In the Proteus episode of Ulysses we see Stephen the poet writing. We are brought into a moment of his solitude walking on the beach and in his stream of consciousness and word play we see him franticly scribble notes on Mr. Deasy's letter. Perhaps the strongest image that stood out to me was the scene of a live dog finding the carcass of a dead dog, circling it and sniffing it.
"He stopped, sniffed it, stalked around it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffing rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody. Here lies poor dogsbody's body." (46)
This image set up for me an idea of duality (between things and narrative point of views) and connected back to the "cracked looking glass." Here this dog sees a distorted reflection of itself in the dead dog, an inevitable future and yet the dead dog remains something removed from the living dog. Much as later Stephen, when Stephen is writing, we are given the narrator's comment, "His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star?" and then later in the same paragraph Stephen's voice, "I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form?" (48)
This image of Stephen and his shadow parlelles the image of the two dogs, one dead at the others feet. Stephen brings it back to an issue of the soul as the form of all forms and we are presented with his observations of finite man versus the soul, wondering if his shadow, what he seems to poetically transform into an ethereal essence, were to become infinite, would it still be his?
Ultimately we see Stephen searching, focusing on language and mentioning history again and again. The way that images are weaved into the narrative is arresting and sometimes needs re-reading to take a scene away from all the sensations that we are given in the description of sand under feet as Stephen walks on the beach.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Nestor
Immediately noticable, the narrator gets closer to Dedalus in this section of the book than in the previous one. This serves to give the reader deeper insight into the conflict of the character concerning religion. This issue is established at the beginning of the section rather heavy handedly as we see how intrinsically the nature of time and Dedalus' own anachronistic feelings are tied to his views on religion. On page 24 the first non-dialogue line begins one theme running through the section: "Fabled by the daughters of memory." This is followed by Stephen's visceral and ingrained memory of the distant past. We see him here feel the wieght of time and the past as immediate issues. The use of the word fable sets the connections to The Odyssey prominently, as does the role of the olympian muses.
On page 25 we see Stephen ponder the mutability of the past, the probability wave of things having gone differently than they did. "Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinte possibilities they have outsted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind." The reader is thrust into the unresolved ponderings of Stephen wherein history is created out of either endless possabilities, or else functions within a mode of determinism. But by the next page, we see Stephen find a resolution for his query in, "Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms." In his acceptance of things existing as they are and in no other manner Stephen finds tranquility, but as we see in his conversation with Mr. Deasy, not God or religion.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake." (34) Stephen can accept that things are as they are, yet he still finds them oppressive in their nature. Deasy's response that all history is is moving towards "the manifestation of God," prompts Stephen to point out the commonplace sounds of children playing as God. Since Stephan sees History as unchangeable and unending (in that he sees it as cyclical and determined), God would manifest in the mundane, the everyday. In this way, "his shadow," the shadow of Christ, that Stephen sees as cast upon all people, is the inescapable cycle of history that is constantly butting up against the present.
On page 25 we see Stephen ponder the mutability of the past, the probability wave of things having gone differently than they did. "Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinte possibilities they have outsted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind." The reader is thrust into the unresolved ponderings of Stephen wherein history is created out of either endless possabilities, or else functions within a mode of determinism. But by the next page, we see Stephen find a resolution for his query in, "Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms." In his acceptance of things existing as they are and in no other manner Stephen finds tranquility, but as we see in his conversation with Mr. Deasy, not God or religion.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake." (34) Stephen can accept that things are as they are, yet he still finds them oppressive in their nature. Deasy's response that all history is is moving towards "the manifestation of God," prompts Stephen to point out the commonplace sounds of children playing as God. Since Stephan sees History as unchangeable and unending (in that he sees it as cyclical and determined), God would manifest in the mundane, the everyday. In this way, "his shadow," the shadow of Christ, that Stephen sees as cast upon all people, is the inescapable cycle of history that is constantly butting up against the present.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Telemachus
Reading the first section of Joyce's Ulysses required having dictionary.com and babelfish open for most of it. Despite this, I am still uncertain what "ouns" are. Regardless, the over all tone has been set for a novel where class and race divides are a strong undercurrent within Stephen Dedalus' life. By the second page, or page four in the Vintage edition, Buck Mulligan establishes this dynamic by discussing Haines with Dedalus, saying; "A ponderous Saxon, He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English. Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus; you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade."
This allows us to see much about Buck Mulligan as well as reigning issues between the English and the Irish within the novel. Buck Mulligan's name for Dedalus asserts his own work as a medical student and it also gives the reader insight into a character, the main character, that we don't hear very much from till pages into the first section. This nick-name makes Dedalus into a person who dissects things and is exacting, perhaps cruel, perhaps sterile and honest. We have yet to learn. And the way a reader does learn about Stephen is in the narrative shifts. The novel begins with a narrator that is not a character but an observer. It is difficult to tell at first if the narrator is ommnipotent and as one reads on by page six it is tempting to see the narration as first person unreliable when there suddenly appears the words "me" and the reader is thrust into an internal monologue. By page ten however it becomes clear that this "me" or "i" voice is the internal dialogue of Stephen Dedalus and the narration is close third person narration. This confusion manages to allow Joyce liberties with aspects of his descriptions which bring us close to the characters whose heads he does not enter, but he maintains his tie to Dedalus as the character whose thoughts he shares.
By page fourteen an interesting focus on language is given attention and we see an Irish peasant, romanticized in Dedalus' head into some ideal pastoral scene, bring the milk to breakfast. The focus on language arises when Haines, an English man begins to speak Gaelic to her and she mistakes it for French, not recognizing the original language of her own people. This allows the discussion on class to deepen and it shows social power structures at work, the same way that the key to the tower shows the power dynamic between Stephen and Mulligan. The power structure being connected to language is something entirely intentional on Yeats' part and shows not only his focus on history and nationality, but on the uses and weight of language. That an English man would speak to an Irish woman in Gaelic and then preach to her that "we ought to speak Irish in Ireland" is adding insult to injury, since the primary reason English became the dominant language in Ireland was because of the British occupation of the lands and their demand of obedience to the English king. Language is a tolken of culture and by taking away their language the English were breaking apart Irish culture to make them a part of their own. Joyce makes a commentary here on this porcess and an attempt at perhaps asserting his on view that Ireland should reclaim their language. This idea of misplacement within their own lands continues with Dedalus' statement that he is the "servant of two masters... the imperial British state... and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church." (20)
It seems that these focuses, so strongly asserted in the beginning of the novel will become dominant themes within the book, much as they are within Irish history.
This allows us to see much about Buck Mulligan as well as reigning issues between the English and the Irish within the novel. Buck Mulligan's name for Dedalus asserts his own work as a medical student and it also gives the reader insight into a character, the main character, that we don't hear very much from till pages into the first section. This nick-name makes Dedalus into a person who dissects things and is exacting, perhaps cruel, perhaps sterile and honest. We have yet to learn. And the way a reader does learn about Stephen is in the narrative shifts. The novel begins with a narrator that is not a character but an observer. It is difficult to tell at first if the narrator is ommnipotent and as one reads on by page six it is tempting to see the narration as first person unreliable when there suddenly appears the words "me" and the reader is thrust into an internal monologue. By page ten however it becomes clear that this "me" or "i" voice is the internal dialogue of Stephen Dedalus and the narration is close third person narration. This confusion manages to allow Joyce liberties with aspects of his descriptions which bring us close to the characters whose heads he does not enter, but he maintains his tie to Dedalus as the character whose thoughts he shares.
By page fourteen an interesting focus on language is given attention and we see an Irish peasant, romanticized in Dedalus' head into some ideal pastoral scene, bring the milk to breakfast. The focus on language arises when Haines, an English man begins to speak Gaelic to her and she mistakes it for French, not recognizing the original language of her own people. This allows the discussion on class to deepen and it shows social power structures at work, the same way that the key to the tower shows the power dynamic between Stephen and Mulligan. The power structure being connected to language is something entirely intentional on Yeats' part and shows not only his focus on history and nationality, but on the uses and weight of language. That an English man would speak to an Irish woman in Gaelic and then preach to her that "we ought to speak Irish in Ireland" is adding insult to injury, since the primary reason English became the dominant language in Ireland was because of the British occupation of the lands and their demand of obedience to the English king. Language is a tolken of culture and by taking away their language the English were breaking apart Irish culture to make them a part of their own. Joyce makes a commentary here on this porcess and an attempt at perhaps asserting his on view that Ireland should reclaim their language. This idea of misplacement within their own lands continues with Dedalus' statement that he is the "servant of two masters... the imperial British state... and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church." (20)
It seems that these focuses, so strongly asserted in the beginning of the novel will become dominant themes within the book, much as they are within Irish history.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Converse Truths
'In Memory of Major Robert Gregory' mentions "forgotten truth." The poems from 'The Tower' seem to remember these truths but approach them with a light heartedness. This attitude seems to arie from Yeats' enlarged perspective on the cycle of transient things whish he sums up in his reappearing symbol of the gyre. When younger and not yet embracing a view of all things as running paralelle and unceasing- a view adopted after he began utilizing a technique of automatic writing- Yeats' poems were more cynical and his view of aging and death were at times a terror and at times something to look forward to. His tone throughout the poems shows a new veiw that allows him to let go of a fear of death and an idea of a true end to things.
Sailing to Byzantium shows Yeats setting up this series of poems by describing his looking into the past since he now views it as necessarily connected to the present. In the first stanza he immediately sets up the same contrast between old and young, but the bird song commends both birth and death and the cycle of "begotten, born, and dies," is the cycle for all things. Yeats here admits that man, and he himself, at times fails to remember this. But in the second stanza we see Yeats study himself to reach Byzantium and in the third stanza he looks towards the external world to find his own soul and act within the gyre. This is significant in a form of synthesis, since so often in Yeats' earlier poems we see a disconnect between the external and the internal. By the end of the poem Yeats manages to portray this synthesis by asking to be made into a material thing.
"Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing
But such a form as Grecian goldsmith make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come."
By longing to be made into a staute he manages to create a symbol within the poem that embodies the material world but the material thing itself portrays myth. Yeats here fonds a way to incorporate the material world so to make himself into myth in order to spread his own mythology. After this poem he does just this. Throughout he likens himself to Homer and disavows long-standing philosophical beliefes, erecting his own.
We see that where change used to be source of pain to Yeats, he now celebrates it with lines from My Table such as
"No moon; only an aching heart
Concieves a changeless work of art."
This line manages to show his new attitude towards change as well as the inspiration for this attitude shift. The moon features strongly throughout Yeats' poems, but here begins to take on a new significance. His line breaks here are strongly intentional. That when at a phase in life where there is no moon, there is only an aching heart. Also that with out the changing phases of the moon life itself would be changeless, people would not progress or differentiate themselves. Therefore the aching heart that has no moon, or phase of moon to identify with, in their life would concieve of a changless art. This also incorporates a tone of self reflexivity. Since the tone of this book of poems has changed from his former writing.
In My Descendants we see Yeats give the image of the gyre a weighty meaning. Here we see him put a lot of stock into the future of his children and on his new idea of how the future relates to present and past.
"And what if my descendants lose the flower......
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless ruin that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky."
This function to show that this literal flower, the roses in his garden, that he has found in his new abode and married life, used to exist only as a metaphor for him. Again Yeats has incorporated the tangible world into his world of symbols, and vice versa. At the end of the third stanza we see this by the way that Yeats uses the stones of the house to mimick the movement of the universe, and this way makes a monument out of them. Throughout these poems Yeats seems to making a monument to his new found thoughts.
At first glance I felt that The Wheel managed to fit in closely with other earlier poems by Yeats. It seems cynical and expresses a longing for death. Ultimately though I see the "longing for the tomb" in this poem as a releasing of transient things. As Yeats has accepted that things will go on and have gone on, and while living one longs for a time that is not the present, but that this too is part of the cyclical nature of things. He manages to express that all this looking forward means only looking towards death and that one must be able to cease this in order to accept the cycles that he sees all things embodying. All this shows an acceptance on the part of Yeats to incorporate the converse truths of his old age and his young, of the tangible world with the intangible and of his blood thirsty country men with himself.
Sailing to Byzantium shows Yeats setting up this series of poems by describing his looking into the past since he now views it as necessarily connected to the present. In the first stanza he immediately sets up the same contrast between old and young, but the bird song commends both birth and death and the cycle of "begotten, born, and dies," is the cycle for all things. Yeats here admits that man, and he himself, at times fails to remember this. But in the second stanza we see Yeats study himself to reach Byzantium and in the third stanza he looks towards the external world to find his own soul and act within the gyre. This is significant in a form of synthesis, since so often in Yeats' earlier poems we see a disconnect between the external and the internal. By the end of the poem Yeats manages to portray this synthesis by asking to be made into a material thing.
"Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing
But such a form as Grecian goldsmith make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come."
By longing to be made into a staute he manages to create a symbol within the poem that embodies the material world but the material thing itself portrays myth. Yeats here fonds a way to incorporate the material world so to make himself into myth in order to spread his own mythology. After this poem he does just this. Throughout he likens himself to Homer and disavows long-standing philosophical beliefes, erecting his own.
We see that where change used to be source of pain to Yeats, he now celebrates it with lines from My Table such as
"No moon; only an aching heart
Concieves a changeless work of art."
This line manages to show his new attitude towards change as well as the inspiration for this attitude shift. The moon features strongly throughout Yeats' poems, but here begins to take on a new significance. His line breaks here are strongly intentional. That when at a phase in life where there is no moon, there is only an aching heart. Also that with out the changing phases of the moon life itself would be changeless, people would not progress or differentiate themselves. Therefore the aching heart that has no moon, or phase of moon to identify with, in their life would concieve of a changless art. This also incorporates a tone of self reflexivity. Since the tone of this book of poems has changed from his former writing.
In My Descendants we see Yeats give the image of the gyre a weighty meaning. Here we see him put a lot of stock into the future of his children and on his new idea of how the future relates to present and past.
"And what if my descendants lose the flower......
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless ruin that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky."
This function to show that this literal flower, the roses in his garden, that he has found in his new abode and married life, used to exist only as a metaphor for him. Again Yeats has incorporated the tangible world into his world of symbols, and vice versa. At the end of the third stanza we see this by the way that Yeats uses the stones of the house to mimick the movement of the universe, and this way makes a monument out of them. Throughout these poems Yeats seems to making a monument to his new found thoughts.
At first glance I felt that The Wheel managed to fit in closely with other earlier poems by Yeats. It seems cynical and expresses a longing for death. Ultimately though I see the "longing for the tomb" in this poem as a releasing of transient things. As Yeats has accepted that things will go on and have gone on, and while living one longs for a time that is not the present, but that this too is part of the cyclical nature of things. He manages to express that all this looking forward means only looking towards death and that one must be able to cease this in order to accept the cycles that he sees all things embodying. All this shows an acceptance on the part of Yeats to incorporate the converse truths of his old age and his young, of the tangible world with the intangible and of his blood thirsty country men with himself.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Is Yeats (in these 7 poems) comfortable with not knowing? able to let the mysteries of life be, and not define and pin them to a page, solved at last?
"The Wild Swans at Coole"- Yeats has changed, but the swans have not. They are indefagitable, unwearied. But they will leave one day and delight another's eyes. It is the autumn of life and Yeats has changed, "all's changed since I, hearing at twilight, the first time on this shore, the bell-beat of their wings above my head, trod with a lighter tread." Yeats walks heavier, perhaps because his heart has grown old with passion and conquest, unlike the swans' hearts.
"Lines Written In Dejection"- here is Yeats again, looking upon a favored scene- the moon- and lamenting that all of the mystery and magic have vanished now that he is fifty years old. All of the imaginings of childhood- the witches on broomsticks, the centaurs- have vanished and left him to face the day without the armor of myth and story. The sun has shed light on the imaginings of childhood and uncloaked the moon, leaving Yeats un-storied to face the day.
"An Image From A Past Life"- A woman imagines an image of her lover's former sweetheart as they gaze into a stream and covers his eyes so that he cannot see the image. He doesn't know why see is so distressed, after all, he is hers, he is right there at her shoulder, how could he be fonder of an image than of her? She does not know, but she is afraid of this image. In this poem we see that Yeats is comfortable with leaving the reader with the mystery of love and jealousy. He leaves us as he leaves the woman, guessing at her fear.
"The Wild Swans at Coole"- Yeats has changed, but the swans have not. They are indefagitable, unwearied. But they will leave one day and delight another's eyes. It is the autumn of life and Yeats has changed, "all's changed since I, hearing at twilight, the first time on this shore, the bell-beat of their wings above my head, trod with a lighter tread." Yeats walks heavier, perhaps because his heart has grown old with passion and conquest, unlike the swans' hearts.
"Lines Written In Dejection"- here is Yeats again, looking upon a favored scene- the moon- and lamenting that all of the mystery and magic have vanished now that he is fifty years old. All of the imaginings of childhood- the witches on broomsticks, the centaurs- have vanished and left him to face the day without the armor of myth and story. The sun has shed light on the imaginings of childhood and uncloaked the moon, leaving Yeats un-storied to face the day.
"An Image From A Past Life"- A woman imagines an image of her lover's former sweetheart as they gaze into a stream and covers his eyes so that he cannot see the image. He doesn't know why see is so distressed, after all, he is hers, he is right there at her shoulder, how could he be fonder of an image than of her? She does not know, but she is afraid of this image. In this poem we see that Yeats is comfortable with leaving the reader with the mystery of love and jealousy. He leaves us as he leaves the woman, guessing at her fear.
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