Eliot & The Hollow Men & more

Ok, time to delve into some Eliot. Firstly, I found a very interesting article called, The Composition of the WasteLand. It mentions something interesting about Pound's insight into it:

"Pound's criticism of The Waste Land was not of its meaning; he liked its despair and was indulgent of its neo-Christian hope. He dealt instead with its stylistic adequacy and freshness. For example, there was an extended, unsuccessful imitation of The Rape of the Lock at the beginning of "The Fire Sermon."

Check it out here:

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/eliot/composition.htm

However I wish not to continue delving into the WasteLand, as I have discussed it in my earlier blogs, and I wish to pay credit to Eliot's other poems: credit where credit is due.

The Hollow Men: We did not discuss the Hollow Men much in class, and I wonder why that is. My understanding is that the Hollow Men is considered to be the 'second part' of the Waste Land, though stylistically, it is quite different.

It appears a bit more traditonal that the Waste Land in terms of form: the lines are shorter. But Eliot definetely experiments with the modern. Firstly, his epigraph is intriguing: Mistah Kurtz, he dead, and A penny for the old guy, symbolize the rebellion against imperialism: What is it to be DARK, in Heart of Darkness? Who's heart is it that is dark? Is savagery dark? Here we encounter an interogation of the fictional versus the historical: 'A penny for the old guy' symbolizes the actuality of this imperial nature; to remember the rebellion against it, children traditonally collect candy...These two quotes serve the purpose of the epigraph greatly by throwing us into the poem with a particular overview/summary of humanity, perhaps its history: The history of imperialism, assimilation, conquer.

In my edition of the poem, the first quote is on the title page, and the second quote is on the first page of the poem. I'm wondering if anyone has any idea as to why that is...

"We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men...." Such short lines! Seems so contrary to the Waste Land! It seems, however, that these shorter lines enrich the overall tone. The tone becomes even more serious, even more deep, morbid really. The rytyhm bounces up with, Let me be no nearer in death's dream kingdom, let me also wear such deliberate disguises...", then the sudden, "No nearer, not that final meeting, in the twilight kingdom." Powerful.

I love the transition into part 5: "Here we go round the prickly pear..." This is an allusion to a childhood song, whos history was based on a situation of death, I believe, the famine (though I may be wrong on this one.) Eliot combines the realms of childhood with the morbid to create the eerie tune. He then picks up pace with: "Betweeen the idea, and the reality, between the motion, and the response...." Very rhythmic. This reminds me of the earlier part (part 1): "Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion." I believe that this segment demonstrates best Eliot's precision with words. PARALYSED FORCE is wonderful: What is force when it is paralyzed? This evokes imagery: Imagine a clenched fist that is unmoving. This is the hollow men, this is how we are.

"Life is very long," is touching, as is the famous, "this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper." This quote seems to have shaped, or contributed to, the death sentence that seemingly casts its shadow over the 20th century: The cumulative idea that the world is coming to an end. Or perhaps it pokes at this question, it interrogates it: When the world ends, we won't think it ends. Perhaps it has ended already, but we did not hear it end, it was so quiet.

The Hollow Men is strong, strong: A poem that manages to be loud while being quiet. Very moving: The animation and mixed voices that are present in the Waste Land are not as present here (only somewhat). We do not encounter such a mixing of past and present. It switches some voices, but I suppose that it suggests the topic of the Present as one that carries with it the burden of the past, those quotes: How it deals with the history of man, not necessarily by revisiting it, or by repeatedly returning, but by letting it linger always there in the shadows. The unified sensibility is generated here: Emotional and intellectual are in full swing.

(sigh)

Hello Blog,

Just a note to say that I haven't forgotten you. I was anxious for the exam, but I think I got through it okay. I just have to learn to write faster.

I've been cranking out assignments, but once I'm done with those (which will be soon), I can give you my full attention. Then it will be non-stop Eliot ranting.

Till then!

Exam Anticipation

Hello all,

Well it's the most hectic time of the year...at least for me...However the exam for this class is a fresh break from the usual cramming routine.

I went to the library on Tuesday to check out what was information was available on the exam questions. There is SOO much. The "essay" questions are more restrictive, clearly. But, for example, the term "imagination"- looking at Wordsworth's spin on it alone could fill up the whole question!

I guess this is where I have been slightly overwhelmed...I am concerned about "repeating information". The notion of imagination was vey important to the romantics, if they revolutionized anything it was that. But how do I speak of Wordsworth, in particular, without falling on the territory of "Wordsworth's idea of nature" in queston two.

I suppose more research into other perspectives is the answer...

Anyway, I'm grateful especially for these questions because I have so far found them very interesting to research- they are very theoretical, philosophical...and we can be creative with them!

Good luck everyone on your studying...I have to get back to work now....

Preaching Eliot!

I have an Eliot incident to report, and I am sorry to say that it is at best quasi-intellectual. Here's a story about what I did this weekend:

I have a theory, and I think it is a popular one, that words lose effect through abuse. ('abuse' is not necessarily negative here; it often results from over-use, or colloquial use, catch phrase or cliche). It is for this reason that we unconciously but constantly innovate our language, and the meanings of words adapt. If it did not, we'd get bored. We would never be able to say anything that could make someone cry (or smile, for you optimists).

Bright and early (speaking of cliche) Saturday morning (okay, mid-day...MY idea of morning), I was showing off my great big Eliot book to my boyfriend. He likes to torment me about things I enjoy, like poetry. So as I took it out he grabbed it from my hands and began to read Eliot's poetry aloud in booming mockery. I tried to get it back, but couldn't.

He wouldn't stop reading so I ran away. I ran away and blocked my ears. I didn't want him to ruin it for me. At first it was a joke but then he began reading aloud the Waste Land, and I gasped. I ran outside. He ran after me, shouting the words so I could hear them mispronounced...

I ran outside, past my garage, up the side of my house, covering my ears with my hands, with a man running after me shouting from a heavy Eliot book like he was preaching the Bible, me crouching against the wall refusing to hear, both of us in pajamas and no socks.

And then he started to read from my FAVOURITE parts of the Waste Land..! "April is the cruellest..." AHHHHHH!

K, so in the end he got bored and dropped the book, or had to use the washroom or something, but I was exhausted and now I get to write about it and think: Something about him reading Eliot aloud in that way makes it lose its effect on me. When you reduce something to a joke, it manifests that way. Similarily, when something is built up as an object of respect I understand it as such. I certainly felt differently that day then I did when we read it in class...

However, there was something about hearing Eliot read in a loud, preaching, apocalyptic tone that was so fitting...

(Ironic: What was meant as a joke, is actually how Eliot's words sound as you read them. As a profound declaration. A speech. A condemnation of something dead brought back to life. Or maybe I am placing upon Eliot's rhetoric my impressions of Ash Wednesday...that is how the poem really feels, in form and content: Eliot's voice is being resusitated, as are the ideas in the text, as was biblical Jesus, etc.)

What About Us?

All this talk about Eliot has made me think: Where are the Canadians? Who is our hero? Don't we have some great modern writers that should be canonized in the mainstream? For example, the modern movements that people like the Montreal Automatists took part in. Seems like I'd have to take a very specific course to even hear about those guys: An upper level course, or Canadian literature course, perhaps.

I know it's difficult to judge this situation because Canada's "literary development" has taken some more time than, say, America's has. For example, the Toronto we have today- with the international credit it has in arts and literature- was not that way some fifty years ago. It took a lot of hard work to get noticed. Arguably, our modernist writers (except for Margaret Atwood) simply were "not as influential".

But what decides which writers are to be "influential"? If Eliot was a Canadian, would his writing be "the turning point of literature" or "THE critique of Western civilization" as it is known to be today? I'm doubtful. How has the academic "media" shaped this outcome? Is "literature" based on decisions made by particular people who claim objectivity in a box that is actually quite relative?

Any thoughts on this...?

Professor Sharp was Insightful

What an interesting lecture we had yesterday. It was nice to speak openly about Eliot, and how his writing effects us. I liked listening to the different impressions he made on everyone in the class, and Prof. Sharp's comments regarding them were insightful.

The class brought my attention to a particular part of the Waste Land that I had personally overlooked. I have, since my first reading of the Waste Land, adored, "The Burial of the Dead," and, "A Game of Chess." But the final section, now that we've had a close look at it (I suppose that it relatively speaking; 'closeness' seems an indefinite feat when it comes to Eliot), has incredible depth, a lot of which I still don't understand. Perhaps it will suffice to say that I am closER.

DA- The Thunder. What is DA? Is still tormenting me. The constrasts between anger and peace in the text is like a roller coaster: "Ile fit you!" to "shantih shantih shantih".

But to get back to my old favourites, I'd like to comment on one thing in particular that moved me during class. I had made some obscure comment about "A Game of Chess..." Oh yes, I had mentioned that in Eliot's text I (and others I think too) experience a sense of KNOWING WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT even though I probably DON'T. Eliot expresses an EXPERIENCE in his writing that seems to say:
It.
But we just don't know what it is. I gave the example in class:
"Do you know nothing? Do you remember nothing?..."
(from "A Game of Chess")
And I understand it personally though probably not completely, on some emotional-intellectual level that I can define. When I read it aloud I ask the world too this question: Do you remember NOTHING?

The image in my mind when I read it: Two people talking. Personal talk. Perhaps a man and a woman. A woman is speaking, and when she is speaking she is addressing the man, and the entire world (perhaps the Western world) at once. (It feels like a sort of dramatic irony- on stage it is a dialogue between two people, but the audience knows that the question is a rhetorical, mystical, universal question of humankind that silently refers to a traumatic past- the past of revolution and war and suffering- perhaps of overcoming- Do you remember nothing?
Note that Eliot re-invents this sense of dramatic irony- he makes it new, even more subtle, perhaps.)

NOTHING> After I ranted about that for a while, Professor Sharp said yes and then he paused and he faced the class and said, "But do you notice that it is impossible to remember nothing." In a rhetorical sort of way and then he said, "Think about it. Really can you try to remember nothing? It is the mystical, not-possible metephor. You cannot remember nothing."

In my mind the image changed. The lady was saying, "Do you remember nothing," and the man sits quietly, uncomfortably, a half smile on his face that answers "no". The look on his face is Of Nothing- it is of an ignorant pride. "no I don't." And then there's a picture in his mind, and he sees what the lady is begging of him to see, and he remembers something, still he says "I remember nothing."

The lady knows it is impossible to remember nothing.

The lady is speaking to the world.

Thank you, Professor Sharp for a great class. Professor Kuin, we missed you. I'm looking forward to your reflections when we next see you, in under two weeks from now. I hope we will do some more of Eliot's poetry when you get back- there seems so much here to think about.

The Waste Land: An Analysis

Seeing as we are beginning the study of the WASTE LAND next class, I thought it would be fitting to put up my two cents. Here's my analysis: (Some references used in this analysis are noted in depth at the bottom, writers Hugh Kenner, Roland Barthes, Elizabeth Drew, and my wonderful literature professor, Marie-Christine Leps, and my creative writing professor, Dr. Uppal, who took the time to have a long conversation with me today about Eliot and writing.)

It just so happens that my assigned reading for my creative writing class this week was "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Convenient, eh? In class discussion, we thoroughly discussed Eliot's views on literature and writing. Above all what I took out of it was Eliot's firm view that writers must read. My creative writing professor stressed that to Eliot (and in general) one that seems to write in an immature or perhaps underdeveloped way if often one who does not read enough. To Eliot, writing is a response, to history, to time, to other writers.
It is as a dialogue is, it is a building and contrasting of ideas (perhaps a bit Hegelian here) that is built upon, but if we must contrast, we must do so as a mature writer: 'Amateur writers imitate, mature writers steal'. They reference. They combine. They take the old and make it new. But we must know to old quite well in order to do so, or else we're just writing fiction.

One line in particular that Dr. Uppal pointed out today is when Eliot mentions that 'only those people with personalities know what it is to want to escape from it.' There was a lot of emphasis, here, about escaping from the personality of the writer, escaping from the person. Eliot beleives that authorship, essentially, is crap. Those who attempt to dissemble and explain poetry by investigating the author's life are going about the business wrong, as is one who believes that by knowing all there is to know about that writers lifetime will make them explicable. The writer is not the 'person', and while they still certainly receive credit for what they do, the writer is a mind and the poems are the words on the page. Alienation- the writer, Eliot himself, is alienated from his own work. While he maintains a firm evocative voice (the emotional and feeling-oriented voice he also speaks of in his essay), the voice is not tied to him, cannot be explained by one who knew him. He is not the context, there is no context in the Waste Land. In fact, not only is Eliot alienated from his own work, but so is the audience, so is time and space and straight narration, so is form alienated. It is a timeless work that demonstrates the chaos of Eliots time with form but bears no necessary resemblance to Eliot or to his time. The alienation is worthy of investigation, because I myself have not before read something like it and, it creates the STRONG effect that the Waste Land is so famous for. Who knew that detachment from sentimental experience could make the experience, could build the sentiment, could be so strong?

Eliot’s transitions between speakers alienate the author. The fragmented psyche he creates implies one that is not united yet somehow cohesive. This shows the many narrators, and with so many with so much to say, there is no one in charge (Kenner 149). There is no author, as Eliot removes himself completely from his text, and is completely out of context. Barthes would describe this power, "the text is…a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash (Barthes 2)." The meanings of the passages mean something in context of one another. However the trick with Eliot’s work is that although he creates a sense of alienation between himself and the writing, he empowers the meaning of the text. The intertextuality he uses is purposeful, as he documents his sources, with footnotes, at the end of the poem (Drew 58). Passages combine otherwise segregated and contextual meanings into one, blending history and culture into one undefined universal message (ibid.). Multiple speakers come in also as third parties, for example, in "A Game of Chess," the line "hurry up please its time" repeatedly interjects a two-way dialogue. It pushes the reader and the author outside of the text, alienating them from it.

In Eliot’s work, there is no sense of time. The text is alienated from particular historical or temporal context. He changes the concept of time to one that is constant, not continuous or unfolding (Drew 158). The work begins with a description of the rebirth of the springtime. It describes the transition between seasons that blur together, setting the stage for the temporal cohesion of events in the poem (Drew 68): "April is the cruelest month…winter kept us warm…summer surprised us…" The rest of the text switches between biblical times and descriptions of the modern industrial scenery. He alludes to historical texts, Shakespeare and the ancient literatures. These changes of landscape are used as defamiliarization techniques, making strong reference to time without actually mentioning it (ibid.). This creates no particular time in which the text is situated. As long as the publishing date of the text is ignored, the reader is alienated from exact time (Drew 64). There is, as well, no sense that time is being looked back upon; the reader may be anywhere in time, or even switching back and forth (ibid.). The disconnection of phrasing in the text mirrors this intellectual alienation (ibid.). Eliot "makes times new" in this way, and uses phrasing to further disconnect words and time. Eliot, the Poet of Disconnection, is obsessed with making things new, mixing symbols and ideas, confusing lines like he confuses time; to make it both temporally and structurally innovative (Leps Jan. 6). Almost as if saying to the reader, "You are barely beginning to understand this." He makes ideas new by putting them where they are consciously not usually considered, and makes time new by relating it to life unconventionally, to make a point. He puts emphasis in phrasing where it is not usually placed: "What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do? The hot water at ten. And if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door."

A third way The WasteLand alienates itself is by its disconnected plot line (Drew 67). It has no particular story to tell, rather, many stories, all contrasting and shaping one another. An example of the defamiliarization Eliot uses in terms of plot:
"They called me the hyacinth girl. And yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden, your hair wet and your arms full, I could not speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing, looking into the heart of light, the silence."
Above, Eliot uses a very emotionally charged voice (Leps Jan. 6). The speaker is sentimental. But this changes quickly to a clear-headed tone: "Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant, had a bad cold nevertheless, is known to be the wisest woman in Europe…" And then to "Unreal City, Under the fog of a winter dawn…". Apparent is the clash of tones, ideas, and scenes. He plays games with plot, amplifying its lack of flow by showing their ideas as somehow interconnected. For example, in The Burial of the Dead, he writes, "Fear death by water." This is a referral to the poem itself; section 6, "Death by Water" (Drew 65). The scenes refer to each other, but are not apparently related in structure or conventional plot time. The defamiliarization and connections in plot are meant to confuse and alienate one from conventional understanding (Drew 64). These different events and tones move along a plot that the reader and writer is completely alienated from (ibid.). As it is read, it is completely unknown where it will lead, since it takes no particular direction. It is fair to say only that it builds upon itself: his work refuses plot, but because it has many resemblances to plot laced throughout the text, it fools us into imagining one.

None of The WasteLand has to do with Eliot’s life, he is only a mind and words are just a statement (Leps Jan. 6). The nature and the purpose of his work alienated him.
Outside of context, an experience is just an experience. We can make it, shape it, and watch it go by. And so is time in our lives. We think we are there but we are truly watching a sailboat drift, and all the while saying this is fun, this is emotional, this must have meaning, but there is no meaning here. We are pieces watching and playing a game of chess but if we photographed the game and saw it objectively, truly examining the canon of literature, all we would see are pieces that are just there, ever-changing and complimenting each other in a sphere of breath and nothingness. Only in this point in history, after the Great War, we can console ourselves, we show meaning in futility. We prove that history alone is meaningless, but that we can appreciate that.

Kenner, Hugh. "The Invisible Poet: T.S. Eliot." Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., New
York 1959.
Leps, M.-C. "Modernism and T.S. Eliot." Literature and Theory: An Introduction 1300B.
York University, Toronto. 6 Jan, 2004.
Barthes, Roland. "Death of the Author." 1977.
Drew, Elizabeth. "T.S. Eliot: The Design of his Poetry." Charles Scribner's Sons, U.S.A.
1949.

"And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living."
(Tradition and the Individual Talent)

Intro to Eliot

Ah Eliot! We've finally begun with Eliot...

I found our first class to be a great introduction. The films were great. They gave a good depiction of Eliot's life and mostly, the man he was in it. It's an odd view...because I think many of us in the class are infatuated with his writing, and so to think of him as 'a man who writes' seems odd; seems odd to call him ordinary.

He seemed like a nice man. That may sound wierd but, so many modern writers I study seem to be off the wall somehow...under the influence of something. But he seemed like a man that loved one woman for quite some time, and was very dedicated to her. After many years that ended, and much later he fell in love again. He seemed like a happy, calm man, not quite as tempermental as one might imagine: with all that emotion he writes with.

And I suppose that may have taken me aback a little bit. I expected there to be something aBOUT him. Where did the Waste Land come from? "You brought me hyancinths first a year ago..." Who did? Where is the intensity of his voice in his life? Watching the film, I searched for it, but found only a the part when it mentioned that he spent a certain amount of time producing the Waste Land. But from where? What was the influence? What exactly was he unhappy with...his writing, too, seems so historical that, while his writing is personal and his voice distinct, the subject matter does not seem to be of his life...perhaps he was a very internal person?

These questions, I expect, will be soon under investigation...

I liked that we resumed with a bunch of Eliot's poems. We got in a good variety, and the poetry was light. I really like the Love Song of Alfred Prufrock...and the hippopotamus one was interesting! It's crazy how many references he makes...more to come on this soon!