The final episode in Ulysses seems more like a coda then a continuation. Then again, it is rich with the signs of a new beginning, so maybe it's better to say it feels like the beginning of a connected but different work. In either case, the novel has seemed to resolve itself by the end of Ithaca. The plotless last episode adds nothing to the story.
Femininity has been a symbol for creative acts throughout the novel, and so it also seems to read as the sort of wellspring for the book, for Bloom's quest, and maybe for the lives of all the Dubliners in the novel. The virtue of the chapter here is the remarkably ambiguous power of Molly's. One critic has compared her voice to Gerty's. Though far coarser and not nearly as hypocritical, I can see where this interpretation is coming from. Molly is not an earth mother, nor a goddess. She is a lower middle class woman who had an unhappy childhood, but who is still intent on getting something out of life.
And for Bloom, that's enough.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A woman's hand writing
Full disclosure: I haven't finished "Ithaca" yet. Partly because I just finished a screening of a brutal little movie,"The Celebration", about incest, suicide, and family gatherings which I can't get my head around it, and partly because I want this chapter to last a little longer. Also because I'm graduating in 2 weeks.
I'll post again on this chapter, but what's stuck with me in the first 30 pages or so is an image of a woman's hand writing. It first appears in answer to the question "Were their views on some points divergent". Stephen attributes the strange day to the "reapparition of a matutinal (def: of, relating to, or occuring in the morning) cloud...at first no bigger than a woman's hand".
The hand reappears in Stephen's reaction to Bloom's viral ad campaign of having two women write in a carriage drawn through the streets, when Stephen imagines a woman's hand writing "Queen's Hotel", the hotel where Bloom's father killed himself. The image occurs again in the list of Molly's shortcomings; she leaves a pen in the ink jar after writing letters.
The image is mysterious and haunting, and finally indecipherable. There are some connections to be made: it works as a bridge to the next chapter, Molly's monologue; the letters written by Milly and Martha; and as an image of creativity, feminine (like the metaphor in "Oxen of the Sun").
But at this point in the chapter it seems mostly discrete from the motifs and themes raised previously, and more powerful because of it. There are so many lines to draw between like things in Ulysses, that at times I felt like the novel could almost be "solved", interpreted satisfactorily, like an equation. The strange image of the woman's hand cannot; it exists on its own terms.
I'll post again on this chapter, but what's stuck with me in the first 30 pages or so is an image of a woman's hand writing. It first appears in answer to the question "Were their views on some points divergent". Stephen attributes the strange day to the "reapparition of a matutinal (def: of, relating to, or occuring in the morning) cloud...at first no bigger than a woman's hand".
The hand reappears in Stephen's reaction to Bloom's viral ad campaign of having two women write in a carriage drawn through the streets, when Stephen imagines a woman's hand writing "Queen's Hotel", the hotel where Bloom's father killed himself. The image occurs again in the list of Molly's shortcomings; she leaves a pen in the ink jar after writing letters.
The image is mysterious and haunting, and finally indecipherable. There are some connections to be made: it works as a bridge to the next chapter, Molly's monologue; the letters written by Milly and Martha; and as an image of creativity, feminine (like the metaphor in "Oxen of the Sun").
But at this point in the chapter it seems mostly discrete from the motifs and themes raised previously, and more powerful because of it. There are so many lines to draw between like things in Ulysses, that at times I felt like the novel could almost be "solved", interpreted satisfactorily, like an equation. The strange image of the woman's hand cannot; it exists on its own terms.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Chapter 16
The "Emmaeus" episode drifts sleepily through Bloom's thoughts in the cab shelter, reiterating mostly familiar themes in new terms, with cliches and loopy digressions. The language is purposefully hazy, veering off on tangents and mixing up characters (e.g., the referrent of "he" is often unclear), and reflects the time of night and Bloom's (and maybe Joyce's) fatigue.
Cliches pepper the sentences, in a unqiue way. Usually a cliche is a shortcut for a writer. Here Joyce uses a superabundance of tired language to represent the narrative from different angles, to state and then overstate: "En route, to his taciturn, and not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion, Mr. Bloom, who at all events, was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober..." The technique has the effect when read of forcing the reader to question of the authority and the reality of what's been written, which is the exact opposite intended effect of a cliche. Right?
The narrative seems to make itself sleepy, as it often cuts itself off with an "etcetera" or an impatient change of topic. "We can't change the country. Can we change the subject?"
The topics though are also cliched, or over discussed, in the context of the novel: the results of the horse race; adultery; Molly and her "Spanish eyes"; music; Parnell and Irish Nationalism: i.e., all things we've read about before. Here they are written about in the tricky seemingly straightforward style of the newspaper Bloom glances at and addressed at face value to the greatest degree yet (though really its a layering of conflicting facts).
The sailor Murphy is a double for Bloom, or more like a false Bloom. He claims to seen many strange things, been separated from his wife, and to have a son like Telemachus who's gone to sea. He is a sailor/adventurer but unlike Bloom he gets no real thrill out of his experiences. It's strongly hinted he has invented some or all of his stories: Bloom thinks "referring to friend Sinbad", mocking him. But then, he goes on to add his story about the Italians is, maybe, plauisble. The sailor says his favorite book was Arabian Nights which seems like his inspiration for his tales.
Cliches pepper the sentences, in a unqiue way. Usually a cliche is a shortcut for a writer. Here Joyce uses a superabundance of tired language to represent the narrative from different angles, to state and then overstate: "En route, to his taciturn, and not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion, Mr. Bloom, who at all events, was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober..." The technique has the effect when read of forcing the reader to question of the authority and the reality of what's been written, which is the exact opposite intended effect of a cliche. Right?
The narrative seems to make itself sleepy, as it often cuts itself off with an "etcetera" or an impatient change of topic. "We can't change the country. Can we change the subject?"
The topics though are also cliched, or over discussed, in the context of the novel: the results of the horse race; adultery; Molly and her "Spanish eyes"; music; Parnell and Irish Nationalism: i.e., all things we've read about before. Here they are written about in the tricky seemingly straightforward style of the newspaper Bloom glances at and addressed at face value to the greatest degree yet (though really its a layering of conflicting facts).
The sailor Murphy is a double for Bloom, or more like a false Bloom. He claims to seen many strange things, been separated from his wife, and to have a son like Telemachus who's gone to sea. He is a sailor/adventurer but unlike Bloom he gets no real thrill out of his experiences. It's strongly hinted he has invented some or all of his stories: Bloom thinks "referring to friend Sinbad", mocking him. But then, he goes on to add his story about the Italians is, maybe, plauisble. The sailor says his favorite book was Arabian Nights which seems like his inspiration for his tales.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Circe
I enjoy this chapter very very much and think it is a demonstration of limitless skill in developing, creatively, the book's preoccupations. But I could easily understand another reader's frustration with "Circe". Besides being very demanding on a reader (making demands on time, memory of the book, & sense of location within the book: like "Oxen of the Sun" the chapter jars the reader (more like "Circe" basically assualts the reader)), there is no true resolution, which I think is probably the fundamental or at least first learned joy of reading. I think it's a little bit of an acid test for the reader, who must really work at this chapter, and the interpretations drawn are going to really depend on the reading of the preceeding thirteen chapters.
Because in one way, "Circe" interrogates the reader and his or her interpretations of the novel to this point. Especially, to make of Bloom. The mirror we see his reflection in in the beginning of the episode, from four points of view, is a symbol of that. He begins the chapter literally having shit his pants, and then he is put on trial, forced to confess his fetishes, turned into a woman, raped, and sacrificed. Simulatenously he is praised as a reformer, a religious figure, and a god. The different views of Bloom do seem to follow more than a dialectic or two sided course; it really seems more like four sided, with participants entering the stage from many dimensions (like Virag, Bloom's ancient progenitor and keeper of the Bloom manhood).
Critics seem to have reached a consensus, that the really weird parts of the chapter are Bloom's hallucinations. I disagree. Clearly they are from his point of view, as they feature things from his consciousness: the soap, the potato. But they seem more like a gestalt of the novel. I would argue that Ulysses' is a closed universe, with a limited numbers of objects (literally it has a vocabularly of about 30,000 different words). "Circe" then seems like encyclopaedic encapsulation of the book, of its themes, characters, motifs, and previous action, in conjugation. (You could also say "Circe" is a written as a dialetic disguised as a synecdoche of the novel; both words appear within pages of each other at the end of the chapter.)
Conjugation describes the chapter well because 1) the characters' defining attributes, their tehnics, are shown in various progressions, as a conjugation of a verb 2) the theme of conjugates, i.e. opposing pairs or doubles features heavily 3) conjugal relationships, especially Bloom and Molly 4) sex & the brothel.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Nausicaa
This chapter is split into two prose styles. The first half is written like a novel for women, not unlike Sweets of Sin. It ends with Bloom ejaculating as the fireworks reach their climax. The second half of "Nausicaa" is written in the stream of consciousness style Joyce has established in "Lotus Eaters", "Calypso" and "Hades".
The second half of the chapter gives the reader some biographical information about Bloom, Molly, and Milly: where they used to live, Molly's first kiss and memories of Milly as a little girl. It also features Bloom's reflections about menstruation, the moon, and sailors, and so is thematically important.
But the first half of the chapter is undoubtedly more interesting in itself. In this set piece, Joyce skewers both mediocre prose and lower middle class ambition. The tepid writing confuses phrases like the "apple of dischord" and the "golden rule". It shows the Virgin Mary as the (obviously unrealistic) feminine ideal for Irish girls. Its observations of what a teenaged girl might imagine married life to be are a sad and absurd contrast to the reality of other marriages in Ulysses.
At about the same time as Bloom begins masturbating to Gerty Macdowell, cracks begin to appear beneath the veneer of placid prose. Gerty's friends become ugly. One of them is hinted to be a lesbian. The twin boys turn into brats. I interpret these contradictions as reality shining through the cliches of romance novel, at the same time as sexuality is hinted at it in Bloom's onanism. What lies beneath romance, and guides it, sex, also overtakes it, in the form of children, middle age, your children's children, and eventually death. I interpret this as Joyce implying Tthat language cannot completely lie, that even at its most tired and inexpressive it begins to break down and suggest truth.
Who's thoughts are being channeled in the first half of Nausicaa? Is it Bloom, in an extended and vivid fantasy? Is it Gerty, in another example of the unresricted narration Joyce employs? Could it be some amalgam of both, suggesting a fanciful/fantasical meeting of minds? Or is it a third character, a new narrator invented for the reasons I've intrepreted?
The second half of the chapter gives the reader some biographical information about Bloom, Molly, and Milly: where they used to live, Molly's first kiss and memories of Milly as a little girl. It also features Bloom's reflections about menstruation, the moon, and sailors, and so is thematically important.
But the first half of the chapter is undoubtedly more interesting in itself. In this set piece, Joyce skewers both mediocre prose and lower middle class ambition. The tepid writing confuses phrases like the "apple of dischord" and the "golden rule". It shows the Virgin Mary as the (obviously unrealistic) feminine ideal for Irish girls. Its observations of what a teenaged girl might imagine married life to be are a sad and absurd contrast to the reality of other marriages in Ulysses.
At about the same time as Bloom begins masturbating to Gerty Macdowell, cracks begin to appear beneath the veneer of placid prose. Gerty's friends become ugly. One of them is hinted to be a lesbian. The twin boys turn into brats. I interpret these contradictions as reality shining through the cliches of romance novel, at the same time as sexuality is hinted at it in Bloom's onanism. What lies beneath romance, and guides it, sex, also overtakes it, in the form of children, middle age, your children's children, and eventually death. I interpret this as Joyce implying Tthat language cannot completely lie, that even at its most tired and inexpressive it begins to break down and suggest truth.
Who's thoughts are being channeled in the first half of Nausicaa? Is it Bloom, in an extended and vivid fantasy? Is it Gerty, in another example of the unresricted narration Joyce employs? Could it be some amalgam of both, suggesting a fanciful/fantasical meeting of minds? Or is it a third character, a new narrator invented for the reasons I've intrepreted?
Cyclopes
The "Cylcops" episode is written in a playful mock epic tone that appropiates Homer's catalogues, Bible stories, Irish folk lore, society and sports reporting, and parliamentary debate. The melange of styles most resembles the "skit" the Citizen reads to Joe Hynes et. al., about the tribal chieftain meeting Queen Victoria, which parodies a news story by coolly reporting including absurdities alongside facts. The cavalier tone makes the argument between Bloom and the Citizen seem ridiculous, and in fact all the men's arguing, about the Gaelic language and sports, and foot and mouth disease, cannot be taken seriously. (Or rather, it cannot be read at face value, but rather as a barely disguised attack on Bloom's identity. Identity is the crucial theme in the Odyssey's Cyclops episode; Odysseus pretends to be nobody, than yells at Polyphemus his true identity.) Bloom does take the debates seriously; as the anonymous narrator notes, he will discuss anything. The reader is shown Bloom's power of reasoning and poise in a debate, but Joyce's inclusion of the ridiculously discursive prose digressions ironically inform the reader that Bloom's ability to "see" or understand life is, while quantatively better than the other men's, still blind to the greater scope of life.
By the greater scope of life, I mean the range of singular experiences Joyce shows are facing turn of the century Dubliners, which he seems to argue can't be abstracted to sociology (drinking) or politics (home rule), but which can only be understood truly on a personal, singular level: Dignam's son, Rudy Bloom, Molly's infidelity, Stephen's mother's death, and even the bigotry Bloom has to suffer. The poignancy of these individual cases have the power to be "seen", or felt by others; though sadly they are mostly suffered through alone.
References to eyes abound. My favorite is the "I" relating the half of the chapter in slang, the direct presentation of the action. It reminds me of a John Barth passage about first person narration: "Blind 'I', seeing and signifying nothing". The narrator is blind to the reader, in that we know nothing about him and can't guess who he is (the smart money may be on Simon Deadalus, whose name is full of 'eye' sounds); he is also blind to the true action in the episode, concerned only with the action rather than the ideas motivating the Citizen and Bloom.
By the greater scope of life, I mean the range of singular experiences Joyce shows are facing turn of the century Dubliners, which he seems to argue can't be abstracted to sociology (drinking) or politics (home rule), but which can only be understood truly on a personal, singular level: Dignam's son, Rudy Bloom, Molly's infidelity, Stephen's mother's death, and even the bigotry Bloom has to suffer. The poignancy of these individual cases have the power to be "seen", or felt by others; though sadly they are mostly suffered through alone.
References to eyes abound. My favorite is the "I" relating the half of the chapter in slang, the direct presentation of the action. It reminds me of a John Barth passage about first person narration: "Blind 'I', seeing and signifying nothing". The narrator is blind to the reader, in that we know nothing about him and can't guess who he is (the smart money may be on Simon Deadalus, whose name is full of 'eye' sounds); he is also blind to the true action in the episode, concerned only with the action rather than the ideas motivating the Citizen and Bloom.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Chapter 11
The sirens in Chapter 11 are not Mina (pun on Midas, gold) Kennedy and Lydia Douce (pun on deuce, i.e. the chapter's two noted motif; and on a certain hygenic device). The true siren is the evocative power of music, especially lyrics; effectively, like many of the preceding chapters, language is the Homeric analogue in "Sirens". As we have seen happen before, Joyce's prose adopts a new quality here, musicality. Its allure (a buzz word in 'Sirens') is misleading, and for Bloom, potentially deadly.
As he sits in the dining room of the Ormond listening to Stephen's uncle Richie Goulding, Bloom thinks "Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory." The lines apply not just to Goulding's anecdote, but to Bloom's internal monlogue, and in fact all communications. Truly lyrical discourse, Joyce argues in this passage, can persuade one of lies, or dissuade one from his goal. "Taking my motives he twined and turned them": the message is lost in the beauty of the medium. The lyrics of Simon's song momentarily convince him: "Yes: all is lost", i.e., because Boylan has seduced Molly, he has failed.
The sing song rhythm, always in twos, reinforces this theme: the horses hooves', bronze gold, jingle jangle, etc. The alliteration and easy rhythm is appealing, but lacks depth ("gold from afar, bronze from anear"), and so is ultimately false. Besides, music as Bloom notes, is to be found anywhere, even in the sounds of farts. You can't lose your head over it. That is not to say that Joyce's musical language in "Sirens" isn't appealing. The greatest pleasure in this chapter is derived from it. And consider the alternative, presented by Pat the deaf waiter: "Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went." The language is dead on the page. Like Odysseus, the trick is to be able to hear the beauty of the siren song without being persuaded by it.
Kevin in his post writes that Joyce will write a very poetic line and on the last word break the structure, saying "fuuuuuuck that" to strict ideals. Yes. See above.
As he sits in the dining room of the Ormond listening to Stephen's uncle Richie Goulding, Bloom thinks "Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory." The lines apply not just to Goulding's anecdote, but to Bloom's internal monlogue, and in fact all communications. Truly lyrical discourse, Joyce argues in this passage, can persuade one of lies, or dissuade one from his goal. "Taking my motives he twined and turned them": the message is lost in the beauty of the medium. The lyrics of Simon's song momentarily convince him: "Yes: all is lost", i.e., because Boylan has seduced Molly, he has failed.
The sing song rhythm, always in twos, reinforces this theme: the horses hooves', bronze gold, jingle jangle, etc. The alliteration and easy rhythm is appealing, but lacks depth ("gold from afar, bronze from anear"), and so is ultimately false. Besides, music as Bloom notes, is to be found anywhere, even in the sounds of farts. You can't lose your head over it. That is not to say that Joyce's musical language in "Sirens" isn't appealing. The greatest pleasure in this chapter is derived from it. And consider the alternative, presented by Pat the deaf waiter: "Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went." The language is dead on the page. Like Odysseus, the trick is to be able to hear the beauty of the siren song without being persuaded by it.
Kevin in his post writes that Joyce will write a very poetic line and on the last word break the structure, saying "fuuuuuuck that" to strict ideals. Yes. See above.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Wandering Rocks
"Wandering Rocks" is thrillingly systematic, and its method/logic is both large and small, ranging on a scale from trash in the street to the cosmos. Intpreteting this chapter requires the reader to identify how the smaller and greater mechanics of Ulyssess' universe are at play. Most important I think is to identify agency and influence in the interacting systems that controls this chapter.
There are a number of symbols for this in the chapter.
One is Tom Rochford's invention, a device (I think) for horse races to show what race is on. Its "rising columns of disks" control the disks that are inserted: "He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, woobled a little, ceased, ogling them: six." The vignettes work the same way, including the "woobling", which corresponds to the insertion of lines from later vignettes in the earlier ones. The invention then is a symbol for Joyce's narrative method in 'Wandering Rocks', which is numerical, juxtapositional, all the qualities of the machine.
Another symbol, which has narrative and thematic overtones, is Parnell's brother's game of chess he is playing against an unnamed and unseen "foe"; we are tempted to think it is a symbolic Englishman, though he could be playing against himself. (The scene is in the D.B.C.) He "translates a white bishop": This is clearly an analogue for Conmee, whose movements open the chapter. When Joyce zooms in on that bishop, Conmee seems to retroactively lose all agency. "An instant after, under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more upon a working corner". Working corner has a double meaning, of course, on street corner and a corner of the board; with Conmee as a shield, he continues with the workmanlike aspect of the game.
The chess game has complex analogues throughout the chapter. The viceregal entourage can easily be spotted as his "foe's" rook. The tower Ned Lambert shows to the Rev. Love is most likely the white castle. The whitehatted H.E.L.Y.'S men are pawns, whose inane movements mask the true action (though in a sense, the pawn's actions are the true action, and the game can be followed by divining how their movements disguise the more important pieces'; this is another degree of the great and small dynamics that riddle the chapter). The black team is less well defined, though it would include Stephen and Bloom and Dignam's son, all in black for mourning.
The tmost complex system is the geography of the streets and the character's movements along them.
Amanda in her entry mentions the constant referall to the character's names, which makes us aware of the narrator. I agree; I think ultimately, Joyve wants us to question whether he has agency over the sprawling cast, or whether he is part of a larger system.
There are a number of symbols for this in the chapter.
One is Tom Rochford's invention, a device (I think) for horse races to show what race is on. Its "rising columns of disks" control the disks that are inserted: "He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, woobled a little, ceased, ogling them: six." The vignettes work the same way, including the "woobling", which corresponds to the insertion of lines from later vignettes in the earlier ones. The invention then is a symbol for Joyce's narrative method in 'Wandering Rocks', which is numerical, juxtapositional, all the qualities of the machine.
Another symbol, which has narrative and thematic overtones, is Parnell's brother's game of chess he is playing against an unnamed and unseen "foe"; we are tempted to think it is a symbolic Englishman, though he could be playing against himself. (The scene is in the D.B.C.) He "translates a white bishop": This is clearly an analogue for Conmee, whose movements open the chapter. When Joyce zooms in on that bishop, Conmee seems to retroactively lose all agency. "An instant after, under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more upon a working corner". Working corner has a double meaning, of course, on street corner and a corner of the board; with Conmee as a shield, he continues with the workmanlike aspect of the game.
The chess game has complex analogues throughout the chapter. The viceregal entourage can easily be spotted as his "foe's" rook. The tower Ned Lambert shows to the Rev. Love is most likely the white castle. The whitehatted H.E.L.Y.'S men are pawns, whose inane movements mask the true action (though in a sense, the pawn's actions are the true action, and the game can be followed by divining how their movements disguise the more important pieces'; this is another degree of the great and small dynamics that riddle the chapter). The black team is less well defined, though it would include Stephen and Bloom and Dignam's son, all in black for mourning.
The tmost complex system is the geography of the streets and the character's movements along them.
Amanda in her entry mentions the constant referall to the character's names, which makes us aware of the narrator. I agree; I think ultimately, Joyve wants us to question whether he has agency over the sprawling cast, or whether he is part of a larger system.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Chapter 7
Joyce juxtaposes the intense death imagery of the "Hades" episode with the chaos of daily life: the first images in Chapter Seven are of speeding omnibuses. Joyce tightens the focus on the Post Office in the second segment, ending with the image of shoe cleaners. Then in a radical twist in the third episode "Gentelman of the Press", he draws it even closer, to an advertisement. The image is just as life like as the preceding ones, except it is unchanging, as evidenced by the palindromic repetition with which Joyce describes it.
The progression between these segments draw attention to a paramount theme in the chapter, as oratory and the art of convincing others is so prominent here, and in fact in the work in general: representations as they relate to the thing being represented. We've talked in class a little about Ulysesses' realism: that the stream of consciousness is not actually very realistic. I agree, but I don't think it's failure. The work I think is not supposed to invisibly or seamlessly capture reality, but rather, Joyce draws attention time and again to the fact that the novel is an artifice, and so is inherently limited.
In "Clever, Very", in describing/thinking about Myles Crawford's mouth, Dedalus observes/writes "Why did you write than then?" The line confounds an easy explanation, just as it's tough to describe the novel as realistic or constructed (the title of the segment underlines its slippery meta qualities). Moreover, the hard work of decoding this chapter, even at the simple level of recognzining who is speaking, draws further attention to the problem. Most obviously pointing to the artifice of writing and the constructed qualities of writing are the headlines marking each episode
The characters are deepened somewhat, Bloom as a target, pushed aside by the opening door, and harassed because he is actually working; and Stephen as awkard in his abilities (Pisgah Palestine and the Parable of the Plums) and undecided if he wants to join the "press gang". But I think more important here than the character and the progression of the plot is the verbal volleys and an examination of discourse.
The progression between these segments draw attention to a paramount theme in the chapter, as oratory and the art of convincing others is so prominent here, and in fact in the work in general: representations as they relate to the thing being represented. We've talked in class a little about Ulysesses' realism: that the stream of consciousness is not actually very realistic. I agree, but I don't think it's failure. The work I think is not supposed to invisibly or seamlessly capture reality, but rather, Joyce draws attention time and again to the fact that the novel is an artifice, and so is inherently limited.
In "Clever, Very", in describing/thinking about Myles Crawford's mouth, Dedalus observes/writes "Why did you write than then?" The line confounds an easy explanation, just as it's tough to describe the novel as realistic or constructed (the title of the segment underlines its slippery meta qualities). Moreover, the hard work of decoding this chapter, even at the simple level of recognzining who is speaking, draws further attention to the problem. Most obviously pointing to the artifice of writing and the constructed qualities of writing are the headlines marking each episode
The characters are deepened somewhat, Bloom as a target, pushed aside by the opening door, and harassed because he is actually working; and Stephen as awkard in his abilities (Pisgah Palestine and the Parable of the Plums) and undecided if he wants to join the "press gang". But I think more important here than the character and the progression of the plot is the verbal volleys and an examination of discourse.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Chapter 6
In this episode Joyce presents an inherent problem in narratives, and life: death, or THE END, as the great unknown may render all that comes before it null. Bloom's incredible perceptions are no match for the grave, and his daydreaming about the dead, like the nail catching their flesh (they bleed and they don't) and the telegraph by which they can speak to the living, are ludicrous (& funny). If the consciousness of Bloom and Stephen seem overwhelming, then Joyce's alternative is so very underwhelming: the dead as completely separate, in their own universe so to speak, as to make the protagonists' worlds seem at least vivacious.
There's a lot of Irish in this chapter. Some good old Irish sentiment, i.e., "They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't already broken" (line had me choking up, a bit). And Irish types: Dedalus as the redfaced blowhard, Powers the hypocrite, and Cunningham the Blarney speaking, sensitive but insubstantial lad. Not to mention the sycophantic caretaker and the fascistic John Henry Menton. Having Bloom as the observer gives Joyce a good lens for observing these sons of Erin; his mind is so his own, it helps to see others clearly through him.
The chapter is human, and touching, in Ulysses unique way. There's no flinching from the ugly, but it's not fetishsived. Rather the awful, the offal, and the beautiful are put on the same level, and considered realistically.
There's a lot of Irish in this chapter. Some good old Irish sentiment, i.e., "They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't already broken" (line had me choking up, a bit). And Irish types: Dedalus as the redfaced blowhard, Powers the hypocrite, and Cunningham the Blarney speaking, sensitive but insubstantial lad. Not to mention the sycophantic caretaker and the fascistic John Henry Menton. Having Bloom as the observer gives Joyce a good lens for observing these sons of Erin; his mind is so his own, it helps to see others clearly through him.
The chapter is human, and touching, in Ulysses unique way. There's no flinching from the ugly, but it's not fetishsived. Rather the awful, the offal, and the beautiful are put on the same level, and considered realistically.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Chapter 5
The nuance of Leopold Bloom is a huge artistic accomplishment, and Joyce has a seemingly limitless number of tools at his disposal to refine Bloom's character.
In Chapter Five, when Bloom leaves his house in the morning, there is the sense that he has begun his quest. A tracking shot has Bloom walking past storefronts, Joyce effortlessly breaks into Bloom's conscious ("Could have give that address too") with an aside that won't make sense until Bloom reaches the post office, jarring and alerting the reader, then we're back into the scene. The precision of detail of what is observed, and how it is observed, evokes a bifurcated, but simultaneous, experience which I can only compare to Cubism, if the paintings also took place in time. Maybe the best examples are from Martha's letter, when Bloom reimagines it replacing flowers for nouns (letters glanced over are a running gag), and when he is in the chemist's.
But, what do I mean by Bloom's quest? In Chapter 4, Bloom seemed to be imprisoned. Now as he leaves the house in the morning, he is leaving a certain safety, and encountering the myriad puzzles of turn of the century Dublin. There is a momentous feel to the chapter. Paradoxically, so acute and unflinching are the details, there is nearly a documentary quality to what is observed. Events are both inflated and deflated.
One technique Joyce uses to very good effect in this chapter to create that tone, is the Homeric motif of Lotophagi. Chapter Five corresponds to Book Nine of the Odyssey, and Joyce's Lotus Eaters are well adapted: the British soldiers in the post office ad, the churchgoers, and the horses at their feedbags are all actually frightening images, especially to Bloom (although humorously, because they frighten Bloom, they also seem amusing to the reader). At church, Bloom's naive and nearly humanistic idea of Catholic service is contrasted with the fire and brimstone actuality of it, and the specter of kneeling, slavishly crossing themselves. The horses eat: "No use thinking of it anymore. Nosebag time." And the soldiers are "half baked, hypnotized like".
Against the dangers of advertising and the church, Bloom has some powers (He is, after all, the story's hero). One is sight. "Clearly I can see today," Bloom thinks while staring at a lady. The perception is clearly multifaceted; Bloom can see a lot of things that others can not. Often his perception is in service to another power, his "flower". The lotus-eaters are castrated: the horses are geldings, the church's best singers are castratos, and the soldiers seem to have subsumed their sexuality into national identity. The frisson of a sexual thought keeps Bloom from forgetting.
Consider, the Lotus-eaters had forgotten their homeland completely. Bloom would like to forget that Blaze Boylan has an assignation with his wife; a few time we see the cognitive dissonance at work, when he gets a letter from his Martha, for instance, or when he thinks about confession and what the women confess to ("chachachachachacha"ing). He may disguise his thoughts, but he cannot forget them, he knows what Molly's up to. To "forget his homeland", would be to give up the love, sexual and otherwise, in his marriage.
In Chapter Five, when Bloom leaves his house in the morning, there is the sense that he has begun his quest. A tracking shot has Bloom walking past storefronts, Joyce effortlessly breaks into Bloom's conscious ("Could have give that address too") with an aside that won't make sense until Bloom reaches the post office, jarring and alerting the reader, then we're back into the scene. The precision of detail of what is observed, and how it is observed, evokes a bifurcated, but simultaneous, experience which I can only compare to Cubism, if the paintings also took place in time. Maybe the best examples are from Martha's letter, when Bloom reimagines it replacing flowers for nouns (letters glanced over are a running gag), and when he is in the chemist's.
But, what do I mean by Bloom's quest? In Chapter 4, Bloom seemed to be imprisoned. Now as he leaves the house in the morning, he is leaving a certain safety, and encountering the myriad puzzles of turn of the century Dublin. There is a momentous feel to the chapter. Paradoxically, so acute and unflinching are the details, there is nearly a documentary quality to what is observed. Events are both inflated and deflated.
One technique Joyce uses to very good effect in this chapter to create that tone, is the Homeric motif of Lotophagi. Chapter Five corresponds to Book Nine of the Odyssey, and Joyce's Lotus Eaters are well adapted: the British soldiers in the post office ad, the churchgoers, and the horses at their feedbags are all actually frightening images, especially to Bloom (although humorously, because they frighten Bloom, they also seem amusing to the reader). At church, Bloom's naive and nearly humanistic idea of Catholic service is contrasted with the fire and brimstone actuality of it, and the specter of kneeling, slavishly crossing themselves. The horses eat: "No use thinking of it anymore. Nosebag time." And the soldiers are "half baked, hypnotized like".
Against the dangers of advertising and the church, Bloom has some powers (He is, after all, the story's hero). One is sight. "Clearly I can see today," Bloom thinks while staring at a lady. The perception is clearly multifaceted; Bloom can see a lot of things that others can not. Often his perception is in service to another power, his "flower". The lotus-eaters are castrated: the horses are geldings, the church's best singers are castratos, and the soldiers seem to have subsumed their sexuality into national identity. The frisson of a sexual thought keeps Bloom from forgetting.
Consider, the Lotus-eaters had forgotten their homeland completely. Bloom would like to forget that Blaze Boylan has an assignation with his wife; a few time we see the cognitive dissonance at work, when he gets a letter from his Martha, for instance, or when he thinks about confession and what the women confess to ("chachachachachacha"ing). He may disguise his thoughts, but he cannot forget them, he knows what Molly's up to. To "forget his homeland", would be to give up the love, sexual and otherwise, in his marriage.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Calypso
Leopold Bloom is a prisoner, and imprisonment has made him extremely humane. Its a sensitivity directed to the entire Ulyssesian universe and all its contents (it knows no bounds). The opening paragraph of the chapter, which has Bloom as a civilized savage, belies his humanity; Bloom realizes that the "inner organs of beasts and fowls" he consumes are just that, something physical, once alive, still tinged with a "faint scent of urine". On p. 59, at the butcher's, Bloom seees a picture of a heifer in a field in a newspaper. The image fascinates him and he considers it from several angles: "He held the page aslant paitiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest."
These are quotidian objects of his sensitive consciousness; the tragic and truly affecting things in Bloom's life, we might imagine, would cripple him. The death of his son, and more immediately, the clues he gets that his much loved wife Molly (who has him practically serving her on hand and foot), these to Bloom must be truly devastating. But no, Joyce has a far more nuanced character: the tragedies Bloom has suffered have not made him into an obsessive, wringing his hands and cursing his fate, but rather made the world Bloom occupies fecund with meaning: "A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow."
An interesting passage has Bloom looking at Molly's pulp fiction, Ruby, the Pride of the Ring: "Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's. Had to look away..." From there he goes on to wonder about souls, specifically the deceased Dignam's soul.
Bloom is far and away my favorite character in Ulysses; his perception is so accute, and his feelings are so sensitive. He's on a mission: a mission of love.
These are quotidian objects of his sensitive consciousness; the tragic and truly affecting things in Bloom's life, we might imagine, would cripple him. The death of his son, and more immediately, the clues he gets that his much loved wife Molly (who has him practically serving her on hand and foot), these to Bloom must be truly devastating. But no, Joyce has a far more nuanced character: the tragedies Bloom has suffered have not made him into an obsessive, wringing his hands and cursing his fate, but rather made the world Bloom occupies fecund with meaning: "A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow."
An interesting passage has Bloom looking at Molly's pulp fiction, Ruby, the Pride of the Ring: "Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's. Had to look away..." From there he goes on to wonder about souls, specifically the deceased Dignam's soul.
Bloom is far and away my favorite character in Ulysses; his perception is so accute, and his feelings are so sensitive. He's on a mission: a mission of love.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Proteus
"Proteus" is in one way an extended riff on the creative process; it's self aware and forces the reader to think about Joyce and his relation to writing Ulysses. Dedalus' struggle to capture the essence of experience as it happens, or in the "ineluctable" passage of time, is the struggle of authorship. Authorship of one's experience, and by extension, of records of that experience.
The process fascinates Dedalus; he is unable to stop his thoughts, first from controlling or authoring the way he experiences his walk along the beach, and then from spiraling out to simulatenous possible experiences, like visiting his Uncle Richie. Joyce convinces us that he has in fact gone to his uncle's house. This forces the reader to intepret whether experiences are channeled from reality and narrated by the self, or whether all experience is in fact engineered.
The question becomes important again when Dedalus sees the cockle pickers. His fantasies about them are as real as anything else; in fact, they are all we reader's have to judge them. That is, there is no break between an objective and subjective, because the total experience is subjective. The reader has to become a participant and make his own assessments.
As much as he is fascinated by creation, Dedalus is equally intimidated by it, and especially by his powerlessness over it. By the end of the chapter, the few lines of poetry he is trying to write seemed to me like an escape from his thoughts and were experienced as a relief from the maelstrom of consciousness. Writing things down, fixing (as in a fixed reality) deadens Dedalu's experience, and there is no question that the lines he writes are less interesting than what he thinks. But given the tumult, which is more frighening because it is a quotididan tumult (notice that everything he thinks about is in his line of vision, and relates directly to what he is happening...there is no thinking about the future, beyond the next hour or so) a fixed, unshifting point must be experienced as a relief.
The process fascinates Dedalus; he is unable to stop his thoughts, first from controlling or authoring the way he experiences his walk along the beach, and then from spiraling out to simulatenous possible experiences, like visiting his Uncle Richie. Joyce convinces us that he has in fact gone to his uncle's house. This forces the reader to intepret whether experiences are channeled from reality and narrated by the self, or whether all experience is in fact engineered.
The question becomes important again when Dedalus sees the cockle pickers. His fantasies about them are as real as anything else; in fact, they are all we reader's have to judge them. That is, there is no break between an objective and subjective, because the total experience is subjective. The reader has to become a participant and make his own assessments.
As much as he is fascinated by creation, Dedalus is equally intimidated by it, and especially by his powerlessness over it. By the end of the chapter, the few lines of poetry he is trying to write seemed to me like an escape from his thoughts and were experienced as a relief from the maelstrom of consciousness. Writing things down, fixing (as in a fixed reality) deadens Dedalu's experience, and there is no question that the lines he writes are less interesting than what he thinks. But given the tumult, which is more frighening because it is a quotididan tumult (notice that everything he thinks about is in his line of vision, and relates directly to what he is happening...there is no thinking about the future, beyond the next hour or so) a fixed, unshifting point must be experienced as a relief.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Nestor
In the "Nestor" episode, Joyce develops Dedalus' social personality along two lines: his external behavior and his internal psychology. Unlike the "Telemachus" episode, Dedalus is shown around people who are not his peers. Rather they are his subordinates and his superior. The way he behaves around his students and his "mentor" Deasy give the reader a nuanced idea of who Dedalus is in the world.
Dedalus is awkward. His jokes and riddle fall flat on the boys. He cannot guage his audience, and must seem weird to their prepubscent perceptions. Like an adjunct professor, he is not inclined towards rules or norms. We see this in the way he responds to Armstrong, the class clown. Rather than punish the boy, he humours him. Also he does not favor Comyn, the teacher's pet, over the others; he has no special respect for the boy's pedantry. He doesn't care very much for what he's teaching them, recognizing it as rote learning of a certain class, not true edcuation.
With Sargent, Joyce develops Dedalus' empathy. The ironically named boy who asks for help with his algebra is not Dedalus' younger analogue; like Dedalus he is physically weak, but unlike him he is also stupid. Dedalus identication is misguided, then; it is more a reflection of his lingering sadness over his mother, who he melodramatically reflects "saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been". There is a sad humour to his heavy handed line of thought. Neither is Dedalus' identificaton with Sargent accurate, nor can his guilt ridden reflection be taken too seriously, and so the passage is ironic, but touchingly so. With Sargent we see Dedalus as, alas, a little boy.
Empathy and awkardness are at play with Deasy; the uncomfortable (and funny) conversation is pitch perfect. Importantly he does not ignore the man's request to have his letter published, he internally resolves to do it, despite the fact that he recognizes Deasy as a fool. More interesting to me are Dedalus' non sequitors: "Histor is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". "That is god...a shout in the street". Deasy's facile response is first (basically) "God is great"; and second "I am happier than you", which is undoubtedly true, but leaves the modernistic sentiment hanging in the air, for the reader to ponder.
Dedalus is awkward. His jokes and riddle fall flat on the boys. He cannot guage his audience, and must seem weird to their prepubscent perceptions. Like an adjunct professor, he is not inclined towards rules or norms. We see this in the way he responds to Armstrong, the class clown. Rather than punish the boy, he humours him. Also he does not favor Comyn, the teacher's pet, over the others; he has no special respect for the boy's pedantry. He doesn't care very much for what he's teaching them, recognizing it as rote learning of a certain class, not true edcuation.
With Sargent, Joyce develops Dedalus' empathy. The ironically named boy who asks for help with his algebra is not Dedalus' younger analogue; like Dedalus he is physically weak, but unlike him he is also stupid. Dedalus identication is misguided, then; it is more a reflection of his lingering sadness over his mother, who he melodramatically reflects "saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been". There is a sad humour to his heavy handed line of thought. Neither is Dedalus' identificaton with Sargent accurate, nor can his guilt ridden reflection be taken too seriously, and so the passage is ironic, but touchingly so. With Sargent we see Dedalus as, alas, a little boy.
Empathy and awkardness are at play with Deasy; the uncomfortable (and funny) conversation is pitch perfect. Importantly he does not ignore the man's request to have his letter published, he internally resolves to do it, despite the fact that he recognizes Deasy as a fool. More interesting to me are Dedalus' non sequitors: "Histor is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". "That is god...a shout in the street". Deasy's facile response is first (basically) "God is great"; and second "I am happier than you", which is undoubtedly true, but leaves the modernistic sentiment hanging in the air, for the reader to ponder.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Terrible Beauty
In my paper I want to look at Yeats' terrific and original sense of aesthetics. I think that beginning in his middle period, he often approached beauty as terrifying. Ecstasy is derived from the Latin for "terror", and this is the typical sort of Yeatsian ecstasy. Beauty offers the poet transcendence, but to a fiercer, more brutal plane. His aesthetics could be called awesome, in the older sense of the word.
Poem 311, "Ribh in Ecstasy", is instructive. The poem's speaker, surely a facet of the poet's own personality, describes sex between cosmic entities, "Godhead on Godhead". The potency of their union triggers a feeling of riveted powerlessness. The effect is heightened by the ominous next line "Some shadow fell". The last lines compare this cosmic sex to the average, every day encounter, amorous cries that...come" and then must return to routine.
The poem is also helpful for showing the connection between Yeat's aesthetics and poetics. The first lines, "What matter that you understood no word!/Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard/in broken sentences", gives the uneasy, almost inverse relationship between being very moved and being able to say, at what, or why. Some of Yeats' most beautiful poems are also his least comprehensible; the connection isn't accidental.
"Lapis Lazuli" describes the destruction of "Old civilisations" and the consequences, and finds joy in the apocalyptic topic. Yeats almost seems to be laughing at the prospect of war. Is it because he considers it inconsequential, given the great unknown forces he believed were guiding the world? Is the promise of rebirth, and new growth, enough to compensate for the casualties? The very beautiful lines that take us from a lapis lazuli statue into a scene on a hill, a "tragic scene" though not unbroken by the hint of new life in the form of flowering trees, are key. This is the mysterious "transfiguring" that links terror with beauty.
Poem 311, "Ribh in Ecstasy", is instructive. The poem's speaker, surely a facet of the poet's own personality, describes sex between cosmic entities, "Godhead on Godhead". The potency of their union triggers a feeling of riveted powerlessness. The effect is heightened by the ominous next line "Some shadow fell". The last lines compare this cosmic sex to the average, every day encounter, amorous cries that...come" and then must return to routine.
The poem is also helpful for showing the connection between Yeat's aesthetics and poetics. The first lines, "What matter that you understood no word!/Doubtless I spoke or sang what I had heard/in broken sentences", gives the uneasy, almost inverse relationship between being very moved and being able to say, at what, or why. Some of Yeats' most beautiful poems are also his least comprehensible; the connection isn't accidental.
"Lapis Lazuli" describes the destruction of "Old civilisations" and the consequences, and finds joy in the apocalyptic topic. Yeats almost seems to be laughing at the prospect of war. Is it because he considers it inconsequential, given the great unknown forces he believed were guiding the world? Is the promise of rebirth, and new growth, enough to compensate for the casualties? The very beautiful lines that take us from a lapis lazuli statue into a scene on a hill, a "tragic scene" though not unbroken by the hint of new life in the form of flowering trees, are key. This is the mysterious "transfiguring" that links terror with beauty.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Breaking it down: stanza by stanza, line by line
In this post I'd like to take a step back from sociopolitical and biographical details of W.B. Yeats' life and analyze the opening poem of The Tower, paying close attention to the language and poetics Yeats employs. This is difficult poetry; however, that doesn't preclude interpretations. In fact I'd argue that interpretations are necessary, that we must try to draw meaning from the lines, obscure as they may be. We can understand Yeats to be saying more than one thing at the same time, but this means that there is a range of, or multiple, coexistent (and interactive) but fixed interpretations, rather than than an interpretation that is nebulous, or nonexistent.
Sailing to Byzantium is a poem in four sections. Immediately this suggests to me the four seasons, particularly given Yeats' motif of cycles, passing time, mortality and the "gyre". The opening demonstrative "That is no country for old men" foreshadows what Yeats reveals in line 15, that he has "sailed the seas and come/to the holy city of Byzantium". QED, the journey of the title is already completed; it is a voyage written in the present perfect (this seems trivial, but will almost subconsciously resonate with the closing lines). Moving back, the first stanza is a catalogue of life, of what is "begotten, born, and dies". The magnificently paradoxical "dying generations" are along the thematic lines of the cyclical, death paired alongside generation. The middle lines of the stanza, "The salmon falls, the mackerel crowded seas,/Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long/Whatever is begotten, born, and dies", because there are full of stresses, read as busy, nearly chaotic: an echo of hectic, generative life. The rhythm in the last line of the stanza is much more restrained, to correspond with the idea of a detached "timeless, unageing intellect". We can summarize the meaning of the first stanza: The speaker of the poem, presumably an old man, finds himself irrelevant because of his age and inferred impotence; yet he recognizes something more lasting than those involved in the natural cycles of life, which is ignored by the "dying generations".
The second stanza makes clear the speaker's identity more clear. The first two lines seem to state inarguably that the speaker is an "aged man", and feels a certain impotence. However he has found a certain alternative: he is "but a paltry thing" unless "Soul clap its hands and sing", and "louder sing/for every tatter in its mortal dress". The more aged and decrepit the body, the stronger the "singing" should be. What this singing refers to is ambiguous at this point. However, as this is a poem and many poems are self referential, there is the definite possibility that "singing" could refer to writing poetry (this really is not even coded; singing and reciting poetry have an ancient connection beginning in classical poetics, and antiquity is on the line from the title; writing poetry must therefore be considered as a compelling extraction of singing). The next line almost seems like a lapse, a misplay by Yeat: 'Nor is there singing school but studying'. The singing school has no connection to the other elements of the poem, and feels forced by the meaning that is being conveyed by the next line, that singing is only learned via reflection on "Monuments of its own magnificence". The mellifluous alliteration is in line with the musicality of the singing metaphor and points further in the self referential direction. The last lines are the clearest in the stanza, and from them we can fix an almost certain interpretation: The speaker is returning to the Classical, to get in touch with the ageless eternally rejuvenating (Platonic and possibly, if the idea of singing as poetry has already convinced, Homeric) realms of antiquity. Note that this stanza must function on a metaphorical level, that the literal is simply nonsense: That monuments could teach singing, which would revitalize the soul, and that those monuments are located in Byzantium (Constantinople, Instabul).
The third stanza opens with the thrilling image of "sages standing in God's holy fire", a demonstration of the men's tenacity and a possible reference to the phoenix, which regenerates from the ash's of a fire and so is immortal. The line also seems to be a quasi classical invocation, as to a muse, suggesting that antiquity has already begun to influence the speaker. "As in a gold mosaic of a wall" is a knotty line, which we may not want to pin down. "Wall" suggests stability and lasting qualities (but maybe also ruins), while the metaphor could be read as correlating the sages to individual tiles and "God's holy fire" as the whole "gold mosaic", suggesting that meaning and power is granted by connection with a greater force or design. Then, Yeats would himself become part of this operation, would become an element within the "gyre" or another tile within the mosaic. The final four lines are simple by comparison: the speaker wants his human characteristics, his "heart" and his body ("dying animal") to be transformed and so by made immortal. "Artifice of eternity", like the mosaic, or singing, clearly seems to mean that immortality is crafted by creative acts; again, my tendency is to interpret this most immediately as poetry in general and this poem specifically.
The final stanza is rather fanciful, but also really clever. Here the speaker seems to have escaped the perils of aging, the "no country for old men", in fact the natural world entirely. Maybe that is a little exuberant, perhaps he has only yearned for this transformation: "Once out of nature I shall never take/My bodily form from any natural thing". Also, notice that the monuments of magnificence have shrunk to fine metalwork, and then baubles. Yeats suggests that the fountain of youth outlined in the poem may have its drawbacks. Many of the allusions crystallize here; the scene created is undoubtedly an ancient one (one that seems to be confabulated from different epochs, the Greek and Roman); singing is reinforced by the closing image of a golden bird "set upon a golden bough to sing". Perhaps the singing has become literally true? At a shallow level, yes, but the profitable association of singing with poetry yields a deeper interpretation. In the line "a form as Grecian goldsmiths make/Of hammered gold and gold ennameling" the artisanal aspect of the artifice seems like a match for Yeats "flexible (tensile, malleable) yet firm" poetics. And the closing line seems to perfectly capture the tradeoffs a natural life, i.e. one spent in the moment, and one spent writing (that is, the writing can never exist in the present moment, but only reflect "what is past, or passing, or to come") and also to be an avowal of the poetry that follows (that is, it is a suitable opening poem for the volume).
There is a mix of Christian, Greek, and Roman reference in the poem. Does this suggest a connection between the three, or does Yeats mean that all great works of art rooted in any school of thought can last?
Sunday, February 3, 2008
The Wind Among the Reeds
This volume is, like most of Yeats, multivalent. The consistent thread through these poems is the the "He"; this is the clue to a relationship which may be to poetry, or a love affair, or a god, or, to combine all three, to the Muse of lyrical verse...the emotion that is the course of the volume runs from the high spirited young, eager young poet, a virtuoso of the felt world to the dejected older poet who has lost use of his early love and grown philosophical.
Some of Yeats' concerns we can witness throughout his works are apparent in this collection, especially in the linchpin that ties the beginning poems to the last, 59 and 60, the Cap and Bells and The Valley of the Black Pig. The first poem seems to correspond to the two components of poetry, the heart and the soul: the soul, "blue" and wise, and the sweet tongued "red", whoch only together (and separate from the jester) have the power to charm the poem's young queen .
The Valley of the Black Pig is a poem obsessed with historicity. In the evening "dew dropped" hours, a motif throughout the volume, the narrator loses himself and seems to move into ancient, "unknown" epochs: we have the cromlech and the cairn, two symbols of ancient Gaelic culture, submitting to what must be assumed is the Roman empire. These are established as players in a dichotomy between rational and irrational, with the short term preference on the the masters of the "still star" but the realistic bet with the irrational to trump these empiricists.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
In the Seven Woods
'Your strength, that is so loft and fierce and kind,/It might call up a new age, calling to mind/The queens that were imagined long ago,/Is but half yours: he kneaded in the dough/Through the long years of youth, and who would have thought/It all, and more than it all, would come to naught/And that dear words meant nothing?'
He reminds his thoughts, or rather a disassociated self that believes them, that they would not exist without him. In fact, though, the youth who thought words "meant nothing", will be proven wrong; words, Yeats says, will last longer, will outlive the poet. The legendary "queens" can be resurrected by future generations, but it will be a different set of people "kneaded in the dough", i.e. actually alive, bringing them back to life
Poems 77~80 poems can all be seen as examples of Ellman's description of Yeats' conservativism. Ellman writes that Yeats' struggles with his enlightened father J.B. Yeats informed Yeats' vision: "like the avant garde in Paris today who, wishing to escape the older generation and finding that the older generation was Dadaist, surrealist, and rebellious, is obliged to attack from the point of view of the conservative." The seasonal metaphor of "In the Seven Woods" suggests that aesthetics, or even world views (specifically here a Romantic, though in important ways Modern concept of the world) are also cyclical, and that Yeats' will have its (second) turn.
"[S]ince his father spoke of rationalism with sympathy, and since revolt was stirring in his own bones, he looked round him for authority to contest the paternal position," Ellman writes. He adds that one way in which Yeats challenged his father was believing Christian dogma. The closing poems of In the Seven Woods are religious poems, but they are also subversive poems. "The Players ask for a Blessing on the Psalteries and on Themselves" is an invocation by believing singers and players to angels, "masters of the shining town", that they worship, to remember and save them. The music the players make will be immortal, but the players (or poets) themselves are not. The "weight of mortal hours", the "heavy history", everything that makes up the world we live in, is immaterial, a seeming argument against rationality and empiricism. Yeats writes desperately, as if the "Kinsmen of the Three in One", i.e. the Holy Trinity, are on their way "[T]hey hurry down", even as "[O]ur hands ebb away".
In the last poem, "Happy Townland", the Poet visits a quasi~Utopia that nevertheless leaves the reader uneasy. Here the "queens" of "Old Memory" are ressurected~though impersonally, "dancing, in a crowd". In some ways, this "townland/That we are riding to" is like the world of "The Arrow", i.e., the world of concepts and ideas. There is a Gnostic aspect to the story of the townland; apparently, its cosmology so powerfully transcends the physical world that it would crush ordinary men to hear about it. This is not an ordinary Christian afterlife, then (as the fox says, it is " 'The world's bane', not the world's salvation). However, it does have Christian mythology at work: it is guarded by the angels Michael and Gabriel, albeit in a mythological, shape shifting form.
"Adam's Curse", a scene with dialogue, is by far the most realistic, least allegorical of the poems. How does it offset the others?
In "Under the Moon", what relationship does the obscurity of the words read in the present day have to the conjuring power of the poem?
Is there a complacent and/or bourgeois aspect to these poems? Is it attractive? How?
Sunday, January 27, 2008
"The Madness of King Goll" & "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"
At the heart of both poems, Yeats is preoccupied with Ireland's ancien regime, with social change, and with modernity. Both poems feature narrators torn between the natural or felt, and immanent reality, and in both this is symptomatic of an identity paradox. Yeats as poet seems to be suffering his own (invented?) identity crisis by writing in formal, rhymed meter but employing ambiguous, difficult symbolism.
"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (dactylic hexameter? alternating on the last line of each stanza with pentameter, maybe in the style of classical poetics, and so pointing up the ancient vs. modern). The speaker longs for a monastic life in the country, where he will adopt older ways of living. In this slower world, time seems to become inverted: "midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow", suggesting an escape from aging. In the third and final stanza, the irony of the speaker's longing is suggested by his day to day surroundings, the modern infrastructure of "roadways" and "pavements grey". The disconnection between Yeat's speakers' longings is located in his "deep heart's core"; this may also be the only place where his desire will be fulfilled.
Questions There is a discrepancy between the speaker of "King Goll", and the title, which labels him "mad". Who should we believe, or to what degree is the "madness" of Goll ironic? What is Yeats' attitude to Goll, and those who would describe him as mad?
What does Yeats accomplish by making the connection between the "wires" and the "whirling and a wandering fire" ambiguous? Is "King Goll's" meaning diluted by the range of interpretations (Catholic, political, ontological)?
How are realistic details at play in "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"? Are the poem's description of the natural convincing? On how many levels?
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