9 posts tagged “literature”

I noticed something interesting when reading Dharma Bums this week. Japhy is explaining yabyum, but either he or Kerouac has a misunderstanding about the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum. He is associating this mantra with yabyum, but that mantra is the mantra of the Bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara. "This is what they do in the temples of Tibet. It's a holy ceremony, it's done just like this in front of chanting priests. People pray and recite Om Mani Pahdme Hum, which means Amen the Thuderbolt in the Dark Void. I'm the thunderbolt and Princess is the dark void, you see" (28-9). Om Mani Padme Hum actually means 'the jewel in the lotus'.

"The middle part of the mantra, maṇi padme, is often interpreted as 'jewel in the lotus,' Sanskrit maṇí 'jewel, gem' and the locative of padma 'lotus', but according to Donald Lopez it is much more likely that Maṇipadme is in fact a vocative, not a locative, addressing a bodhisattva called Maṇipadma, 'Jewel-Lotus'. The oṃ is straightforward as the sacred syllable prefixed to many mantras, and the hūṃ is an exclamation or interjection, the like of which are also frequently found in mantras" (Wikipedia.org).

The lotus flower is an important part of Buddhist symbolism. As a river flower, the lotus grows up out of the mud and the murky water towards the sky and glowing sun. This is like a mind that overcomes the "mud and murky water" of ignorance and misconception, and thereby reaches the infinite-clear sky of enlightenment. Once it overcomes the mud and murky water, it blossoms, and the jewel in the lotus is Bodhicitta (roughly translated as the attitude of compassion or altruism). Yabyum is the symbolic joining of wisdom and compassion, though as far as I know Avalokiteshvara isn't usually/ever the deity depicted as the deity representing compassion in yabyum imagery.

I feel like Kerouac would know this since he mentions elsewhere in the book that he ascribes to the Mahayana/Tibetan Buddhism tradition, and that Avalokiteshvara is his "favorite Buddhist saint" (12).

Works Cited:

The Dharma Bums

I've been heading down the rail trail to this old rusted out bridge over the Mascoma river. The river is especially high this time of year because of all the thawing snow, but there are still some rocks above the surface under there. I climb down, take a seat, and read the Dharma Bums.

The Dharma Bums

I've really been enjoying this book, which really reflects Kerouac's later (later than On the Road) appreciation for Buddhist philosophy and... bums. I think the idea of the 'dharma bum' is incredibly romantic and entirely too appealing to me. I have a rucksack too! Maybe it's time to bum around the country and take a bite out of life. I jest, of course... at least I have this wonderfully escapist literature, and I nice place to escape to and read it.

    In this last weeks reading I was especially intrigued by Norman Mailer's essay The White Negro. He gives us a unique and poetic description of what he considers the source of "the American existentialist - the hipster" (584): a psychopathic philosopher and a mystic, but most importantly a figure pushed to the fringes of society and rebellion. Mailer describes a sort-of cultural marriage between the white bohemian and the Negro, from which society has gained the better parts of the exchange. "The hipster has absorbed the existentialist synapses of the Negro, and for practical purposes could be considered a white Negro. To be an existentialist, one must be able to feel oneself - one must know one's desires, one's rages, one's anguish, one must be aware of the character of one's frustration and know what would satisfy it" (587). One of my favorite passages is his description of this cultural matrimony:
        The bohemian and the juvenile delinquent came face-to-face with the Negro, and the
        hipster was a fact in American life. If marijuana was the wedding ring, the child was the
        language of Hip for its argot gave expression to abstract states of feeling which all could
        share, at least all who were Hip. And in this wedding of the white and the black it was
        the Negro who brought the cultural dowry. (586)
    Mailer's philosophy seems to center around the idea that we, being aware of our own existence and the transient nature of life, should embrace an existential existence with our focus firmly rooted in the now - what he calls the "enormous present". A philosophy centered around the certainty of death - something heavy on the mind of a generation exposed to "the psychic havoc of the concentration camps and the atom bomb upon the unconscious mind" (583). People, especially the youth still trying to come to terms with life and his place in this "contradictory popular culture" (588), in the face of wholesale death must accept the possibility of sudden and meaningless obliteration. "A death that could not follow with dignity as a possible consequence to serious actions we had chosen, but rather a death by deus ex machina in a gas chamber or radioactive city" (583). Instead of letting courage fail us in the face of this frightening reality, Mailer claims
        The only life-giving answer is to accept the terms of death, to live with death as                
        immediate danger, to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on            
        that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self. [... ] To encourage the            
        psychopath in oneself, to explore the domain of experience where security is boredom            
        and therefore sickness, and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is            
        without past or future, [...] the life where a man must go until he is beat. (584)
To Mailer, this was the creed of the 'beat' generation. It was the inner understanding that beat them down and out to the fringes of a society hostile to the lifestyle such an understanding demanded. If we must accept the constant possibility of death then the only possible course is to embrace it, because otherwise we are left stagnant and afraid. The hipster is the American, the existentialist, who has realized this truth. "His inner experience of the possibilities within death is his logic. So, too, for the existentialist. And the psychopath. And the saint and the bullfighter and the lover. The common denominator for all of them is their burning consciousness of the present, exactly that incandescent consciousness which the possibilities within death has opened for them" (588).
    Most significant I think is the fact that this is no temporary phenomenon, but a change in the world, in the minds of humanity, because the infectious philosophy of the white Negro is founded on an "inner certainty that his rebellion is just, a radical vision of the universe which thus separates him from the general ignorance" (589). That sort of conviction, the heartfelt conviction of the rebel - religious conviction - cannot be easily dismissed.
    In this selection I also especially appreciated Mailer's description of Jazz as the music of orgasm. This reminded me of Neil's enthusiastic reaction to some of the musicians that is described in On the Road. He feels as though they have some grasp on "it", on the now, on the whole reality of their moment in existence. Mailer says of the Negro, "in his music he gave voice to the character and quality of his existence, to his rage and the infinite variations of joy, lust, languor, growl, cramp, pinch, scream and despair of his orgasm. For jazz is orgasm, it is the music of orgasm, good orgasm and bad, and so it spoke across a nation" (586). Orgasm is like the zenith of personal experience, a culminating moment of ecstasy that can only be expressed in the enormous present. Although the piece tended towards stereotype and sometimes seemed weakly argued, some of the passages from The White Negro are both poetic and ripe with some sort of undeniable truth about the consciousness of post-war America. All-in-all an excellent work that I genuinely enjoyed reading, and a revealing essay about the beat generation.

    I really enjoyed reading Robert Browning this week, especially Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister. Our introduction explains that Browning helped popularize the dramatic monologue and his style helped pave the road "of twentieth-century poetry" (1248). This particular clever soliloquy is about what one can assume is a cloister boy. This character is complaining about the Abbot of the Spanish cloister, Brother Lawrence, who he seems to hate with inordinate passion. The poem even opens, and closes, with that guttural "gr-r-r" - you can almost imagine the boy clenching his teeth and focusing his pinpoint hatred-eyes on the greedy impious abbot. He introduces him as "my heart's abhorrence" (1253) and continues the hateful sentiment throughout.
    One cannot be sure whether this is a youth's hatred of authority, a genuine grievance over a corrupt abbot, or some sort of slow-growing resentment that has sprung up over long hours trapped by this man's side, as Browning hints at beginning in the second stanza where the narrator talks about dining with Laurence, and his habits. The narrator goes so far as to wish Brother Laurence damnation - but the only mildly incriminating thing we hear about the good brother is that he takes the most food at dinner, one melon to him and one divided among "all of us" (1254) - who I assume means us cloister boys. This is where Browning is particularly clever. His use of an unreliable narrator lends depth to the poem, and since the poem works as a brief window into the narrator's mind, we only briefly observe this strangely impassioned hatred and get no real sense of the person from which this hatred has sprung. The tale does, however, hint at the character of Laurence who is seen living comfortably in a rather impious, indulgent way.
    Browning ends the poem, in the last three stanzas, by talking about heresy and damnation specifically relating to the "works of the flesh" as our note tells us. Whether the abbot is truly guilty of some damning indulgence or the poem is merely a testament to the spark of youthful resentment is a decision left to personal interpretation. The genius of the poem lies in the fact that it is a real snapshot of a life - a true soliloquy beginning in medias res that implies previous and continuing action. This sort of poetic narrative, dramatic monologue if you will, a piece of one man's story, was relatively unprecedented when Robert Browning started writing in this style.
    My Last Duchess is another example of this sort or work. In that poem, an old favorite of mine and also incredibly clever, Browning uses a narrator who is conversing about various works of art in his home and discusses a painting of his 'last duchess'. Through his description of her and the painting, we get a sense of significant previous action, as well as a sense of the narrator's character and that of the duchess as well. "'Twas not / Her husband's presence only, called that spot / Of joy into the Duchess' cheek" (1255). This, and many other lines said as if he could be talking about either the painting or the duchess, or the duchess through the painting. They tell a story without departing from another unreliable narrator as he describes a work of art. For these, and his other writings, Robert Browning is one of my favorite English poets.

Works Cited:

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, Volume 2: The Romantic Period through th

    I've enjoyed many of the women we've read in A Different Beat, but a couple of the writers we read for Monday I especially liked - Diane di Prima and Carol Bergé.  Bergé's style of poetry is especially appealing to me because of how she seems to write the way the mind thinks. The chaos of her words is in my mind just pre-formed speech, unorganized thought, the raw oft-unarticulated ideas. Prima on the other hand is a great narrative writer - great at conveying action and event. Bergé's writing has a more philosophical-introspective bent. My favorite of her poems, despite belonging to the other half, is Chant for Half the World. Some of the lines in this are just genius in their power.
        First girlchild becomes servile
        Second loses its birthright escutcheon
        Third girl has no face fourth is shadow
        first girlchild leads schools
        second becomes maker of delicate symbols
        third creates old specific buttons
        fourth is the voiceless farmer's wife (18)
I love this sequence because there is a sense of a woman's life, or at least how  Bergé views a womans life. The "voiceless" wife, a mere "shadow" - an image of the woman who fades into the background. Perhaps a telling testament to the women beat-generation writers who lived in the shadow of their male counterparts.
    Another passage I especially liked uses a lot of imagery and jumbled ideas that in my mind conveys negativity related to marriage and specifically birth/birthing. 
        The women breast to breast across empty
        across lava-strewn bitter plains
        facing lidless eyes of the majestic surgeons
        who demand they empty their wombs
        of the quintuplet dolls shaped like "husband" (18)
Her writing is very visceral, and really bites into my brain. It is as if Bergé finds the role of women as the mothers of the world to be closely related to their subservience.
    The poem as a whole says a lot about women, but more than anything I feel it paints a picture of strength through oppression. The poem ends with
        The rich women of animalskins
        waists slanted in memory of wellsprings
        stained with sun with come with breastmilk
        The women coppered and grafted into love [...]
        The women walking as memory of man (20)
This makes me imagine so-called "primitive" cultures with animal skin clothing and hard labor in the sun. I think perhaps Bergé considers the women of such cultures to have a special wealth ("rich women") beyond those of more "civilized" society by existing an integral part of the survival lifestyle. The last line of the poem seems rife with meaning that I just can't seem to extract. The words "walking as memory of man" could mean many different things, but it seems again to oppose the feminine mode of existence with the masculine. All in all I enjoyed her work thoroughly.

Works Cited:

A Different Beat: Writing by Women of the Beat Generation (High Risk Books)

Wordsworth's note on the poem reads that, "No poem of mine was composed under circumstances more pleasant for me to remember than this. I began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening, after a ramble of 4 or 5 days with my sister" (258).

Our note tells us that "Wordsworth had visited Tintern Abby [...] while on a solitary walking tour in August 1793, when he was twenty-three years old" (258).

The poem is a sort-of meditation on life, in which Wordsworth places his narrator at a moment in time and looks back to the past, and then ahead to the future through his sister. It begins with a reflection on the lovely pastoral setting, and the effects its memory has had upon Wordsworth throughout his life. He says:

These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration: - feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love (259).

The idea that nature can have a lasting and profound "influence on that best portion of a good man's life, his [...] acts of kindness and of love" is an excellent example of the ideas of English romanticism. Romanticism was "a reaction against the rationalization of nature [...] In art and literature it stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature" (Wikipedia).

When Wordsworth was a child he was given free-run of the countryside in the sparsely populated area near Esthwaite Lake, and here, according to our introduction, developed his love for the pastoral as well as for poetry. In the poem he reflects upon his passionate childhood communion with nature.

The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm (260).

By describing his youthful experience as "an appetite" Wordsworth sets up the contrast between his youth with a pure, unnamed appreciation of nature, and the mature, studied appreciation of adulthood.

I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue (260).

This "still, sad music of humanity", what you could almost call the equivalent of William Blake's concept of 'experience', subdues the wild fancies of youth and forces Wordsworth to view nature from a matured perspective. It is nature in the context of larger society and human concerns. 

The "sister" in the poem is Dorothy, who in 1795 settled with Will in Dorsetshire and became his, quote: "confidant, inspirer, and secretary". Within the context of the poem she inspires the narrator to reflect upon his youth.

Thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! (261)

Though time, age and experience have changed him, Wordsworth still remembers the "language of [his] former heart" - and sees in his sister's eyes the wild passion that has stayed with him and influenced him so greatly over the years. Through his sister he feels he can better appreciate and understand the inclinations of his youth by vicariously experiencing her "pure" communion with nature. He closes the poem saying,

After many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! (261-2).

Tintern Abbey was written in blank verse, in the form of a reflective monologue.

Works Cited:

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, Volume 2: The Romantic Period through th

Greenblatt, Stephen et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume Two, Eigth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.

Well, today at my 8am literature class I have to give a presentation on Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey. So far I have made several terrible mistakes as far as preparing for this speech go. First I procrastinated all day yesterday, except for re-reading the poem and doing some highlighting. Second, I let insomnia keep me up far too late. When I woke up at five this morning I was exhausted beyond usual, and couldn't (and still can't) concentrate. I hate giving presentations  because I get ridiculously nervous and tend to choke and stutter. This used to concern me, since my chosen career path involves regular speaking before a crowd, but last year when I got the opportunity to teach a few classes I realized that it's the evaluation thing that throes me off. When I'm not being evaluated (by a professor) I am great at running a class, and only slightly nervous. Usually before orals I take a few shots of whiskey, but there is no liquor for me today, so we shall see how I fare. Hopefully I'll at least have this thing organized before class, and my head a little less clouded. On that note I'm back to work. I just needed a moment to complain to my blog because preparing a presentation is almost more stressful than giving one. 

Justin Dewey

Professor John Larkin

English Literature: 18^th Century to Present

26 January 2006

Created to Fall: A Look at The Book of Thel

The poem “The Book of Thel” by William Blake begins with a description of Thel addressing the river of Adona, perhaps ever speaking to her reflection in the water – pondering aloud, and she is overheard by the Lilly. Thel is contemplating her mortality as she observes the transience of the world around her.

O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water,
Why fade these children of the spring, born but to smile & fall?
Ah! Thel is like a wat'ry bow, & like a parting cloud;
Like a reflection in a glass; like shadows in the water;
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face;
Like the dove's voice; like transient day; like music in the air. (98)

Thel is alike to Eve bereaved of Eden. She has lost her innocence and become a mortal - but not in the same way. Thel's fall is an awakening. She becomes aware of her mortality and it begins to weigh on her. “Thel is like” these things. Thel is part of this “transient” world. She will fade like the lotus, and her greatest fear is that she was “born but to smile & fall”. Thel is searching for meaning in her impermanent stay on the mortal coil, in the turn on the wheel, as all rational beings would upon realizing their fragile state.

The Lilly, who responds to this queery, would have Thel put her faith in God, who made all things with purpose, and put all things in their proper place – telling her story of “the gardener” who 'planted' the Lilly there and provided for it through its time. He tells the flower to “Rejoice” because it “shalt be enclosed in light, and fed with morning mana, / Till summer's heat melts [it] beside the fountains and the springs / To flourish in eternal vales” (98). In other words, the Lilly will be nourished with sunlight and dew in the morning, until it dies and becomes a Lilly in heaven. The Lilly doesn't have any proof that this is true – that it has its place in the world and a place in the afterlife, it only has the word of the Gardener and its innocent faith. The Lilly doesn't question, and so it cannot appreciate Thel's dilema. “Then why should Thel complain” (99) it asks, completely missing the point. Thel can appreciate the Lilly, but she cannot find meaning for herself. “Thel is like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun: / I vanish from my pearly throne, and who shall find my place?” (99)

Thel is not convinced, and so the Lilly directs her to the Cloud. Again Thel asks “Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away” (100). She wants to know what makes life worth living; what brings contentment with the bell tolling for thee? The Cloud replies with a similar sentiment to the Lilly, that it has no fear because when it passes away it will “to tenfold life, to love, to peace, and raptures holy” (100). The Cloud also speaks of his purpose, but gives no reasons for its confidence of place and continuence in the afterlife. It also maintains innocent faith, and also can't offer Thel any real help.

Dost thou, O little Cloud? I fear that I am not like thee,

For I walk thro' the vales of Har, & smell the sweetest flowers,

But I feed not the little flowers; I hear the warbling birds,

But I feed not the warbling birds; they fly & seek their food:

But Thel delights in these no more, because I fade away;

And all shall say, 'Without a use this shining woman liv'd,

Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms?' (100)

She can appreciate the Cloud as she could the Lilly, but she is not like them. She believes that, unlike the Cloud who provides for the flowers and birds, she is “without a use” except perhaps as the “food of worms”. Thel, again unconvinced, is sent by the cloud to the Worm which Thel professed to feed, and seek her answer. The Worm, interestingly, only weeps, and in Thel's eyes seems to represent helplessness and vulnerability. It is then the Clod of Clay comes in to nurture the Worm. It explains to Thel that “we live not for ourselves”. The Clod offers Thel more than any of the others could with this wisdom, the idea of altruism and virtuous life, but even if Thel sees purpose she cannot help but fall short of its perfection. Though the Clay speaks wisdom, it still belongs to the innocent world of the Lilly and Cloud. “How this is, sweet maid, I know not and I cannot know; / I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love” (101).

The Clog, of course, comes from the Earth, or as Blake calls it “the matron Clay”. Earth is a land of mortality, and inevitably where Thel must go. It is also the world of the fallen – and therefore stripped of the innocence that Thel has been rejecting in her world, her Eden. The matron Clay speaks to Thel: “Wilt thou, O Queen, enter my house? 'tis given thee to enter / And to return” (101). Thel enters, and gains the boon of experience. She is forever changed. “Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown. / She saw the couches of the dead, and where the fibrous roots / Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists: / A land of sorrows and of tears where never smile was seen” (101). To Blake the Earth is the land of the dead – a brief pause before eternal death. It is also a world of suffering. Thel is immersed in this “land of sorrows” and finally comes face to face with her own death, and must face her greatest fear. She sits beside her own open grave and from the “hollow pit” a “voice of sorrow” breathes the great question of the poem, the most important question. It is the question Blake feels man must ask, who is made different than the rest of creation: why are we created with the terrible burdens of reason and intelligence?

Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?

Or the glist'ning Eye to the poison of a smile?

Why are Eyelids stor'd with arrows ready drawn,

Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?

Or an Eye of gifts and graces show'ring fruits and coined gold?

Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?

Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?

Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror, trembling, and affright?

Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy?

Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire? (101-2)

Thel's lot, like that of humanity, is to comprehend her mortality and be unsatisfied. Because she is uncontent, she is doomed to sin. Sin is a product of her creation. The senses of the body, which Blake uses in several of his poems to represent the sensory world, conjure desire, greed, gluttony, envy, fear, and more sufferings. Thel discovers to her horror that because of how man is designed, he cannot help but fall into sin. Her reaction is clear – “The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek / Fled back unhindered” (102) – she chooses innocence over humanity and experience, but because of her nature she will always fall.

Works Cited:

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Eighth Edition, Volume 2: The Romantic Period through th

Greenblatt, Stephen et al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume Two, Eigth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.

(this essay may not be used or reproduced without the expressed consent of the author)