The Painful Nowning Process

You decide:

Jay Parini plays some variations on the classic themes: poetry helps us understand life, it appeals to the spirit and the imagination, it opens the emotions:

[Robert] Frost argued that an understanding of how poetry works is essential to the developing intellect. He went so far as to suggest that unless you are at home in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values, “you don’t know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may break down with you.” Those are very large claims.

Poets do make large claims, and they are usually a bit exaggerated. In his “Defense of Poetry,” Shelley famously wrote: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I prefer the twist on that offered by a later poet, George Oppen, who wrote: “Poets are the legislators of the unacknowledged world.”

Either way, something major could happen, if you can figure out exactly what Shelley and/or Oppen means. Parini also notes that modern poetry has earned a reputation for being “difficult” because of all its classical allusions.

Meanwhile, in the Wall Street Journal, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins contemplates the poetic inspiration of Looney Tunes—something most readers should have no trouble connecting with immediately. How is Bugs Bunny poetic?

. . . characters could jump dimensions, leaping around in time and space, their sudden exits marked by a rifle-shot sound effect. . . . This freedom to transcend the laws of basic physics, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry.

So, according to Collins, if you know how to watch cartoons, you know how to read poetry. That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it.

“Translation is interpretation.” I’m pretty sure someone else said that first, but I can’t recall who. In any case, I say it to my students in almost every class, especially “world literature” and medieval lit, in which they often read (or want to read) translations from Old or Middle English.

A few months ago I posted about the controversy over the translation of the so-called “Gospel of Judas.” This week the Chronicle of Higher Education reviews and updates the whole story, and the four scholars most involved with translating and publicizing the ancient text: Bart Ehrman, Marvin Meyer, Elaine Pagels, who contracted with the owner of the manuscript fragments, National Geographic, to translate it and participate in a highly publicized documentary about the text, and April D. DeConick, who questioned the results:

These discoveries filled her with dread. “I was like, this is bad, and these are my friends,” she says. It’s worth noting that it didn’t take DeConick months of painstaking research to reach her conclusions. Within minutes, she thought something was wrong. Within a day, she was convinced that significant mistakes had been made. Why, if it was so obvious to her, had these other scholars missed it? Why had they seen a good Judas where, according to DeConick, none exists?

Maybe because they were looking for him. The first reference to the Gospel of Judas was made by St. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, in Against Heresies, written around 180. Irenaeus was not a fan of the Gospel of Judas, which he deemed a heretical text (though it’s not known whether he actually read the gospel or had only heard rumors about it). Until the Coptic manuscript surfaced in the 1970s, Irenaeus’ mention of the gospel was the only known reference. Irenaeus wrote that the gospel portrayed Judas as “knowing the truth as no others did.” It was an intriguing statement and suggestive of a more positive Judas.

DeConick thinks the translators were overly influenced by Irenaeus and read the gospel with his interpretation in mind. If you come to the gospel free of preconceptions, she argues, then it’s clear that Judas is evil and cursed, not holy and chosen.

Last week, the Chronicle reviewed a new translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, the first by a woman (a second will be published later this year), and also discussed the interpretive slants of other popular translations:

Our own recent, bloody history makes it easy to hear echoes in Virgil’s tragedy. That has made the Aeneid even more appealing to a post-Vietnam generation of translators.

“Particularly when you get meaningless wars like World War I, Vietnam, and Iraq, the legitimacy of death gets questioned,” says Richard F. Thomas, a professor of Greek and Latin and director of graduate studies in the classics department at Harvard University. “This is a poem that activates that question pretty well: Is Rome worth it?”

He points to a 1971 translation by Allen Mandelbaum as one that has been particularly popular with instructors “who wanted to get Virgil as a post-Vietnam poet.” That resonance has not faded. The cover photo on [Stanley] Lombardo’s 2005 version is a close-up of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, with the names of the fallen inscribed on black stone.

. . .

Richard Thomas . . . points to a phrase in Lombardo’s edition . . . “Without very much justification on the level of Virgil’s Latin but a great deal of justification from what’s going on in the poem,” he says, “Lombardo writes ’shock and awe,’ which immediately takes one to more-recent events and sets one asking the question, Are we Rome?”

Seamus Heaney’s popular translation of Beowulf is now embedded in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, and although I and many other critics have praised its readability and poetic style, they’ve also noted that it’s not always very accurate. Heaney’s introduction to the translation discusses the many parallels he found to ancient Irish culture, which some think lead to a somewhat odd result. Tom Shippey critiques the pros and cons very even-handedly.

In the south, it’s “lhude singe mockingbird,” even though we have “cuccu”s, they aren’t nearly as remarkable as the English ones. So, exams and final papers are done, grades are filed, graduation and its celebrations have passed. We said farewell to several of our finest English majors, as we do every year. Some have plans, some–are still planning, but we expect they’ll do well whatever they do.

I’ll be cleaning up my office (or at least organizing the clutter a bit), preparing the courses I’ll be teaching this coming fall, and writing a paper for a conference in June. Not necessarily in that order.

What are you doing this summer?

The ancients had it right after all—the planets do “sing” in their orbits—well, sort of:

Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery.

. . .

In the past, the oscillations that researchers found made up this hum were “spheroidal” — they basically involved patches of rock moving up and down, albeit near undetectably.

Now oscillations have been discovered making up the hum that, oddly, are shaped roughly like rings

As Joseph Addison put it (paraphrasing Ps. 19):

The spacious firmament on high,
with all the blue ethereal sky,
and spangled heavens, a shining frame,
their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied sun from day to day
does his Creator’s power display;
and publishes to every land
the work of an almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,
the moon takes up the wondrous tale,
and nightly to the listening earth
repeats the story of her birth:
whilst all the stars that round her burn,
and all the planets in their turn,
confirm the tidings, as they roll
and spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence all
move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice nor sound
amid their radiant orbs be found?
In reason’s ear they all rejoice,
and utter forth a glorious voice;
for ever singing as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”

I love that.

Although this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins is called “Spring and Fall,” it is really more about Fall. Nevertheless, it is among my favorites and, for a variety of reasons which are better not explained, seems peculiarly appropriate today, even if it is April 30:

To a Young Child

Margaret are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
Now no matter, child, the name;
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

I regret that I am unable to reproduce Hopkins’ original “sprung rhythm” stress-marks.

Celebrated as William Shakespeare’s birthday! (see comment for elaboration)

My mother-in-law would like me to note that one of her relatives founded the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.

Sonnet 94 by Bill S:

They that have power to hurt and will do none
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow;
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Slate helpfully guides us to everything we need to know about Shakespeare books, movies, and websites.

Spring is sprung!

Regular public radio listeners may be familiar with The Writer’s Almanac, presented daily by Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame. Every day, a poem and some literary events associated with the day—authors’ birthdays, book publications, etc. In case you miss it on the air, you can read it and listen to the poems online. Today’s is House, by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins.

Speaking of Collins, his “Introduction to Poetry” is in our first-year Introduction to Lit. anthology. Sometimes I think it takes a bit of the pressure off poetry analysis for my students. Sometimes I’m not sure.

Yesterday was “Poem in Your Pocket Day.” Sorry if you missed it—so did I, if that’s any consolation, though I had a note-to-self and everything. But since it’s National Poetry Month all the way through April, any day is a good day for carrying a poem in your pocket—on paper or electronically. I think this is a neat concept, even though I still live in the virtual dark ages and can barely enter new numbers in my cellphone—still haven’t figured out how to retrieve voice-messages (so if you’re calling me, don’t bother leaving a message. If I see that I’ve missed a call from you, I’ll call you back).

What poem(s) would I carry in my pocket? I propose a choice of two, in case of mood swings:

The Journey, by Mary Oliver

and this sonnet by John Milton:

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

What poem or poems would you put in your pocket?

April is National Poetry Month. I have many favorite poets, but among those who immortalized April, we must acknowledge Geoffrey Chaucer, who reminds us (via the mysterious ChaucerBlogger) that

Bifor Aprille was the cruellest moneth (whatever that meneth!), it was a moneth of coloures and cries, and pilgrymages.

Hear! Hear! Or as Chaucer would have said (perhaps), “Oyez, oyez!”

One of my favorite poems by Chaucer, read aloud in Middle English:

“Truth” or the “Ballad of Good Counsel”

During April, the Academy of American Poets will e-mail you a Poem a Day. I make no representations to the value or appropriateness of said poems, but you can check out those that have been sent so far this month.

Beautiful spring day. Let us now praise famous authors:

Claire Tomalin admires John Milton:

Paradise Lost has held me in thrall ever since I first read it in my teens. I have reread it at irregular intervals, always with pleasure and renewed astonishment. I was no more a believer in the Christian myths when I first read it than I am now, but Milton sets out his version of the creation and the fall of man with such assurance and vigour, he invests the story with so much passion, the scope of his imagination is so wide, that the great structure of the poem carries you along with an irresistible momentum. Even the dim patches and the thinness of the figures of Jesus and God hardly slow you down. The vastness of the spaces through which his aerial beings move; the brilliant ambivalences of the villain who is Satan, soliloquising dramatically; the enchanted perspectives of paradise with its two freshly formed residents who busy themselves pruning roses, heaping up vegetarian meals for the entertainment of archangel visitors, and setting out the ground rules for marriage - none of this has any parallel in English poetry. Milton makes you think, provokes you into arguments about power, good and evil, about responsibility, innocence and the right to knowledge.

A new edition of Shakespeare’s poetry is reviewed:

Is the greatest writer in the English language primarily a poet or a dramatist? The easy answer, that he is both, is no answer at all. The better one, which most practicing poets of whatever age have endorsed, is that he is a poet who, wonderfully well equipped at adapting stories and devising theatrical situations, also can tame the lightning of poetry for stage performance.

…Why, they ask, do convenors of Shakespeare conferences, academics in general and almost all authorities of sententious disposition ignore the poems, concentrating on the plays? He arrived at fame and consciousness first as a poet, and a remarkably realistic and accessible one. The introduction puts this directly – “Although both Venus and Lucrece are more patterned and verbally complex than the plays, they are considerably more naturalistic”. Viewed together, the two poems offer unique opportunities to link Shakespeare with the great Renaissance painters of Italy and France.

And speaking of Shakespeare, Henry Jaffa argues in “Macbeth and the Moral Universe” that

 In Macbeth Shakespeare presented the moral phenomena in such a way that those who respond to his art must, in some way or another, become better human beings.

Some literature seems to invite immorality, however, in the form of theft:

The coin of the realm is now, and has always been, the fiction that young white men read, and self-satisfied young white men, the kind who love to stick it to the man, are the majority of book shoplifters.

So obviously literature (and other arts) won’t necessarily make you a better person, so what’s the point? Robert Fulford explains his faith in the arts:

Rebecca West, a great journalist of the last century, remarked (rather like Antonio Salieri discussing Mozart in Amadeus) that “the power to create a work of art, like a good complexion, is frequently bestowed on the undeserving.” So my faith, rather like Christianity, comes with no guarantees of virtue or enhanced intelligence.

What, then, does it guarantee? Those who give it their time and love are offered the chance to live more expansive, more enjoyable and deeper lives.

“Offered the chance”—that’s all. We still have free will to reject the offering, just as with the grace of God.