Allen Ginsberg’s An Eastern Ballad:
I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.
I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild.
———-
I’m seeing this poem as the movement from a kind of innocence to experience, from being cosseted to becoming unbridled. It could also suggest being on the cusp of the movement from one kind of poetry, stock and conventional, to perhaps something unbounded and unformed in poetry.
In the first verse—maybe—he thinks of love, and what comes to mind is the moon, a traditional image and symbol for love and lovers. So maybe in his conventional conception of love, it’s faithful but blind—blind to what though: maybe other possibilities in love beyond faithfulness, and maybe beyond heterosexual faithfulness.
The moon moves in his thought—he “speaks of love that comes to mind”—but he can’t say anything about it but what is conventional, traditional and accept ed/able. The comfort of conformity to the acceptable, which is “perfect” in a stultified way, has made the moon, which is an image and symbol of love and lovers, bleak, which is to say, bare and cold.
(I don’t read this poem biographically necessarily, but Ginsberg was gay and him coming to terms with being gay may inform a dimension of what this poem may be thought to go to.)
But now, second verse, he sees the sea’s depths—and consider here the moon affecting the sea, and consider ocean depths beneath the surface; and he sees the earth’s darkness, maybe the experience side of the coin of existence, the other side innocence. He sees the dark side, wildness, radicalism, against convention’s strictures.
He has been asleep in his innocence, in his conventionality. (Btw, the depths of the sea is sometimes a metaphor for the unconscious.) Now he’s woken to become someone different, a child of the universe, another one, a different one. Now the world is wild for him.
As for the title, I’m not sure. The sun rises in the East. Does it rises as he wakens from his dream of darkness and depths from a sleep so long to the new-for-him wild world? And the ballad is a song and verse form inherited from England by America. Is the Eastern Ballad a merger of the two?
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Monday, April 27, 2020
Response To A Review Of Woody Allen’s A Propos Of Nothing
The Review:
https://quillette.com/2020/04/21/woody-allens-apropos-of-nothing-a-review/
Me:
As it happens, I’m just near finished reading Allen’s bio, maybe 25 pages or so to go, and I’ve been talking about it some with friends, including one friend who raves about it. I don’t. Nor do I like it as much as Evanier does, though I think it’s ok.
I’ll say that I’m one who doesn’t believe any of Mia Farrow’s charges against Allen, impressed as I am by Moses Farrow’s account of how monstrous she was and is, by his exoneration by the two long, thorough and expert investigations into the allegations, by Farrow’s failed attempt to void Allen’s adoption of Moses and Dylan, by no criminal charges and by Allen’s ability to adopt two baby girls despite the Farrow allegations, those adoptions requiring he be vetted by a different judge for each adoption.
The book is marred by too many one liners that don’t have the snap, crackle and pop of Allen’s original (especially stand up) comic brilliance.
It’s marred by Allen trying too hard to project an image of himself as a kind of unintellectual, street hustling, down to earth type of cracking-wise guy.
It’s marred by way too much self deprecation that finally comes across as humble-brag, especially as Allen keeps peppering his writing with all kinds of obscure references spanning the arts and sciences and as he keeps up an enormous amount of name checking to show us how widely and deeply he has taken in the arts and culture. He’s got the intellectual insecurity of an autodidact who never got beyond high school, which Allen didn’t, getting turfed out of NYU after one failed year.
It’s marred by his repeated jejune world view that life is “nasty, brutish and short,” compounded by his view that existence is meaningless, desperate and despair making. In all this he sounds like a college freshman who’s just read Sartre lying on his high thread count sheets in his comfy college dorm room with its fridge and pantry well stocked with expensive items courtesy of mummy and daddy, the fridge located right beside his new wall unit 64” flat screen smart tv.
His life belies his sincerity here.
And it’s marred as well by about its final 1/5th or so that’s pure gush about all the actors and actresses and others with whom he’s worked. And that 1/5th is without any insight or charm that might redeem the gushing.
And yet, despite all that mars it, the book is an easy, clever, fun, interesting and on occasion touching read.
As to this review, I’ve highlighted a few of the things said, not all, that struck me and I comment on them.
“He is not a sociable creature and calls himself a misanthrope.”
Allen certainly says this about himself. And yet, we’re adorned with recounting after recounting of all his friends, of all his constant socializing, of all the rich, famous and powerful people he’s met, befriended, dined with. Idiosyncratic and neurotic, he certainly comes across as, but as a misanthrope he does not.
———
“By planting the nude pictures of Soon-Yi, Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, where she would be likely to find them, Allen acted cruelly and never really looked back.”
This is at odds with Allen’s account of how the pictures were left on his mantle piece by accident and by how contingent were the circumstances of Farrow finding them. Evanier may not believe Allen’s account. But he in fairness owes Allen the benefit of his own explanation. That should come first with Evanier’s own opinion and reasons why he disbelieves Allen coming second.
——-
“And, most famous of all, there is Mia Farrow and her discovery of the nude pictures of Soon-Yi. In a way this was Allen’s ultimate taunt. It was unconscionable.”
See my above comment.
———-
“He would incorporate some of those memories into his comic masterpiece, Broadway Danny Rose.”
Not only do I agree with this but it’s also my favorite Allen movie.
——-
“I was struck by the cascade of films he’s created, over 50 of them, 25 among the best work any director has given us in the last 60 years.
...
His greatest film, Crimes and Misdemeanors, came soon after.”
This is critical nonsense. There is no Allen picture, not one of them, that enters the pantheon of the greatest films of the last 60 years. At best his best films are some combination of funny, inventive, clever, touching and hugely entertaining. But their tendency to be thin, formulaic, lacking in scope, emotional and intellectual depth and gravity counts against any greatness. And generally in film, comedies do not rank as among what are considered great films.
If we think of movies like Godfather 2, Letters From Iwo Jima, Bridge On The River Kwai, Apocalypse Now, The Unforgiven, West Side Story, Boyhood, The Deer Hunter, The Revenant, Roma, Once Upon A Time In...Hollywood—and throw in Some Like It Hot, though I wouldn’t—just to name a few I consider great, not one movie by Allen comes close to any of them.
Moreover, his attempts at being dramatic, as he acknowledges, were flops.
And if, big if, Crimes And Misdemeanours is his greatest film—let’s say it is for argument’s sake, and I agree it is pretty good—Allen in his bio analyses its flaws, his mashing up the serious half with the comic half, his wishing he’d focused on the former at the expense of the latter, since the latter, he says, took away from the former.
And in the most standout performance of any of his films, Cate Blanchett’s bravura performance in Blue Jasmine, right up there with Vivian Leigh as Blanche Dubois, she highlights by contrast how comparably flat and typically Allenesque the rest of the movie is. She simply by her brilliance elevates its quality. Allen says himself that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really totally come off.
Allen in his own words: “How would I sum up my life? Lucky. Many stupid mistakes bailed out by luck. My biggest regret? Only that I’ve been given millions to make movies, total artistic control, and I never made a great film.”
50 movies by Allen, give or take: clearly being prolific does not of itself for greatness make.
————
“There is no doubt in my mind from Allen’s account that he deeply loved Ronan, once called Satchel, and Dylan and Moses, his adopted son who has confirmed Allen’s account of what transpired with Mia. His pain at being separated from Dylan and Ronan is palpable in this memoir.”
Here I agree, (though Allen’s focus is on the pain of what’s in effect his loss of Dylan as his daughter more so than Satchel/Ronan.) His sadness is genuinely palpable. It’s the book’s unintended emotional centre. I felt this pain whereas while he keeps stressing his deep love for his wife, Soon-Yi, and I believe it, he doesn’t make me feel it.
—————-
“The key to Allen can be found in his discussion of one of his most brilliant films, Zelig. He writes that the film “was about how we all want to be accepted, to fit in, to not offend, that we often present a different person to different people knowing which person it might best please.” Allen, in the totality of his life and career, has had the strength and centeredness to avoid those traps. But his love appears to be primarily for his art.”
Evanier here is being reductive and arbitrary rather than penetratingly incisive. Allen’s singularity in his art in opposition to the sentiment in this quote from Zelig is no more the key to Allen, than is his conformity to or deviation from any other number of limitless quotes that could be plucked from his vast store of films in a pretentious attempt to announce, “I’ve got the key.” That he is insistent on the way he does his films without interference is certainly remarkable but many things are remarkable about him. To pose any one thing as the key may get one through a door or two but many others will remain inaccessibly locked by means of that key.
P.S. I noted above that I hadn’t quite finished reading APropos Of Nothing. Now I have. And thankfully it ends on a strong, impassioned note after all the book end’s slush of gush.
https://quillette.com/2020/04/21/woody-allens-apropos-of-nothing-a-review/
Me:
As it happens, I’m just near finished reading Allen’s bio, maybe 25 pages or so to go, and I’ve been talking about it some with friends, including one friend who raves about it. I don’t. Nor do I like it as much as Evanier does, though I think it’s ok.
I’ll say that I’m one who doesn’t believe any of Mia Farrow’s charges against Allen, impressed as I am by Moses Farrow’s account of how monstrous she was and is, by his exoneration by the two long, thorough and expert investigations into the allegations, by Farrow’s failed attempt to void Allen’s adoption of Moses and Dylan, by no criminal charges and by Allen’s ability to adopt two baby girls despite the Farrow allegations, those adoptions requiring he be vetted by a different judge for each adoption.
The book is marred by too many one liners that don’t have the snap, crackle and pop of Allen’s original (especially stand up) comic brilliance.
It’s marred by Allen trying too hard to project an image of himself as a kind of unintellectual, street hustling, down to earth type of cracking-wise guy.
It’s marred by way too much self deprecation that finally comes across as humble-brag, especially as Allen keeps peppering his writing with all kinds of obscure references spanning the arts and sciences and as he keeps up an enormous amount of name checking to show us how widely and deeply he has taken in the arts and culture. He’s got the intellectual insecurity of an autodidact who never got beyond high school, which Allen didn’t, getting turfed out of NYU after one failed year.
It’s marred by his repeated jejune world view that life is “nasty, brutish and short,” compounded by his view that existence is meaningless, desperate and despair making. In all this he sounds like a college freshman who’s just read Sartre lying on his high thread count sheets in his comfy college dorm room with its fridge and pantry well stocked with expensive items courtesy of mummy and daddy, the fridge located right beside his new wall unit 64” flat screen smart tv.
His life belies his sincerity here.
And it’s marred as well by about its final 1/5th or so that’s pure gush about all the actors and actresses and others with whom he’s worked. And that 1/5th is without any insight or charm that might redeem the gushing.
And yet, despite all that mars it, the book is an easy, clever, fun, interesting and on occasion touching read.
As to this review, I’ve highlighted a few of the things said, not all, that struck me and I comment on them.
“He is not a sociable creature and calls himself a misanthrope.”
Allen certainly says this about himself. And yet, we’re adorned with recounting after recounting of all his friends, of all his constant socializing, of all the rich, famous and powerful people he’s met, befriended, dined with. Idiosyncratic and neurotic, he certainly comes across as, but as a misanthrope he does not.
———
“By planting the nude pictures of Soon-Yi, Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter, where she would be likely to find them, Allen acted cruelly and never really looked back.”
This is at odds with Allen’s account of how the pictures were left on his mantle piece by accident and by how contingent were the circumstances of Farrow finding them. Evanier may not believe Allen’s account. But he in fairness owes Allen the benefit of his own explanation. That should come first with Evanier’s own opinion and reasons why he disbelieves Allen coming second.
——-
“And, most famous of all, there is Mia Farrow and her discovery of the nude pictures of Soon-Yi. In a way this was Allen’s ultimate taunt. It was unconscionable.”
See my above comment.
———-
“He would incorporate some of those memories into his comic masterpiece, Broadway Danny Rose.”
Not only do I agree with this but it’s also my favorite Allen movie.
——-
“I was struck by the cascade of films he’s created, over 50 of them, 25 among the best work any director has given us in the last 60 years.
...
His greatest film, Crimes and Misdemeanors, came soon after.”
This is critical nonsense. There is no Allen picture, not one of them, that enters the pantheon of the greatest films of the last 60 years. At best his best films are some combination of funny, inventive, clever, touching and hugely entertaining. But their tendency to be thin, formulaic, lacking in scope, emotional and intellectual depth and gravity counts against any greatness. And generally in film, comedies do not rank as among what are considered great films.
If we think of movies like Godfather 2, Letters From Iwo Jima, Bridge On The River Kwai, Apocalypse Now, The Unforgiven, West Side Story, Boyhood, The Deer Hunter, The Revenant, Roma, Once Upon A Time In...Hollywood—and throw in Some Like It Hot, though I wouldn’t—just to name a few I consider great, not one movie by Allen comes close to any of them.
Moreover, his attempts at being dramatic, as he acknowledges, were flops.
And if, big if, Crimes And Misdemeanours is his greatest film—let’s say it is for argument’s sake, and I agree it is pretty good—Allen in his bio analyses its flaws, his mashing up the serious half with the comic half, his wishing he’d focused on the former at the expense of the latter, since the latter, he says, took away from the former.
And in the most standout performance of any of his films, Cate Blanchett’s bravura performance in Blue Jasmine, right up there with Vivian Leigh as Blanche Dubois, she highlights by contrast how comparably flat and typically Allenesque the rest of the movie is. She simply by her brilliance elevates its quality. Allen says himself that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really totally come off.
Allen in his own words: “How would I sum up my life? Lucky. Many stupid mistakes bailed out by luck. My biggest regret? Only that I’ve been given millions to make movies, total artistic control, and I never made a great film.”
50 movies by Allen, give or take: clearly being prolific does not of itself for greatness make.
————
“There is no doubt in my mind from Allen’s account that he deeply loved Ronan, once called Satchel, and Dylan and Moses, his adopted son who has confirmed Allen’s account of what transpired with Mia. His pain at being separated from Dylan and Ronan is palpable in this memoir.”
Here I agree, (though Allen’s focus is on the pain of what’s in effect his loss of Dylan as his daughter more so than Satchel/Ronan.) His sadness is genuinely palpable. It’s the book’s unintended emotional centre. I felt this pain whereas while he keeps stressing his deep love for his wife, Soon-Yi, and I believe it, he doesn’t make me feel it.
—————-
“The key to Allen can be found in his discussion of one of his most brilliant films, Zelig. He writes that the film “was about how we all want to be accepted, to fit in, to not offend, that we often present a different person to different people knowing which person it might best please.” Allen, in the totality of his life and career, has had the strength and centeredness to avoid those traps. But his love appears to be primarily for his art.”
Evanier here is being reductive and arbitrary rather than penetratingly incisive. Allen’s singularity in his art in opposition to the sentiment in this quote from Zelig is no more the key to Allen, than is his conformity to or deviation from any other number of limitless quotes that could be plucked from his vast store of films in a pretentious attempt to announce, “I’ve got the key.” That he is insistent on the way he does his films without interference is certainly remarkable but many things are remarkable about him. To pose any one thing as the key may get one through a door or two but many others will remain inaccessibly locked by means of that key.
P.S. I noted above that I hadn’t quite finished reading APropos Of Nothing. Now I have. And thankfully it ends on a strong, impassioned note after all the book end’s slush of gush.
Allen is called on to defend himself yet again due to the renewal by the Farrow Three, Mia, Dylan and Satchel/Ronan, of the absurd charge that he molested Dylan when she was seven. The renewal got life from #metoo and flew yet again, this time under its aegis.
In a few powerful pages at book’s end, however, Allen lays bare the cowardice of celebrity know nothings (bandwagon clingers) who celebrate themselves in proclaiming his guilt and their refusal to associate with him as yet again the poison of narrative displaces actuality, the truth of facts.
The poison is fed by the lunatic excesses of #metoo, where guilt by accusation prevails and where the idiocies asserted by idiots, like the mind numbing notion that all women must be believed, mind-blowingly get credence.
All too few speak out in behalf of Allen, while those who’ve jumped on the anti Allen narrative bandwagon know not of what they flagellate.
Allen’s indubitability as to the fact of his innocence fuels the righteousness of his passion. And we feel it.
Sunday, April 26, 2020
A Note On New Criticism As Against Scholarship
Douglas Bush:
https://bit.ly/2S2XTNR
Me To A Friend:
I missed the subtlety and complexity in Bush. The dilemma I read him to point to differs from the one you describe. I will say I skimmed over his examples of New Criticism gone awry but think I got his main points that include its excesses and its tendency to dismiss both scholarship and the specifics of a work’s context, including its times and the author too. And he proposed his own solution, which I noted twice, and seems obvious: we need both in judicious measure.
But you pose a false either or: scholarship as against simply reading the work as it presents itself to us in our time. I fail to see this binary.
For one, we need to understand a work as product of its time or we simply fail to understand it. A simple example of that is our need to read the glossary footnotes in Shakespeare to understand properly his use or language and what mores, idioms, conventions and folkways he may be specifically invoking.
And for two, good works span time. So that even if as we understand a work in relation to its time, we integrate that with our response to it given our own time.
Your binary raises a dilemma that doesn’t exist.
Theme is simply the ideation of what the work is about, what the artist intended as conveyed by the text, and, as the NC noted, once the work is out there, it may speak to us differently than what the author intended. Which is part of what it means when we use the metaphor of autonomy to describe the status of a work of art. The theme may be a moral, a specific idea, a revelation of some insight into certain types of characters, the nature of the world, or anything that a work gives rise to.
We don’t have the benefit of the canon for receiving the value of current works so we do the best we can without that aid.
There’s a distinction that must be made in relation to interpretation insofar as interpretation is the idea(s) binding the work. And my sense is that you conflate both sides of the distinction. And it is precisely what arises as a generalization from a reasonable reading of the work as to what it’s about, and which generalization is supportable from what is in the work as against ideas external to and often remote from the work that are imposed upon it.
That imposition has at least two springs:
one is simply a wild interpretation that the work can’t support, which is in effect imposing something on the work it can’t plausibly bear;
the other is, as noted, some kind of presupposition, an ist, an ism, an overarching theory of something or other, that the work is thought to illustrate.
My sense is you sometimes use the second half of the broad distinction I draw to argue that the first is mere chimera, a tissue of abstraction.
I think of good movies and novels by theme. It may not always come out because getting to theme is hard work that takes disciplined thinking and it’s easier to make off the cuff comments along the way. Short poems, like the ones I send my kids, are easier to come to thematically because they’re short.
In a nutshell, the inability to say what a work of literature is ultimately about is a failure ultimately to understand it. I don’t want to harp on the last few poems we argued over, but in all three of them I struggled with them till I could formulate what made them cohere, which is to say, articulate their themes.
https://bit.ly/2S2XTNR
Me To A Friend:
I missed the subtlety and complexity in Bush. The dilemma I read him to point to differs from the one you describe. I will say I skimmed over his examples of New Criticism gone awry but think I got his main points that include its excesses and its tendency to dismiss both scholarship and the specifics of a work’s context, including its times and the author too. And he proposed his own solution, which I noted twice, and seems obvious: we need both in judicious measure.
But you pose a false either or: scholarship as against simply reading the work as it presents itself to us in our time. I fail to see this binary.
For one, we need to understand a work as product of its time or we simply fail to understand it. A simple example of that is our need to read the glossary footnotes in Shakespeare to understand properly his use or language and what mores, idioms, conventions and folkways he may be specifically invoking.
And for two, good works span time. So that even if as we understand a work in relation to its time, we integrate that with our response to it given our own time.
Your binary raises a dilemma that doesn’t exist.
Theme is simply the ideation of what the work is about, what the artist intended as conveyed by the text, and, as the NC noted, once the work is out there, it may speak to us differently than what the author intended. Which is part of what it means when we use the metaphor of autonomy to describe the status of a work of art. The theme may be a moral, a specific idea, a revelation of some insight into certain types of characters, the nature of the world, or anything that a work gives rise to.
We don’t have the benefit of the canon for receiving the value of current works so we do the best we can without that aid.
There’s a distinction that must be made in relation to interpretation insofar as interpretation is the idea(s) binding the work. And my sense is that you conflate both sides of the distinction. And it is precisely what arises as a generalization from a reasonable reading of the work as to what it’s about, and which generalization is supportable from what is in the work as against ideas external to and often remote from the work that are imposed upon it.
That imposition has at least two springs:
one is simply a wild interpretation that the work can’t support, which is in effect imposing something on the work it can’t plausibly bear;
the other is, as noted, some kind of presupposition, an ist, an ism, an overarching theory of something or other, that the work is thought to illustrate.
My sense is you sometimes use the second half of the broad distinction I draw to argue that the first is mere chimera, a tissue of abstraction.
I think of good movies and novels by theme. It may not always come out because getting to theme is hard work that takes disciplined thinking and it’s easier to make off the cuff comments along the way. Short poems, like the ones I send my kids, are easier to come to thematically because they’re short.
In a nutshell, the inability to say what a work of literature is ultimately about is a failure ultimately to understand it. I don’t want to harp on the last few poems we argued over, but in all three of them I struggled with them till I could formulate what made them cohere, which is to say, articulate their themes.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
A Minor Note On Being 1/2 Way Through Woody Allen’s A Propos Of Nothing
To a friend:
Reaching 1/2 way mark.
One thought: did you notice that he peppers his writing with scads of obscure references to a wide spectrum of things. Some are esoteric and I find myself often—I’m reading it on my Kindle—looking up what the word or reference means?
For examples, he uses the word “erg,” which is some kind of physics term for a unit of energy; or he mentions Mandlebrott as something to do with similarity, and this guy turns out to be some kind of mathematician or physicist or some such who has a complicated theory about similarity or something— nothing I grasped.
So there’s a lot of that. And my thought about him doing it is that Allen’s in effect preening in a way that complements his continual humble brag about what a shallow schnook he is. With all these obscure references, I read him to be in effect saying, “Look how widely learned I actually am.” I think he tries too hard with that. All these references come across like a self conscious autodidact who’s insecure about not ever having gone to or finished university—-he got tossed out after his first year.
This goes to something more general I’m finding in his book: I feel he strains at times to project a particular persona, wise guy, wise cracking, street smart hustler, down to earth type guy, but one who can talk as easily about Schopenhauer or Sartre as he can about Roger Maris or Minnesota Fats.
(Which isn’t to say that he’s not an accomplished, creative guy who’s lived a really interesting life. Commentary + Dissent= Dysentery.)
Ya’ think?
Reaching 1/2 way mark.
One thought: did you notice that he peppers his writing with scads of obscure references to a wide spectrum of things. Some are esoteric and I find myself often—I’m reading it on my Kindle—looking up what the word or reference means?
For examples, he uses the word “erg,” which is some kind of physics term for a unit of energy; or he mentions Mandlebrott as something to do with similarity, and this guy turns out to be some kind of mathematician or physicist or some such who has a complicated theory about similarity or something— nothing I grasped.
So there’s a lot of that. And my thought about him doing it is that Allen’s in effect preening in a way that complements his continual humble brag about what a shallow schnook he is. With all these obscure references, I read him to be in effect saying, “Look how widely learned I actually am.” I think he tries too hard with that. All these references come across like a self conscious autodidact who’s insecure about not ever having gone to or finished university—-he got tossed out after his first year.
This goes to something more general I’m finding in his book: I feel he strains at times to project a particular persona, wise guy, wise cracking, street smart hustler, down to earth type guy, but one who can talk as easily about Schopenhauer or Sartre as he can about Roger Maris or Minnesota Fats.
(Which isn’t to say that he’s not an accomplished, creative guy who’s lived a really interesting life. Commentary + Dissent= Dysentery.)
Ya’ think?
Sunday, April 19, 2020
An Analysis Of Dylan Thomas’ Great Poem In My Craft Or Sullen Art
Thomas contrasts in the first few lines the active and the inactive. He exercises craft or art. The moon rages. He labours. But the night is still. The lovers are lying in bed in each other’s arms, and spent one might think. Even craft suggests something active while sullen art suggests the sluggishness of gloom. And the gloom seems related in quality to the lovers’ grief. Against all that though is the singing light that accompanies his labour. In the still night all is quiet and dark and lonely save for, “only,” the moon raging. I take the rage of the moon to share a quality with his art’s sullenness. And I note the contrast between that rage and singing light.
These contrasts and associations suggest to me the poet’s pleasure in his not-sullen craft—and exemplified by the very craft in this poem—juxtaposed with a kind of resistant sulkiness in his solitary work. The art results from the craft: it’s where he wants to get to. He’s in the process of creation and it’s effortful—“exercised.” Stillness contrasts with rage. I can imagine the “moon rages” to be a correlative for his intense desire to create.
The sullenness and the rage though are mediated and mitigated by the poet’s imagining the lovers in bed holding each other in their grief. It’s only after imagining them, and they are, after all, for whom he writes, that “sullen” and “rage” resolve into “labour by singing light.” That transition is suggested to by the move from the past tense “exercised” to the present tense “I labour.” “Singing light” suggests the light of the muse, since music “comes from the Greek word (mousike), which means "(art) of the Muses". This resolution springs from the poet’s deep sense of the grief that attends the lovers, their grief the deep woe conjoint with their love is the condition of their common, unsung, hard life.
The poet abjures the very things the lovers don’t have: fame ambition, wealth, prestige, accolades, honours, sophistication, awards. These don’t inspire him to create. What moves him rather is his insight into the very depths of the lovers’ innermost being, their love rooted in woe. What he earns are prosaic wages or his satisfaction at his craft and art reflecting and illuminating what is most deep in them, secret because it takes the creative imagination of an artist to reach that deep place, unlock it, bring it to light and honour it. The rhyme of art and heart couples them and in that coupling links his art to their most secret heart.
By the way, the other rhymes in the first verse similarly poetically reinforce in their coupling the poetic relation between what’s rhymed.
Paralleling and reinforcing the rejection of plaudits and material reward as the springs of his art, the poet in the second verse continues the negation of the “not for” in the first verse by listing for whom he doesn’t write, But who is that “for whom”? Is it the proud man apart from the raging moon; or does apart complete the identification of one class of person not written for? If the latter, then the poet, it seems, now invokes the raging moon as objectifying the throes of creation.
I’m inclined to this latter view for a few reasons.
It’s hard to understand what might be meant by the proud man apart from the raging moon.
A proud man apart describes completely a certain kind of man, aloof in pridefulness, separated from others by his pride, his pride an obstruction to connection, the means of his self imposed isolation.
A proud man apart contrasts precisely with the lovers abed.
Thomas in the first verse has set “moon rages” as integral to his craft and art both as physical setting and as correlative of the intense desire to create.
And there is a nice link in imagery between the raging moon and the spindrift pages: spindrift is the spray coming off cresting waves; and one meaning of a raging moon is its effect on oceans by affecting and effecting tides; so the throes of creation is imaged in the pages flying around as the poet writes, as though they they’re the white tips of spray of cresting waves.
Nor does the poet write to commemorate the famous “towering” dead. When it comes to the “towering dead” he’s like Huck Finn:
“After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.”
The poet’s abjured dead already have “their nightingales and psalms.”
So the proud man apart and the towering dead with all their ceremonial memorialization define further by contrast for whom the poet creates.
In the last four lines the poet’s words are, again, devoted to those he considers “lovers.” Who might count as lovers isn’t made precisely clear but “lovers” of course goes to those who have the capacity to love. They, it seems, take into themselves the accumulated grief of the ages. While their arms stretch around one another, they will also spread out to encompass the history of the world’s grief. They do that because their conjoint lives of love and woe are the universal thus permanent condition of such common, undistinguished, loving but woe-filled people.
Finally, the poet says he does not write for those who “praise” him or pay his “wages.” He seems not to want to write for anyone to whom he feels materially or conventionally beholden. He knows that those for whom he writes do not “heed” or pay great attention to his “craft or art.” Their woe infused lives exist outside his art.
I don’t read this as sad as such. Rather, I see this final recognition as an acknowledgement of satisfaction if his non sullen art can convey the deepest truths about those for whom he writes, who inspire him to write, who by their existence resolve his art, which was initially sullen. His art will honour, commemorate and memorialize them.
These contrasts and associations suggest to me the poet’s pleasure in his not-sullen craft—and exemplified by the very craft in this poem—juxtaposed with a kind of resistant sulkiness in his solitary work. The art results from the craft: it’s where he wants to get to. He’s in the process of creation and it’s effortful—“exercised.” Stillness contrasts with rage. I can imagine the “moon rages” to be a correlative for his intense desire to create.
The sullenness and the rage though are mediated and mitigated by the poet’s imagining the lovers in bed holding each other in their grief. It’s only after imagining them, and they are, after all, for whom he writes, that “sullen” and “rage” resolve into “labour by singing light.” That transition is suggested to by the move from the past tense “exercised” to the present tense “I labour.” “Singing light” suggests the light of the muse, since music “comes from the Greek word (mousike), which means "(art) of the Muses". This resolution springs from the poet’s deep sense of the grief that attends the lovers, their grief the deep woe conjoint with their love is the condition of their common, unsung, hard life.
The poet abjures the very things the lovers don’t have: fame ambition, wealth, prestige, accolades, honours, sophistication, awards. These don’t inspire him to create. What moves him rather is his insight into the very depths of the lovers’ innermost being, their love rooted in woe. What he earns are prosaic wages or his satisfaction at his craft and art reflecting and illuminating what is most deep in them, secret because it takes the creative imagination of an artist to reach that deep place, unlock it, bring it to light and honour it. The rhyme of art and heart couples them and in that coupling links his art to their most secret heart.
By the way, the other rhymes in the first verse similarly poetically reinforce in their coupling the poetic relation between what’s rhymed.
Paralleling and reinforcing the rejection of plaudits and material reward as the springs of his art, the poet in the second verse continues the negation of the “not for” in the first verse by listing for whom he doesn’t write, But who is that “for whom”? Is it the proud man apart from the raging moon; or does apart complete the identification of one class of person not written for? If the latter, then the poet, it seems, now invokes the raging moon as objectifying the throes of creation.
I’m inclined to this latter view for a few reasons.
It’s hard to understand what might be meant by the proud man apart from the raging moon.
A proud man apart describes completely a certain kind of man, aloof in pridefulness, separated from others by his pride, his pride an obstruction to connection, the means of his self imposed isolation.
A proud man apart contrasts precisely with the lovers abed.
Thomas in the first verse has set “moon rages” as integral to his craft and art both as physical setting and as correlative of the intense desire to create.
And there is a nice link in imagery between the raging moon and the spindrift pages: spindrift is the spray coming off cresting waves; and one meaning of a raging moon is its effect on oceans by affecting and effecting tides; so the throes of creation is imaged in the pages flying around as the poet writes, as though they they’re the white tips of spray of cresting waves.
Nor does the poet write to commemorate the famous “towering” dead. When it comes to the “towering dead” he’s like Huck Finn:
“After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.”
The poet’s abjured dead already have “their nightingales and psalms.”
So the proud man apart and the towering dead with all their ceremonial memorialization define further by contrast for whom the poet creates.
In the last four lines the poet’s words are, again, devoted to those he considers “lovers.” Who might count as lovers isn’t made precisely clear but “lovers” of course goes to those who have the capacity to love. They, it seems, take into themselves the accumulated grief of the ages. While their arms stretch around one another, they will also spread out to encompass the history of the world’s grief. They do that because their conjoint lives of love and woe are the universal thus permanent condition of such common, undistinguished, loving but woe-filled people.
Finally, the poet says he does not write for those who “praise” him or pay his “wages.” He seems not to want to write for anyone to whom he feels materially or conventionally beholden. He knows that those for whom he writes do not “heed” or pay great attention to his “craft or art.” Their woe infused lives exist outside his art.
I don’t read this as sad as such. Rather, I see this final recognition as an acknowledgement of satisfaction if his non sullen art can convey the deepest truths about those for whom he writes, who inspire him to write, who by their existence resolve his art, which was initially sullen. His art will honour, commemorate and memorialize them.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Analysis Of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Poem Thou Art Indeed Just Lord, If I Contend With Thee:
The poem, Hopkins’s Thou Art Indeed Just Lord, If I Contend With Thee:
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
My friend P:
I don't agree there is an absolute perfect understanding that exists in a platonic sense.
The impactive effects and affects, plus impressions, of diction, syntax, form, sound and reference will always add nuances understanding.
My reading juxtaposes two contending ideals of justice, based on the words 'just', one before the caesura in the first line, the other before the stop in line two. The whole poem agonises over this blocked justice.
One 'just' is amoral, the other moral. An opposing duality of divine versus human, absolute versus subjective, abstract versus experienced is thus achieved. One form of 'just' is indifferent and self absorbed, the other is self caring and all caring. One cannot be contended against, the other exists through pleading; one is self rewarding and implacable, the other serves without reward and is painfully denied its very essence. One is pre-existent, the other must be affirmed. The poem explores comparatively how the speaker's quest for affirmation is thwarted.
My response:
I like your note a lot.
My sense is that there is an interrelation between the opening justs. The first “indeed” suggests a given, an assumption, that beyond doubt God’s justice will hear out Hopkins’s complaint. (And the legal implication of a trial is apparent in the language—just, contend, plead; Lord and sir are ways of addressing a common law judge.) So, “indeed” suggests faith that is rather implacable. Paraphrase: “Of course, Lord, your divine justice will hear my complaint without damning me. But still disturbing my faith is the disparity between my fruitlessness despite its fervency whereas sinners thrive.”
Hopkins’s faith in his moral capacity to question his Lord without incurring His wrath speaks to an Old Testament conception of a God who is somewhat human, who has ways worthy of complaint and can shoulder questioning, which is to say, can take “a good talking to.” So the divine, inscrutable just is certainly separable from the earthly just, but they’re not completely detachable. God’s justice includes hearing Hopkins out, as Hopkins in his faith sees it.
By pleading that an enemy couldn’t be doing him worse, Hopkins brings his complaint to the very edge of his faith. The conjunction of friend and enemy in the line, however, suggests the extent of faith’s strain without tearing as the latter “friend” contains “enemy.” The friend is declared; the enemy is hypothesized to make a deeply frustrated point.
So this goes to my view that Hopkins never loses his assumption that the initial “indeed” lays down. The complaint can get full vent within Hopkins’s faith in God’s justice, with which he can grapple.
The case for the justness of Hopkins’s complaint is then laid out in particulars: spare times of whoring and drunkenness yield more earthly delight in sin and reward than what all the hours of Hopkins’s labours in his faith bring him. The intimacy of Hopkins’s relation to his God is evident in his “See” heading the next particular: the self replenishment of refulgent nature compared to his barrenness; nature’s sustaining fragility; the leasts of nature, birds, building compared to his straining fruitlessness in endeavour and in life as captured in this amazing line:
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
The line falls down in the middle capturing Hopkins verging on collapse or break down, staved off only, ironically, by his acknowledgement of his virtual nothingness: “not,” “no,” reminiscent, to me, of Lear’s “No, no, no, no!”—contexts of course much different but abiding sense of negation similar.
“Time’s eunuch” heads his final and most devastating particular. Hopkins sees himself as metaphorically castrated, serving a temporal ruler, time itself, just as eunuchs sexlessly serve earthly rulers. To see himself as a eunuch suggests a sexlessness, a barrenness, beyond impotence, a sexlessness that has no possible seeds of rejuvenation as he attends to his faith and his work all while time hurls him inexorably toward death.
But again in an irony similar to negation staving off his near break down in ... birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,...Hopkins by bringing himself to the peak of his complaint, metaphorically unmanning himself—“Time’s eunuch”—has it seems expiated, if that’s the right word, or, maybe better, worked out psychologically, what has so deeply troubled him. For from bringing his complaint to its peak come the springs of a turning-to-life restoration of hope in faith: “Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.” God, in his justness, may do this, Hopkins’s fervent faith now tells him.
And in that born-anew faith-brought hope, might one argue, the opening and separable two justs meet?
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
My friend P:
I don't agree there is an absolute perfect understanding that exists in a platonic sense.
The impactive effects and affects, plus impressions, of diction, syntax, form, sound and reference will always add nuances understanding.
My reading juxtaposes two contending ideals of justice, based on the words 'just', one before the caesura in the first line, the other before the stop in line two. The whole poem agonises over this blocked justice.
One 'just' is amoral, the other moral. An opposing duality of divine versus human, absolute versus subjective, abstract versus experienced is thus achieved. One form of 'just' is indifferent and self absorbed, the other is self caring and all caring. One cannot be contended against, the other exists through pleading; one is self rewarding and implacable, the other serves without reward and is painfully denied its very essence. One is pre-existent, the other must be affirmed. The poem explores comparatively how the speaker's quest for affirmation is thwarted.
My response:
I like your note a lot.
My sense is that there is an interrelation between the opening justs. The first “indeed” suggests a given, an assumption, that beyond doubt God’s justice will hear out Hopkins’s complaint. (And the legal implication of a trial is apparent in the language—just, contend, plead; Lord and sir are ways of addressing a common law judge.) So, “indeed” suggests faith that is rather implacable. Paraphrase: “Of course, Lord, your divine justice will hear my complaint without damning me. But still disturbing my faith is the disparity between my fruitlessness despite its fervency whereas sinners thrive.”
Hopkins’s faith in his moral capacity to question his Lord without incurring His wrath speaks to an Old Testament conception of a God who is somewhat human, who has ways worthy of complaint and can shoulder questioning, which is to say, can take “a good talking to.” So the divine, inscrutable just is certainly separable from the earthly just, but they’re not completely detachable. God’s justice includes hearing Hopkins out, as Hopkins in his faith sees it.
By pleading that an enemy couldn’t be doing him worse, Hopkins brings his complaint to the very edge of his faith. The conjunction of friend and enemy in the line, however, suggests the extent of faith’s strain without tearing as the latter “friend” contains “enemy.” The friend is declared; the enemy is hypothesized to make a deeply frustrated point.
So this goes to my view that Hopkins never loses his assumption that the initial “indeed” lays down. The complaint can get full vent within Hopkins’s faith in God’s justice, with which he can grapple.
The case for the justness of Hopkins’s complaint is then laid out in particulars: spare times of whoring and drunkenness yield more earthly delight in sin and reward than what all the hours of Hopkins’s labours in his faith bring him. The intimacy of Hopkins’s relation to his God is evident in his “See” heading the next particular: the self replenishment of refulgent nature compared to his barrenness; nature’s sustaining fragility; the leasts of nature, birds, building compared to his straining fruitlessness in endeavour and in life as captured in this amazing line:
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
The line falls down in the middle capturing Hopkins verging on collapse or break down, staved off only, ironically, by his acknowledgement of his virtual nothingness: “not,” “no,” reminiscent, to me, of Lear’s “No, no, no, no!”—contexts of course much different but abiding sense of negation similar.
“Time’s eunuch” heads his final and most devastating particular. Hopkins sees himself as metaphorically castrated, serving a temporal ruler, time itself, just as eunuchs sexlessly serve earthly rulers. To see himself as a eunuch suggests a sexlessness, a barrenness, beyond impotence, a sexlessness that has no possible seeds of rejuvenation as he attends to his faith and his work all while time hurls him inexorably toward death.
But again in an irony similar to negation staving off his near break down in ... birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,...Hopkins by bringing himself to the peak of his complaint, metaphorically unmanning himself—“Time’s eunuch”—has it seems expiated, if that’s the right word, or, maybe better, worked out psychologically, what has so deeply troubled him. For from bringing his complaint to its peak come the springs of a turning-to-life restoration of hope in faith: “Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.” God, in his justness, may do this, Hopkins’s fervent faith now tells him.
And in that born-anew faith-brought hope, might one argue, the opening and separable two justs meet?
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
On What It Means To Understand A Poem Using Hopkins’ “Thou Art Indeed Just Lord, If I Contend” As An Example
R:
There is a big difference between understanding a poem overall and then asking how any element fits into that understanding. I believe I perfectly understand lots of poems, just as I perfectly understand jokes. If you now ask me to articulate that understanding I would begin with a paraphrase. "In this poem, the speaker, whom we know by convention has some attributes of the author, Gerard Hopkins, ie is a Catholic priest, first politely but with understated force, complains to god about his suffering when sinners around him are flourishing, and wonders what worse God might do to dim. He then says that even plants and animals, who do not love and devote themselves to you, go about their business without a constant sense of failure. I put all my heart and soul into serving you and nothing results.
Then suddenly the poet changes key and ends the poem by praying quietly to God that He bring new life to him.
If a student wrote that I would say he understood the poem. I could, but absolutely no longer care to ask whether the : "if" in line 1 simply means "even if" or if it implies that somehow and also the very existebnce of god's justice depends on Hopkins complaining. Actually I prefer the simpler one because the other makes the poem worse as an experience because I have to interrupt the eloquent expression of Hopkins state of mind to address a philosophical issue that seems irrelevant to me.
One might ask how the compression "How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost defeat thwart me" affects the meaning, and say something like it expresses his urgency, but one could find examples of such compression which didn't work and on and on. Not worth it. I have the experience of the poem down pat, it never changes and it never palls. (I don't do it every day). It does make me appreciate once more just how fucking good he is. The Auden poem will never be worth your noble efforts. If you find some hidden pattern of themes, that is your invention, as that is not how poems work on us. They get us to imagine compelling imagined states of mind. Once you get that you got it.
A friend once said that if Hopkins would get married and lead a normal life he would have avoided the misery, so it is not god who did it but himself. The poem was self-pitying and the sentiment expressed not deeply moving. Now that is real criticism. He hears pathetic self-pity I hear eloquent expression of suffering. That I get, thought I think it is a bad judgment.
He and I both understand the poem but we experience it differently so our judgment differs. That is what matters. Most people who read it agree with me, and it has survived and been read my way for a long time so the poem is good. No proof possible.
Me:
I don’t think “perfect understanding” is a helpful phrase. For there is no perfection possible if form makes content. The technical possibilities for discussion seem innumerable. And that is where judiciousness comes into it, some sense of proportion, which is a judgment not an absolute, and, therefore, an art not a science.
So I think that your distinction between overall meaning, or understanding what the poem “says,” and how its parts and means fit or form it is wrong in theory, if form and content are the same thing, two sides of one coin, aspects of each other, distinguishable but not, finally, detachable.
The overall meaning of the poem seems straightforward but the emotion of it is profound and is deeply affecting. So what you no longer care to ask about within the poem, its means, is ok certainly, but what point does your personal uninterest go to?
If you were teaching this poem to even a high school English class, it would be bad teaching not to examine what no longer interests you. If this is one of English literature’s great sonnets, then at a certain level of interest, either personal or professional, one would be interested in what no longer interests you about the poem, namely its technicality. Which isn’t to say, there’s anything wrong with where your interest ends, only that there is, I argue, no generalizable point that emerges from it.
Of course our personal experiences, who we are, will make for different reactions to the poem. And I’d agree that being deeply affected by it either empathically or even like your friend with some impatience is the key thing we want from art, to be compelled by it. We want and expect it from the greatest works and performances in all branches of the arts. But, again, and respectfully, so what? The greatness of art makes for its worthwhileness to study.
There’s an implication in your argument, as I take it in, of doubt about that worthwhileness. But the study of greatness is at the heart of a liberal arts, a humanities education, to pass on in a measure of detail and understanding the greatness of our cultural heritage, the highest that’s been created and thought. And for that note the puzzling ambiguity you note in the poem but that you no longer care to think through:
...”if" in line 1 simply means "even if" or if it implies that somehow and also the very existence of god's justice depends on Hopkins complaining...
Getting at this ambiguous “if” is proxy for, or a microcosm of, what a liberal arts education in necessary part consists of. And the very question you raise but no longer holds your interest belies, I think, both your, and the possibility of, a perfect understanding.
There is a big difference between understanding a poem overall and then asking how any element fits into that understanding. I believe I perfectly understand lots of poems, just as I perfectly understand jokes. If you now ask me to articulate that understanding I would begin with a paraphrase. "In this poem, the speaker, whom we know by convention has some attributes of the author, Gerard Hopkins, ie is a Catholic priest, first politely but with understated force, complains to god about his suffering when sinners around him are flourishing, and wonders what worse God might do to dim. He then says that even plants and animals, who do not love and devote themselves to you, go about their business without a constant sense of failure. I put all my heart and soul into serving you and nothing results.
Then suddenly the poet changes key and ends the poem by praying quietly to God that He bring new life to him.
If a student wrote that I would say he understood the poem. I could, but absolutely no longer care to ask whether the : "if" in line 1 simply means "even if" or if it implies that somehow and also the very existebnce of god's justice depends on Hopkins complaining. Actually I prefer the simpler one because the other makes the poem worse as an experience because I have to interrupt the eloquent expression of Hopkins state of mind to address a philosophical issue that seems irrelevant to me.
One might ask how the compression "How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost defeat thwart me" affects the meaning, and say something like it expresses his urgency, but one could find examples of such compression which didn't work and on and on. Not worth it. I have the experience of the poem down pat, it never changes and it never palls. (I don't do it every day). It does make me appreciate once more just how fucking good he is. The Auden poem will never be worth your noble efforts. If you find some hidden pattern of themes, that is your invention, as that is not how poems work on us. They get us to imagine compelling imagined states of mind. Once you get that you got it.
A friend once said that if Hopkins would get married and lead a normal life he would have avoided the misery, so it is not god who did it but himself. The poem was self-pitying and the sentiment expressed not deeply moving. Now that is real criticism. He hears pathetic self-pity I hear eloquent expression of suffering. That I get, thought I think it is a bad judgment.
He and I both understand the poem but we experience it differently so our judgment differs. That is what matters. Most people who read it agree with me, and it has survived and been read my way for a long time so the poem is good. No proof possible.
Me:
I don’t think “perfect understanding” is a helpful phrase. For there is no perfection possible if form makes content. The technical possibilities for discussion seem innumerable. And that is where judiciousness comes into it, some sense of proportion, which is a judgment not an absolute, and, therefore, an art not a science.
So I think that your distinction between overall meaning, or understanding what the poem “says,” and how its parts and means fit or form it is wrong in theory, if form and content are the same thing, two sides of one coin, aspects of each other, distinguishable but not, finally, detachable.
The overall meaning of the poem seems straightforward but the emotion of it is profound and is deeply affecting. So what you no longer care to ask about within the poem, its means, is ok certainly, but what point does your personal uninterest go to?
If you were teaching this poem to even a high school English class, it would be bad teaching not to examine what no longer interests you. If this is one of English literature’s great sonnets, then at a certain level of interest, either personal or professional, one would be interested in what no longer interests you about the poem, namely its technicality. Which isn’t to say, there’s anything wrong with where your interest ends, only that there is, I argue, no generalizable point that emerges from it.
Of course our personal experiences, who we are, will make for different reactions to the poem. And I’d agree that being deeply affected by it either empathically or even like your friend with some impatience is the key thing we want from art, to be compelled by it. We want and expect it from the greatest works and performances in all branches of the arts. But, again, and respectfully, so what? The greatness of art makes for its worthwhileness to study.
There’s an implication in your argument, as I take it in, of doubt about that worthwhileness. But the study of greatness is at the heart of a liberal arts, a humanities education, to pass on in a measure of detail and understanding the greatness of our cultural heritage, the highest that’s been created and thought. And for that note the puzzling ambiguity you note in the poem but that you no longer care to think through:
...”if" in line 1 simply means "even if" or if it implies that somehow and also the very existence of god's justice depends on Hopkins complaining...
Getting at this ambiguous “if” is proxy for, or a microcosm of, what a liberal arts education in necessary part consists of. And the very question you raise but no longer holds your interest belies, I think, both your, and the possibility of, a perfect understanding.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
A Personal Note To A Friend On Reading Not Beating Poetry
Just a note on torturing poems to their deaths and burials.
It’s honestly not me taking pleasure in exercising such inventive powers as I have. It’s only that I have no other gear when I drive.
I can easily read poems without giving them much thought and get a surface impression of them. And that’s fine. But then I really don’t adequately understand them and if I’m to move, either just for myself or for some other reason, beyond that impression I know of no half way measure.
I’m driven, I drive, in that one gear either to come to what I feel is a satisfactory understanding of the poem or to give up as being unable to. And what makes for a satisfactory understanding is to have a complete sense of what is going on in the poem from first line to last, from first word to last.
Obviously, this can be overdone, leading into a descent into the picayune and trivial. But I don’t judge myself guilty of that. I do acknowledge some obsessiveness in this, like a dog gnawing on a juicy bone, to borrow an image.
My test for myself is: do I understand the poem well enough to teach it, as I taught poems for two years to freshman English students.
I never ever went into a classroom without a comprehensive view of the work or works I was teaching. Not that I stood there and lectured and force fed, but I knew where I wanted to wind up by way of questions and hopefully answers and some discussion and without being dogmatic.
Candidly, I can’t imagine a teacher doing any less in teaching a work, of not having what lawyers call “a theory of the case.”
I had only one experience of failing to understand a poem to my satisfaction by Wallace Stevens. I don’t remember the poem. But it was just an awful class. Torture really, for me and the kids.
Same btw for writing papers. I was psychically unable to write a paper on any work or works until I had, you should pardon the metaphor, wrestled it to the ground and could stand behind an argument that accounted for it comprehensively.
So, in sum, there is in me no desire to preen or show off or dazzle anyone. Only, there is a restless and driven desire wholly to understand what I’ve first read and responded to.
It’s honestly not me taking pleasure in exercising such inventive powers as I have. It’s only that I have no other gear when I drive.
I can easily read poems without giving them much thought and get a surface impression of them. And that’s fine. But then I really don’t adequately understand them and if I’m to move, either just for myself or for some other reason, beyond that impression I know of no half way measure.
I’m driven, I drive, in that one gear either to come to what I feel is a satisfactory understanding of the poem or to give up as being unable to. And what makes for a satisfactory understanding is to have a complete sense of what is going on in the poem from first line to last, from first word to last.
Obviously, this can be overdone, leading into a descent into the picayune and trivial. But I don’t judge myself guilty of that. I do acknowledge some obsessiveness in this, like a dog gnawing on a juicy bone, to borrow an image.
My test for myself is: do I understand the poem well enough to teach it, as I taught poems for two years to freshman English students.
I never ever went into a classroom without a comprehensive view of the work or works I was teaching. Not that I stood there and lectured and force fed, but I knew where I wanted to wind up by way of questions and hopefully answers and some discussion and without being dogmatic.
Candidly, I can’t imagine a teacher doing any less in teaching a work, of not having what lawyers call “a theory of the case.”
I had only one experience of failing to understand a poem to my satisfaction by Wallace Stevens. I don’t remember the poem. But it was just an awful class. Torture really, for me and the kids.
Same btw for writing papers. I was psychically unable to write a paper on any work or works until I had, you should pardon the metaphor, wrestled it to the ground and could stand behind an argument that accounted for it comprehensively.
So, in sum, there is in me no desire to preen or show off or dazzle anyone. Only, there is a restless and driven desire wholly to understand what I’ve first read and responded to.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Different Views Of W.H. Auden’s Funeral Blues
First the poem,
W.H. Auden’s
Funeral Blues:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
The poem now seems clear to me.
1. Genial mockery vis hyperbole of public expressions of grief.
2. Genial mockery of personal expressions of grief.
3. Last line of three: Gentle fun of greeting card style in his expression of loss.
4. First three lines of four: Similar to three
5. Last line: similar to last line of three.
Very symmetrical, thus also very simple in form.
P:
like your paradoxical image; it's like the notion of extreme vitality employed to announce the termination of what was once so vital.
The poem resembles coition, with building and all rising exuberance, then risidual emptiness. There is a rhythm rise and fall- even an abrupt collapse.
In the first stanza there are commands to withdraw from the quotidian-followed in the second by permissiveness- the intimacy of erotic sound and gesture -then abandonment in the third -heady ecstacy plus intensity of love, in all directions and none-and in the final stanza deflation-energy and substance voided. .
It builds up through luxuriant hyperbole to the sudden pouring away of the ocean, then stalls at the remaining emotional void.
Sort of.
M: replying to P
Couldn't have put it better myself!
But the third stanza makes me want to pose a question: if it can be conceded that a poem may be 'about' something, is it a fair reading to say that "Funeral Blues" is about the end of a love affair or relationship rather than bereavement in the usual sense?
P: back to M
Yeah, I once figured that and forgot... Emphasis then is on 'Blues' in title...
Me:
Thank you P for your nice reading and M for your comment and good question.
Not sure I agree with your reading P.
I’m not seeing the rhythm of sex here, though it may well
be there and I’m just not seeing it.
I get the playfulness, exuberance and outlandishness of the surreal images and demands of the first two stanzas. I just don’t get their “why” given what I would assume to be the speaker’s grief. And some of them are or verge on the absurd: traffic cops wearing black gloves: crepe bows around the necks of white doves; give the dog a juicy bone to silence its barking; skywrite ‘He is dead.’ These images remind me of Salvador Dali paintings. But why this spiritedness in the face of such loss? It sounds celebratory, publicly ceremonial. I infer, assume, it’s not a public occasion, the death of some revered public figure who has lived a full life. It’s rather the death of an intimate, a lover who constituted virtually the whole of the speaker’s life. The exuberance, the playfulness, the outlandishness tend to baffle me.
Even the poem’s title, Funeral Blues, has me wondering. It seems to go to a step removed. I think of the blues as a sad or depressed state of mind brought on by a calamitous event: a flood, a death, a lover’s wrongdoing and so on ad infinitum. Song titles for these events might be high water blues or death letter blues or my rider’s gone blues. But here it’s not the death as such generating the blues. It’s the secondary event, the funeral, which in principle is a ritual to commemorate a past life and to try to accommodate grief.
My working theory is that the in the outlandishness of the first two stanzas,and the oddity of the funeral generating the blues rather than the death as such, there’s some genial subversion, a lampooning, a sending up, of public signification of the death as opposed to the intensity of the private grief.
So then in the third stanza, the genially subversive lampoon gives way to the expression of how all consuming and life defining this love was, such that in its absorption and intensity was born the illusion it would never end, kind of like in Donne’s poems where the lovers’ bed becomes the centre of and entirety of the world. Last line of third stanza is a coming to terms with the illusion. Death is a fatal dominant X.
And the final stanza is of weeping despair. Now, no surreal, playful directives. Now, the opposite: pack up, dismantle, pour out, sweep away all the substance of the world (and the material for images, metaphors and symbols of art expressing love). “For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
M, as to your nice question, in my view it’s entirely plausible to read the poem as about the end of a love affair. I don’t read it that way but it’s certainly defensible and casts a much different light on the poem, especially on the first two stanzas.
W.H. Auden’s
Funeral Blues:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message ‘He is Dead’.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
The poem now seems clear to me.
1. Genial mockery vis hyperbole of public expressions of grief.
2. Genial mockery of personal expressions of grief.
3. Last line of three: Gentle fun of greeting card style in his expression of loss.
4. First three lines of four: Similar to three
5. Last line: similar to last line of three.
Very symmetrical, thus also very simple in form.
P:
like your paradoxical image; it's like the notion of extreme vitality employed to announce the termination of what was once so vital.
The poem resembles coition, with building and all rising exuberance, then risidual emptiness. There is a rhythm rise and fall- even an abrupt collapse.
In the first stanza there are commands to withdraw from the quotidian-followed in the second by permissiveness- the intimacy of erotic sound and gesture -then abandonment in the third -heady ecstacy plus intensity of love, in all directions and none-and in the final stanza deflation-energy and substance voided. .
It builds up through luxuriant hyperbole to the sudden pouring away of the ocean, then stalls at the remaining emotional void.
Sort of.
M: replying to P
Couldn't have put it better myself!
But the third stanza makes me want to pose a question: if it can be conceded that a poem may be 'about' something, is it a fair reading to say that "Funeral Blues" is about the end of a love affair or relationship rather than bereavement in the usual sense?
P: back to M
Yeah, I once figured that and forgot... Emphasis then is on 'Blues' in title...
Me:
Thank you P for your nice reading and M for your comment and good question.
Not sure I agree with your reading P.
I’m not seeing the rhythm of sex here, though it may well
be there and I’m just not seeing it.
I get the playfulness, exuberance and outlandishness of the surreal images and demands of the first two stanzas. I just don’t get their “why” given what I would assume to be the speaker’s grief. And some of them are or verge on the absurd: traffic cops wearing black gloves: crepe bows around the necks of white doves; give the dog a juicy bone to silence its barking; skywrite ‘He is dead.’ These images remind me of Salvador Dali paintings. But why this spiritedness in the face of such loss? It sounds celebratory, publicly ceremonial. I infer, assume, it’s not a public occasion, the death of some revered public figure who has lived a full life. It’s rather the death of an intimate, a lover who constituted virtually the whole of the speaker’s life. The exuberance, the playfulness, the outlandishness tend to baffle me.
Even the poem’s title, Funeral Blues, has me wondering. It seems to go to a step removed. I think of the blues as a sad or depressed state of mind brought on by a calamitous event: a flood, a death, a lover’s wrongdoing and so on ad infinitum. Song titles for these events might be high water blues or death letter blues or my rider’s gone blues. But here it’s not the death as such generating the blues. It’s the secondary event, the funeral, which in principle is a ritual to commemorate a past life and to try to accommodate grief.
My working theory is that the in the outlandishness of the first two stanzas,and the oddity of the funeral generating the blues rather than the death as such, there’s some genial subversion, a lampooning, a sending up, of public signification of the death as opposed to the intensity of the private grief.
So then in the third stanza, the genially subversive lampoon gives way to the expression of how all consuming and life defining this love was, such that in its absorption and intensity was born the illusion it would never end, kind of like in Donne’s poems where the lovers’ bed becomes the centre of and entirety of the world. Last line of third stanza is a coming to terms with the illusion. Death is a fatal dominant X.
And the final stanza is of weeping despair. Now, no surreal, playful directives. Now, the opposite: pack up, dismantle, pour out, sweep away all the substance of the world (and the material for images, metaphors and symbols of art expressing love). “For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
M, as to your nice question, in my view it’s entirely plausible to read the poem as about the end of a love affair. I don’t read it that way but it’s certainly defensible and casts a much different light on the poem, especially on the first two stanzas.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
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