Samuel Beckett

Dear all, it's Michael.

Very quick note on Samuel Beckett. In endgame I was reminded of the lines in Macbeth: "It is a tale told by an idiot/Full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing" (off the top of my head so some of it may be a bit off!). Beckett shows a world where the meaning has drained out of it, where even the names have become monosyllabic grunts. It seems a response to the modernism of Virginia Woolf, where something can be seen as signifying anything; here everything is meaningless and has no inherent value

Gilles Deleuze

Hiya all :) Jo V here. I can't believe it's week 10 already! :-S

I am going to share a little bit on the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in the next seminar (I can make handouts if people would like :-) ) But I thought I'd also post a link to where you can read a translation of his famous essay "L'Epuisé" (Trans. "The Exhausted") which is relevant to Beckett's theatre in general and especially Endgame, which can be said to have much to do with endings, winding-down, exhausting etc... :) I will elaborate on Thurs. :D

Here it is; it's on JSTOR so you have to sign in. :)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3685005

I hope you all have a nice couple of days!
Jo
xxx

Interview with Salman Rushdie & President Lee Bollinger

Hiya! It's Jo again, just another little thing on Salman Rushdie :)

I found this and thought you might find it interesting :) It's a long watch, but worth it! :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YkaMhnIZ3E

I hope you all have a lovely weekend! :)
Jo
xxxxx

Midnight's Children and His/story

Hi, it’s Jonathan.

Whilst reading Midnight’s Children I was particularly struck by Rushdie’s exploration of the creative process involved in the production of art, and its relation to the unreliable/ambiguous nature of history. Linked to this idea was one of the novel’s most prominent themes, that of experiencing the world through a multiplicity of differing perspectives. As the embodiment of a united India, Saleem represents the amalgamation of these perspectives, and serves as the antithesis to the numerous groups in the novel who remain consistently intolerable to any deviation from their own principles, demanding complete singularity in regards to perception (for example, the protestors urging the creation of language-based regions, the anti-Muslim Ravana gang, the gang who attack Lifafa Das, the monotheism of Pakistan etc.). Like Lifafa Das’ peep show, Saleem’s narrative serves to depict the world from numerous viewpoints, and with a kaleidoscope of differing principles and influences. Saleem’s story is not only that of his personal life, but also the collective life of the nation.

Something I found particularly interesting however, was Saleem’s unreliability as a narrator, and particularly this in relation to (Rushdie’s?) view of history. As the novel progresses, Saleem’s errors (most notably his mistake in misplacing Ghandi’s death) somewhat cloud the reader’s faith in his ability to narrate accurately. However, this seems to be of little importance to Saleem, who contends that history is the product of multitudinous experiences and perspectives, and that memory (and thus his own narrative) can create its own truths. If we consider the common saying “History is written by the victors”, we can see some parallels between this phrase and the portrayal of events in Midnight’s Children, in as much as history is dictated by perspective, whether it adheres to genuine historical truth or not. History is considered ‘true’ not only because there are facts to support it, but because it is depicted as an authoritative account of events. The codification of history, and the passage of time, leads people to accept history as the truth. Thus, whilst Saleem worries over his mistakes, he chooses to maintain his version of events, and continues to believe in his narrative’s importance, equating it with religious scriptures. A parallel is made, for example, with Ahmed Sinai’s ambition of rearranging the Quran. Whilst the meaning of this religious text is not debated, the order of it is far from conclusive and is thus overshadowed by a similar doubt to that of Saleem’s story:

“‘When Muhammed prophesied, people wrote down what he said on palm leaves, which were kept any old how in a box. After he died, Abubakr and the others tried to remember the correct sequence; but they didn’t have very good memories’” (Vintage, 107).

Chronology and Meaning in Midnight's Children

Hi, this is Maria.

One part of the novel which I found really interesting was Ahmed Sinai’s ambition to rearrange the Quran in chronological order, the details of which are parenthesised:

‘(He once told me: “When Muhammed prophesised, people wrote down what he said on palm leaves, which were kept in any old how in a box. After he died, Abubakr and the others tried to remember the correct sequence; but they didn’t have very good memories.” Another wrong turning: instead of rewriting a sacred book, my father lurked in a ruin, awaiting demons. It’s no wonder he wasn't happy; and I would be no help. When I was born I broke his big toe.)’ (Vintage ed, p.107)

Ahmed’s fixation on time periods and order suggests a focus on the historiography of the Quran and the act of recording Muhammed’s actual words as opposed to its spiritual importance as a religious text. The colloquial and almost nonsensical phrase ‘any old how in a box’ communicates the jumbled and fragmented nature of these Quran verses, which Ahmed feels does no justice to the reality of their genesis. In this it can be inferred that Ahmed would feel more comfortable with the idea of the Quran as a single ordered entity, as an exhaustive profession of the Islamic faith.

Saleem’s remark ‘I would be no help’ can be related to his vastly different method of recounting history where ‘To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.’ (p.145) Saleem doesn’t just recognise the chaos of life, but constantly embraces ideas of it throughout Midnight’s Children. In beginning to comprehend life, it is not recognition of order that is paramount but of finding meaning in its disorder. This is evident in Saleem’s constant jumping back and forth between time frames in the novel, an example of which is present in the above excerpt. By mentioning Ahmed’s broken toe in a scene which takes place several months before the actual incident occurs, Saleem covertly demonstrates how chronology is often irrelevant to ideas of meaning and by doing this, implicitly suggests that it is perhaps fortunate that his father never got around to rewriting this ‘sacred book’. By parenthesising Ahmed’s ambition and acknowledging his failure to carry it out, the reader is led to realise how (as with the apparently disorganised verses of the Quran) we recognise meaning more effectively by rearranging the countless fragments that make up life, rather than in any attempts to preserve events in their correct time frame.

Rushdie Midnight's Children and representation

Hello, it's Michael.

I thought that Rushdie's use of a novel to try and document India's independence and subsequent territorial struggles was interesting - he uses what is a traditionally Western literary form and applies it to his homeland. This places the novel slightly uneasily between the colonialist British and the indigenous Indians.

I thought the opening of the novel contained a symbolic representation of the differing perceptions between Indian and European (specifically British) perceptions of the world, and the novel.

...My grandfather peered around the room. 'But where is she Ghani Shabi?' he blurted out finally. The lady wrestlers adopted supercilious expressions and, it seemed to him, tightened their musculatures, just in case he intended to say something fancy.

'Ah, I see your confusion,' Ghani said, his poisonous smile broadening, 'You Europe-returned chappies forget certain things. Doctor Sahib, my daughter is a decent girl, it goes without saying. She does not flaunt her body under the noses of strange men. You will understand that you cannot be permitted to see her, no, not in any circumstances; accordingly I have required her to be positioned behind that sheet. She stands there, like a good girl.'

A frantic note had crept into Doctor Aziz's voice. 'Ghanis Sahib tell me how I am to examine her without looking at her?'

'You will kindly specify which portion ofmy daughter it is necessary to inspect. I will then issue her with my instructions to place the required segment against that hole which you see there...'

(pg. 22-23 Vintage edition),bold added by me

The woman behind the sheet has become representative for a moment of India. Visitors, and people who have not been raised in the country, are unable to perceive more than partial, and momentary glimpses of this country at a time, prevented by both their own cultural impediments and the intransigence of the indigenous population. This is ironic considering Rushdie's desire to do justice to his country in the scope of the novel.

What it also reminded by of was Plato's parable of the Cave. Although the doctor can be certain of what body parts he is gazing upon, unlike the chained humans in the parable, it does raise the question of what we are being authorised to see, and how we could be potentially misled.

Placing Padma

Hello all! Jo V here. :) I have discovered in my wider reading some interesting perspectives on Padma.

Catherine Cundy sees Padma's role in Midnight's Children as representative of the varied technical and even cultural demands that writing the novel made on Salman Rushdie:

"On the one hand she can be seen as the exemplification of Roland Barthes's arguments on the role of the reader subsequent to the 'death' of the author...on the other, she provides a link back to the culture which Rushdie insits informs his work most strongly. Padma, taken on these terms, becomes a vocal and individualised member of the multitude which sits at the feet of the storyteller, hanging on his every word."

However, Nancy E Bathy argues that Padma's role as Saleem's "necessary ear" should not obscure her status as co-creator of the narrative. (An example I suppose would be Saleem's descriptions, upon Padma's insistence, of the "Purveyor of Dung" and the dung-filled city of Amristar. (p.33) According to Saleem's chronicle, Padma was "named after the lotus goddess, whose most common appellation amongst village folk is 'The One Who Possesses Dung'" (p.25) making this insistence personal.)

Cundy concludes that: "Padma's role within the text is clearly a symbolic one. She becomes critical of the process of construction and reconstitution of personal and national history in which text is engaged. She is not merely a symbol of the Indian storyteller's audience- it's capacity or credulity crystallised into a single identity - but a symbol also of a wider critical position in relation to the narrative mode itself... Padma serves to embody a critical skepticism about the narrative and to suggest a relationship of contestation between the text's form and context...It is through Padme's eyes that we are made aware of our own difficulties in dealing with the demands of the text."
So, in conclusion, Padma can perhaps be seen as much more than simply a convenient character - she appears alternately as a narrative foil, a Barthesian manifestation, a co-constructor of narrative and finally a symbolic advocate for the reader or the receptive public as a whole.

Hope you all had a nice weekend! :)

SOURCES:

Bathy, Nancy E, "The Art of Suspense: Rushdie's 1001 (Mid-)Nights" in Ariel, 18:3, p.54.

Cundy, Catherine, Salaman Rushdie, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996, p.36.
Rushdie, Salaman, Midnight's Children, London, Jonathan Cape, 1984.

Observations on Heaney

Hi all, it's (the other) Alex.

I sensed an air of self-deprecation and self-dissatisfaction about Heaney's collection. Michael commented on Heaney’s dissatisfaction with Irish politics, and I would agree; however, what runs deeper in the poem (I refer to ‘Punishment’) is an anger directed back upon himself:

My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
But would have cast, I know,
The stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur

…

I who have stood dumb
When your betraying sisters,
Cauled in tar,
Wept by the railings,

[I] Who would connive
In civilised outrage
Yet understand the exact
And tribal, intimate revenge.


The word “Yet” makes the ending problematic; it suggests that Heaney is affecting “civilised outrage” but in fact “understand[s]” and accepts the women's punishment. However, while Heaney understands its “tribal, intimate” nature, he does not necessarily condone the punishment; rather, his point is that he now understands it on the level of a ritual. In invoking this ritual (which harks back to the first century), Heaney lends the atrocities a further layer of barbarism; adultery and cavorting with enemy soldiers are equated by Heaney, which by extension equates the uncivilised system of justice of the first century to that of modern Ireland. The poem is therefore an indictment of these punitive practices.

More importantly, though, the poem is a self-censure. Heaney, as “artful voyeur”, feels he is hiding behind something, willing only to “cast … the stones of silence” - that is to say, like so many others, he disagrees with the measures taken against the “betraying sisters” but is unwilling to endanger himself in actively aiding their plight. This armchair moralising - incidentally, note a sense pervasive in Heaney’s work that the poet is set apart from the world, distanced; unable to affect it; able only to observe it as "voyeur" - is what Heaney rails against: good intentions, says he, are worth nothing without actions to accompany them.

His preoccupation with “the point of poetry” (I again refer to Michael) is the sort of self-reflexive concept with which artists are in perpetual grips; it will inevitably force any artist to question the importance of his own creations and, indeed, the act of creation itself. I think, then, that while (qua artist) he is inherently concerned with the point of poetry, Heaney’s major anxiety is his own poetic inadequacy. We see this in ‘Station Island’, when the ghost of Joyce emerges to lend artistic advice; and also in ‘The Forge’, where the labour of the blacksmith is majestically depicted as a foil to poetic practice, “a door into the dark”.

Hill's Mercian Hymns

I think that Geoffrey Hill may be yet another confusing, difficult poet, like T.S. Eliot. However, as with Eliot, you can certainly enjoy his poetry without quite understanding the references. Hill's references are muddled in time and space, rather than in past works of literature and song, it seems.

He begins Hymn VI with what seems a John Clare-like praise of the majesty of nature: "The princes of Mercia were badger and raven", and then reminds me of Dylan Thomas' 'Fern Hill', when he talks of those childhood days of digging and hoarding, and drinking "from honeycombs of chill sandstone", but humans enter the scene, and Hill then dashes back and forth with VII being a strange mix of the modern and the ancient. We have the "Gasholders, russet among fields", and he references "a biplane", but then links these things with a character called "Coelred", before finally returning to a little boy in a "private derelict sandlorry named Albion". This section of 'Mercian Hymns' does seem to be about Albion, from the medieval to the childhood of the poet, a puzzling story of the nation. It links history with memory, and you have to know about things like gasholders and biplanes to be able to absolutely locate where we are in Hill's train of thought. It doesn't help much that the poem is puzzlingly arranged; written in prose but set out like a poem, with the indented lines. Hill makes you concentrate to understand, but equally, if you decide not to concentrate, you can get a very powerful sense of the poem simply by reading it in your head, since the vocabulary is so rich and evocative.

"And we only can discover/ Life in the life we make"

Hi everyone, it's Jonathan.

Following on from my presentation on existentialism and the Absurd, I found reading Louis MacNeice's London Rain particularly interesting, given the poems focus on the consideration of human existence. It must be stressed that I have used the word 'consideration' here, rather than 'search', given the poem's apparent indifference to actually discovering definitive meaning. MacNeice considers the notion of two types of existence, one with and without the presence of God, but soon after concludes that "Whichever wins [i.e God or No-God] I am happy". Unlike existentialist thought which would usually settle on one scenario and discuss its implications on the meaning of existence, MacNeice accepts a contented, agnostic middle ground (one which I find I can relate to): "For God will give me bliss/ But No-God will absolve me/ From all I do amiss". MacNeice's optimistic position is, I feel, something which can be related to and also simultaneously rejected. For example, whilst I agree with there being benefits to both the existence and non-existence of God, it is hard to agree with his controversial statement later in the text, albeit a fascinating progression of thought: "if we are under No-God/ Nothing will matter at all,/ Adultery and murder/ Will count for nothing at all." MacNeice takes his argument to the extreme, disregarding any sense of morality. As such, are we meant to believe that without God, all morality goes out of the window? This seems to contend that the presence of God is the prerequisite for human morality, however, this is something I find difficult to agree with.

Another aspect of the poem I found striking was the depiction of his passions as fenced off "stallions of the soul". Having researched the passions for my last essay (in connection with Milton), this portrayal of human emotions reminded me of the classical thought that the body was an internal landscape populated by wild animals (the passions), which required taming and restraint. In the absence of God, the speaker's lust is said to be "riding horseback/ To ravish where I choose,/ To burgle all the turrets/ Of beauty as I choose".

Heaney's 'The Forge'

Hi all, it's Alex.

I had some thoughts about the problems of creation, preservation and authentic representation in Heaney’s ‘The Forge’. In choosing to write a sonnet on the simple figure of the blacksmith, Heaney commemorates this modest artisan with Wordsworthian dignity. But whereas Heaney, the poet, leaves his written work for posterity, the blacksmith is voiceless, uttering only a ‘grunt’ throughout the poem. Nonetheless the poem revels in its own oral effects (this comes across well in Heaney’s reading, especially the last three lines http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfatu3_seamus-heaney-the-forge_creation), and is a celebration of a figure who can articulate himself wordlessly ‘in shape and music’. In light of this, the objects created at the forge become important symbols of the non-verbal expression the blacksmith leaves behind. The ‘old axles and iron hoops rusting’ outside the forge containing the anvil/‘altar’ are reminiscent of neglected tombstones outside a church, which will not survive in comprehensible completeness for posterity.

Blake Morrison records that ‘taciturnity’ is a key characteristic in Heaney’s early figures, and that poetry was regarded as a luxurious superfluity to Irish working-class life (Contemporary Writers: Seamus Heaney, Routledge, London & New York, 1982, 21). Heaney’s commemoration of the physical, wordless process of creation in the forge thus marks his paradoxical relationship with his Irish rural heritage; by commemorating the unsung folk heroes with formal poetry, he is diverging from the very culture which he wishes to preserve.

'The Distant Fury of Battle

Hi everyone, this is Maria.

I found Geoffrey Hill’s ‘The Distant Fury of Battle’ (p.1831 in the Norton) striking in its depiction of the struggle to preserve human meaning against the brutality of physical reality. These modes of meaning range from ‘Words glossed on stone’ to ‘licence and duress’ and although they wield power over humankind (with unions ‘Claim[ing] the born leader, the prepared/ Leader’) their agency is incompatible with the sheer physicality of nature which in itself reduces us to purely physical beings in death, where all we can do is ‘test /Alike the endurance of yews’.

Despite this bleak destiny, Hill explores alternative ways of finding meaning in life through ‘the arrangement of love’, yet the mention of ‘auspices’, ‘subjects’ and ‘profits’ suggest that humans who turn to this particular method end up becoming a slave to this quest for meaning in their anxiety to extract gratification from it. I think that in light of this, the poem’s last sentence ‘Some, dug out of hot-beds, are brought bare, Not past conceiving but past care.’ doesn’t necessarily evoke bleak resignation , but a neutrality to the battle between meaning and reality where the preservation of meaning after death isn’t worth spending one’s life agonising over. This would explain the title ‘The Distant Fury of the Battle’; the fury is distant as it is the individual’s choice whether or not to engage in this battle to preserve that which they feel is important enough to withstand the tests of time and nature.

Geoffrey Hill

Hello, all. Lewis here.

I had some thoughts on the presence of the poet in some of Geoffrey Hill's work. 'September Song' is an elegy for someone a day younger than the poet; by making the poem both for and about another person, Hill is able to retreat into his role as omnipotent arbitrator, present only in his choosing what "is plenty [...and what] is more than enough" (l. 14) in his construction of the poem. Though Hill has written an "elegy for [him]self" (l. 9), his role is lessened by the "many routine cries" (l. 7) of the death camps.

In a similar way, 'The Guardians' has Hill categorising other human beings as "The young" (l. 1) and "The old" (l. 5), but he does not ally himself with either group. He projects this sparseness of presence onto the events of the poem, rooting the action solely in the "soft aftershocks of calm" (l. 10).

MacNeice and Heaney

Hello it's Michael.

[warning, while doing the reading I covered poetry that is not within the anthology; all these poems are easy to find online and named. Hope I don't cause you too much distress!]

The most particular similarity I noted was the poetry of MacNeice and Heaney. Both seemed to be debating the actual point of poetry - why was it, exactly that they were writing in verse? I came to the conclusion that it was to express dissatisfactions with political situations that wouldn't have been able to suffice in prose. MacNeice finds his reason in Autumn Journal - to illustrate the "the ranks/ Of men [that] are ranks of men, no more cyphers" (Autumn Journal, extract from Norton Anthology, line 31-32). Poetry is a riposte to the ideological constructs that dominated in the 30s that would "dragoon [MacNeice] me into a lethal automaton,/ would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with/ one face, a thing" ['Prayer before birth' from Selected Poems, London: Faber, 1980, 94]. As MacNeice says

I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
Flushed by the childrenæs bedtime, level with the shore.

The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want
To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus
But to keep my eye only on the nearer future
And after that let the sea flow over us.

Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle,
Join hands and make believe that joined
Hands will keep away the wolves of water
Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed
That no one hears them among the talk and laughter.

Wolves (selected Poems, pg.23, written 1934)

Poetry has become a medium to protest against the political disturbances of fascism. Likewise Heaney uses his poetry to protest against the Irish Troubles:

And whatever you say, you say nothing.

Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us:

Manoeuvrings to find out name and school,

Subtle discrimination by addresses

With hardly an exception to the rule

That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod

And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape.

O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,

Of open minds as open as a trap,

Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,

Where half of us, as in a wooden horse

Were cabin'd and confined like wily Greeks,

Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

from part III 'Whatever you say, you say nothing', New Selected Poems: 1966-89 (Faber: London, 2009), pg 79

It is through poetry that Heaney is able to show the ridiculousness of discrimination and expose the divides between Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. What the discrimination is exposed for is an organised pettiness, people reduced to scouring address books to find out who they are to avoid. The comparison to the Trojan horse adds a farcical layer to the whole scenario - those within the Horse are shut off, excluded from the world, 'Besieged within the siege' - no longer are they 'wily' but entrapped themselves.

Seamus Heaney poetry reading

Hi! me again :) This post is about Seamus Heaney - I found a video on Youtube of Heaney reciting "Digging" (1966) (the first of his poems in our anthology I think), and I thought you might like it. He really doesn't sound like I imagined him to!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIzJgbNANzk

Kieran Quinlan claims that "Heaney's elevation [to Professor of Poetry in Oxford, 1989] said much not only about the character of a poet who had been emormously successful from almost the very beginning of his career, but also about the changed and changing self-perception of the people on the island from which he had come - a former colony of the First British Empire now slowly, painfully, and still partially emerging into its proper postcolonial consciousness." (63) Interestingly, however, according to Quinlan, Heaney claimed that in "Digging" the intriguing description of the speaker's pen "snug as a gun" in his hand "had more to do with clumsily invoking the American western gunslinger for an analogue of the writing process then with any project of subverting British colonial hegemony"(63).

(Source: Kieran Quinlan, "Tracing Seamus Heaney", World Literature Today, Vol 69, No 1, Postmodernism/Postcolonialism (Winter 1995) pp.63-68.

Finally, here's a characterful picture of Heaney I found. :) Jo xxxxx

Auden and Caliban

Hiya guys! I thought I'd post a (totally random) fact pertaining to last week's seminar on 'The Sea and The Mirror'; did you know, W. H. Auden played Caliban in a school play as a child! :D I read this in a review in the Guardian,by Jeremy Noel Tod (teaches English Lit at Oxford university) - he even went so far as to refer to "W. H. Caliban" later in the article!
Jo
xxxx

(Source: "Caliban's last sigh", The Guardian, Saturday 27th September 2003. Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/sep/27/poetry.classics)

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