it includes a shared heritage of literature, especially poetry, even though it was entirely the poetry of nineteenth century men.

I thought of this walking the beach early this morning, in the chill just after sunrise, watching a group of intrepid people plunge into the icy water without the benefit of wet suits and swim out further than I could see.

... what has been lost is valuable, too, since it includes a shared heritage of literature, especially poetry, even though it was entirely the poetry of nineteenth century men.

I wonder to what degree the faith we privileged people place in our physical wellbeing—while we have it—has replaced a perhaps less fragile faith in a benign power governing the world—a faith that only those people who attend AA meetings seem able to profess. Or those, perhaps even fewer, who go to church. No one in my extended family has access to either version.

The sea also in its nonhuman scale and its apparent invulnerability—apparent, only, since we are damaging it everywhere and all the time—provokes a solemnity that few other aspects of nature, other than high mountains, can evoke: that we are tiny, and lost, on these vast shores, where perhaps faith offered a glimpse of rescue.

One of the poems I memorized, as a child was Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much With Us.” What I made of this poem at eleven or twelve I don’t remember, but the cadence, if not the substance, lodged in my imagination.

Now, decades later, standing on the chilly beach, I remembered the lines near the end of the poem: “Then might I standing on this pleasant lea/Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn/Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea/Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”

That particular faith in the old Greek gods is so long gone we can’t take it seriously, but we can catch the longing for some belief, some sort of force, that might govern even the sea. Perhaps the bobbing heads of the dauntless swimmers steadily moving forward through the freezing water is an apt version for these times—the physical well-being and even more the daring that sends us to the tops of mountains, down icy slopes, into the path of avalanches, may be the faith that moves us moderns, but it’s a faith with severe limitations (we all grow old after all) and does not seem to have the melancholy reassurance of Wordsworth’s lines.

But how many remember them now?

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In Travel Faulkner Wordsworth California

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. QUENTIN says

    August 6th, 2021 at 2:40 am

    Standing on this pleasant lea, I’ve glimpsed that which would make me less forlorn tho I howl at sleeping flowers..
    I see little that is ours..
    dreaming for the pilgrim promised to the promised land, circled by the circus sand, with all memory at hand
    And the waving voice command
    Black Elk’s streams of praires’ rain giving stirrup
    heel down pain,
    Of another sun and grain
    Victorious.

    JF / WW/ RZ

    Love binds heaven to this earth Sallie xx

    Reply

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Taken By The Shawnee

Taken By The Shawnee

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Sallie Bingham introduces and reads from her latest work, Taken by the Shawnee.
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