In trying to focus our discussion on Ecopoetry next Tuesday, I was hoping we could begin with some central ideas to ecopoetry discussed in Leonard Scigaj’s fine book Sustainable Poetry: Four American Ecopoets with an emphasis on the work of A.R. Ammons. Let me explain how I’ve laid out the .pdf that Christoph posted on Oncourse in an attempt to help you make sense of it. The first two sections (pgs 1-41) lay some of the foundation of ecocritical/ecopoetic ideas with an emphasis on référance, original experience and the tendency of ecopoets to resist poststructural theories of language (and the insistence that all experience is mediated by language); pgs 83-94 offer critical insight and analysis into the work of A.R. Ammons as an ecopoet, which is followed by a sampling of A.R. Ammons’s poetry including a selection of the book-length poem Garbage, and the poems ”Corson’s Inlet” and “Tracing Out”; the final section of the .pdf includes a poem from W.S. Merwin, Wendell Berry and two from Joanna Klink. In the interest of time, please focus on Ammons’s poetry and the Scigaj exerpts that precede it first—I’d like for this to be our focus on Tuesday. And if we have time, we might focus on the other poems included to see how they are demonstrating/representing the ideas presented in the Scigaj exerpts. Below, I offer some questions to think about:
ECOPOETICS, the fundamental ideas:
In Ecopoetry: A Critical Introduction by J. Scott Bryson, he defines ecopoetry in the following way (drawing from Buell, Scigaj and Gifford): “Ecopoetry is a subset of nature poetry that, while adhering to certain conventions of romanticism, also advances beyond that tradition and takes on distinctly contemporary problems and issues, thus resulting in a version of nature poetry generally marked by three primary characteristics: a) an emphasis on maintaining an ecocentric perspective that recognizes the interdependent nature of the world (with a devotion to specific places and to the land itself); b) an imperative toward humility in relationships with both human and nonhuman nature; and c) an intense skepticism concerning hyperrationality, a skepticism that usually leads to an indictment of an overtechnologized modern world and a warning concerning the very real potential for ecological catastrophe” (pgs 5-6). How does this definition of what ecopoetics centrally concerns itself with differ from the larger field of ecocriticism and/or how is it similar? How much of this definition suggests a certain level of activisim (that would excite a critic/activist such as Lindholdt)? To what extent do the poems I’ve included here from Ammons, Merwin, Berry and Klink exemplify/demonstrate this definition and its central tenants?
Ecopoets present nature in their poems as a separate and equal other in dialogues meant to include the referential world and offer exemplary models of biocentric perception and behavior, suggesting that both our human origin and the origin of language derive from the natural world and that the natural world is essential for our word-making—this is the idea of référance. What do we make of this? Leo Marx in his essay on Walden suggests that the text is all that there is without the necessity of the referential world (or as Derrida said, “there is nothing outside of the text”), thereby cutting Walden off from the environment. Ecopoets are appalled by this idea and resist it, insisting on, instead, the “self-reflexive recognition of the limits of language” (Scigaj, 38) … my question is, is an ‘original/nature-based’ experience necessary for world- or word-making? To what extent do the poems I’ve selected suggest this necessity and speak to it?
As it says in the section “A Poetry of Referance”, “the ecopoem is a momentary pause for a reconfiguration of perception” (Scigaj, 41) – how then does the ecopoem allow for this reordering of perception? What does that supposed moment of reconfiguration allow for? Is it as Bachelard suggests the opportunity to experience ‘new possibilities’ of language and imagination?
Is the ecopoem too ecocentric? Too first–wave to have any value? What might Buell say about this?
AMMONS’S POETICS:
Ammons once wrote that “poetry is not made out of ‘reality,’ but out of an invented system of signs” and “language, an invented instrument, is not identical with what it points to” – this idea seems to support the ecopoetic position that poststructural language theories have it all wrong, but does this suggest that there can be no outside-text (as Leo Marx insists is the only possibility) because the visible must be intertwined with each poetic act? How does the selection from Garbage speak to these ideas, that is, the necessity of the physical precept or a real referential event?
To complicate things a little, the heavy-weight critic Harold Bloom (a huge fan of Ammons’s work) says that Ammons never wrote ‘nature-poetry’ and that what Ammons calls ‘nature’ is no more natural than Emerson’s Nature was or Whitman’s either and that Ammons is truly a poet of the Romantic Sublime. What is the marked difference here between how Scigaj illustrates Ammons’s work and what Bloom is suggesting? The idea of transcendence that is integral to the sublime – how does that necessitate the natural world or un-necessitate it? Does Ammons’s work suggest transcendence?
“Corson’s Inlet” with its constant flip-flop from internal to referential worlds every few lines seems to underscore the necessity of referentiality (with Marx and Bloom negate). In this poem, Ammons seems to free himself from “separating inside/from outside.” The inner and outer swap around as he permits himself “eddies of meaning” where his “sayings” partake of “swerves of action/like the inlet’s cutting edge.” Can we ascertain from this poem that inner and outer worlds meet in a way that suggests humans are always in experience, not just as dominating exploiters and manipulators, but as partakers of motions and energies that cannot allow for complete/definite separation from the referential real world? Is this poem essentially a poem about direct experience?
Ammons is often posited against poststructural language poets like Hass and Jorie Graham with one of the differences being that Hass and Graham desire to write the gaps between concepts and the referential world—to write an originary language in the flash moment of creation, but some critics suggest that this ends up becoming a safe ‘anthropocentric refuge’ (Scigaj, 115) – is Ammons writing in this gap between concept and referential world or from some other vantage point? And how does the desire for referentiality avoid becoming sheer mimicry?
Note on “Antelope” by Joanna Klink:
In the “notes” section of Klink’s collection of poems, she writes: “Eighty-five antelope fell through thin ice and drowned on January 9, 2004, while moving south across Fort Peck Lake in Valley County, Montana. Antelope have been making the crossing for hundreds of years.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Hunting and Vision in RPW’s Audubon
In order to focus on discussion of Hunting Narratives this week, I’d like to consider Audubon the primary text. If you are pressed for time, please read Audubon first, then the Smith essays on Audubon. It would be nice if we could draw on Roosevelt and Smith’s poems for sake of comparison. In Audubon, overall, in which parts are we dealing with hunting narrative? What does “hunting” consist of in Audubon and how can we apply ecocritical lens to it? In order to allow for the broadest possible interpretations of “hunting” in this poem, I will often not distinguish between hunting, murder, and other acts of or implied violence. The following is a LONG list of questions and thoughts…do with them what you will….
Hunting and Human/Non-human
· How does hunting alter or affect the distinction between our typical binary distinction between human and non-human (animal/natural)?
· How are the often distinct states of “sight” and “thought” (body/mind; senses/reason) either working against each other or unified during acts of hunting/violence? Also, there often seems to be a tendency to acquire a certain degree of narrative distance in acts of violence, where the subject is removed as the agent of the action taking place.
· What is the relationship between eating, hunting, murdering, thinking and seeing (“saw”) in part 2?
· How does hunting stimulate, in the predator’s/hunter’s conscience, a reordering process? In other words, how do the senses, given that present moment—that moment right before killing, reprioritize what is observed by the hunter? (i.e. The teeth are more importantly white / Than has ever been imagined…)
· Does Audubon lead us to believe that hunting is simply a metaphor or that the act of hunting, shooting, killing, actually allows one to transcend human limits of knowledge (Unless. Unless what?)
· When Audubon first sees the Indian’s face (II.D), he sees one eye only, the other eye is his mouth: “From one eye only, the other / An aperture below which blood and mucus hang, thickening slow.” RPW employs a strange synesthesia, mixing up the sites of the senses and their functions. Furthermore, what the eye sees is often more indication of the eye itself, the observer’s consciousness, than the object observed. Aside from lust and hunger, what can we make of the mouth-eye as it relates to hunting? I wonder if this relates in any way to how fuel stems from food and shelter in Thoreau’s economy….Or perhaps we can read hunting, here, as a return to the most primitive mode of being, which although animalistic, might be conceived of as return to nature? Certainly a return to nature in the first-wave sense, however, without any regard for social justice.
The Gun and Present Tense
· What is the role of the gun in Audubon? How is RP Warren using it as a prop? A voice? A motif? How might the Gun be used as mediator, and hunting an act of mediation between human and natural world (I am thinking of Thoreau’s hunters who “stitched the ground in places” where it would otherwise be unstitched…)
· Hunting seems to gain much of its appeal and poignancy from the way it anchors the hunter in the present moment. Yet, hunting narratives are often told in past tense, rather than present tense and that “moment” of killing and death as it occurred physically can only be retold by creating the very context that the moment of hunting—the shot—vanquishes. Hunting moments in Audubon, where he holds or leans on or looks through his gun—where the shot is potential—are told in the present tense. Most all others are not. Verb tense is never more evident that in the second section of Audubon, where A-J is the only section of the poem told in present tense, because it leads up to the “affair.” The act of violence/murder looming keeps Audubon in the present moment, keeps us enclosed in his mind, where there exists a clarity of mind—a “now”—that is in other sections fragmented, dreamed. Section K marks the transition back to the past tense. The omniscient eye previously set in Audubon’s mind, zooms out to see the affair in the context of the larger world. Here, it is only after the implied murder that the reader is given access to context, gravity—the greater ramifications of the narrative. In some ways the act of violence is prerequisite to “coming to” or awareness. We, the audience, can only see afterward, what the man and woman see in the present moment (“and the face / Is, he suddenly sees, beautiful as stone, and / so becomes aware…). Furthermore, when we do see it, we see it much differently (“the affair was not tidy…”).
· While acts of violence may give us context, and divert our attention outward, the gun shot also triggers memory and causes Audubon (and RPW) to turn inward. What does Audubon’s story/Penn warren’s narrative suggest about the relationship between memory (nostalgia) and hunting? See IV where the shot in A brings to life another world recalled in section B. How is the world of memory different from the world (i.e. “Tell me the name of the world”)
Masculinity and Other intersections
· What is to be made of Masculinity and Hunting (“he cannot think what guilt unmans him”) and is it fair to say that the “manly state” = hunter/predatory state in section 2?
· What is to be made of the primitive / uncivilized communication and speech patterns by both Audubon and the woman. Audubon never speaks aloud to the woman, though she speaks to him. He only thinks, or perhaps his thoughts are in dialogue with the Indian he sees in the cabin. What can we make of the Indian—where does he come from, what is he to Audubon, and why is he present in this scene? Is he at all responsible for the murder? Furthermore, how does the Indian and the presence of “manliness”—the societal standards outside the world of the poem—effect Audubon’s actions? (see 2.H)
Hunting and Murder
· How does the description of the murder in II. K compare to hunting narratives? What is more or less “humane” about the murder? How can we use ecocritical perspectives toward the description of murder as a “new dimension of beauty”? How would this relate to romantic notions of beauty and transcendence via nature/primitive modes of being?
· Audubon finds “a new dimension of beauty” in death and killing, and to some extent this beauty is derived from the realization of “the present moment” along with the limits and sufficiency of the self—that by enacting death, one faces and subverts one’s own death. Thus, beauty is an end in itself, an aesthetics that is not necessary congruent with or continuous with ecocritical perspectives?
· To what extent can we read hunting/murder in Audubon as a self-referential act or as metaphor for objectification of the other done for one’s own joy/beauty? See 2.J-L, where in J: “she is what she is”; objectified in K: “the face, like a plum”; self-referential turn in L:”what has been denied me?”
Narrative/Structure/Poetics
· In many sections of the poem, RPW develops a reactionary dynamic where Audubon focuses on and observes an object, and is thereby propelled into “thought” and self-dialogue. Rarely do we see Audubon reacting through actual speech, but rather through interiority/ “thought”, or else, by quiet acts of violence that might or might not take place outside of his mind. To what extent can we treat hunting (and murder) scenes/references in Audubon as narrative, as opposed to metaphor? I wonder how our answer to this question is affected by the poem’s biographical foundation—that the poem asks us to begin our reading with a real man who is already, before our reading, a construction in our minds. It seems we could talk exhaustively about this poem without the first reference to hunting, on the other hand, we might read the entire poem (perhaps beginning with the first instance of the word “saw” in the second stanza) as one long hunting narrative constructed by Penn Warren. In the first page of “Warren’s Ventriloquist”, Smith catalogues a number of different critical approaches to Warren’s poetic form in Audubon. For Smith, Audubon is “a poem of lyric voice performing narrative tasks” (61). What on earth does this mean? I think, in some ways, Buell’s world-making applies here. Penn Warren seems to be primarily concerned with rendering a world unbound by temporal and spatial constraints, and certainly not dependent on the “true story” of a man for whom there is no such thing. In some regards, Audubon is perhaps a logical alibi for Penn Warren to tell his own personal narrative without the highly unfashionable personal pronoun. In any case, if we think of the story as a created environment, it seems there might be something in common with how RPW uses Audubon, Poe uses Pym, and Thoreau uses Walden, Bachelard uses nests and shells. Perhaps one way to apply ecocriticism to these “environments” is to first ask whether it is a means to understanding or connecting the self and “other” realms, or whether it is a rubber stamp, whereby objectification, abstraction, anthropomorphism apply. In Poe, we talked a lot about how nature often seemed to be simply a backdrop—a means to heighten interiority—Poe’s primary environment. More extreme, perhaps, is Bachelard, who certainly extracts shells and nests from nature for the sake of metaphor and the higher meanings he attaches to them as his own intellectual property. In Thoreau, it might be said that Walden is very much a necessary means to and an integral part of his intellectual journey rather than a convenient vehicle for his metaphor (certainly, one could argue against this too). What happens in a poem where the primary environment is Audubon? Can a person’s life (biographical info/art/myth, etc…) be the environment for a text, and to what extent can the author’s handling of this environment—his “vision” be viewed ecocritically? How is “Audubon” by Robert Penn Warren or “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” by Poe—by their very titles and premises—like anthropomorphizing of nature—one man assuming the voice of a thing he cannot speak for?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The poetics of (macabre) space
I think some combination of Bachelard's "phenomenology" and Buell's suggestion that we open up ecocriticism to human-constructed environments could provide a way of reading The Narrative of AGP "ecocritically." As I'm not entirely sure how to do this, I'll just throw out a few reasons why I suspect these lenses (131 be damned) could be useful:
As per usual, Poe is dwelling on dark, claustrophobic, and labrynthine spaces; but I think what makes the ship a particularly interesting one is that it is a portable, suffocating enclosure in the midst of the most open, unconstructed, arguably least human space on earth. There's something to be said about this juxtaposition between unremitting nature and its undifferentiated space and the, what Poe I think is suggesting to be an almost wholly unconscious desire to bring our claustrophobic shells into the middle of it. In any event, I find it interesting how this portable home becomes much like the turtle in Bachelard's anecdote; starving men, like his wolf, facing a shell full of food that will not, initially at least, yield up its nourishment. Unlike the wolf, though, the men are fecklessly digging in their own shell; the frustration caused by its failure as a shared home leading them to eat each other. And while this interpretation could use some fleshing out, there's enough evidence that Poe is thematizing the shell, I think, to make this a worthwhile line of thought. Of course the sick crew eats the tortoise, but also the barnacles on the keel, crabs, etc. (I find the pickling of the turtle in jars of vinegar--and the dependence on the crew on tenuously secured containers in general--though practical, also somehow uncanny, or creepy...there's just something going on with the idea of containment in general).
And then there is the lengthy description of the nests of penguins and albatross, which finds Poe at his most Thoreauian: "In short, survey it as we will, nothing can be more astonishing than the spirit of reflection evinced by these feathered beings, and nothing surely can be better calculated to elicit reflection in every well-regulated human intellect" (115/Chapter XIV). The curious emphasis here on "calculated" reflection and the "well-regulated human intellect" suggests, at least, that Poe sees a parallel between the mathematically ordered dwelling places of birds and human beings. Perhaps the astonishing reflection is that the latter species seems to be faring not quite as well in its well-ordered dwellings. It may be that Poe's lengthy, seemingly digressive, accounts of ship construction and cargo holds has something in common with his also, seemingly digressive accounts of tortoises inhabiting their shells and birds building their nests. Though, this narrative is so stylistically heterogeneous that any suggestion that it is the product of a "well-regulated" intellect may be out of the question (which charge could probably be leveled at this blog post).
One other thing...
it is interesting, maybe from a Bachelardian angle, to consider how the ship in AGP (and elsewhere) is a fertile site for daydreams and figuration. Ghosts, dreams, visions, all staples of the ship. Although I got lost in exactly what Bachelard's argument about the relationship between reverie and the "function of inhabiting" was, it seems to me that all of the fantastical, dreamlike stuff we are getting here is related to how human beings organize themselves with relation to their built environments. Arthur's daydream on the theme of motion could be one place to pick up on this relationship. Even though Bachelard finds discussing the turtle as the "animal with the house that walks" the subject of "facile commentary", I think Poe is somehow concerned with human beings as creatures with walking houses; this daydream would be my first piece of evidence If I were to try to build this case:
"I fell into a state of partial insensibility , during which the most pleasing images floated in my imagination; such as green trees, waving meadows of ripe grain...I now remember that, in all which passed before my mind's eye, motion was a predominant idea. Thus, i never fancied any stationary object, such as a house, a mountain, or anything of that kind; but windmills, ships, large birds, balloons, people on horseback, carriages driving furiously, and similar moving objects, presented themselves in endless succession" (74/Chapter IX).
So anyhow it seems to me that this book requires an ecocriticism that is concerned not with place, or some specific local, but with portability and motion.
As per usual, Poe is dwelling on dark, claustrophobic, and labrynthine spaces; but I think what makes the ship a particularly interesting one is that it is a portable, suffocating enclosure in the midst of the most open, unconstructed, arguably least human space on earth. There's something to be said about this juxtaposition between unremitting nature and its undifferentiated space and the, what Poe I think is suggesting to be an almost wholly unconscious desire to bring our claustrophobic shells into the middle of it. In any event, I find it interesting how this portable home becomes much like the turtle in Bachelard's anecdote; starving men, like his wolf, facing a shell full of food that will not, initially at least, yield up its nourishment. Unlike the wolf, though, the men are fecklessly digging in their own shell; the frustration caused by its failure as a shared home leading them to eat each other. And while this interpretation could use some fleshing out, there's enough evidence that Poe is thematizing the shell, I think, to make this a worthwhile line of thought. Of course the sick crew eats the tortoise, but also the barnacles on the keel, crabs, etc. (I find the pickling of the turtle in jars of vinegar--and the dependence on the crew on tenuously secured containers in general--though practical, also somehow uncanny, or creepy...there's just something going on with the idea of containment in general).
And then there is the lengthy description of the nests of penguins and albatross, which finds Poe at his most Thoreauian: "In short, survey it as we will, nothing can be more astonishing than the spirit of reflection evinced by these feathered beings, and nothing surely can be better calculated to elicit reflection in every well-regulated human intellect" (115/Chapter XIV). The curious emphasis here on "calculated" reflection and the "well-regulated human intellect" suggests, at least, that Poe sees a parallel between the mathematically ordered dwelling places of birds and human beings. Perhaps the astonishing reflection is that the latter species seems to be faring not quite as well in its well-ordered dwellings. It may be that Poe's lengthy, seemingly digressive, accounts of ship construction and cargo holds has something in common with his also, seemingly digressive accounts of tortoises inhabiting their shells and birds building their nests. Though, this narrative is so stylistically heterogeneous that any suggestion that it is the product of a "well-regulated" intellect may be out of the question (which charge could probably be leveled at this blog post).
One other thing...
it is interesting, maybe from a Bachelardian angle, to consider how the ship in AGP (and elsewhere) is a fertile site for daydreams and figuration. Ghosts, dreams, visions, all staples of the ship. Although I got lost in exactly what Bachelard's argument about the relationship between reverie and the "function of inhabiting" was, it seems to me that all of the fantastical, dreamlike stuff we are getting here is related to how human beings organize themselves with relation to their built environments. Arthur's daydream on the theme of motion could be one place to pick up on this relationship. Even though Bachelard finds discussing the turtle as the "animal with the house that walks" the subject of "facile commentary", I think Poe is somehow concerned with human beings as creatures with walking houses; this daydream would be my first piece of evidence If I were to try to build this case:
"I fell into a state of partial insensibility , during which the most pleasing images floated in my imagination; such as green trees, waving meadows of ripe grain...I now remember that, in all which passed before my mind's eye, motion was a predominant idea. Thus, i never fancied any stationary object, such as a house, a mountain, or anything of that kind; but windmills, ships, large birds, balloons, people on horseback, carriages driving furiously, and similar moving objects, presented themselves in endless succession" (74/Chapter IX).
So anyhow it seems to me that this book requires an ecocriticism that is concerned not with place, or some specific local, but with portability and motion.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Scale and the sea--ecocritical entries into Poe?
I am going to try to fit together my various notes and strands of thought on chapter one, with regard to our class discussion today, in order to locate ecocritical entry ways into Pym....
Chapter one begins, like Beowulf and other Epics, with a sort of short genealogy for Pym, which begins with his father, courses through the main agents of his education, and ends, strangely, with Augustus—who might be seen as his wild and imaginative counterpart. After all, the two “occupy the same bed.” So long as Pym and Augustus remain inside “lying like a dog” they have only their adventure stories, and can only retreat into their imaginations. It is implied that only a dog would be so senseless and unconscious to forgo the opportunity for real exploration. The opportunity presents itself, first, through Augustus’s intoxication (which we may read literally as drunkenness, additionally as passion or “ecstasy”), but Augustus would still be passed out with intoxication if not for the “glorious breeze from the southwest”…the “coolness of the night air” which “starts him up.” Thus, it is hard to say how much of Augustus behavior is a result of alcohol consumption and how much is the intoxicating effect of the sea, the wind, and night.
The wind/breeze/air is mentioned over and over again as a catalyst for various reactions—often causing Pym and Augustus to act on the impulses the wind stirs up. Thus, the wind is not only outside, but inside the mind, and it often sets the characters in motion. Thus, begins the dualism of coming to consciousness in chapter one. Pym recognizes, the “usual effect” of air: “The coolness of night air, however, had its usual effect—the mental energy began to yield before its influence—and the confused perception which he no doubt then had of his perilous situation had assisted in hastening the catastrophe. He was now thoroughly insensible…” (592). Here the night air affects the blurring of distinction between the mental energy or rational nature, and the body/physical senses—perhaps even animal nature which are often in conflict, and Poe shows this to be even more apparent in “perilous situations, where ones environment makes this internal conflict all the more urgent.
This dynamic can be seen through the parallelism of Pym and Augustus throughout—Pym being the more rational one, who is also more conscious of how his rationale yields to the influence of the senses—impulses which Augustus stirs up in him. You could almost read Pym as the mind, Augustus as the body of the dualistic relationship Poe wants to frustrate—and ultimately how problematic it is to separate the two. Augustus is often described as insensible, in a “highly concentrated state of intoxication.” It is even suggested that his unbalanced and impassioned state is a madness. Whatever it is, it is deceptive, as Pym says, how Augustus appears to have “perfect possession of his senses.” After being enticed to follow Augustus onto the boat, throwing reason to the wind, it is only in Augustus’s absence (having passed out) that Pym can regain “some degree of presence of mind.” Only, it is hard to know if it’s Augustus's absence, Pym’s solitude, or an utter lack of sensation (“I was so utterly benumbed, too, in every limb…” (593)) that enables the “presence of mind.”
On the one hand, the senses (empirical knowledge, i.e. “coolness of night air”) prevent or override the mind/rational thought and this has the effect of delusion or deception—this is what leads the two onto the boat in the first place. On the other hand, being “numb to the senses” as Pym is on the boat, unable to feel his limbs, causes him to “accidentally” lose control of the mast—though nature intercedes, turning his accident into the very thing that saves him from “destruction.” This numbness of limbs is, like the accident itself, a direct result of nature on the senses, and Pym is conscious of (rationally attuned to) the effects of nature on his senses. Conversely, senseless Augustus, in the bottom of the boat, demonstrates another type of “imminent danger” because he is not only senseless, but also lacks Pym’s presence of mind to know that he is senseless.
While I cant say with any certainty that Poe is invested in Descarte’s dualism, it seems that nature (wind, storm, sea) is used to blur the distinction between mind and body and the correspondence of each to the rational/material/exterior or emotional/psychological/interior, and that nature makes man's reliance on his own resources more urgent. Furthermore, nature often isolates man, so that he has only his own resources—rational and sensory— to make sense of things. In fact, even in the society of other people—particularly at sea—it’s every man for himself. The wind and water are so loud at sea that there is very little talk. Pym often notes the lack of speech, as well as the things said that he only partially hears. For instance, Captain Block’s “drown and be d—d” is heard only partially (whether b/c of sea or denial) and this may be paralleled to Augustus’s earlier “going home—d—d—don’t you see?” (592). The sea and the inability to see and hear limit one’s ability to speak. This happens to Pym a great deal and he is conscious of the lack of speaking and communication that takes place on the water.
Furthermore, the sea makes sounds for which there is no context for interpretation. Originally, this is what causes Pym to “tumble” into the sea—the sound Pym hears that evokes fear in him. Fear is nearly a reversal of the wind that wakes Augustus and draws them to the sea. Though fear is likewise evoked by something “outside” Pym, he reacts to it by drawing inward; he admittedly reacts by retreating from “the source” which proves an ineffective way to negotiate the unknown. Pym deludes himself: “I felt the blood congealing in my veins—my heart ceased utterly to beat, and without having once raised my eyes to learn the source of my alarm, I tumbled headlong and insensible upon the body…” This brings to mind Hawthorne’s psychosomatic scarlet “A” insofar as the mind affects physical manifestations of itself. Pym “tumbles” because he lets his mind become detached from his senses, and is, thus, unable to temper fear with the exterior world. What begins as a feeling or a premonition in the mind, becomes a physical reaction (heart ceased), and because Pym failed to look up—to see the source of his alarm in the exterior world—to physically get his balance—he fails to stand against nature, and falls “headlong” upon a body, “insensible.” It seems that man can only coexist with nature when his mind and body are in balance, and because this is rarely if ever the case, nature has a way of tumbling man overboard, along with his scale.
Pym seems to support the idea that humans need “tools” to help them “navigate” the natural world. Clearly, Poe is invested in science. Early on, at sea, Pym mourns his lack of tools to face the storm with: “A storm was evidently gathering behind us; we had neither compass nor provisions; and it was clear that, if we held our present course, we should be out of sight of land before daybreak.” Nature is beyond human capacity for knowledge; humans need tools to navigate it. Pym knows, rationally, that to go at nature alone and challenge it unaided with only one’s physical strength and “sensibility”, without science or technology, will lead one to the point where senses are impotent (land is out of sight).
Later, Pym finds out it is other men (hunting men), not the sound he hears, or the storm, or his own inability to right the ship, which tumbles Pym. These same men ultimately restore him. Pym reflects on the facts afterward, seeming to say: If only I could have known they were “almost at right angles to our own course” (science) or if only the hunting men were more perceptive, this would not have happened. Still, it seems it would it have. Pym and his little boat are next to nothing in comparison with the Whaling boat, “The huge ship…rode immediately over us with as much ease as our own little vessel would have passed over a feather…. Yet, neither of the boats compare to “the roar of wind and water” (593). The wind and water shut out communication, and overwhelm human perception and rationale again and again. But what seems of ecocritical import is how the sea affects society--the extent to which the ship contains the world, and the way the sea distorts the human sense of scale (we discussed how the sea subverts democracy in class).
How is Poe using the first chapter as a “lesson” for both Pym and the reader? Clearly, the irony of “lesson” adds to the sense that he is making fun of people, as someone said in class. Pym learns a lesson insofar as he sees that the Ariel was like a feather and he experiences, first hand, proof of nature's ability to wipe him out. Yet, what makes it more interesting to pursue the following chapters is what makes Pym forget his lesson, or else, what makes him willingly and knowingly go back. Pym admits to his own forgetting and romanticizing of the past: “This short period (after the event) proved amply long enough to erase from my memory the shadows and bring out in vivid light all the pleasurably exciting points of colour, all the picturesqueness of the late perilous accident” (596). I can’t help but see parallels to Plato’s cave allegory here.
Poe speaks to the tendency of mind, afterward, to forget things and embellish others, to heighten the story. Our artistic inclinations seem to be another kind of “shadow” which erases the “lesson” and draws one back to same mistakes. What does this mean for his narrative—narrative mode in general? After all, the wind that draws Pym to sea also draws him away from the boring complacency of the house where the dogs are content to lay around. How is the reader as “navigator” of text” paralleled to seaman? How are we readers as short-sighted as Pym, so quickly forgetting what we’ve just learned, and so affected by the narrative devices and the arbitrary distinctions between fiction and nonfiction? I wonder if Buell's world making text is applicable here....and now I'm just rambling.
Chapter one begins, like Beowulf and other Epics, with a sort of short genealogy for Pym, which begins with his father, courses through the main agents of his education, and ends, strangely, with Augustus—who might be seen as his wild and imaginative counterpart. After all, the two “occupy the same bed.” So long as Pym and Augustus remain inside “lying like a dog” they have only their adventure stories, and can only retreat into their imaginations. It is implied that only a dog would be so senseless and unconscious to forgo the opportunity for real exploration. The opportunity presents itself, first, through Augustus’s intoxication (which we may read literally as drunkenness, additionally as passion or “ecstasy”), but Augustus would still be passed out with intoxication if not for the “glorious breeze from the southwest”…the “coolness of the night air” which “starts him up.” Thus, it is hard to say how much of Augustus behavior is a result of alcohol consumption and how much is the intoxicating effect of the sea, the wind, and night.
The wind/breeze/air is mentioned over and over again as a catalyst for various reactions—often causing Pym and Augustus to act on the impulses the wind stirs up. Thus, the wind is not only outside, but inside the mind, and it often sets the characters in motion. Thus, begins the dualism of coming to consciousness in chapter one. Pym recognizes, the “usual effect” of air: “The coolness of night air, however, had its usual effect—the mental energy began to yield before its influence—and the confused perception which he no doubt then had of his perilous situation had assisted in hastening the catastrophe. He was now thoroughly insensible…” (592). Here the night air affects the blurring of distinction between the mental energy or rational nature, and the body/physical senses—perhaps even animal nature which are often in conflict, and Poe shows this to be even more apparent in “perilous situations, where ones environment makes this internal conflict all the more urgent.
This dynamic can be seen through the parallelism of Pym and Augustus throughout—Pym being the more rational one, who is also more conscious of how his rationale yields to the influence of the senses—impulses which Augustus stirs up in him. You could almost read Pym as the mind, Augustus as the body of the dualistic relationship Poe wants to frustrate—and ultimately how problematic it is to separate the two. Augustus is often described as insensible, in a “highly concentrated state of intoxication.” It is even suggested that his unbalanced and impassioned state is a madness. Whatever it is, it is deceptive, as Pym says, how Augustus appears to have “perfect possession of his senses.” After being enticed to follow Augustus onto the boat, throwing reason to the wind, it is only in Augustus’s absence (having passed out) that Pym can regain “some degree of presence of mind.” Only, it is hard to know if it’s Augustus's absence, Pym’s solitude, or an utter lack of sensation (“I was so utterly benumbed, too, in every limb…” (593)) that enables the “presence of mind.”
On the one hand, the senses (empirical knowledge, i.e. “coolness of night air”) prevent or override the mind/rational thought and this has the effect of delusion or deception—this is what leads the two onto the boat in the first place. On the other hand, being “numb to the senses” as Pym is on the boat, unable to feel his limbs, causes him to “accidentally” lose control of the mast—though nature intercedes, turning his accident into the very thing that saves him from “destruction.” This numbness of limbs is, like the accident itself, a direct result of nature on the senses, and Pym is conscious of (rationally attuned to) the effects of nature on his senses. Conversely, senseless Augustus, in the bottom of the boat, demonstrates another type of “imminent danger” because he is not only senseless, but also lacks Pym’s presence of mind to know that he is senseless.
While I cant say with any certainty that Poe is invested in Descarte’s dualism, it seems that nature (wind, storm, sea) is used to blur the distinction between mind and body and the correspondence of each to the rational/material/exterior or emotional/psychological/interior, and that nature makes man's reliance on his own resources more urgent. Furthermore, nature often isolates man, so that he has only his own resources—rational and sensory— to make sense of things. In fact, even in the society of other people—particularly at sea—it’s every man for himself. The wind and water are so loud at sea that there is very little talk. Pym often notes the lack of speech, as well as the things said that he only partially hears. For instance, Captain Block’s “drown and be d—d” is heard only partially (whether b/c of sea or denial) and this may be paralleled to Augustus’s earlier “going home—d—d—don’t you see?” (592). The sea and the inability to see and hear limit one’s ability to speak. This happens to Pym a great deal and he is conscious of the lack of speaking and communication that takes place on the water.
Furthermore, the sea makes sounds for which there is no context for interpretation. Originally, this is what causes Pym to “tumble” into the sea—the sound Pym hears that evokes fear in him. Fear is nearly a reversal of the wind that wakes Augustus and draws them to the sea. Though fear is likewise evoked by something “outside” Pym, he reacts to it by drawing inward; he admittedly reacts by retreating from “the source” which proves an ineffective way to negotiate the unknown. Pym deludes himself: “I felt the blood congealing in my veins—my heart ceased utterly to beat, and without having once raised my eyes to learn the source of my alarm, I tumbled headlong and insensible upon the body…” This brings to mind Hawthorne’s psychosomatic scarlet “A” insofar as the mind affects physical manifestations of itself. Pym “tumbles” because he lets his mind become detached from his senses, and is, thus, unable to temper fear with the exterior world. What begins as a feeling or a premonition in the mind, becomes a physical reaction (heart ceased), and because Pym failed to look up—to see the source of his alarm in the exterior world—to physically get his balance—he fails to stand against nature, and falls “headlong” upon a body, “insensible.” It seems that man can only coexist with nature when his mind and body are in balance, and because this is rarely if ever the case, nature has a way of tumbling man overboard, along with his scale.
Pym seems to support the idea that humans need “tools” to help them “navigate” the natural world. Clearly, Poe is invested in science. Early on, at sea, Pym mourns his lack of tools to face the storm with: “A storm was evidently gathering behind us; we had neither compass nor provisions; and it was clear that, if we held our present course, we should be out of sight of land before daybreak.” Nature is beyond human capacity for knowledge; humans need tools to navigate it. Pym knows, rationally, that to go at nature alone and challenge it unaided with only one’s physical strength and “sensibility”, without science or technology, will lead one to the point where senses are impotent (land is out of sight).
Later, Pym finds out it is other men (hunting men), not the sound he hears, or the storm, or his own inability to right the ship, which tumbles Pym. These same men ultimately restore him. Pym reflects on the facts afterward, seeming to say: If only I could have known they were “almost at right angles to our own course” (science) or if only the hunting men were more perceptive, this would not have happened. Still, it seems it would it have. Pym and his little boat are next to nothing in comparison with the Whaling boat, “The huge ship…rode immediately over us with as much ease as our own little vessel would have passed over a feather…. Yet, neither of the boats compare to “the roar of wind and water” (593). The wind and water shut out communication, and overwhelm human perception and rationale again and again. But what seems of ecocritical import is how the sea affects society--the extent to which the ship contains the world, and the way the sea distorts the human sense of scale (we discussed how the sea subverts democracy in class).
How is Poe using the first chapter as a “lesson” for both Pym and the reader? Clearly, the irony of “lesson” adds to the sense that he is making fun of people, as someone said in class. Pym learns a lesson insofar as he sees that the Ariel was like a feather and he experiences, first hand, proof of nature's ability to wipe him out. Yet, what makes it more interesting to pursue the following chapters is what makes Pym forget his lesson, or else, what makes him willingly and knowingly go back. Pym admits to his own forgetting and romanticizing of the past: “This short period (after the event) proved amply long enough to erase from my memory the shadows and bring out in vivid light all the pleasurably exciting points of colour, all the picturesqueness of the late perilous accident” (596). I can’t help but see parallels to Plato’s cave allegory here.
Poe speaks to the tendency of mind, afterward, to forget things and embellish others, to heighten the story. Our artistic inclinations seem to be another kind of “shadow” which erases the “lesson” and draws one back to same mistakes. What does this mean for his narrative—narrative mode in general? After all, the wind that draws Pym to sea also draws him away from the boring complacency of the house where the dogs are content to lay around. How is the reader as “navigator” of text” paralleled to seaman? How are we readers as short-sighted as Pym, so quickly forgetting what we’ve just learned, and so affected by the narrative devices and the arbitrary distinctions between fiction and nonfiction? I wonder if Buell's world making text is applicable here....and now I'm just rambling.
Friday, March 6, 2009
On Death in Beowulf
Having flipped through Beowulf again after our last meeting, one thing I notice that distinguishes the environment from everything else in the poem is death. Death is inevitable for everyone and everything in the poem, except for the elements, which alone endure throughout time (the tide is even, as we discussed briefly in class, linguistically connected to time). The subject of death, obviously, links Beowulf up with "The Wanderer," although that poem seems more concerned with the inescapability of human sorrow and suffering than death. Sorrow and suffering, rather than death, is also a major feature of "Aber Cuawg Illness," which has me, like Kelly and Matt, wondering about genre. Is there something crucial about the fact that Beowulf is obsessed with death, whereas these other "elegaic" poems are about the sorrows of life?
Regarding death in Beowulf, however, there was one passage that particularly caught my eye. The speaker has just described Beowulf's encounter with Grendel, and the Danes have set about repairing their hall. "Only the roof remained unscathed," we are told, "by the time the guilt-fouled fiend turned tail/ in despair of his life." Then the poem does something strange. In commenting on the doom of Grendel (and, perhaps, the once-indestructable hall), the speaker says that "death is not easily/ escaped from by anyone:/ all of us with souls, earth-dwellers/ and children of men, must make our way/ to a destination already ordained/ where the body, after the banqueting,/ sleeps on its deathbed" (ll.999-1007). The especially odd line here is "all of us with souls," implying Grendel, who (whatever he is) is not human, also has a soul, as do all "earth-dwellers." All things on earth are given to death and decay. In the end, both Beowulf and the dragon "face the end of [their] days/ in this mortal world" (ll. 2342-43).
Significantly, it isn't just humans and animals that expire in Beowulf, but objects, too. Heorot, the great hall, is susceptible to destruction by fire. Things made of iron are likewise apt to fail, like the sword in ll. 1605 ff., which "wilt[s] into gory icicles," or like any number of Beowulf's other swords. Even the dragon's treasure, in the end, is eaten by rust, after its "thousand winters under ground," and being "under a spell" (ll. 3047, ff.). Does this mean that these artificial objects also have souls (can we have a Marxist reading of an Old English poem?)? Or is the point simply that the only things in the world that are sure to remain are those elemental substances: fire, water, stone, winter air, and time?
Whatever the case, the categories operating in Beowulf are not simply "human" and "non-human," but might be better characterized as "earth" and "earth-dwellers," or perhaps "time-bound, fated," and "timeless, enduring." Death and decay is what seems to separate the environment from those that occupy it, the "earth-dwellers." Death is also the condition of having a soul, though any sense of an afterlife (save, perhaps, in fame) is missing. So the environment is that soulless, blank canvas on which the actions of "earth-dwellers" takes place, and yet it is also the one thing that will, after all is done, remain. The environment is passive space, but also the active agent whereby "earth-dwellers" meet their final fate.
This relationship does not seem to be an issue for anyone in Beowulf; there is no sense of having a "right relationship" with the environment. Rather, this relationship is the condition of existence, and one must come to terms with the ultimate endurance of the earth as opposed to the fleeting time one has as an "earth-dweller." Maybe we could read passages that warn against trusting in technology (e.g. well-crafted swords and mead-halls) as warning against attempts to put off death, which is inevitable. Finally, all must, like Grendel's mother, "let go of [their] life and this unreliable world" (l. 1622).
Hrothgar tells Beowulf that those who understand "true values" are most unlike the "mind of a man" that "follow[s] its bent," and "forgets that it [life] will ever end for him." "[...] Illness and old age/ mean nothing to him," until finally "the soul's guard, its sentry, drowses,/ grown too distracted. A killer stalks him." Hrothgar explains that, as for all humans, "finally the end arrives/ when the body he was lent collapses and falls/ prey to its death." The "ancestral possessions" he had hoarded "are inherited by another/ who lets them go with a liberal hand" (ll. 1723-57). No one can escape such fate in an "unreliable world." The answer is to seek "eternal rewards" (l. 1760), the timeless qualities of "truth and justice," "respect [for] tradition" (l. 1701) and the virtues of being "even-tempered,/ prudent and resolute" (l. 1705-06). Through possessing these, one may become part of the eternal, gain fame and, perhaps (like Beowulf), be remembered by a barrow-memorial, made with everlasting soil. Working at timeless virtues allows one to gain access to the timeless, to leave a mark on the earth.
Regarding death in Beowulf, however, there was one passage that particularly caught my eye. The speaker has just described Beowulf's encounter with Grendel, and the Danes have set about repairing their hall. "Only the roof remained unscathed," we are told, "by the time the guilt-fouled fiend turned tail/ in despair of his life." Then the poem does something strange. In commenting on the doom of Grendel (and, perhaps, the once-indestructable hall), the speaker says that "death is not easily/ escaped from by anyone:/ all of us with souls, earth-dwellers/ and children of men, must make our way/ to a destination already ordained/ where the body, after the banqueting,/ sleeps on its deathbed" (ll.999-1007). The especially odd line here is "all of us with souls," implying Grendel, who (whatever he is) is not human, also has a soul, as do all "earth-dwellers." All things on earth are given to death and decay. In the end, both Beowulf and the dragon "face the end of [their] days/ in this mortal world" (ll. 2342-43).
Significantly, it isn't just humans and animals that expire in Beowulf, but objects, too. Heorot, the great hall, is susceptible to destruction by fire. Things made of iron are likewise apt to fail, like the sword in ll. 1605 ff., which "wilt[s] into gory icicles," or like any number of Beowulf's other swords. Even the dragon's treasure, in the end, is eaten by rust, after its "thousand winters under ground," and being "under a spell" (ll. 3047, ff.). Does this mean that these artificial objects also have souls (can we have a Marxist reading of an Old English poem?)? Or is the point simply that the only things in the world that are sure to remain are those elemental substances: fire, water, stone, winter air, and time?
Whatever the case, the categories operating in Beowulf are not simply "human" and "non-human," but might be better characterized as "earth" and "earth-dwellers," or perhaps "time-bound, fated," and "timeless, enduring." Death and decay is what seems to separate the environment from those that occupy it, the "earth-dwellers." Death is also the condition of having a soul, though any sense of an afterlife (save, perhaps, in fame) is missing. So the environment is that soulless, blank canvas on which the actions of "earth-dwellers" takes place, and yet it is also the one thing that will, after all is done, remain. The environment is passive space, but also the active agent whereby "earth-dwellers" meet their final fate.
This relationship does not seem to be an issue for anyone in Beowulf; there is no sense of having a "right relationship" with the environment. Rather, this relationship is the condition of existence, and one must come to terms with the ultimate endurance of the earth as opposed to the fleeting time one has as an "earth-dweller." Maybe we could read passages that warn against trusting in technology (e.g. well-crafted swords and mead-halls) as warning against attempts to put off death, which is inevitable. Finally, all must, like Grendel's mother, "let go of [their] life and this unreliable world" (l. 1622).
Hrothgar tells Beowulf that those who understand "true values" are most unlike the "mind of a man" that "follow[s] its bent," and "forgets that it [life] will ever end for him." "[...] Illness and old age/ mean nothing to him," until finally "the soul's guard, its sentry, drowses,/ grown too distracted. A killer stalks him." Hrothgar explains that, as for all humans, "finally the end arrives/ when the body he was lent collapses and falls/ prey to its death." The "ancestral possessions" he had hoarded "are inherited by another/ who lets them go with a liberal hand" (ll. 1723-57). No one can escape such fate in an "unreliable world." The answer is to seek "eternal rewards" (l. 1760), the timeless qualities of "truth and justice," "respect [for] tradition" (l. 1701) and the virtues of being "even-tempered,/ prudent and resolute" (l. 1705-06). Through possessing these, one may become part of the eternal, gain fame and, perhaps (like Beowulf), be remembered by a barrow-memorial, made with everlasting soil. Working at timeless virtues allows one to gain access to the timeless, to leave a mark on the earth.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Elegy, Epic, Ode--What's the Difference?
I should begin by saying I am not versed in the Welsh or Anglo Saxon elegiac tradition and I am fully aware that I am likely glossing over “elegy” as it relates to these, so please feel free to fill in the gaps. In part, I want to respond to Ben’s question about the way Elegy is working out / evolving in poems like the Wanderer and Beowulf and I want to flesh out this curious distinction between Epic and Elegy, without any knowledge of Tolkien's argument. For some reason, I want to use the classic Ode form to help me explore the distinction between Elegy and Epic. How will this all bring any ecocritical light to the poems? I’m not sure yet… One of my favorite poet critics, Ellen Bryant Voigt, states that poetic form is, most simply, the “right relation of all the parts.” It seems to me, then, that a poet’s choice of form—how all the parts are intentionally related—might be a useful way to uncover ecocritical implications….
Ode is derived from “odein” the Greek word for “to chant” and was used in English poetry as the most grand, ceremonial and high-minded of forms. Nowadays, we are likely to associate it with Keats, Wordsworth, and other romantics as simply a romantic reflection on nature, beauty, art and the process of making a poem, whereby there is usually a move from physical description to meditation and finally to some kind of insight, resolution, stasis. According to Stephen Fry, who traces the evolution of the Ode and other forms in “The Ode Less Traveled” (whose title undermines its value), we most commonly conceive of poems as Odes where “An object, phenomenon or image is invoked, addressed or observed by an (often troubled) ode writer; the observation provokes though which in turn results in some kind of conclusion, decision or realization.” Fry questions whether this designation is descendent from the Ode tradition, or the medieval Sonnet, and he remains skeptical about the extent to which common usage of “Ode” reflects the original.
However, what seems particular to the Ode, even from the earliest forms, is a direct address or invocation at the start, which might be an “O” of praise or an “Oh” of realization. The Pindaric Ode seems appropriate to either of these impetuses, given the typical three-part structure commonly associated with the mode: Strophe (Turn), Antistrophe (Counter-turn), and Epode (Stand). Fry says of the classical form: “Pindar is associated with a form much more suited to ceremonial occasions and public addresses…He developed it from a choral dance for the purpose of making encomiums or praise songs that congratulate athletes or generals on their victories…” In addition to the “O” or the “Oh,” the dialectical structure is another feature inherent in the Ode, despite variations, and it might be generally thought of as a reenactment of the discovery process: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Inevitably, though, something doesn’t “fit” and every attempt at resolution fails to some degree, affirming, in a ritualistic way, limits of human perception and incapacity for synthesis. In this sense, the Ode begins a movement that perpetuates itself beyond the poem. With this in mind, it seems the Ode form parallels (perhaps recounts) epic content. Though the Epic assumes a linear narrative and “straight-forwardness” in terms of chronology in a way that Ode does not, the “narrative arc” consists in the series of conflicts, turns, and returns. I am thinking of Thoreau and how his passages between “civilized” world and Walden—both the actual move and the intermittent travels to the village/back—as well as his “reading” parallel both Ode and Epic.
The Elegy is, at its most basic, a mournful poem, a looking back, an affirmation of what is gone or past. To state the obvious, Elegy is absolutely dependent on the present, an external referent to memory. It is only in the “presence” of something, that “absence” arises, and to some degree, the elegy functions as the measuring stick between the present and the past, presence and absence, external world and memory, physical and emotional, etc…. Strangely, though, in “The Wanderer,” what is lost must be withheld. Memory and dream must be consciously “bound” to the interior and not let out, but concealed from the natural world, which is always taking away, creating more and more absence as a sort of anti-creation. If The Wanderer expresses his inward grief, as a true elegy would, he would lose even his ability to contain absence, memory.
The turning back of the elegy affirms a present counterpart, and to some degree, enacts a sequence of turns, much like the Ode, if only to circumscribe what is gone. At their most basic levels, then, it seems the Ode and Elegy have much in common, in that they operate by turns in time and consciousness, turns between natural and human, physical and emotional, etc…in order to enact praise, honor, mourning, preservation, recovery. The “O” and “Oh” seem relevant to elegy and the process of grief and mourning, insofar as the elegy functions to both honor (O!) or invoke a specific person, place or thing, and to bury it—which is often a dialectical process comprised of many turns and realizations (Ohs).
All in all, it seems to me that Ode and Elegy might be more helpful as similar or interrelated processes that stem from different occasions or objectives. Perhaps the Ode process, the perpetual turning and anti-resolution, is simply the residue of human effort toward reconciliation with time and space, otherwise death, memory, civilization and the natural world. I realize all this Ode-talk sounds like a rough paraphrase of T.S. Eliot….
Perhaps what matters about Ode and Elegy and Epic, is how they differ in the degree to which the writing is organized to reflect process (however Ode-like it may or may not be) and how time is treated therein….perhaps this leads into the tenuous distinction between narrative and lyric—one that interests and confounds me a great deal.
I fully plan to apply these ideas to Beowulf at some point….
Ode is derived from “odein” the Greek word for “to chant” and was used in English poetry as the most grand, ceremonial and high-minded of forms. Nowadays, we are likely to associate it with Keats, Wordsworth, and other romantics as simply a romantic reflection on nature, beauty, art and the process of making a poem, whereby there is usually a move from physical description to meditation and finally to some kind of insight, resolution, stasis. According to Stephen Fry, who traces the evolution of the Ode and other forms in “The Ode Less Traveled” (whose title undermines its value), we most commonly conceive of poems as Odes where “An object, phenomenon or image is invoked, addressed or observed by an (often troubled) ode writer; the observation provokes though which in turn results in some kind of conclusion, decision or realization.” Fry questions whether this designation is descendent from the Ode tradition, or the medieval Sonnet, and he remains skeptical about the extent to which common usage of “Ode” reflects the original.
However, what seems particular to the Ode, even from the earliest forms, is a direct address or invocation at the start, which might be an “O” of praise or an “Oh” of realization. The Pindaric Ode seems appropriate to either of these impetuses, given the typical three-part structure commonly associated with the mode: Strophe (Turn), Antistrophe (Counter-turn), and Epode (Stand). Fry says of the classical form: “Pindar is associated with a form much more suited to ceremonial occasions and public addresses…He developed it from a choral dance for the purpose of making encomiums or praise songs that congratulate athletes or generals on their victories…” In addition to the “O” or the “Oh,” the dialectical structure is another feature inherent in the Ode, despite variations, and it might be generally thought of as a reenactment of the discovery process: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Inevitably, though, something doesn’t “fit” and every attempt at resolution fails to some degree, affirming, in a ritualistic way, limits of human perception and incapacity for synthesis. In this sense, the Ode begins a movement that perpetuates itself beyond the poem. With this in mind, it seems the Ode form parallels (perhaps recounts) epic content. Though the Epic assumes a linear narrative and “straight-forwardness” in terms of chronology in a way that Ode does not, the “narrative arc” consists in the series of conflicts, turns, and returns. I am thinking of Thoreau and how his passages between “civilized” world and Walden—both the actual move and the intermittent travels to the village/back—as well as his “reading” parallel both Ode and Epic.
The Elegy is, at its most basic, a mournful poem, a looking back, an affirmation of what is gone or past. To state the obvious, Elegy is absolutely dependent on the present, an external referent to memory. It is only in the “presence” of something, that “absence” arises, and to some degree, the elegy functions as the measuring stick between the present and the past, presence and absence, external world and memory, physical and emotional, etc…. Strangely, though, in “The Wanderer,” what is lost must be withheld. Memory and dream must be consciously “bound” to the interior and not let out, but concealed from the natural world, which is always taking away, creating more and more absence as a sort of anti-creation. If The Wanderer expresses his inward grief, as a true elegy would, he would lose even his ability to contain absence, memory.
The turning back of the elegy affirms a present counterpart, and to some degree, enacts a sequence of turns, much like the Ode, if only to circumscribe what is gone. At their most basic levels, then, it seems the Ode and Elegy have much in common, in that they operate by turns in time and consciousness, turns between natural and human, physical and emotional, etc…in order to enact praise, honor, mourning, preservation, recovery. The “O” and “Oh” seem relevant to elegy and the process of grief and mourning, insofar as the elegy functions to both honor (O!) or invoke a specific person, place or thing, and to bury it—which is often a dialectical process comprised of many turns and realizations (Ohs).
All in all, it seems to me that Ode and Elegy might be more helpful as similar or interrelated processes that stem from different occasions or objectives. Perhaps the Ode process, the perpetual turning and anti-resolution, is simply the residue of human effort toward reconciliation with time and space, otherwise death, memory, civilization and the natural world. I realize all this Ode-talk sounds like a rough paraphrase of T.S. Eliot….
Perhaps what matters about Ode and Elegy and Epic, is how they differ in the degree to which the writing is organized to reflect process (however Ode-like it may or may not be) and how time is treated therein….perhaps this leads into the tenuous distinction between narrative and lyric—one that interests and confounds me a great deal.
I fully plan to apply these ideas to Beowulf at some point….
Monday, March 2, 2009
a scattering of jumping-off thoughts on Beowulf
If I were teaching Beowulf to my 131 students, I'd probably start off by having them list all the binaries they can find in the poem: monster/hero; hall/wilderness; night/day; celebration/mourning; traveling/being at home; cultural/natural; lord/retainer; et cetera. Of course all these binaries deconstruct somewhat upon closer prodding, but they still seem very present and significant in the structure of characters and themes -- Grendel is associated with night and with the wilderness, while Hrothgar acts in the day and in the hall; Beowulf is triumphant as a stranger and a retainer, while he loses the battle he fights as a king at home. The binaries that have to do with space are particularly interesting for our ecocritical take on things, and especially the moments where those binaries are transgressed -- when a character leaves the hall and goes into the wilderness, or when a monster leaves the wilderness and enters the hall, or when a character leaves one national space and travels to another. Are spaces/places defined, Saussure-style, to some extent by what they're not? How does movement from place to place (esp. type of place to type of place) confuse or complicate that?
How do we read the monsters? Grendel comes to the hall (civilization, the home of Hrothgar's clan) from the wild. But the monsters are also given homes; Grendel has a "lair," the dragon a cave (with a treasure-hoard) and Beowulf confronts Grendel's mother in the mere, in a hall of her very own. Do the monsters have a culture or are they only projections (maybe abjections) of nature? Can monsters inhabit? What does their monstrosity mean for the attitudes about nature portrayed in the poem?
Traveling is a marked behavior here. When Beowulf and company come to Denmark, the Danish coast-guard claims to have never seen anything like their arrival, and Beowulf emphasizes later how far he's come to fight Grendel. Since identity is to some extent clan-identity (Beowulf introduces his cohort saying they they "belong" to Hygelac and the Geats), what happens to identity as characters -- mostly Beowulf -- move among clans and their associated geographies?
I've been struck this time through the poem by the profusion of guards, sentries, checkpoints, even just doors -- points at which one type of political/cultural space abuts another. What function do these figures play, especially in relation to the background of space divided into different types of place? Related to this, how do we read the sea? It's clearly more a wild space than an inhabited one, but it's also a particular site for travel -- it's called the "whale-road" the first time it's referred to.
There's a great deal in Beowulf about renown, fame, the spreading of news and the telling of stories. Can this be read as a kind of travel? Beowulf has to hear about the monsters before he sets out to defeat them, and Hrothgar has to have heard about Beowulf before he'll let him into his hall, and Beowulf is regularly described in world-wide superlative terms -- the strongest man in the world, the hardiest warrior anyone's ever heard of, etc. How do news and renown connect (or divide?) the various spaces in which the poem takes place?
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