| In my beginning is my end. |
[Apr. 5th, 2006|11:15 am] |
This blog entry will be the last work that I perform for my undergraduate degree. I wish that I had the time to spend in order to create something truly memorable, but alas, I start my teaching block tomorrow and must prepare. To conclude, then, I wish to discuss a passage from the Quartets, East Coker, Section V which reads:
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years -
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deus guerres -
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
I have been constantly in school for the last 20 years, and though a lot of it wasn't 'largely wasted', some of it, indeed was. Much of what we learn, Eliot suggests, is through the awfully dull exercise in redundancy we call life. Writing, painting, driving a car or whatever it is you would like to perfect can only be achieved through 'a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure". Wise words. The only thing that we can possibly ever know is that we know nothing, right? So, if that's the case, then don't we, as people highly invested in cultivating our minds to the highest possible point, have a problem? What kind of things can we say to have achieved in this our unknowable world?
How about this? At least we tried. And what a great battle it was.
Bye! |
|
|
| Water |
[Mar. 26th, 2006|03:09 pm] |
Dan Gibson is one of the world's priemere... um... audiographers. What he does is trek out into the big bad wilderness and record the world around him in 5.1 surround sound. Currently sloshing through my speakers is the soothing rolling of the Ocean surf. That's it. No birds, no wind, no rain. It helps me to remember that nature, the place from which we all originally come, doesn't sound like personified cigarette ash.
It is then appropriate that I write on Eliot's continual evokation of water in The Wasteland.
"And the dry stone no sound of water"
"Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road...
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain...
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only...
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water"
So, why is this such a big deal? If George W's Holy War for Oil doesn't kill us, and some crazy strand of super-duper bird flu doesn't kill us, and global warming doesn't kill us, then water surely will. I'm too lazy to research the past and figure out if environmentalists of Eliot's day were talking about the world's dwindling fresh water supply, and I don't think it matters much. Regardless of Eliot's intentions, be they scientific or metaphoric, the 'lack of water' metaphor which runs its parched coarse through this poem is haunting. Human beings are basically composed of water. All that we eat and drink is made of and by water. The air that we breath, created by that thing we call nature, requires water. If we have no water, we have only death. The city is a place without water. Coffee and gasoline are the liquids of choice, it seems. As we walk down the paved streets, water is no longer liquid and clear, but is red or yellow and you're not allowed to park in front of it. Also, within the confines of the concrete jungle, water has no place to go. It sits and grows fetid; the mosquitoes flock to it. The sun, tired of looking at its garbled reflection, finally soaks it back up into the smoggy air. In the city, it is only at parks and public pools that water flows above the surface... and even then, to not see garbage marring its fluidity is to be lucky, indeed.
What's the point of this? I moved to this place six years ago, and as each day passes, the urge to fly from its grasp grows ever stronger... nature is where I need to be... but I also gotta have high speed internet. :-) |
|
|
| Four lines of Modernity |
[Mar. 15th, 2006|11:38 am] |
Here is Eliot’s amazingly complex yet concise depiction of modernity:
“A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse”
Now, rats are a product of the city. They thrive in the darkness and the dampness and the garbage of the city. As this particular rat quietly thieves its way through the vegetation (a term here which harkens to both natural vegetation of the rich and full kind and the sparse and half-dead grass and shrubs of the city), its belly, which by its invocation we are meant to pay attention to, is dragged along through slime. Slime is, true, found in nature occasionally, but it is found far more in the city, where water, stuck atop pavement and full of gas and garbage begins to fester and grow. The belly of the rat is as fat as the land which produced him. The bank, which might have been a river bank, is the bank of a canal, an entirely artificial river in which the “I” of this section of the “Wasteland” is fishing, an image which is loaded.
Fishing, of course, would have been a past-time and a source of food for people living out in the country. Fishing is a wonderfully relaxing thing to do, though boring to some. This person, on a winter (not spring or fall or summer) evening, sits behind another completely artificial thing, a gashouse, and fishes in the ‘dull canal’.
These images, taken together, form what I would consider the greatest four lines which encapsulate the hopelessness, unnaturalness, the misery and the filth which modernity and city life has brought to Western Civilization. This person is alone, his company only a horrible rat whose belly is contaminated by slime and gluttony. The gashouse behind which he sits, a symbol of the power generation which made modernity possible, perfectly finishes the image and solidifies the artifice which surrounds this person… a person who wishes to do nothing more than that which people have been doing in nature since forever: fishing. He cannot even fish any longer, not in any real, meaningful, human sense, for there is just too much in his way.
-Dan |
|
|
| My tiny attempt at a 'Wastland' Poem |
[Mar. 14th, 2006|09:43 pm] |
This is actually taken from a longer short story that I wrote a few weeks back and its transformation into a poem was done weakly at best. Tell me what you think: I can take it. :-)
The City
Shooting through black, underground, tunnels,
the sun outside fighting to just leak
through the haze that you can almost feel,
are one hundred people who have
never before
seen each other.
They stand and sit and look at one another
and not at one another.
They are absorbed in books and newspapers;
absorbed in music or videogame;
absorbed in fear and fear and advertising.
The girls in clubbing gear
tease the cocks of young men
who have been almost destroyed
by their contradictory worlds.
The speakers turn them slowly deaf
as the E slurs their problems into passions
and they spend the whole drunken night
communicating.
But the weekend leaves and
back into the tunnels we are.
And no one says anything.
And everyone is moving.
If you’re not looking at an advertisement,
you are either at home
or at work.
And then there is death.
Death graces our ears everyday
and we become a little more
obliviously afraid.
Cardboard signs supporting them,
human beings with thoughts and dreams,
sleep as garbage over a sewer-grate.
We step around them and are
forbidden to look.
Drivers who are alone in their cars
are rammed by other drivers
who are alone in their cars.
Thus, their blood becomes the shade
of the world around them.
And eventually they are almost gone;
what remains is the tunnel dweller
that doesn’t speak unless it is
absolutely necessary. |
|
|
| One last word concerning Arnold. |
[Mar. 8th, 2006|09:24 am] |
My initial impressions of Arnold were generally negative. I felt his criticism was harsh and somewhat unfair to the current generation of writers. His insistance on high seriousness was interesting but, I felt, it was limiting in the poetry it allowed to be considered great. After reading Arnold's poems, specifically "The Buried Life" I started to see him somewhat differently. Here is a poem which is truely beyond his time. The aimless alientation of the industrial revolution had left a huge population with almost no understanding of what life was all about. In this work, that desperation which arises as the lost search for meaning is not only evident, but extremely well developed over the course of the poem.
"But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;"
Now, in class, Prof Kuin read to us from Arnold's preface to his collected works, in which Arnold suggests that poetry of his age cannot become great like that of the past simply because there exists in his society no greatness of action among men. My dear, Arnold, I beg to differ. What you have so prophetically articulated in "The Buried Life" is the greatest of all the actions from which your society suffers: lack of action. Modernity brought with it a cosmic alteration in the way that human beings lived their lives and understand themselves within the world. This created what we now call alienation and reification. Human beings were being lost within the bustling and inhuman cities and because of the 'go go go' nature of city life, they never had time to really figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. Hence, the poem's 'vague and forlorn' feelings that something is missing in life.
The lack of human action caused by modernity is, I argue, the greatest that Arnold could have written on, and though he may have not thought it, he did adhere to his critical beliefs after all. |
|
|
| "After he has made himself perfectly comfortable" |
[Feb. 8th, 2006|04:25 pm] |
Our imaginations must, once again, be turned on. We must imagine that the industrial revolution had actually accomplished for the common person what people like Arnold were suggesting it would accomplish. They said that we would be working four hour days and have all the luxuries we could possibly want! We would spend our time much like people do in Star Trek: The Next Generation, frolicking in the forests, painting, singing, dancing, screwing, and generally getting to better know ourselves and the world (and/or galaxy) which whips along around us. It would be during this time that our greatest art would be created, for our work-starved minds and bodies would seek some outlet of expression and art of such sublime beauty would be created such as the world has never known.
The last time I checked, the world wasn't QUITE up to that 'four-hours-a-day' standard.
Before my question, an assumption: our art, in comparison, sucks. True, there is some pretty amazing stuff being produced in films, games, the internet and other media based forms, but in terms of literature, visual art and music, how much of what were are creating today will be with us in 100 years? Indeed, most of our stuff comes and goes so fast that it's hard to keep up with all the 'art' that surrounds us.
Now the question: Arnold argues that great art cannot be created unless the 'man meets the moment;' that a society bares some of the responsibility for the creation of great art; genius cannot do it alone. Are geniuses no longer born or is it society which has disabled our artistic endeavours? How about this one... is great art being produced today? Is there anything at all in art that could be considered on par with the great works of history? Is the hyper-active nature of our society disallowing that art from being appreciated and understood for what it really is?
Here is my suggestion: How many of you know of homestarrunner.com? If you are familiar with the website, you, I hope, are also familiar with the genius that lies underneath much of what goes on there. Many of the skits are so sublimely funny that they are watchable again and again without boredom, just as the great works of literature are readable many times over before they become tiresome. (Arnold, I know, wouldn't consider Strong Bad and the gang all that great, considering they lack the 'high-seriousness' he requires, but he's not around any more...) I think that there is some pretty incredible art being produced all over the world, for genius will never cease to exist as long as the mind is aware that there has to be MORE to this whole deal than shampoo and burgers! Our commodity driven lives are so 'go go go!' that we almost have no time to deal with and absorb great art, let alone create any of our own. If (oh, if!) were weren't so stressed out all the time then maybe, just maybe, Arnold's prediction would come true. |
|
|
| Personal Affinity. |
[Jan. 27th, 2006|10:45 am] |
Arnold writes, "Our personal affinities, likings and circumstances, have great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet's work, and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses."
Do dogs read poetry? Do cats? How about an Octopus? Would it be likely that during a deep diving adventure you'd come across an eight-legged creature with an eye for literary irony?
More interesting question: do books read themselves? No? Then, I suppose my (post)modern self must point out that books, in and of themselves, have no importance at all, aside from, perhaps, kindling for the campfire.
Arnold is trying to isolate a way in which literature can be evaluated in and of itself. "What makes good, classic literature," he posits, and for good reason too! It is an important thing to have a clear basis upon which to judge the artistic endeavors of ages gone by, for, as Arnold points out, it is folly to love the writers of the past just because they are exactly that: writers of the past. We must have a set of tools which will enable us to see literature as it really is, and not what our expectations have built it up to be. To do this not only must we forget the story of literature's history, we must also forget that people have preferences and that these preferences alter heavily the way in which we will judge the goodness of something. Arnold suggests that we must jettison this so that our view is objective and, thus, true to the literature itself.
Modernity says that this is impossible. True. However, theory is not bound by reality and so let us entertain the option that Arnold's idea could work. Is it a good one? Yes and No. Yes because it's a bit of academic fun for the 'ol boys sitting in front of the Oxford fireplace, yelling civilly at each other about literature. From the standpoint of Arnold's stated necessary condition for good literature, (that being 'deep enjoyment'), I must say that our personal affinities are all that we have. Literature is enjoyable because it, in some way, speaks to our lived experiences and personal views (or against, of course). If we did not compare Hamlet's frustration at his inability to speak out against our own understandings of what his situation would be like, we can't but appreciate the wonderful craftsmanship. And though the craftsmanship is of very high import, it is the humanity behind that craftsmanship which sticks with us, and the only reason that the humanity of the work sticks with us is because we read the play as human beings; human beings who are full of personal contradictions, emotions, biases, pains, and all the other crap that make us up.
If we didn't have that, we'd have nothing and Arnold's 'classics' would be only ink on wood. |
|
|
| Nature |
[Jan. 19th, 2006|06:24 pm] |
On my back, there is a tattoo of a tree. When I show people the work, they always ask me, "why a tree?" At first, I tried to explain to them the reason for the tree as being more than simply a symbol of something I loved, but rather, as sometime that I am. Growing up on an equestrian ranch, there isn't much to do during the hot, lazy days of summer.
Thus, I spent quite a large amount of time exploring the forests around my place. I used to trek for hours and hours through the woods, climbing the trees, picking the wild raspberries and breathing the wonderfully fresh air. Nature, once you come to know it, becomes such a huge part of how you feel about the world that, for example, moving to the city is torture. I hate it here. There are no trees. Nature, really, becomes your friend, much like a pet does. The more time you spend with it, the more you come to realize how fantastically amazing it is.
Wordsworth's work appeals to me for a few reasons: his throwing out the window of notions of poetry as elitist; his understandable diction; and, of course, his true understanding of nature. Anyone can write a poem about a pretty flower and make it work, but how many can write a poem about the way in which sheep jump when called and make it work?
-Dan.
P.S. If you are interested in seeing my tree tattoo (and it's pretty cool) just ask. |
|
|
| Those silly editors... |
[Jan. 11th, 2006|10:59 pm] |
Okay. Let’s talk editors. They are important people, for they see what we, as artists, tend not to see, considering how close we are to the text. They are sharp of mind and quick of eye, and can spot a comma splice from 100 meters. We need them, just as they need us. With that said, I cannot, without guilt, forego mentioning one of their, perhaps, lesser qualities. They are not necessarily themselves artists… and though some may say that this doesn’t matter, I maintain that it does. There is something in the creation of ideas that cannot be expressed and cannot be understood except by those who do it, regardless of the number of books you have read or the number of classes you have attended.
This brings me to “The Thorn” and “Old Man Travelling” and the editing that was done to them by Wordsworth’s friend Coleridge.
First “The Thorn” and those lovely lines, “I’ve measured it from side to side: ‘Tis three feet long and two feet wide.” Are these lines important? Strong? Evocative? At all necessary? No, no, nope and no way, dude. Speaking from a PURELY academic point of view, should Wordsworth change them to better suit the needs of the poem, whereby the ‘poem’ is first and foremost considered a work of literature? Yes. And indeed he did. However, was Wordsworth’s plan to write ‘beautiful’ poetry which would surely garner the interest of the educated elite, who, upon taking in the glory that it is, would sit around for hours on end, downing large amounts of brandy and arguing happily about it? I don’t think so.
Our author was interested in the REAL lives of those who did not have the luxury of fancy educations, but rather, he was interested in people just like the narrator of “The Thorn” who had, “slow faculties and deep feelings”. In his preface to the poem he writes that he had two objectives: those being to make interesting an uninteresting thing and to “adhere to the style in which such persons describe [it].
As I wrote in a response to another post, I maintain that writers are actors who, instead of standing upon a stage and manipulating their aspect to suit the needs of a character, sit in their place of writing and manipulate their minds so that the teller of the story, whomever he (forgive the male pronoun) may be, takes control of that writer’s toolset and co-writes the piece. I know it sounds rather silly, but if you’d like proof, just ask a writer and they will tell you that characters tend to do things on their own as you are writing, even against your will.
Briefly: “Old Man Travelling” I do not know if the notion of Zen existed anywhere in the world at this point, but this old man surely is it. Is the question about where he is going melodramatic? Yep. Regardless, it is there and, like much else of what I’ve read of Wordsworth, it rings true to the character that has been created. If, by contrast, the last bit seemed like a silly attempt to strengthen the above representation, then, yes, I would have a problem with it. However, when we read the edited version, the image that we take with us is just as strong as that which the original left us with. Both versions ring true to the purpose of the work: to depict the reality of human existence. |
|
|
| Will I never shut-up about REALITY??? |
[Dec. 15th, 2005|06:22 pm] |
Today, I am going to engage in an exercise of the willing suspension of disbelief. I wish to write about this fabled ‘reality’ gig that everyone seems to be harping upon, but I wish to do so without the encumberment of that bit of knowledge that I’ve gained from the reading of Wordsworth’s poems. Thus, even though I shall already know the answers to the queries I shall pose, I shall nonetheless pose them as if I did not. Let the game begin!
In his defence, Sidney majestically articulates that “Poesy … is an art of imitation”. Specifically, Poesy is chiefly an imitation of “the unconceivable excellencies of God”. Now, considering that Sidney would have conceived of the world much as a text that is in need of reading and understanding, it is not too much of stretch to suggest that what Sidney was actually seeking is the nature of human reality, at least as far as that reality can be aligned with its aspirations for divine understanding.
So, the question I now pose: Does Sidney discover the ‘reality’ for which he was seeking? Using Astrophil and Stella as our example, the answer to our question resides somewhere around the ‘perhaps’ region with a slight spill over into ‘not really’s territory. Though the sequence is a masterwork of poetic beauty and calculated rhetoric, it isn’t necessarily a definitive work on the nature of reality.
Alright, so, now we move to Dryden, who, in his essay, writes that a play ought to be, “a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours.” Does our proper English friend bark up the tree he has sown? Well, taking his gorgeous tragic epic All for Love as our example, I’d have to conclude that while it is certainly a lively image of human passions, it isn’t what I would consider a just representation of lived reality.
Our new friend Wordsworth makes a far bolder claim when speaking of the infamous eel Reality. He writes, “I have proposed to myself to imitate, and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men.” In terms of diction, specifically the high-falutin’ gobbledegook that most poets employ in their work, Wordsworth writes, “I have taken as much pains to avoid it as others ordinarily take to produce it.” God Bless him for that, IF it’s true. Indeed, if Wordsworth actually delivers on what he preaches, it will be a happy day for all.
In wonder… I wonder…
Here's to hoping that ya'll 'r chillin' and stuff. |
|
|
| While we wait... |
[Dec. 8th, 2005|12:02 pm] |
Hi. I will be blogging on Wordsworth at least twice over the next week or so, but in the meantime, I thought it might be fun to share some of my work in the Sonnet form. I'm currently enrolled in 4121: Lyric Poetry, and in that class you have a choice of either responding critically to the works, or writing your own imitations. These imitations can launch from any facet of the poems, and, indeed, this is a wonderfully fun and rewarding exercise. Now, for our major assignments, we can work our way through a sonnet cycle of our own conception, and for the Fall term assignment, I've written the first 9 sonnets of my cycle which I will continue later on in the year. For now, I thought it might be fun to share a few of the good ones with you. Feel free to comment upon them in any manner you like.
8
A stranger on the street asked me today,
What was, indeed, the most beautiful thing.
I thought and replied, “how can I portray
Perfection? I am not a poet king.”
The stranger stood: I was bidden to try.
In searching for words I dug my mind deep;
Ideas flashed: an infinite supply,
But none were the harvest I wished to reap.
“No words come forth: too difficult a task!”
And on that note I was ready to move,
A hand stopped me, “only once do I ask
“so I do go, but this truth you can prove!”
The person gone, a thought sprang into view:
It was your smile: the stranger had spoke true.
5
It was ten minutes before you arrive,
And I thought it would be a nice surprise
To be welcomed by me after the drive
With something in hand to brighten the eyes.
Across the snow covered streets I did go,
To a shop with a sign promising heat,
“An extra large please;” I ordered a Joe,
A prise I had for my kitty so sweet.
The time did it pass but the bus came not.
In the cold I waited; coffee in hand,
And I soon had to drink what I had bought
For the heat gave in to the cold’s demand.
And when you pulled up much later that night,
All that I had was the tale of my plight.
7
It was on the bus as I went to school,
That sitting across from me, hand in hand,
Were two people who meant not to be cruel,
And to make me sad was not what they planned,
Yet as they chatted: a nudge or a wink,
Their affections displayed for all to see,
Stolen was my mind to a land called Think:
Most definitely not a jubilee.
Before the path of my thoughts could be stopped,
A Phantom arose and stood by my seat
It showed me that all my efforts had flopped
My repression of longing had been beat.
And though class I did have at school that day
My mind was elsewhere: on a Phantom’s stay.
and...
2
Happiness, perhaps, is something you buy.
Encased in the shiniest of plastic,
And always in the shortest of supply.
Well, of course, it is surely fantastic!
You walk up, take it, right off the shelf,
People behind you are pushing, fighting,
The box is wonderful, alive itself,
Everything’s so great! Just so exciting!
Moving to the front, a cashier awaits -
Taking your happiness, scanning it through,
The cost is quite high, but money dictates
Whether or not your new life will be blue.
I’m glad to say that all this is a lie,
A life with you; the above I deny.
Thanks for reading!
-Peace. |
|
|
| Anthony the Hero |
[Nov. 23rd, 2005|10:45 pm] |
What is a hero? How must a person live in order to be considered a hero? Well, a hero must be strong, but they also much be kind. A hero must show initiative, but they also must bear the most important of responsibilities. Of course, a hero must do great things. That Anthony had done great things and had been a hero is not a point of contention. However, what I wish to suggest is that Anthony, as a heroic figure, does not re-obtain that status until the very end of Dryden’s play. Perhaps until after his final words have escaped his body.
In act one, we see a man defeated and lost. His loss in battle has shattered his world and caused him to drive himself from his love, and thus, he has lost that of himself as well. However, Ventidius does arrive, and by the end of the act, Anthony has regained at least a small part of his heroic virtue in that he is once again going to take charge and lead his men.
In act two, after Ventidius and Cleopatra fight over Anthony as if he is a commodity to be won, Cleopatra wins him and Anthony once again loses his title of General, but regains his name of Lover. His heroic self is in pieces, and he is torn between worlds which demand one side of him, but require a full refusal of the other.
Act three heralds the return of responsibility. Anthony, being a man of honour and virtue, cannot simply dismiss the needs of his wife and children, and subsequently, he moves from being a Lover to being a man of honour and responsibility. Still, he is only partially a hero.
The fourth act, in which all Anthony knows falls down before his already tortured eyes, returns him to the state at which we joined him: as an utter loss of a man, whose life is reduced to a mere shell.
It is only in the fifth act, I suggest, that Anthony, having nothing left to live for, attempts to take his own life. In this botched attempt, we see a man whose eyes are finally open once again and he has regained his title as a hero.
“Think we have had a clear and glorious day,
And heaven did kindly to delay the storm
Just till our close of evening. Ten years’ love,
And not a moment lost, but all improved
To th’ utmost joys. What ages have we lived!
And now to die each other’s; and so dying,
While hand in hand we walk in groves below,
Whole troops of lovers’ ghosts shall flock about us,
And all the train be ours.”
Goodbye, dear Anthony. You will be missed. |
|
|
| The pangs of dispis'd love. |
[Nov. 16th, 2005|09:45 am] |
To end our discussion of Dryden and All for Love, I shall take a shot at trying to resolve the question of whether or not Dryden has done what he set out to do in his essay, and if so, has he done it well and is the end result a good play? For this question to be effectively answered, I shall also briefly discuss Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra.
Anthony and Cleopatra is an interesting play, but to definitively say that it is a love story with a tragic ending would be a bit much. This play is very highly political, and indeed, more of the play is spent watching the political and military operations unfold than it is watching the lovers. And not only do we rarely see the lovers, there are only a baby’s handful of instances whereby they are actually showing each other their love (granted, Cleopatra is ALWAYS railing on about Anthony, but, unlike Dryden’s work, Anthony’s mind is often otherwise occupied). This is a story of many things, and at its core is not necessarily a story of love, but rather a story of what happens when you step beyond the bounds of your station. I’m not denying that the love is there, but rather, I’m suggesting that it serves more as the gas, smelled, but rarely seen, for the machine that is the play (excuse the bad metaphor).
Now. All for Love is a very different story. This is a play about a Queen named Cleopatra, and a very messed up General named Anthony. That the story revolves, is dependent upon, would collapse without, their love for each other is undisputable. Though, like the Shakespeare, this too is a play about what happens when one’s bounds are exceeded, it is far more about how Anthony’s passion has destroyed him. (I’m not ready to tackle the moral position the play takes on this, but I will tentatively argue that it does not necessarily demonize Anthony’s passion for Cleopatra.) Since this play is essentially only about Anthony and his struggle between his old-school Roman Reason and Honour and his Passion for Cleopatra, it can be said that Dryden wrote a play which adheres to the tenet of a singularity of action. Furthermore, since the play takes place entirely within the walls of the Queen’s palace, it also sticks with a single place of scene. Finally, the time-span of the play, while not ‘realistic’, is far, far more reasonable than Anthony and Cleopatra, which has characters zooming all over the world. Thus, the unity of time can be said to remain mostly intact.
So, the question now comes: is All for Love a good play? Does it keep up with its Shakespearian counterpart? Yes, and definitively so. I’d suggest that it surpasses it and for the simple reason that it is a play one can far more easily and deeply relate to. Of battles and international politics most of us know not. We know little of betrayal (I hope) and so can only guess as to how it hurts. But love. We have all felt the pangs of dispis’d love, and so when Anthony and Cleopatra, in act four have come to such a horrible misunderstanding that they both are weeping for the love that once was, we go, ‘ah, yes… that… I know that…’. This is a far more sympathetic play, and one which has far more of a satisfying closure about it. We feel satisfied, at the end, that what we have witnessed was a true tragic moment, whereby two deserving people were robbed of each other.
-Peace |
|
|
| The Misogyny of Dryden(???) |
[Nov. 6th, 2005|06:46 pm] |
My initial reading of All for Love left a decidedly negative response within me. I found the play dull in language, lifeless, completely unrealistic, and so generally boring that I was wondering what the big deal was. How, I thought, could the English go from the greatness of Shakespeare to this? (At that point, I had not yet read Anthony and Cleopatra, thus, my comparison was general).
However, having just completed my second reading of the text, and having read Shakespeare’s version, I am inclined to dramatically alter my view. Though I’m not ready to admit that it is, per se, better than Shakespeare’s work, it is certainly more, shall we say, precise. The ‘point’, if you will, of Dryden’s play is far more easily understood than Shakespeare’s play. Though less complex (I’ll argue, potentially, next time), the characters are far more emotively concise, if not a bit on the extremist side. Additionally, the characters of Ventidius, whose entire existence revolves around his lord and master, and that of Alexas, whose simple, yet honest, stupidity causes the fall of all, are subject to both the viewers’ (readers’) ire and their sympathy, for are they not doing only what they believe to be right for those that they love? All of this I shall return to when I compare the two works later on.
Onto what I wish to discuss: misogyny. Such a fun word! Sounds somewhat serpentine, wouldn’t you agree? Now. The idea to write about the text’s misogynistic character(istics) came to me during the initial reading, and I don’t necessarily continue to field the view that Dryden was a misogynist. However, I found a very interesting quote from an abstract to a research paper on this very topic and decided that I could fly, at least a bit, with this. It reads thusly:
“Misogyny is one means [playwrights of the Restoration] have for fighting against reductive readings, preserving the opportunity for understanding texts by occupying the many different perspectives offered by each sentence, regardless of whether a perspective is ostensibly maligned or approved by the text as a whole”
(http://www.users.muohio.edu/mandellc/misog.html)
It my electronic attempts to further validate this, I came up with only static and advertisements, therefore, I am limited to accepting it as, at least, somewhat correct.
Shakespeare’s text does not have any overt misogyny within. There is no character who loudly proclaims, “Woman! Woman! / Dear damned, inconstant sex!” (IV, 124-5), or, “Oh women! Women! Women! All the gods / Have not such power of doing good to man, / As you of doing harm” (II, 451-3), or, “For manhood’s sake, and for your own dear safety, / Touch not these poisoned gifts, / Infected by the sender” (II, 202-4), etc… Ventidius constantly is reminding Anthony of how women make men effeminate and unman them. It is understandable that Dryden did this so as to build a strong and binary relationship between Ventidius and Cleopatra, and due to the play’s simplicity, a complex character structure would perhaps have gone beyond of the unity(esque) play.
For Restoration live, thanks for cognizating. |
|
|
| The Aesthetics(???) of Dryden. |
[Oct. 22nd, 2005|05:48 pm] |
What struck me as particularly odd concerning Dryden’s essay was the near lack of any discussion of aesthetics. It was made clear to me from that video we watched was that the push at this time was realism, realism, realism. It is not without a slight chuckle that I ponder this, as their literature, specifically their theatre, was anything but ‘realistic’.
Thinking back to those painful years which we tend to refer to as ‘high school’, I recall, very poignantly, the myriad of insults thrown in the general direction of good ‘ol Shakespeare. “People don’t talk like this! This is SOOOO unrealistic.” I’m sad to say that, at the time, when I didn’t know from my elbow my ass, I too joined into the cacophonous choir of chortling infants as we raged and ranted about how completely unrelated to our lived experiences big Shakky was.
Being far from an expert on the period, I cannot say for certain how they conceptualised this slippery beast known as ‘reality’, however, it struck me as wonderfully funny that these four academic silly-billies should discuss their society’s literature in essentially the same way (yet with far more grand diction and structure) that my grade nine, acne-plagued, hormone driven peers did: “This shit is so totally not realistic.”
What I expected Dryden’s argument to be (though, naturally, we cannot confer complete authority to Dryden… let us say Neander) was not what it turned out to be. Neander’s river-loving boat-fellows spit upon and spurn their nation’s literature, and for many a reason. Essentially the punch line is as discussed above. I thought, and wrongly, that the response of Neander would be along the lines, “True, we are not the most realistic of poets and thespians, YET, our literature is damn pretty and rather profound, when you get to the heart of it.” Instead, we get, “No no no no… it IS realistic, and here’s why…” (I found a few of his refutations lacking in substantiation). When all is said and done, my initial reading returned but ONE mention of the direct importance of aesthetics on the 96th page of our chlorophyll pigmented chronicle where, of rhyme’s naturalness, Neander says, “and sometimes [rhymes] may sound better”.
That’s it, as far as I can tell. Not only is this said in a passing sort of way, he says ‘sometimes’… sometimes… ah, sometimes. The reason Shakespeare has yet to be surpassed (in my barely-educated view, he’s the bomb of all bombs), is not because of his stories, nor due to his interesting morality and ethics lessons, but rather, it’s because to read him is to read beauty, regardless of how pornographically grotesque might be the subject.
Peace out, dudes and dudettes. |
|
|
| Yet witches may repent; thou art far worse than they; |
[Oct. 13th, 2005|04:09 pm] |
As I have yet to go to the York Library and get my card done for this session, I am unable to access the OED. Thus, I’m going to have to rely on the highly inferior definitions found on www.dictionary.com for the purposes of this short entry.
What does it mean to be a cold person? Well, according to the above website it means: “Having no appeal to the senses or feelings.” I actually like this definition, for I think it suits Stella well.
Stella’s heart is cold. We know this. Cupid, indeed, in the 8th sonnet, thinks of her that heat he will find, as her eyes so brightly shine. Yet naught but shivers was he by her delivered, and away he went, cold and wet.
Stella is remarked of as ‘cold’ many times (8, 11, 12, 43… to name a few), and at other times, she is just plain ‘ol unfeeling or, it seems to me, stupid (40, 44, 60, 64). And then there is the big one. The fifth song, where Astrophil writes, “I say thou art a devil, though clothed in angel’s shinning” (193). Read this song once to yourself. This is not some sort of ironic or satiric play. Astrophil is sick and bloody tired of being pulled around by his love for this woman who obviously is dumber than a rock.
So, that’s my argument. Why, however, would Sidney intentionally spill his ink as he paints the blackest face of woe? It works within his didactically influenced paradigm. If we dislike Stella, just a little bit, I find that it is more plausible that we will side with Astrophil’s lustful arguments. Our dislike of Stella is slowly built up through the sonnets until, in the fifth song, Astrophil just explodes. Notice that song eight is the Volta. Coincidence not.
-Peace. |
|
|
| The Delight and Instruct |
[Oct. 12th, 2005|06:35 pm] |
It is, perhaps, a bit pretentious to go about declaring what a writer of pure genius thought he was doing some 400 years ago. On the other hand, it is quite fun, potentially enlightening, and really only a little bit blasphemous if I’m wrong. Thus, without further ado, I present to you, dear reader, my theory, the title of which is simply: “To Delight and Instruct.”
Sidney’s defence makes two major points. The first is that poetry isn’t trash; indeed, it should be the form of knowledge transference most highly esteemed! The second point, and the reason that Sidney demands the first, is that good imaginative writing, unlike any other disciplines of the science (shall we say) of art, can simultaneously instruct while it delights. On the two-hundred and thirty first page of the Oxford Edition of Sidney’s Major Works, it is written that Heroic epics serve as great vehicles for both delight and instruction. “For as the image of each action stirreth and instructeth the mind, so the lofty image of such worthies most inflameth the mind with desire to be worthy, and informs with counsel how to be worthy.” By reading of the greatness of Aeneas, the reader, Sidney argues, will be enticed into a mindset which could only be considered virtuous (for a discussion on Virtue, see my first posting). Thus, to be redundant, it is through imaginative writing that a perceiver can be both tickled pink with aesthetic enjoyment and grow ever more sagacious at one and the same time.
Wonderful, except that Astrophil and Stella isn’t a heroic epic. Indeed, it’s nothing like it, in either form or content. A Heroic epic tends to wear its moral stance out on its sleeve, or at least the ‘lesson’ to be learned is not covertly shaded from the reader’s acute perception. Thus, in order to pull off his didactically motivated ambitions, Sidney had to employ some pretty sneaky rhetoric, of which you, dear reader, will soon be acquainted.
Do we like Astrophil? At the beginning and through the middle at least, I’d say that yes we do. We like him because we can sympathize with his plight. Why do we like him? Well, because Sidney wanted us to like him, and thus, he carefully placed sympathetic sonnets throughout the sequence in order to make sure that the reader wasn’t developing deviant thoughts of their own concerning his eloquent protagonist. The ‘I’m the real deal’ sonnets are placed many times throughout the sequence: 3, 6, 15, 28, 54, 55, 74, 90. We want to read, ‘reality’, as Prof. Kuin has reminded us many-a-time. By telling us that he IS (damnit!) the real thing, we tend to want to cheer him on as he fights to gain Stella’s stone cold heart (check out my next entry for a bit of Stella bashing, which, I’ll argue, was completely intentionally and part of his design).
We also like Astrophil because he seems to be head over heels in love with a seemingly wonderful woman. Her greatness is proclaimed in the loudest of trumpets, through the slow cry of a violin, to the demanding beating of a timpani, and, of course, by the orchestra as a whole. Sidney uses his language as an incredible weapon of persuasion, guilefully entreating the reader to see how truly awesome Stella is, and why it is of such paramount import that Astrophil win her. We want him to win so badly that when he finally does, in sonnet 69, we are very happy for him (or at least I was…)
Okay, you say, so what? We like him. How is he teaching us a damn thing? Ah… there’s the rub! What’s Astrophil’s biggest dilemma? Over what are many of his sonnets centred? The conflict between his wit and his will; his passions and desires and what he knows to be right and true: living virtuously. Sonnets 4, 5, 10, 14, 18, 21, 25, 31, 71, and 72 (to name only a few), are all about this problem. Astrophil cannot seem to reconcile his lust and his love; his desire for her body and his love of her mind. Naturally, at the time of composition, the morality of the Church would have demanded that desire over virtue was an absolute sin. Indeed, there are sonnets in which Astrophil’s friends are placating him with wisdom, telling him to PLEASE see how his thoughts can only lead to wickedness!
But we like Astrophil, and his arguments for why desire should have a place alongside virtue are compelling. I heard the little angel perched upon my shoulder saying, ‘Yeah, maybe that Astrophil dude is right! Maybe desire is not such a bad thing after all!’. Sidney WANTS you to feel this way. We sympathize with Astrophil and we want him to get the girl, and even though some of his morals may be a bit off, we are seduced through his language and our empathy towards him into accepting the logic behind his arguments. We begin to think that it is true that desire and virtue are not at odds with one another…. until, of course, the Volta.
Song 8: Astrophil and Stella steal away to a secret and hormone filled fairy land where Astrophil employs his grandest of tropes in an attempt to get her to sleep with him. She refuses, and downhill goes our protagonist. He has many sleepless nights, and many pain-filled days, where his rejection is made ever so clear to him. In sonnet 93, he admits that he has done her wrong, yet he cannot seem to kick his old desirous ways. The sequence ends where it began, with Astrophil lamenting that his only joy is being able to be woeful because Stella he doth love and yet can never have. We, who once Astrophil did love, now find ourselves feeling that maybe, after all, he wasn’t such a great guy. Even if we still like him, the obviousness of his errs are unavoidable. When we ask ourselves (if we care to do so) why did Stella leave him, the answer seems to stare us straight in the face: his desire destroyed him and any chance that he may have had for obtaining her.
To recap: Sidney fashions for us a sympathetic character in a sympathetic situation. We want Astrophil to get the girl, so we cheer for him, regardless of his quasi-sinful morals. We are even seduced into accepting the truth, or at least applicability, of desire in love. Then he fails and we are forced to conclude, subconsciously or otherwise, that desire is in actuality a very harmful and damaging thing. Virtue is way better.
Peace. |
|
|
| Sidney's Brilliance. |
[Sep. 23rd, 2005|12:10 pm] |
Welcome, welcome. (To my subgroup members… sorry for the length of this. I promise not to do this again... maybe.)
This week, I shall delight and inspire as I chronicle some of Sir Philip Sidney’s more brilliant movements (yes, I did say movements) from his sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella.
First, however, I’d like to talk a little bit about why I’m employing such an odd term as ‘movement’ in reference to literature and literary genius. The term ‘movement’ is, generally, lexicographically more prevalent within the discourses of instrumental (and other less good) forms of music. However, because music is a language (and nothing more, really), I think it pertinent to discuss, briefly, how incredible music works.
Musical genius is created in two ways: The first is through the undermining of socialized expectations (this is, indeed, true of great literature as well). The second is achieved when the composer has completely mastered the language at his/her disposal (and musical language is just as complicated, if not moreso, than spoken/written language). When the near perfect execution of these two facets are combined, the resulting creation is (romantically speaking) that which goes beyond abstract classification as ‘art’, and becomes, rather, a living and breathing entity, which, when understood, causes such profound affectual (and intellectual) states within its bearers that a passing layperson would think the bearer mad.
So too does wonderful literature render the emotions and mind, if one can pick up on it.
Let’s roll:
Sonnet 3: In this one, he’s talking about how his muse does not seek grand tropes and overly ornate language in order to guide his pen. Line 12:
How then? Even thus: in Stella’s face I read
What love and beauty be; then all my deed
But copying is, what in her nature writes.
Though this is not an example of language mastery, it is surely intellectual mastery.
Sonnet 8: This is the story, read by Professor Kuin in class, of how Cupid became locked in Astrophil’s heart. Read it out loud. It’s absolute genius. Although writing poetry to swoon the heart of your desired has fallen by the wayside, one can see, just by being human, how incredibly irresistible it would be to have something like this composed for you (even if, believe it or not, you’re a guy).
Sonnet 14: This is a funny one. A theme which runs throughout is the division between virtue and desire. Poor Astrophil is trying to rein in his uncontrollable desire for Stella, effectually turning what his society perceives as lust, into genuine and proper ‘love’. In this sonnet, he’s talking about how fiery is his desire, and how that fiery desire is being perceived by his society as sinful. Line 11:
Ready of wit, and fearing nought but shame:
If that be sin, which in fixed hearts both breed
A loathing of all loose unchastity:
Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.
Check out the awesome righteousness. This guy is proclaiming himself a warrior against ‘loose unchastity’… which is hilarious, considering that he’s lying through his teeth. The irony here just seethes.
Sonnet 22: Okay, here’s a sonnet which would SURELY have floored Stella, had she more than two brain cells to rub together, but I’ll talk about that next week. In this one, he paints a scene where some women on horseback must shade their faces from the sun, lest they burn. Line 9:
Stella alone with face unarmed marched,
Either to do like him, which open shone,
Or careless of the wealth because her own;
Yet were the hid and meaner beauties parched,
Her daintiest bare went free. The cause was this:
The sun, which others burned, did her but kiss.
I don’t think I need to say anything here. This dude is brilliant.
Sonnet 31: Here, he’s speaking with the moon, which, he feels, bears an affective resemblance to his own melancholic heart. He develops a fellowship of sorrow with the moon and beginning on line 11 asks:
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?
As you can see, Astrophil is still trying to figure out the whole virtue/desire thing. This is so incredibly effective because it evokes an almost universal (watch it, Dan…) image in order to demonstrate how silly it is for his peers (and his love) to shun him because he loves.
Sonnet 43: A pretty good one. In it, Cupid inhabits Stella’s body. Line 9:
When he will play, then in her lips he is,
Where, blushing red, that love’s self doth them love,
With either lip he doth the other kiss
That’s pretty smart stuff. A great image, though incredibly sexual, but perhaps that’s just a bit of my hypersexualized North American consumeristic socialization talking there.
Sonnet 49: Another good invention of his. The professor read this one as well. It’s where love’s control over Astrophil is allegorized to Astrophil’s control over a horse, demonstrating in literal terms how love pulls him this way and that.
Okay, know what? That’s all for today… I’ll do the rest of them next week. Goodbye. |
|
|
| Two thoughts. |
[Sep. 18th, 2005|12:34 pm] |
Pre-thought definition for the sake of clarity: The word 'virtue' refers to that quality which, when held, makes humans 'good'. In Sidney's time, there was no (or very little) separation between becoming a 'full, learned and interesting person' (which I would consider to be the requisite qualities needed to make a person a successful or 'good' human being {they DO humanness well}), and the MORALISTIC side of virtue, whereby what is GOOD is what is divinely influenced. [Source: OED -> Virtue n.] Though Sidney is obviously referring to moral goodness when he evokes the virtuosic qualities that literature instills, I wish to avoid that clause of the definition just for the following statement.
FIRST THOUGHT: Sidney's claim that literature, above all other ways that human beings can come to know, is the best possible way to become virtuous is absolutely correct. Even though science has taken our understanding of the corporeal world to a plane of indisputable truths (and truths are what are sought out by virtuous people), it is not through the study of science that we can become the most virtuous of people. The best type of people, I argue, are still those whose minds are constantly and actively engaged with the incredible world of literature. END OF FIRST THOUGHT.
SECOND THOUGHT: Some professor, perhaps Professor Kuin, actually, when I took his literary genres class way the hell back in first year, told me that the name which is attached to the creation of the essay style of argumentation is Francis Bacon. He's the dude that is credited with tackling the old-school Aristotelian notion that human knowledge cannot extend beyond the logical constraints of what is now called a syllogism (All x are y; All y are z; therefore all x are z) [http://www.esgs.org/uk/ari.htm]. Bacon suggested that this was a very limited way of looking at the world (basically because it disallowed x+1, or any additional clause to be attached to x) and thus he created a paradigm for the intellectual exploration of the real world, which we would today call the scientific method, or, in the case of literature, the essay format. [http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/bacon.html]
Now (onto my POINT): He lived AFTER Sidney. AFTER. I don't know about you, but reading Sidney's Defence was like reading a VERY well constructed and executed essay. This, of course, makes a whole bunch of sense, considering that Sidney was also attempting to distance himself from the old-school notions of the purpose of literature and ways of knowing. However, what I find to be so cool is that because Sidney is writing BEFORE the essay is 'officially' invented, he would be not only coming up with his amazing defences of poesy (I'm not even going to try to get into them this week... they are too numerous and brilliant to count), he was ALSO employing an experimental style of argumentation to do so.
Remember... he was only in his 20s when he was writing this stuff. Pretty wild.
END OF SECOND THOUGHT. GOODNIGHT!
(Just as a side note, from the first word of this blog entry (pre-thought) to the final word (goodnight), this blog is EXACTLY 500 words. Spooky.) |
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
dan_cosman's journal