For Easter

"The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood-
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good."

East Coker Section IV (30)

The Children of Eliot’s Quartets

In an earlier blog on Eliot’s Four Quartets I wrote of the three separate times that Eliot brings up “the children in the leaves.” I wanted to look into these passages farther, but since I have no internet at home I thought I would take a stab at it myself before plunging into the world of Google.

I reread the Four Quartets this past weekend, and each time is a richer experience. I understand something more fully, I see an allusion I missed before or even find connections between other literature from class and the themes we have been discussing. But there is one true constant each time I read it, and that is that I love it completely. In particular, I love the image of the children in the leaves.

When I first read the Four Quartets I thought what a wonderful image. Hidden children and the only sound is of their laughter, as if the lines were images and thoughts of the seeker in a game of hide and seek. Eliot mentions them explicitly three times and the lines are as follows:

“Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.” (14)

“Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage” (20)

“The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.” (59)

Eliot writes of them only three times, twice in Burnt Norton, at the beginning and the end, and once in Little Gidding at the very end. When reading these lines for the second time I began to think of the role children play in general, in both their own lives and others around them.

Right at the beginning of Burnt Norton Eliot writes, “Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future” (13). When I thought about this idea more I thought “isn’t that just what children are?” If one of the major themes of this work is the 20 minute lifetime, or a lifetime burning in every moment, is not that how children live? They are the three tenses embodied within one begin. As adults we often lose the ability to live life that way, but children hold on to that enthusiasm for life. This is seen in Eliot’s lines that they are heard but only half-heard. It is our other “lives” and another time calling to us from the "trees."

This is what children are to me at least. They are past, present, and future. They have their own past, especially if we believe in eternal recurrence, and they have already been here before. And they embody the past of their parents, a past love and union that lead to their ultimate creation. They are the present, in that they live wholly in it and think of little else but the reality around them. And they to are the future in that each child has the capacity to do and be so much.

Perhaps this is not what Eliot imagined, that the combining of all tenses is found within children. But it is their ability to live within the moment, and yet hold so much for the future that makes them immune to the mundane world that so many fall into as they get older. Eliot seems to be writing of a way of living that we lose if we don’t remember the child within and that "Time past and time future/What might have been and what has been/Point to one end, which is always present" (14).

Themes and Paper Topics

As I finished The Following Story for the second time, I remembered that Dr. Sexson wanted us to start considering our paper topic. And since I love The Following Story and must agree with Doug and Dr. Sexson that it is, for me at least, the best thing we have read this semester in class, I will focus my paper around this work.

I was thinking about taking several of the themes that emerge in The Following Story, that I would most like to write about, and talk about them in the work and relate them to how we have come to understand the themes from class.

The themes that interest me most in The Following Story are the 20 minute lifetime, world as myth and dream, dolce domum and eternal recurrence. I hope to focus on these topics and tie into them the perceptions of time and the power of memory/déjà vu, since obviously this is an obsessive topic for me this year!

I am intrigued by Nooteboom and want to read more of his work in the future. I appreciate his interest in and rather obvious connection to Nabokov’s Transparent Things. This is just a rough rant for what I want to focus on in my paper, and a jumping off point for beginning to write soon I hope.

Just Because I Must

So this has no real use except for amusement. I love The Vicar of Dibley, most likely the best Britcom ever created. They swear all the time, are really randy and they make fun of Noel Edmonds all the time! I also appreciate that while they are probably considered low brow they also make jabs at other low brow material.

The clip below actually has them taking a jab at The Da Vinci Code and those that believed it was real and had true connections to the Bible. I apologize that I could not find just that clip, but I am not very technologically savvy and therefore the clip is not really until about 5 minutes in! Sorry about that but perhaps you can find a way to fast forward.

One of Many From The Following Story

Crito Closing the Eyes of the Dead Socrates by Antonio Canova
1787-92


"It was not my soul that would set out on a journey, as the real Socrates had imagined; it was my body that would embark on endless wanderings, never to be ousted from the universe, and so it would take part in the most fantastic metamorphoses, about which it would tell me nothing because it would long since have forgotten all about me. At one time the matter it had consisted of had housed a soul that resembled me, but now my matter would have other duties. And I? I had to turn around, I had to let go of the ship's rail, to let go of everything, to look at you. You beckoned; it was not difficult to follow. You had taught me something about infinity, about how an immeasurable space of memories can be stored in the minute time span, and while I was permitted to remain as small and coincidental as I was, you had shown me my true stature. You needn't beckon me any longer, I'm coming. None of the others will hear my story, none of them will see that the woman sitting there waiting for me has the features of my dearest Crito, the girl who was my pupil, so young that one could speak about immortality with her. And then I told her, then I told you

the following story"

The Alchemy of Coelho (Perceptions of High and Low Brow)

I had read The Alchemist once before in high school and I must admit that I did not much enjoy it then. I recognized the idea that Coelho is trying to share with the world that the treasures we seek are really just right outside our door and within the familiarity of our home. I guess I never found the idea very profound and have not read it since then. Since taking this class though I feel a new appreciation for the book. Not because it is so profound, because I still don’t really think it is, but because of Coelho’s use of the theme dolce domum.

Since reading The Alchemist for the second time now and understanding its connection to the themes in this class I have a better appreciation of the work. Dr. Sexson mentioned in class that it was the low brow version of dolce domum, while the high brow is the Four Quartets. Then again I feel anything that encompasses the theme of dolce domum is low brow compared to the Four Quartets! In turn I would have to say though that for me perhaps The Alchemist is somewhere in between, more of a middle brow then just one or the other in relation to understanding the theme. Yes it is massively popular and widely translated and circulated across the globe, but then again it has profound themes, that as Sam writes in her blog have the power to change lives. It is basic and yet profound enough to be appreciated by almost all high and low brow people.

While on the topic of high and low brow I have one small rant. To me perceptions of high and low brow seem to shift depending on the person. I am sure that there are even those that would consider the Four Quartets to be at least middle brow. So what is really high or low brow? Are we told what is high or low brow by those around us that we consider “elitist”? Even though we all attempted to answer this question at the beginning of the semester I don’t believe we can. What we or anyone perceives as high, low or even middle brow depends on the person. Yes there will be those books that many feel are high brow, also know as Finnegans Wake, but for the most part we ourselves establish what we feel is high or low brow based on our intellectual capabilities.

I even feel every time I take one of Dr. Sexson’s classes that I am expanding my boundaries on what is classified as high and low brow. Each semester I seem to leave class with a list of books to read and have yet to make my way through all of them, and usually I end up having to purchase another copy due to the fact that my mother reads them and I never see them again. This most recently occurred with The Slave, The Four Quartets, Beckett and The Following Story. I must remember never to “loan” my books to my mother. It’s much to dangerous when we have similar tastes!

High and low brow seem to be terms that fluctuate with society and even our own personal ideas of what those terms mean. After being almost half way through class I feel as if we cannot truly define these terms for all, but only define them for ourselves and our tastes. Perhaps we can be influenced by others but mostly it relies on us to decide.

A Visitation to The Following Story

So I still love The Following Story, and the goal is to finish it for the coming week today. While I was catching up on the life as fiction/déjà vu blog I kept returning to this work and the focus that Nooteboom seems to have on the power of memory and dreams. His work also seems to encompass many of the themes we are discussing in class, but I won’t get into that until I finish it for the second time.

The reoccurrence of memory and dreams I noticed I marked quite a bit while reading it the first time and I am struck by it again as I continue to read on. Some of my favorite quotes that address memory and dreams are as follows:

“There’s nothing better than a full-blown déjà vu…”

“…I must settle down to the business of memory…”

“Dreams are closed systems, in which everything fits to perfection.”

“I had a thousand lives and I took only one…”

“To a large extent, you already existed before you had anything to do with it at all.”

“The world is a never-ending cross-reference.”

“Some people are fated to have been everywhere before.”

Nooteboom recognizes, as did Nabokov whom he seems to be a fan of, that memories and dreams have the power to change the world we encounter and how we view it. He frequently writes about eternal recurrence and being where we have been before. As he writes “the world is a never-ending cross-reference” for something we have experienced before. And it is not just some people that are “fated to have been everywhere before,” but all of us are experiencing déjà vu whether we realize it or not.

Nooteboom’s work combines all three tenses into the tale of one man and his remembrance of things past and his own realization of his future. Musserr through his journey is living through the past, present and future, and we as readers experience it as well. We all are within all tenses when we experience déjà vu. A realization/remembrance of something within one moment about our past and in turn our future as well, because we will return to that moment time and time again whether we realize it or not.

We have been everywhere before and our whole life is an act of remembering everything we have forgotten. These memories often return as dreams and then are realized in a more jumbled form in our waking reality. As Nooteboom writes, ““Dreams are closed systems, in which everything fits to perfection,” and it seems that only when we wake to they become misunderstood.

P.S. Nooteboom also mentions Mnemosyne on page 64. Speak, Mnemosyne for all you Nabokovians.

What is the Matrix?

I must agree with Alicia and be quite literal in that the Matrix to me is a movie or a mathematical method to solve multiplication. When we discussed it and blogs in class though I was intrigued by the definition we found regarding word origin and the connection to womb, woman and mother (matriarchal).

After thinking about this idea for sometime it actually began to tie into the movie more and more for me, or at least what I could remember of the movie. If the connection to the womb applied to the matrix it would then be as if those involved are within the “womb” of this alternate reality, suspended in another world different from the outside world.

The idea of the womb also could relate to the idea of the an all encompassing being or place, a mother creator/earth in a sense. A tie back once again with old and indigenous views of the earth and its creation. The idea of a matriarchal basis for life.

Mother as creator and the “womb” of all creation. In the matrix all are within this other reality and connected through the suspension of life and belief in the alternate reality.

Miranda and Prospero (Age vs. Youth)

Dr. Sexson mentioned on Friday in class that to Miranda everything is new and Prospero has "been there, and done that." When he mentioned this I immediately thought of age and youth. If you took Dr. Sexson's Classical literature class you would know that this is one of the major conflicts throughout literature and history. Miranda and Prospero also happen to fall under the classification of man versus woman as well. There are several other conflicts but I can only remember about four, and out of the ones I remember only these two seem to fit these characters.

But isn't this the main conflict of all of history? The young trying to see the world through their eyes and the old telling them, "yep, we already did that." Miranda and Prospero are in direct opposition to each other throughout the work. Each new generation tries to assert itself and create and see something new in the world around them, but the old are telling them no we already did that and things are the way they should be and how they always have been.

Prospero is the obstacle between boy and girl, he is in a way Miranda's memory and he tells her about her past that he shares with her. In a way her not remember everything completely is a view of the future while he is the past, the moment and the memory, the young and old.

Miranda sees nothing behind her and only what lies ahead, all that is new and exciting for her, all that the world holds. Prospero sees all that the world is since the beginning of time and has done it all, there is nothing new and exciting to him. This opposition between father and daughter is the ever present conflict between young and old, and when father comes between daughter and love then the conflict emerges into woman and man.

I shouldn't be surprised that Shakespeare used these conflicts in his works since they seem to appear time and time again, but he does use the two most prolific of the five(?), that of man versus woman (or even father versus daughter) and youth versus age. The two conflicts that have plagued us all since the beginning of time, and of course Prospero would know!

The Tempest in New York

The link below is to the theater review article from The New York for March 8th. I picked my copy up from the mailbox on Friday and I always read the theater and arts reviews first. This is just so I can moan about all I am missing in New York, pathetic I know. But once again another coincidence, or just a one in three chance, the Tempest is being performed in Brooklyn.

I enjoyed reading this review in the fact that Lahr seems to have read the work before, or at least understands the idea of illusion and magic in life that runs throughout the work. I also was pleased to see that he recognizes that Shakespeare talks directly to the audience through Prospero, that there are many realities on the "island," the island is both inside and outside Prospero and the drama is within the mind, also how the set is put together intrigues me and is an insight as to how Mendes sees the work.

Lahr writes the perfect lines at the end connecting Shakespeare to Prospero. He writes, "Prospero, having restored the other characters to their senses, also disenchants himself of his own grandiosity. He stands before us now as an almost ordinary citizen and asks to be released “from my bands / with the help of your good hands.” This moment—at once elegiac and exhilarated—feels autobiographical: Shakespeare, the compulsive magician, is finally freed from the spell he cast."

I enjoyed the article and just wanted to share it with you all so enjoy if you wish!

Read more: “The Tempest” and “Clybourne Park,” review: newyorker.com

Life In Fiction. Have I Been Here Before?

I know that this is probably quite strange to write in a blog, but I feel that I have been here before. I have written this blog while sitting on my couch on this Wednesday afternoon. While the sun streams in through my patio and Oskar peacefully purrs in his sleep next to me while I write. As Nooteboom writes in The Following Story, “There’s nothing better than a full-blown déjà vu….”

Déjà vu is something that for the past semester I have found myself completely preoccupied with in Dr. Sexson’s classes, especially Nabokov and now Emergent. The idea that memories and déjà vu have the power to connect a moment in time with a moment in time from the past.

That is the sense that we have been some place before and it is strangely familiar. It is the only real way we seem as human beings to be able to time travel even if we can only do it for a moment and involuntarily it seems. But as I am sure Dr. Sexson would say we have been there before and we are only then at that instant remembering what we have already forgotten. But then in another moment it is forgotten again until we experience another realization of a past that we have had at another time.

Whenever I experience déjà vu for some reason I always say that I have dreamt this before. While in fact it was perhaps not a dream, but a memory of a past moment. This is strange especially because I rarely remember my dreams, but frequently experience déjà vu. The only dreams I remember are two and they are actually horrific nightmares. Déjà vu to me seems to not be so much a realization of a dream, but a realization of a long forgotten memory of a past life. We have been everywhere before and it just takes a little déjà vu to remember it.

The only real thing that I have to say about life as fiction, since most of the class covered the topic so well. Is that I always wonder if it is our own life that we are living or are we a part of someone else’s world? Whenever I think of the idea of life as fiction I think about the novel Sophie’s World. A novel that is spoken of as almost a beginners guide to the history of philosophy, which I enjoyed, but I really like the story of Sophie herself underneath. By the end you realize as a reader that you are both the audience and a part of the tale when Sophie picks up a copy of the book herself. Perhaps as the audience we/author are creating the mysterious letters she reads. I have not read it in a while but hope to again. Just another final thought on a topic covered long ago.