If Anyone Cares to Weigh In

The two posts that receive the most hits from search engines here are the one on Audition and the one on Francesca Woodman. Searches of the former usually have something to do with plot or characters while searches of the latter usually have something to do with Woodman’s suicide and mental illness. When I wrote the piece on Francesca Woodman I tried to play down her violent death, because that’s just something we generally do when dealing with an artist who commits suicide. My issue is that I am beginning to wonder why we do this and to what degree that sort of thing influences a reading of an artist’s work.

In studying Renaissance literature we now pay a lot of attention to biography and politics of the period, thanks to the so-called New Historicists (who are getting very old as we speak.) There are heavily end-noted and indexed lives of Shakespeare, John Milton and Andrew Marvell, just to name three. The biographers dive into every possible motivation behind a particular work at each stage of the author’s life, whether the motivation owes perhaps to politics, personal tragedy, friendships, patronage, etc.

Now, when dealing with someone like Ernest Hemingway or Virginia Woolf in literary criticism we generally shy away from this seemingly crucial part of an author’s biography. Oddly, though, I think that anyone who is not ignorant of the final event in the author’s life would take the issue of suicide into account. Undergrads are usually curious about this sort of thing but professors politely squash questions about it. “Yes, Hemingway shot himself, but don’t think about that.”

I understand the impulse to disassociate the author’s death from the author’s work. If I was teaching  Mrs. Dalloway I probably would not want to field too many questions relating Septimus Smith to Virginia Woolf. That could easily become tedious and perhaps take away from the importance of the novel. On the other hand, if critics and scholars are all so eager to historicize everything, why leave this part out?

My real point, though, is a different question: How much can we “read” something like suicide into an author’s or artist’s work? Can we see it about to happen, if even only in retrospect? Finally, is it fair to look at art this way?

In case anyone has an opinion I’d be curious to know your thoughts.

It’s My Weblog and I’ll Post What I Want To…

One of two poems by Ezra Pound that I can stand:

Cino

Italian Campagna 1309, the open road

Bah! I have sung women in three cities,
But it is all the same;
And I will sing of the sun.

Lips, words, and you snare them,
Dreams, words, and they are as jewels,
Strange spells of old deity,
Ravens, nights, allurement:
And they are not;
Having become the souls of song.

Eyes, dreams, lips, and the night goes.
Being upon the road once more,
They are not.
Forgetful in their towers of our tuneing
Once for wind-runeing
They dream us-toward and
Sighing, say, “Would Cino,
Passionate Cino, of the wrinkling eyes,
Gay Cino, of quick laughter,
Cino, of the dare, the jibe.
Frail Cino, strongest of his tribe
That tramp old ways beneath the sun-light,
Would Cino of the Luth were here!”

Once, twice a year—
Vaguely thus word they:

“Cino?” “Oh, eh, Cino Polnesi
The singer is’t you mean?”
“Ah yes, passed once our way,
A saucy fellow, but . . .
(Oh they are all one these vagabonds),
Peste! ’tis his own songs?
Or some other’s that he sings?
But *you*, My Lord, how with your city?”

My you “My Lord,” God’s pity!
And all I knew were out, My Lord, you
Were Lack-land Cino, e’en as I am,
O Sinistro.

I have sung women in three cities.
But it is all one.
I will sing of the sun.
. . . eh? . . . they mostly had grey eyes,
But it is all one, I will sing of the sun.

“‘Pollo Phoibee, old tin pan, you
Glory to Zeus’ aegis-day,
Shield o’ steel-blue, th’ heaven o’er us
Hath for boss thy lustre gay!’                                                                                                                    Pollo Phoibee, to our way-fare
Make thy laugh our wander-lied;
Bid thy ‘flugence bear away care.
Cloud and rain-tears pass they fleet!

Seeking e’er the new-laid rast-way
To the gardens of the sun . . .

***

I have sung women in theree cities
But it is all one.
I will sing of the white birds
In the blue waters of heaven,
The clouds that are spray to its sea.”

Unparadiz’d

A few weeks ago I was in the school library looking over a book of designs by Inigo Jones. I frame the situation this way not to make me sound smart, but to illustrate how dull my average day is. Behind me were a couple engaged in amorous behavior and so I got that bit of irritation known to so many of us: having to listen to two people slurping away and being too polite to tell them to cut it out.

Why bring up this anecdote? I’m reading Paradise Lost and am in the middle of Book V, which contains lengthy passages of Adam and Eve in conversation.

Here’s Adam:

Awake
My fairest, my espous’d, my latest found,
Heav’ns last best gift, my ever new delight,

20

Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us, we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tended Plants, how blows the Citron Grove,
What drops the Myrrhe, & what the balmie Reed,
How Nature paints her colours, how the Bee
Sits on the Bloom extracting liquid sweet.

And Eve:

O Sole in whom my thoughts find all repose,
My Glorie, my Perfection, glad I see

30

Thy face, and Morn return’d, for I this Night,
Such night till this I never pass’d, have dream’d,
If dream’d, not as I oft am wont, of thee,

Nauseating. Like watching two people making out. Is it any wonder why readers find themselves rooting for Satan?

Minor and Personal Humiliating Moments

I don’t mean really bad stuff, like, oh, slipping on a turd in a crowded place. Not even slipping on a turd in front of a few friends. That would be really embarassing. What I’m talking about are the things that only I find embarassing and other people think are just sort of funny. I packed up almost all my books the other day in anticipation of next week’s move. I do not know how many boxes of books I have, and I really do not feel like going back and counting. I will let the movers deal with it.

The problem is that I am supposed to read Jane Eyre by Monday. Guess where my copy is? I know the general location, somewhere in the bedroom and in a box, but there is no way in Hades that I am going to start ripping open boxes in search of Ms. Bronte’s novel. I do not care enough to do that. However, I do have to have the book read, so today I cruised over to Border’s and picked up another copy of Jane Eyre which just happened to be the exact same edition that I already owned.

I have three copies of The Sound and the Fury: a battered old copy that I swiped from the donations at the library where I once worked, a Norton edition that I obtained in the same way and an original 1932 first London release that was a gift. I see no problem in owning multiple copies of  my favorite novel, but owning two exact copies of Jane Eyre, a  book I can’t stand…what to make of that?

Oh, bother.

Next Week’s Homework

We all have something that motivates us. For me it is the fear that I will expose myself as the drooling idiot that I am. This is why I finished this week’s homework three days ago and on that same day started in on next week’s homework. By the grace of an email from a fellow student my Friday night was saved and I once again actually went out and talked to real live people.

The old motivator would not allow me a Saturday, though, and I plowed on through more of Nicholas Nickleby and some course handouts that I do not really have to read until next Monday. Call me a hater. In this world (or my world I guess) it is safe to dislike one author from a particular time period, but it is not safe to dislike almost all of them. I can’t say I’m all that eager to finish with Charles Dickens, because next up is Charlotte Bronte. “Oh, my dear Jane! It is not a gypsy you see before you, but ’tis I, your beloved Mr. Rochester!” Tedium, tedium, tedium.

I will not be entirely negative. At least not for now. Reading Nicholas Nickleby last night, I found this particular gem:

Love […] is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination, which has a long memory, and will thrive for a considerable time on very slight and sparing food. Thus it is that it often attains its most luxuriant growth in separation and under circumstances of the utmost difficulty; and thus it was that Nicholas, thinking of nothing but the unknown young lady from day to day and from hour to hour, began at last to think that he was very desperately in love with her, and that never was such an ill-used and persecuted lover as he.

I could not believe what I was reading: a Charles Dickens character behaving like a real human being. I don’t think I’ve ever read a better description of a painful crush. Nicholas, for a moment, steps down from his pedestal as the dark-haired paragon of virtue, chastity and Christianity and becomes a young man. Of course, I still have to tolerate another three-hundred pages of this book and I’m pretty sure that Nicholas will revert to type, but that was a refreshing moment in this otherwise goofy book.

Today the old motivator is not doing its job. This morning I read a page of Nickleby and gave up, choosing instead to surf my favorite Internet spots. I’m trying to figure out what to do with myself when I’m not doing homework. Video games are not that fun anymore and there are only so many hours one can spend in front of a computer screen before eye-fatigue sets in. I don’t know. Mabe I’ll…leave the house.

Inferno

It came to pass that I found myself lost in the strip mall. I looked all about me and the buildings all appeared the same. It had been a long day and I was weary. The stores all looked the same and I could not find my car.

Suddenly I was menaced from three sides: a woman, fortyish, with three ferocious chihuahuas on one side. On another, a high school kid with eyes red like flame asking me for a cigarette or some spare change. On the third, a homeless man ranting about technology and Armageddon and Jesus. I could not run, for I was surrounded, nor could I fight for I had been eating nothing but pasta for three days. Panic mounted.

“Leave that man alone, demons!” I heard from afar. I gazed to the location from where the voice came, the patio of the coffee house. “I say, go!” My three foes hastily scattered and I saw T.S. Eliot approaching me.

“My inspiration!” I cried. “My reason for putting myself through years of mental torture and a life of poverty! Thank you and God bless you for saving me! Could you please help me find my way back to my car?”

“The road back to your car is long and perilous, but I shall be your guide. Follow me at once and do not look over your shoulder, for danger follows us at all times and you must not have fear. You must trust me to guide you.”

“Mr. Eliot, I have trusted you all these years to be my guide and I shall not falter now. Show me the way back to my car.”

“Very well, young one. Follow me into this storefront and remember: have no fear.”

We entered the building. It was long and narrow. Fluorescent light shone down, causing all inside to glow as if afflicted with some sort of skin disease. The inhabitants sat meekly, staring at their feet and moaning almost inaudibly due to the cacophany coming from the walls of the room. On one side were machines that made the sound of hissing and swishing water. On the other, built into the wall, were machines that roared and spun clothing in a circle. The place smelled of bleach and soap and lost souls, who gathered in the center around long formica tables.

“What is this place, oh great master?” I inquired.

“This is the place of French intellectuals who spent their lives intentionally misleading and confusing gullible American academics,” replied my mentor. 

I looked about me. “Why yes,” I said, “I believe I recognize Jacques Derrida!” I approached the dapper Frenchman. “Good day to you, sir! I well remember your tortured sentences from years ago, which made me tremble and chain-smoke at their very thought!”

Derrida stared blankly at the machine on the wall, muttering

 Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which governs the structure, while escaping structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is at the center of the totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center.

I shoved him violently, but he did not notice. “I do not fear you anymore, you snivelling weasel, you pretentious bore! Fie! I shall look upon you no more! I see someone else with whom I wish to speak.” I walked up to the bald and bespectacled man. He was staring at the machine in front of him, much in the way of Derrida. “What say you Michel, you whose students are so infuriating and stubborn!”

Foucault rocked back and forth, wailing

We are talking about two things here: the gaze and interiorisation. And isn’t it basically the problem of the cost of power? In reality power is only exercised at a cost. Obviously, there is an economic cost, and Bentham talks about this. How many overseers will the Panopticon need? How much will the machine then cost to run? But there is also a specifically political cost. If you are too violent, you risk provoking revolts…In contrast to that you have the system of surveillance, which on the contrary involves very little expense. There is no need for arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. An inspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight will end by interiorisation to the point that he is his own overseer, each individual thus exercizing this surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for what turns out to be minimal cost.

“I shall no longer be a slave to your paranoia!” I responded, but this time much less violently. I had begun to feel pity for these men, standing eternally in this room, watching clothing turn in endless circles as punishment for their circular and self-referential logic. I then saw a third and walked over to him. “Jacques, your horrible prose once made me laugh so suddenly that my classmates thought I was reading some sort of comedy when I should have been reading along with the lecture. What have you to say for yourself?”

Lacan babbled

Many people talk nowadays about messages everywhere, inside the organism a hormone is a message, a beam of light to obtain teleguidance to a plane or from a satellite is a message, and so on; but the message in language is absolutely different. The message. our message, in all cases comes from the Other by which I understand “from the place of the Other.” It certainly is not the common other, the other with a lower-case o, and this is why I have given a capital O as the initial letter to the Other of whom I am now speaking. Since in this case, here in Baltimore, it would seam that the Other is naturally English-speaking, it would really be doing myself violence to speak French. But the question that this person raised, that it would perhaps be difficult and even a little ridiculous for me to speak English, is an important argument and I also know that there are many French-speaking people present that do not understand English at all; for these my choice of English would be a security, but perhaps I would not wish them to be so secure and in this case I shall speak a little French as well.

I walked away. There was nothing left for me to do. The emperors now appeared to me to be totally naked and I feared their terrible wrath and terrible writing no more. I stepped back to my master and asked, “Will you show me the way to my car now?”

“Perhaps,” he replied.

[This may or may not become part of a series, once again depending on whether or not I remember to follow up.]

Famous International Playboy

School has not officially started for me and already I have a bunch of stuff to read for a seminar on John Milton. The editor of the anthology saw it fit to add a footnote to almost every other word, so it usually takes at least twice as long to read a poem than it should. Milton was apparently such an absolute slave to his classical education that every poem, no matter how short, must contain something about nymphs, satyrs or ancient gods. This is why I preferred Donne when doing my undergraduate work: he had the same education, but applied the philosophy rather than the mythology to his poetry. Milton seems to do both, but the philosophy is often lost among the thousands of footnoted deities and goofy allusions. What kind of Puritan is this?

His prose, and so far I have only read some of the Prolusions, is wonderfully arrogant. I can’t find any particularly good passages at the moment, so you will simply have to believe me until I can find something. Milton was arrogant even as a boy and it should be fun to watch that arrogance mature, especially when he becomes a bureaucrat under Cromwell and actually has something about which to be arrogant.

So far I prefer the prose to the poetry, but perhaps that might change if I simply ignore the stupid footnotes or read them all before plowing through the poems. Hopefully I am not doing all of this for nothing. This particular class is not filling up since it came late onto the schedule and an older professor is teaching a Shakespeare seminar this quarter. If the Milton class is cancelled I might demand an independent study project for the first time in my life.

The Student

Or, There and Back Again

I may as well start you off with a bit of fun news from Isla Vista:

“‘Get your Jesus burgers,’ hollered the university student, 22, speaking gibberish on the streets of Isla Vista. Patrolling deputies came across the intoxicated male around 1:20 a.m. as he staggered alone. He was arrested for public intoxication.”

The local sheriff’s blotter should be required weekly reading around here, even if only for entertainment purposes. The natives are apparently restless again, and I can only thank my pocketbook and relatively good judgement that I stayed away from that particular cesspool.

I did, however, get the opportunity to witness the place firsthand the other day after a grueling seven hour orientation (which was for the most part extraordinarily dull but did provide some unintentional humor (I really wish I could go into specifics, but I am a bit paranoid that someone will run across this. Email me if you are curious.) Anyway, I am now officially oriented until Monday, when I will be oriented yet again, and then Wednesday, which is another orientation. This is nothing like what I remember from my undergraduate days, when they just gave me a date to register and told me when to show up for classes.

I digress. Last Wednesday after the new graduate student orientation, a bunch of us hit a bar in Isla Vista, where most of those in attendance became just intoxicated enough to let our nerd flags fly high for a few hours. I overheard one affable young man say something to the effect that a person’s interest in any particular literary field was a projection of his or her own neurosis onto the body of work. My interest is in theology. Feel free to interpret.

I mentioned this before, I think, but I have three old essays to “grade” as part of TA training on Monday. I wish I could say that they are predictably bad, but they are in fact unpredictably bad. At least one would have failed in a freshman comp course, and the other two are B- material at best. I’m sure that no one around here actually ever gets an F on a paper, and I will learn all the sensitivity guidelines as to how to grade something truly horrendous, but I am having trouble even getting around to grading these papers. They just make me want to break out a red felt-tip and go berserk.

In local news, I registered for classes three weeks ago. I was going to take one class on Shakespeare’s tragedies and another on Modernist American lit. Then, a few days later, a demon made its way into my ear and somehow convinced me to change both classes. I am now taking one class on Victorian literature and one on Milton. Milton makes sense, but I truly hate Victorian literature. I have no idea what happened, or what was going through my poor addled mind when I made that decision. I now have to read Jane Eyre for what must be the third time, one novel by Thomas Hardy (who I cannot stand) and Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens (who I despise even more than I despise Hardy.) I am only a quarter of the way through Nicholas Nickleby, which is almost eight-hundred pages long. Mon dieu! What have I done?

Finally, the books for the Milton class are not in the bookstore yet. Yesterday I went there to pick them up, but arrived at the bookstore ten minutes before closing. Since I do not want to make enemies there, I decided to go back today. All in all, five dollars of wasted bus fare and two hours spent waiting around when I could have been slogging through the heinous prose of Mr. Dickens.

I bid you all a fond farewell as I try to get my act together. Until the next time, have fun and good luck.

Okay, That turned Out to Be Painless

I’m registered. Now I’m off to work (three more days.)

In the meantime, have some T.S. Eliot.