The Power of Allusion

"Eliot's allusions work when we know them - and to a great extent even when we do not know them, through their suggestive power."
~Wimsatt and Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy"

I remember AP English with Mrs. Jacomme. You were crazy if you took the class, and even crazier if you didn't. I remember reading James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" three times to finally figure out what was going on. We read poetry, such as Coolridge's "Kubla Khan" and Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." And I loved reading all of it. I loved the music of the lines and how the words ran out of my mouth, over my lips, ringing into the silent air. But I didn't understand them. Charlie, the obvious genius of the class, knew every allusion, and voiced each one, making Mrs. Jacomme quite proud, and people like me - who didn't even realize there were allusions at all - feel quite stupid.

Now a senior in college, I have begun to internalize the obvious allusions found in poetry and prose alike. And I thought that you really had to know what all the allusions meant. It adds layers to the poetry and prose that would not be there if we did not pick up on the author's allusions. But, Wimsatt and Beardsley say they can work just on their suggestive power alone. How can this be? Does that mean I can forget all the allusions I have labored to "remember" and just let the poem speak to me on its suggestive power alone? I wonder...

I want to connect this to Eliot's "The Waste Land." First off, I again loved reading the poem, even though upon first reading, I had no idea what was going on. But as I started to study it and to look up commentaries on the poem, I realized that it was rich in all the allusions you could possibly dream of, allusions from Dante, Homer, Milton, Shakespeare. The list goes on. But I would not know half of these if I didn't have the commentaries. But were they still suggestive to me, as Wimsatt and Beardsley say? I think I was perceptive enough to realize that the ideas were rich in meaning, but there was nothing deeper than that. I only picked up on the allusions I knew previously, but it took me going to outside sources to figure out about 90% of the other allusions. And this means I'm going outside the poem. Which means the poem, at least for me, is not "speaking for itself" as the Formalists wanted. But is that my fault, or theirs?

The Formalists (and Eliot) believed that the poet was first a reader and then a poet. So, if you were truly "educated," you would most likely understand each and every allusion in "The Waste Land," because you would have read everything that he alludes to. You have internalized every piece of literature, every subtlety and nuance of the classic writers. The poem speaks for itself only because you have been a reader, not because you can understand the poem on your first try, with absolutely no knowledge of anything but the lines in front of you. So I think suggestive power is out of the question. How can allusions have suggestive power, unless we make up our own meanings for the allusions? And how could one possible find all of Eliot's allusions unless they spend countless hours reading his work and then reading anything that would possibly hint at the allusions Eliot wanted? We have all these commentaries and notes because people did just that... searched for Eliot's meanings though his allusions. And we, the students, could not survive without them. But again, that means we have to go outside the poem, and the allusions are not speaking for themselves. And doesn't this go against the whole of Formalist philosophy in the first place?

I will agree that allusions obviously add tremendous depth to a piece of literature. Without them, we wouldn't be able to even attempt understanding of the poem. And in some cases, the allusions (because they are so well known), speak for themselves. But in other cases, the obscure allusions cause us to miss the meaning and therefore go outside the poem. And Wimsatt and Beardsley acknowledge this, admitting that "it may be questioned whether the notes [or commentaries, etc.] and the need for them are not equally muffling." For again, that means that the poem cannot truly stand on its own.

Did I like reading Eliot? Yes, I loved it. Did I understand it? On the most obvious level, yes. Did I truly understand it all, as the poem stood on its own? Most decidedly, no. But then again, does that mean I just have to read more??

The Waste Land

War-torn Europe. The lack of community. Lackluster human relationships. And the difference between the historical sense and literary history. I didn't know so much could be packed into one poem. But Eliot did it in "The Waste Land." There is no possible way I could talk about the entire poem in one entry here, so I will focus on just the first part, "The Burial of the Dead."

I wish I could figure out how to get the YouTube version of this, but for all you auditory people out there, I'll just put the link in here. This is Eliot reading "The Burial of the Dead."

And now, let me attempt this... and really, I'm attempting in all senses of the word. I have no idea what I'm going to come up with, and really, I'm at a loss for where to begin. So, I guess I will just start right at the beginning:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain
Winter kept us warm....

Right now, let's just start with poetic "worth." Or rather, what Eliot is doing in this poem. April, in my mind, is never the cruelest month, and winter never really keeps you warm. The striking connections he makes right from the beginning draws the reader in. But just these five lines hold so many allusions... really, it's crazy (yes, I know that's not a very critical statement, but I just had to say it). First off, on the basest level, it is talking of a cycle of death and rebirth, albeit an "overturned" one. And this reminded me of Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent, " and Eliot's take on tradition: "What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career." According to Eliot, the past is not gone, but is part of the present, and the author must mix the two to make something completely new, but also something that seeps with the aura of tradition. In his essay, he uses the analogy of platinum introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide. When the two gases are mixed, they form sulphurous acid: "This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged." Tradition is the basis of the poem, but the poem has transformed that tradition into something else. When reading these five lines of "The Waste Land," this was so heavily apparent in the mixture of memory (tradition) and desire (the individual's talents and personal work that inevitably relies on said tradition). And hasn't tradition (or winter / the past) "kept us warm" for all these years? That is what we have relied upon. The texts we have studied are all in the past, and we look to those (from our memory) and understand the present body of literature in regards to the past, whether we think we are doing that or not. But much of our lives are based in memory, so it follows that, whether consciously or subconsciously, we always have the past as a background for what we are reading / writing / hearing in the present and envisioning for the future.

I have also been trying to figure out the difference here between historical sense and literary history. But in light of what I just discovered, I may not be that far away... a literary historian studies the past, knowing that it is gone. So, their winters are kept warm, but their dull roots (for the past can become dull if not enlivened by the present) are not watered by spring rains. An historical sense, on the other hand, is kept warm by a knowledge of their winters, but in their awareness of the past in their present writings, spring rains have enlivened their dull roots, and they mix their memory with desire... creating something new, yet something quite old, too.

And I have no idea if any of that made any sense. I really am just groping around in the dark on this one... but I would encourage you to read the poem... complicated and difficult as it is, maybe you can see a lot more than I ever could have touched on in this post...

The Escape

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

~T.S. Eliot, " Tradition and the Individual Talent"

Let me start with something silly: I loved reading T.S. Eliot. His fluid prose and unapologetic ideals appealed to my brain at 3 am the other morning. And yet, as much as I enjoyed him then (and I still do, don't worry), I found myself questioning some of his statements... or at least I was questioning in order to figure out exactly what he meant (and isn't that what criticism is supposed to be?).

Specifically, I'd like to talk a little about the above statement. During high school, I remember teachers and classmates alike telling me that poetry was an outpouring of emotion onto the page. But an escape from emotion? The idea is completely foreign to me. When I write, I usually do so to pour out my emotions, but again, I never thought of escaping from them. And perhaps it is because I am a (very) novice writer, I feel like my writing is so much of me, of my personality, that I have no idea how I can ever escape from that. Or if I would want to. Much of the writing I want to do someday (and have begun already) is literary nonfiction (sorry about that for all who do not believe there is such a thing...).

And yet, part of me takes offense to the latter part of Eliot's statement: "But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." If I do not "escape" from them (what in the world does this actually mean?), then do I not have personality and emotions? Am I forever to remain a novice at the craft because I do not wish to escape from me?

First, let me discuss escape. The American Heritage Dictionary Online says "escape" can mean the following things:

1. To succeed in avoiding
2. To break loose from; get free of
3. To elude the memory or comprehension of

But besides this, under synonyms for the word, American Heritage first starts by saying that "escape can mean to get free or to remain untouched or unaffected by something unwanted." I can understand writing to break loose from emotions or to write to be freed from societal confines (I'm thinking of those such as the Brontë sisters right now). But to elude the memory of? Writing in and of itself preserves something for all time, so elusion is not necessarily possible. Freeing, perhaps, but not completely erasing. And, lastly, if we escape from emotions, we are "avoiding" them (is this something we really should be doing? Don't emotions put something into a poem or piece of art that couldn't be there if emotions were also not there?). But really, Eliot was convinced that "the emotion of art is impersonal." But is it really?

When searching the internet for T.S. Eliot "stuff," I came across something I would like to share.
This piece of artwork, done by Nada Sehnaoui, is one of a few pieces titled "When Reading T.S. Eliot." I know it doesn't look like too much, but the descriptions of the pieces are fascinating. In particular, one description states that, "Similar to Eliot, the artist gets rid of personal elaboration and creates work that is based on the most important elemental aspects of the human condition—the spirit. Eliot believed that the artist must be impersonal in the creative exercise of the craft." In the area of art, Senhaoui definitely escaped "conventions." But did she end up escaping her emotions? Does any artist truly write / compose / etc. for the sake of escaping? Perhaps they do... perhaps the Brontë sisters were writing to escape the confines of their patriarchal society. Yes, they were. But weren't their emotions also present there? Can't you have an outpouring of emotion while also attempting to escape them? Does it have to be one or the other? I shared this artwork because I thought it was interesting that someone was inspired by T.S. Eliot to make art. But I also wonder how you can truly extract one from the other... one of the artist's descriptions said that she has responded creatively to her environment, and all of her work "conveys something even more whole… meaning and emotion." So, was she trying to escape from the emotional turmoil of her war-torn homeland of Lebanon, or was she turning loose the emotions that were inside of her, that were a part of her, and she wouldn't want to escape from them if she could, since they make her, her? I have no idea, but I really wonder if you can separate the two. Can't we write to clarify, expose, portray our emotions, even in an attempt to escape them?

Through the Creative Eye

"One must be an inventor to read well. ...There is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar"

The American Heritage Dictionary Online gives the following definition for inventor:

1. To produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination.

2. To make up; fabricate

Traditionally, the writers are the inventors... the authors fabricate the stories from unknown times, the authors pen the profound ideas that the "common man" only glimpses from time to time. The author is the creative one.

Emerson, in his commentary on reading in "The American Scholar," often seems quite suspect of reading. Even though he says it is necessary, he also says that it can become a problem when the reader begins to imitate others. Similarly, when you read, someone else's imagination is in control of your own... Emerson therefore struggles to find a good place for reading. And yet in this passage, Emerson again brings up the subject, putting a positive spin on the act so that the reader is using his or her imagination and not allowing another's thoughts to overtake his or her own.

I would like to take a few minutes to explore this "phenomenon," if you will allow me to call it that. We've heard of creative writing, creative thinking... but creative reading? I think we all have done this in some way, whether we knew we were doing it or not. If we follow Emerson's logic of thinking, it means that while reading, we are not taking everything we read at face value, but instead also analyzing, synthesizing, piecing together, questioning. For instance, when I read "The American Scholar," I read it critically, not wanting to agree with him just because he is the famed Ralph Waldo Emerson. I wanted to take what he said and mull over it in my mind, weigh what he said and take what I felt was truth from it (which could lead to questions over the truth of literature: can literature be only part truth? any truth at all? only truth?). And I think as readers, and especially English majors, we are trained to read this way.

But being an inventor when we read? That I am not so sure of. How can we invent... the author has already "invented" his words and ideas, so how can we further invent upon them? We can read and weigh them, see if we agree or disagree. We can even read between the lines (is this inventing, or just getting at hidden meanings that the author purposely put there through his word choices??). But to invent, to "produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination," or to "fabricate"... can that actually be done through reading? How can we contrive something previously unknown? Again, I don't really know the answer to this, but I would appreciate any thoughts you have on the matter.

And I want to bring up one more thing... the Bible. Revelation 22:18-19 says, "I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book." Now, if Emerson calls us to be inventors, how do we reconcile that with this verse? We are not called to invent God's word. I do believe we are meant to read between the lines, but is that in any way "inventing" meaning? Yes, we can creatively read, as each time we pick up the Bible, new meanings can come to us and meet us where we are. But where do we draw the line? When does inventing become desecrating the Word of God with our fallible humanity?

Just some thoughts to ponder for the evening...

Shelley and Godspell

Perhaps this will be somewhat of a stretch, but I just saw Messiah's production of "Godspell" last night, and since I am still wrapped up in the production, I thought I'd share some thoughts that actually may have something to do with literary criticism. One of the big questions we've asked is "what is literature," and obviously, in its written form, a play is literature. But, once it hits the stage, does it cease being literature and become something else? Does the word not only become an action, but also cease from being a word? Obviously, at the basest level, the word does become an action, for it comes to life. And they still speak (or, in much of last night's production, sing) the words. Is that therefore still literature, or do we classify that only as "theatre" or "music"?

I knew the premise of "Godspell" before I went to see it, but knew nothing else of what I was going to see. I was told that Messiah's theatre department changed and updated many aspects of the musical (can you do such a thing with literature?). But, the synopsis of the production on the inside of the program actually pointed to some type of "theatrical criticism", if you will (I am sure there is such a thing, but is that the same type of criticism we do for literature? And if a play is literature, what would be the differences in criticism?)...

Dr. Ed Cohn's synopsis said (perhaps in a postmodernist way?):

"If this play had not been created until 2008, what would it be? The theatricality would most likely reflect a post-"Rent", post-"Tommy", post-modern approach, breaking the rules of the world of the drama with media and images. But more than that, a post-modern approach would focus more on the impact of the story on the characters who hear it than the story itself. "

The part that stuck out to me most in regards to literary criticism can be seen in this picture.



On the far left, there is a verse from the Bible. Written words were transported into the spoken and sung aspects of the play, making for a multi-media presentation. Now, if we did not feel that the musical itself was literature, should we also say that the use of the written word (in this case, the Bible) is not literature either, since it is presented in this format? For the Bible is written word, whether or not it has any other other meaning for someone. It is literature, and that literature was brought into this play.

I want to tie into Shelley's "Defense of Poetry" for a moment. Shelley's big question in his Defense asked, "Does poetry improve society?" From class, we established a "yes" to that question, saying that poetry (literature) enlarges the mind, or in Shelley's words, "lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world... [and] enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight." This happens because (1) imagination is the foundation of ethics; (2) reading poetry (is seeing a production such as "Godspell" the act of reading??) develops imagination, and (3) therefore, imagination is the basis of good relations among humans. From seeing the play last night, it made me think of all of this, especially when I saw the multi-media approach that they used.

I do not know the answers to my questions. But really, is watching a play a form of "reading" (and if it is, how does that change our definition of reading in this multi-media age of ours?)? And does watching something that is literature (or reading literature on a screen during such a presentation of a play, musical, concert, etc.) improve society? Shelley spoke much of drama in his "Defense"... "Godspell," being a play, may be classified broadly under the term of "drama." Because of the nature of the message last night in the play - that of a Christian message - I thought a lot about my own life and actions and decisions. That play did have an impact on me, far beyond the laughs and the great music. Can I call that literature, or reading? Would Shelley have anything to say against this? Does watching a play fall in a different category for Shelley in regards to the impact literature has on society? After all, a play or a musical really is just words acted out in present time........

Some Poetic Ramblings

I. Corruption vs. Excellence

"The highest perfection of human society has ever corresponded with the highest dramatic excellence; and the corruption or the extinction of the drama in a nation where it has once flourished, is a mark of a corruption of manners, and an extinction of the energies which sustain the soul of social life."
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defense of Poetry"

Wow... that's just a lot to swallow.

In his Defense of Poetry, Shelley claims that poetry flourishes according to the rise and fall of societies; therefore, if a society is corrupt, its art will either be corrupt or wholly extinct, and conversely, if a society is rich in perfection (what is perfection, though?), its art is of the highest caliber.

Right now, my mind is a jumble of questions on this one. As a Christian listening to "the signs of the times," a lot of our society has fallen into corruption. Does that mean our art, our poetry, all our aesthetics are corrupt? Are they being extinct? Is the beautiful being replaced by the vulgar? In an age of such knowledge, are we truly losing the ability to make great art? Sometimes, I do wonder. Obscenities, sexual exploits, and all the vulgarities known to man are infiltrated onto TV and movie screens, into the pages of books, onto the vast world of the internet (all modern-day forms of "drama" and "art"). Shelley himself comments that "obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster from which the corruption of society for ever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret." Yes, obscenity in art destroys the beauty that it was mean to be. And there are times that I turn on the "art" that is TV, listen to the melodies of a new pop song (or even watch "American Idol"), read a contemporary novel... the list can go on forever... and I am disgusted by some of the things I am reading/seeing. In one of my classes here, we were asked to choose a book from a list to read for a book club. I read a synopsis of one of the books and was incredulous to see that the entire book was about one woman's sexual relationships. The "expletive-strewn narrative" was sure to please its audience "with this fantasy of sexual fulfillment." Is this art? Is this literature? Yes, it may have an underlying message, and it may be an incredible story of self-discovery. But it is mixed with the most vulgar. Is this what Shelley meant? If we look at the degradation of our modern-day society, and then look at the art we are producing... it looks like he was right. Many secular artists (I am using this as an all-inclusive term) are not producing the "beautiful."

But then I am lead to ponder what the "beautiful" and the "perfect" truly are. For me, and I think perhaps for Shelley, obscenity does not fall under this category. But then, is beauty subjective? At the end of his Defense, Shelley says that "poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed." So, perhaps the obscenities are beautified by the art form; the art takes and molds that which is most abominable and turns it into the highest form of perfection. And then, I again wonder how subjective art/literature (again, I am using "art" as an all-inclusive term) is... just because I do not find a "fantasy of sexual fulfillment" a thing of beauty, does that mean it is not art, not a think of loveliness? And, going back to the quote I started out with at the beginning of this post, how exactly do we know when a society is falling into corruption, so that we can stop this cycle and continue to produce art of a perfect society.

Ahhh my mind is spinning with even more questions... questions that I cannot even fathom an answer to at this present time. So I will turn my attention to another ramble...

II. Where Would We Be?

"But it exceeds all imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condition of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton, had ever existed; if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if the Hebrew poetry had never been translated; if a revival of the study of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments of ancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if the poetry of the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished together with its belief."

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Defense of Poetry"

I have often thought about the journey I have trod to get me to this very day. I have watched how events in my life have unfolded, how the most painful periods in my life have been the things that have saved me. And yes, I have read books that have changed my life. Read things that made me who I am today.

But I never thought about the whole of humanity, and how different our lives would be if we did not have the great arts preserved for us today.

Let me attempt to flesh this out for a little. As I was reading Shelley, I was realizing how much of our lives depend on those artists and writers who came before us, whether we know it or not. Our lives were shaped by the writings of Plato, Homer, Emerson, the Biblical writers... the list continues on. I realized the other day that I have many Transcendentalist tendencies, and even though I had read Emerson before, I didn't realize how closely my thoughts on life mirror many of his thoughts... so subconscious was this internalization of these ideals that I was not even aware of it... which got me thinking on what other writings my life ideals are based on. Obviously, the Bible has a lot to do with it... but let's think on a grander scale. The whole of America rests on the writings of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. Even if someone has never read the words of Thomas Jefferson, they are living out something from his ideals every day (yes, I know this may be a gross exaggeration, but please bear with me). And what did Jefferson build upon? Who did he learn from? The list continues back. And we here in 2008 have centuries of writers and artists who have shaped our conceptions of the world...

I want to come back to this, but sleep is calling me...

Ah, the curse of thinking the most "profound" thoughts at 1:15 in the morning...

A Piece of Glass

Hello, world! I'm guessing that is how you start such things in the blog world, in the internet world, or maybe in the entire world for that matter. Say hello to everyone you meet, or don't meet, and hope they tune in to your wordy banterings on who knows what the subject of the day turns out to be.

But now that we have our hellos out of the way, I do hope you'll tune in for a little, and after you tune in, I hope you stay around for a little longer than that. And please, please feel free to comment on anything you see...

And now let's get down to it: Emerson. Yes, the guy from a long time ago who wrote a whole bunch of words down and made it sound all poetic and now it's put into humongous anthologies that cost the college student priceless dollars, just so they can read about what he thought about everything. Ok, maybe I paint a skewed picture. Really, I like Emerson a lot. As I was reading "The Poet," I underlined, starred, and "yes-ed!" various aspects of every single page. His prose is like poetry, and how fitting, then, for him to be talking about the poet.

And just so you, the world, knows, I was having a little bit of trouble sifting through this dense body of sonorous language to get at the deeper question: what is an author? Emerson had definitive views, mostly that the poet is the quasi-divine seer. And once sentence there opened my eyes: he says, "the poet turns the world to glass." Ah, that was beautiful. And what is an author anyway? Emerson, as with many others of the Transcendentalist Movement, believed that the poet intuitively found meaning in all things, and then articulated that to the rest of the world who could not see with their eyes.

But please, let me go back to the poet turning the world to glass. Glass... I just used the amazing Google Image Finder to locate pictures of glass. And I forgot all that word encompasses. Clear glass, smoked glass, opaque glass, colored glass. There are the stained glass windows of the orthodox churches, or the precious Opaline glass of the 1800s in France. Glass used for windows and doors, glass used for laboratorial purposes, glass used all the time, everywhere. Glass is there, right around each of us. And yet, the poet, with his words, turns the rest of the world to glass. But as you can see from the numerous types of glass (and I have only listed a few), this can also mean many different things. I think Emerson was saying that the poet turns the world into a clear looking-glass, stripping away any film from the glass, wiping off the smudges and the smears and the fog. He lets us see through, see what we have never seen before. He brings to light the beauty of the world. And lets think about it... or rather, let's look at it. Here are two different pictures, the first artistic glass, and the second is red liquid glass.

Isn't that gorgeous? You see, glass can be seen through. It can be clear. But it can also be breathtakingly beautiful. So a poet does not just make something clear, but he brings to light a thing's beauty. He weaves, fashions, blows (if you will allow me some "glass" talk) the words into form, creating a thing never seen or heard or thought of before. He (or she... please forgive my non-inclusiveness. I just read Emerson and have taken on a few of his writing intricacies... albiet "he" always refers to both sexes) forms it into something the rest of the world does not know. He paints the world in colors, beautifully, artfully. And "the melodies of the poet ascend and leap and pierce into the deeps of infinite time"(Emerson, "The Poet").

Yes, the poet turns the world to glass, a beautiful, intricate, colorful world of glass. A timeless world of glass. Like sea glass, on the waves of the ocean. Ah, but that is an entirely different train of thought...