if you sit still enough
there will be a handful of maracas and djembes
to shake you behind a conga tree
entrain your heart to beat in between seams
sewn as sheets of sound within thee
boom and clang can circle round
and hollow melodies found to embody the things
in the habit of emerging from the ground
recognizing that underneath a microscope
our veins might be knit together seeing
that blood moves centripetal this way
and to be perforated with 32 arms akimbo and radiating
looking something like an occasion
to which you may invite your mother and bring a drum
someone who resembles the madhatter
and sits on bulging roots at the base of the tree
swigs from a crinkled paper sack intermittently offers a whistle
vow to come every Sunday as you recognize old people who resemble aged versions of everyone you know.
like the one who looks like an extra man
with a pink backpack slung over his right shoulder
legitimizing the swagger in his gait
and the baby girl jounces along
which explains the waggle in his walk
the extra old stand on the walk
wearing all white tennis shoes curtain skirts definitive hats
starch and bold and bald and the flow surges by default
everyone belongs and the asian with drumsticks and mother and the man with a laundry cart and all wood barrels make sounds with beads and rope draped and off the sides and tied on like a hauling bump and shack and stars of david and frankincense with whistles and saxophone the resonant force of going. some stop
on the path with basketballs or the curiosity of an archaeologist picking twigs what remnants from the trees and smoke and dancing happens on resting leaves
there’s a reason for boots beanies and beards and repetition and interruption
1.10.08
2.5.08
30.4.08
"...[A]t 80 you are more likely these days to beat out encountering your end in a nuclear war"
"He is still there, sitting most mornings at his desk that faces a yacht basin, an old fort, and the Mediterranean."
(click the title for the article)
(click the title for the article)
26.4.08
25.4.08
AN OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE
This is the story I mentioned in class. As noted, Ambrose Bierce was one of the suspected identities of B. Traven.
Author: BIERCE, AMBROSE
Date Born: 1842
Date Died: 1914
Nationality: AMERICAN
Profession: HUMORIST
A MAN stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners -- two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest -- a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground -- a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators -- a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the centre of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette, silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good -- a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock-coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift -- all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by -- it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and -- he knew not why -- apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance." As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.
"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."
"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side of the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."
"Suppose a man -- a civilian and student of hanging -- should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.
III
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened -- ages later, it seemed to him -- by the pain of sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fibre of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness -- of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river! -- the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface -- knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort! -- what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water-snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out of his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek! He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf -- saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dew-drops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat -- all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly -- with what an even, calm intonation, presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the men -- with what accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words: "Attention, company!...Shoulder arms!...Ready!...Aim!... Fire!" Farquhar dived -- dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream -- nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually. The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.
"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"
An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me -- the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round -- spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men -- all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color -- that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream -- the southern bank -- and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of aeolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape -- was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodsman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation. By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which -- once, twice, and again -- he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue -- he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene -- perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon -- then all is darkness and silence! Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
©Copyright 2008 Roth Publishing, Inc.
Author: BIERCE, AMBROSE
Date Born: 1842
Date Died: 1914
Nationality: AMERICAN
Profession: HUMORIST
A MAN stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners -- two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as "support," that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest -- a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the centre of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground -- a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators -- a single company of infantry in line, at "parade rest," the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the centre of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette, silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good -- a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock-coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his "unsteadfast footing," then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift -- all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by -- it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and -- he knew not why -- apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. "If I could free my hands," he thought, "I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader's farthest advance." As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man's brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.
"The Yanks are repairing the railroads," said the man, "and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order."
"How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?" Farquhar asked.
"About thirty miles."
"Is there no force on this side of the creek?"
"Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge."
"Suppose a man -- a civilian and student of hanging -- should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel," said Farquhar, smiling, "what could he accomplish?"
The soldier reflected. "I was there a month ago," he replied. "I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow."
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.
III
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened -- ages later, it seemed to him -- by the pain of sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fibre of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness -- of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river! -- the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface -- knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. "To be hanged and drowned," he thought, "that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair."
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort! -- what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water-snake. "Put it back, put it back!" He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out of his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek! He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf -- saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dew-drops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon-flies' wings, the strokes of the water spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat -- all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning's work. How coldly and pitilessly -- with what an even, calm intonation, presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the men -- with what accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words: "Attention, company!...Shoulder arms!...Ready!...Aim!... Fire!" Farquhar dived -- dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream -- nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually. The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.
"The officer," he reasoned, "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!"
An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
"They will not do that again," he thought; "the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me -- the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun."
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round -- spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men -- all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color -- that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream -- the southern bank -- and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of aeolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape -- was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodsman's road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation. By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which -- once, twice, and again -- he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue -- he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene -- perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon -- then all is darkness and silence! Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
©Copyright 2008 Roth Publishing, Inc.
24.4.08
B. Traven
Hi all,
I'm not sure how coherent my telling of B. Traven's story was (it's a fairly incoherent story to begin with) so I'm posting some of my (possibly incoherent) notes.
If you're interested, you should also check out this supremely coherent BBC documentary from 1978. It's about an hour long, but pretty fascinating.
http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1119131104&channel=219646953
Speculations on Traven’s identity:
- Jack London, writer
- Ambrose Bierce, writer, disappeared 1914
- An African Slave
- An American Millionaire
- Arthur Cravan, boxer
- Illegitimate son of Kaiser Wilhelm II
- Adolfo Lopez Mateos, former President of Mexico.
- Plutarco Elías Calles, former President of Mexico
Aliases (almost all untraceable in public records):
Traven
- Publication of his work began in Germany in 1925 and dried up around 1939
- Traced in Mexico from 1925, but really surface in early 40s
- Claimed to be Traven’s “agent”
- Sat in on the filming of “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”
- Editions of Travens books were tampered with during Croves’ “era,” references to Germany and the past were excised, there were also new stories and a novel that were not well regarded
- Died in Mexico City, 1969
- Proved to be the same man as Torsvan
- Found by a Mexican reporter, who broke into a security deposit box and found documents addressed to both Traven Torsvan and Martinez
- Reporter befriended Torzvan
- Ran a roadside café
- Proved to be the same man as Torsvan
- Croves denied being Traven, said Traven didn’t even exist, that the work was the product of two men: one Mexican man had the experiences, the other wrote them down (if the writer died in 1939, the quality of the books would decline).
- A German anarchist thought he recognized Traven’s voice as that of his old comrade
- A real, historical figure
- An actor first heard of in Germany in 1907 (bit parts)
- In Munich, editor of Der Ziegelbrenner (the brick maker), an anarchist newsletter during first world war—magazine was the size, shape and color of a brick
- “I shall at all times prefer to be pissed on by dogs, than to be pissed on by readers of Der Ziegelbrenner, with letters that attempt to sniff out holes in my garment in order to pin me down.”
- “No visiting allowed. There is never anybody home. We have no telephone.”
- Insisted on anonymity
- Croves denied he was Ret Marut, as did his wife, at first
- Member of Revolutionary Workers Soviet organization, which was crushed by authorities
- Under sentence of death, may have gone to Mexico “thereby, I cease to exist”
- 1923-1924, known to be in London (CIA, FBI, State Dept, British Home Office) arrested because he had no papers
- Photographs of Marut match those of Croves and Torsvan
- If he could prove he was American, he could escape death in Germany
- Worked passage to Mexico as a fireman (hero of “The Death Ship” was a fireman too)
- Couldn’t have got to Mexico until 1924—how did he earn a living and absorb enough culture to write “The Cotton Pickers” and send it to Germany in 1925?
- Many scholars think he couldn’t have written the books in time…believe Traven must have lived in Mexico for at least 10 years
- But if the product of two men, the problem would be resolved (did an American write the original manuscripts? No evidence)
- Still not German. Identiy card claimed he was born in San Francisco in 1882 (all records destroyed in 1906 fire and earthquake)
- Claimed his father’s name was William Marut
- Others think he was the Son of Kaiser Wilhelm II (looked very much like him and the Der Ziegelbrenner was sometimes oddly sympathetic to the Kaiser)
- The "real" Traven, according to the BBC documentary
- Found birth record in town hall, and birth certificate in Swiebodzin Poland
- Told police this name, address, parents, and parent’s occupations in 1923
- Could Traven have stolen this identity? Used “Wienecke” as an alias (maiden name of the mother) and knew specifics about the mother’s occupation; father made bricks (town was German before WWII, so father was literally “Der Ziegelbrenner”)
- Had brothers and sisters in Germany who said Otto disappeared
- Said mother received one letter from London, in which Otto said he was being deported
- Recognized photos of Croves/Torsvan/Marut
- Theory not popular with scholars (but I was pretty convinced...)
11.4.08
Mitch Sisskind's "Like a Monkey"
Hey everyone, check out out Mitch Sisskind's fine, funny, Genesis-inspired poem "Like a Monkey" now on the Best American Poetry blog:
http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/
-- DL
http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/
-- DL
4.4.08
I love the uncanny
This is a funny little essay I wrote back in the day on Freud, the Uncanny, the Sandman (which is a good scary read), Dracula, Goya, Batman... it's random.
Reasoning Away the Ghost
if you're interested.
Meghan
Reasoning Away the Ghost
if you're interested.
Meghan
1.4.08
More Bible!
From the wonderful Ms. Wislawa Szymborska:
Lot's Wife
They say I looked back out of curiosity,
but I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now - every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls
of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.
Lot's Wife
They say I looked back out of curiosity,
but I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now - every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls
of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.
22.3.08
Many thanks...
Ha! I heard he did enough coke to kill a small horse. He was probably jacked on blow when he wrote that.
Thanks fer the link Leah. Your the best.
- B
Thanks fer the link Leah. Your the best.
- B
20.3.08
Click here for uncanny
No worries, my friend, you got the name on point. However, it looks like Freud doesn't even know how to spell his own name. See:
19.3.08
18.3.08
What passes as uncanny in waking life?
Yesterday morning, around 8 or 9 a.m., I returned to my 11th floor bedroom of my giant apartment complex (over 20 buildings) in Manhattan. The window that houses the air conditioner was cracked open and upon entering my room, I saw a figure perched on the a.c. It was a red-tailed hawk, staring directly at me. When I acknowledged him and froze, he squawked and then flew away. I watched from my other window as the majestic bird, with a wingspan as wide as I am tall, glided between buildings and cast a great shadow as it rounded the corner of my building.
As a native Northwesterner, I have encountered much wildlife usually while hiking about in areas where one would hope to encounter such creatures. One is lucky to catch a glimpse of an eagle and may even enjoy a visit from a raven once in a while as long as it is not dropping by to raid your rations. However, I find it rattling not only to meet with such a symbolic creature in Manhattan, but at my window out of thousands nonetheless.
I was wondering if Freud would agree that such an encounter would qualify as uncanny. When a recognizable, yet unfamiliar creature enters a familiar space, such as my bedroom, I would say yes. What struck me further in making this connection was that it made the familiar unfamiliar at once. I immediately began to think that this was so strange an occurrence that it must mean something. I began researching red-tailed hawks in New York City and made this other connection to our material with regards to Freud's contemporary, Carl Jung and Greek myth. Much like Freud's concept of the uncanny, Jung had an idea about synchronicity, which is either an expansion of the idea, or perhaps a digression. At any rate, this information lends insight when thinking of the Odyssey or hawk visitations.
In The Body of Myth, J. Nigro Sansonese writes:
"The ancients believed strongly in what Jung has called synchronicity: coincident events have coincident meanings. They were sensitive to omens, often morbidly so, and in particular to animal omens. If a Doric hunter on setting out in the morning chanced to see a wolf, a skilled predator, he anticipated good hunting. Moreover, to the hunter, the wolf was sacred to Apollo, indeed was Apollo in the guise of an animal. Thus the hunt and the god were knitted together meaningfully in the mind of the hunter. From our more skeptical point of view, the “truth” of the matter lies in whether the hunter did in fact have a good day, and in general we tend to suppose that the sighting of a wolf or a hawk is irrelevant. Yet that is perhaps to dismiss too casually beliefs and practices having 10,000 years’ experience behind them. The skilled omen reader would not look solely to the appearance of a predator for heavenly sanction but to everything in the environment that caught his attention at that moment. Was there a cloud passing over the sun? If so, the shadow on his path was not a good omen, for Apollo was also associated with the sun, and thus the god’s affections were ambiguous. Did a raven croak? That would be a warning from Cronus. Because, apparently, the trance of omens is potentially large, vaticination (omen reading) could be dismissed as unfalsifiable, hence unscientific; but also, because the number of omens is not arbitrarily large—as a practical manner, the hunter cannot notice everything in his environment at that moment—the truth or falsity of synchronicity ultimately rests with the skill of the vaticinator, which cannot be prejudged. His skill depends crucially on a high degree of concentration, amounting to trance. Vaticination then is a form of samyama, momentarily frozen awareness, as it were, of the immediate environment of the vaticinator” (63).
We could also look at vaticination in terms of selective narration. What does Edgar Alan Poe choose to tell us in the story of the Black Cat that allows the meaning of the black cat to accrue throughout? Who becomes more strange or estranged? What does Poe or the narrator leave out that would otherwise detract from the overall mood and metamorphosis in the story. I think this "frozen awareness," can be quite a useful way to see writing. Many critics and writers talk about what moves the reader, but I think we should not forget about what arrests you.
(exhale)
Lia
7.3.08
Class Summary
For those who missed class on March 5, we missed you! Here are some notes that occurred to me while writing an e-mail to an ill absentee who asked what she missed:
Laurie Schaffler spoke on Ezra Pound's Canto One comparing it to the opening of Book 11 of The Odyssey [Robert Fitzgerald’s translation]. She noted the liberties Pound takes in "translating" 130 lines and reducing them to 66. It was pointed out that this reveals an aesthetic that prizes condensation, compression, and the lyric impulse at the expense of leisurely narrative. The importance of this aesthetic in the modernist revolution sparked by Pound and Eliot. The use of Tiresias -- the blind prophet from whom Odysseus takes counsel in the underworld -- in Eliot's "The Waste Land" and in "Canto One." Can it be that Pound carved his canto out of Book 11 of The Odyssey (in which Odysseus visits the underworld) in part because it affords him the chance to appropriate Tiresias as a prophet regarding his own journey of "The Cantos"? Surely the Ulysses in Dante and Tennyson bears a closer resemblance to that of Homer than does the Ulysses in Pound's Canto One.
Laurie noted that DL spends summers in Ithaca, NY.
Speculation on the symbolic resonance of the Lotus Eaters, the Sirens, and the Cyclops as perils facing the universal mariner. The first two categories are easy enough to understand. But the cyclops? The suggestion was advanced most shyly and tentatively that the cyclops as a beast was "a one-eyed monster," pure phallus with only hungers, no spiritual or intellectual dimension. Matt Cunha pointed out that the cyclops was indeed "a dick."
David West spoke on Ulysses as a character in Dante (canto 26) and Tennyson. Odysseus's last voyage: the inevitability thereof, as how could a man who lived for adventure ever feel quite at home staying in one place, administering the kingdom of Ithaca? Rebellion against age, "rage against the dying of the light" (as Dylan Thomas put it). Condescension to Telemachus. Conception of heroism. Individual lines of Tennyson were quoted and analyzed for their uncanny poetic effects. Cavafy's poem on the importance of the journey, rather than the destination is seen as consistent with the view of Ulysses in Dante and Virgil.
Auerbach's essay was reviewed in brief . Statements about Penelope and Odysseus as a couple equally matched in wits and wiles were summarized. A poem based on the Scylla and Charybdis episode was read aloud.
A heartfelt thank you to Laurie and David and all who spoke out in class.
-- DL
Laurie Schaffler spoke on Ezra Pound's Canto One comparing it to the opening of Book 11 of The Odyssey [Robert Fitzgerald’s translation]. She noted the liberties Pound takes in "translating" 130 lines and reducing them to 66. It was pointed out that this reveals an aesthetic that prizes condensation, compression, and the lyric impulse at the expense of leisurely narrative. The importance of this aesthetic in the modernist revolution sparked by Pound and Eliot. The use of Tiresias -- the blind prophet from whom Odysseus takes counsel in the underworld -- in Eliot's "The Waste Land" and in "Canto One." Can it be that Pound carved his canto out of Book 11 of The Odyssey (in which Odysseus visits the underworld) in part because it affords him the chance to appropriate Tiresias as a prophet regarding his own journey of "The Cantos"? Surely the Ulysses in Dante and Tennyson bears a closer resemblance to that of Homer than does the Ulysses in Pound's Canto One.
Laurie noted that DL spends summers in Ithaca, NY.
Speculation on the symbolic resonance of the Lotus Eaters, the Sirens, and the Cyclops as perils facing the universal mariner. The first two categories are easy enough to understand. But the cyclops? The suggestion was advanced most shyly and tentatively that the cyclops as a beast was "a one-eyed monster," pure phallus with only hungers, no spiritual or intellectual dimension. Matt Cunha pointed out that the cyclops was indeed "a dick."
David West spoke on Ulysses as a character in Dante (canto 26) and Tennyson. Odysseus's last voyage: the inevitability thereof, as how could a man who lived for adventure ever feel quite at home staying in one place, administering the kingdom of Ithaca? Rebellion against age, "rage against the dying of the light" (as Dylan Thomas put it). Condescension to Telemachus. Conception of heroism. Individual lines of Tennyson were quoted and analyzed for their uncanny poetic effects. Cavafy's poem on the importance of the journey, rather than the destination is seen as consistent with the view of Ulysses in Dante and Virgil.
Auerbach's essay was reviewed in brief . Statements about Penelope and Odysseus as a couple equally matched in wits and wiles were summarized. A poem based on the Scylla and Charybdis episode was read aloud.
A heartfelt thank you to Laurie and David and all who spoke out in class.
-- DL
5.3.08
Spot The Bible Story
It's fun spotting Bible stories in literature and art. There were Abraham and Isaac, right below my nose, as I recently reread Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958). The main character, Okonkwo, "well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond" for his strength and fearlessness, faces a challenge of biblical proportions when the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves decrees that Ikemefuna, Okonkwo's adopted son, must die. However, unlike the Abraham story, the village elder, who passes the message on to Okonkwo, forbids that he take action. He says: "Do not bear a hand in his death."
Instead, a group of village elders plan to seize the boy, take him to the outskirts of town, and perform the sacrifice. Okonkwo accompanies the group on the mission. The boy does not know what the trip is for, and wonders if he is being taken back to his native village. Then the terrible moment: "As a man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his matchet, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. The pot fell and broke in the sand. He heard Ikemefuna cry, 'My father, they have killed me!' as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his matchet and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak." In the end, it is Okonkwo that takes Ikemefuna's life.
What is Okonkwo afraid of? His gods, his people, a wounded son or his wounded pride?
On the level of narration, the sacrifice of Ikemefuna in Things Fall Apart brings to mind Erich Auerbach's comparison of narration in The Bible and The Odyssey. As in most literature that comes after these two texts, the sacrifice of Ikemefuna in Things Fall Apart combines both an elusive narration and the patent tell-all, foreground-friendly nature of the Homeric narrative. As the men walk through the forest, we are privy to Ikemefuna's thoughts along the way: "Although he had felt uneasy at first, he was not afraid now. Okonkwo walked behind him. He could hardly imagine that Okonkwo was not his real father..." Later, at the moment of sacrifice, the narrator tells us that Okonkwo is afraid (see above quotation.) However, the narration is maddeningly, beautifully elusive, too. There are no clear answers. As in the Abraham episode, the reader wonders, "How could Okonkwo do that? What was he thinking?" Okonkwo's action is beyond comprehension, and yet, it is of a slightly less mechanical nature than Abraham's, because the narrator makes it clear to us that it is fraught with woe all around.
Poor Ikemefuna. His legacy is strong, however, not unlike that of martyrs or youth gone too young. I was just watching a film called "Ezra" about a former child soldier in Sierra Leone who recalls the war in a so-called "Truth and Reconciliation" forum. In one scene, probably my favorite of the film, Ezra and three other soldiers are relaxing before a night mission in which they will have to raze a village. They discuss Things Fall Apart, and Ikemefuna, and one of the soldiers says, "We are like Ikemefuna," children sacrificed for no apparent reason. And so Isaac becomes Ikemefuna, becomes Ezra, Mariam, and Moses, becomes a baby left in the back of a livery cab, innocence cut down, these sacrificial lambs.
Anyone got another Bible story embedded in something they're reading?
Instead, a group of village elders plan to seize the boy, take him to the outskirts of town, and perform the sacrifice. Okonkwo accompanies the group on the mission. The boy does not know what the trip is for, and wonders if he is being taken back to his native village. Then the terrible moment: "As a man who had cleared his throat drew up and raised his matchet, Okonkwo looked away. He heard the blow. The pot fell and broke in the sand. He heard Ikemefuna cry, 'My father, they have killed me!' as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his matchet and cut him down. He was afraid of being thought weak." In the end, it is Okonkwo that takes Ikemefuna's life.
What is Okonkwo afraid of? His gods, his people, a wounded son or his wounded pride?
On the level of narration, the sacrifice of Ikemefuna in Things Fall Apart brings to mind Erich Auerbach's comparison of narration in The Bible and The Odyssey. As in most literature that comes after these two texts, the sacrifice of Ikemefuna in Things Fall Apart combines both an elusive narration and the patent tell-all, foreground-friendly nature of the Homeric narrative. As the men walk through the forest, we are privy to Ikemefuna's thoughts along the way: "Although he had felt uneasy at first, he was not afraid now. Okonkwo walked behind him. He could hardly imagine that Okonkwo was not his real father..." Later, at the moment of sacrifice, the narrator tells us that Okonkwo is afraid (see above quotation.) However, the narration is maddeningly, beautifully elusive, too. There are no clear answers. As in the Abraham episode, the reader wonders, "How could Okonkwo do that? What was he thinking?" Okonkwo's action is beyond comprehension, and yet, it is of a slightly less mechanical nature than Abraham's, because the narrator makes it clear to us that it is fraught with woe all around.
Poor Ikemefuna. His legacy is strong, however, not unlike that of martyrs or youth gone too young. I was just watching a film called "Ezra" about a former child soldier in Sierra Leone who recalls the war in a so-called "Truth and Reconciliation" forum. In one scene, probably my favorite of the film, Ezra and three other soldiers are relaxing before a night mission in which they will have to raze a village. They discuss Things Fall Apart, and Ikemefuna, and one of the soldiers says, "We are like Ikemefuna," children sacrificed for no apparent reason. And so Isaac becomes Ikemefuna, becomes Ezra, Mariam, and Moses, becomes a baby left in the back of a livery cab, innocence cut down, these sacrificial lambs.
Anyone got another Bible story embedded in something they're reading?
3.3.08
W.S. Merwin
Here's a poem by W.S. Merwin.
-Alina
Odysseus
Always the setting forth was the same,
Odysseus
Always the setting forth was the same,
Same sea, same dangers waiting for him
As though he had got nowhere but older.
Behind him on the receding shore
The identical reproaches, and somewhere
Out before him, the unravelling patience
He was wedded to. There were the islands
Each with its woman and twining welcome
To be navigated, and one to call "home.''
The knowledge of all that he betrayed
Grew till it was the same whether he stayed
Or went. Therefore he went. And what wonder
If sometimes he could not remember
Which was the one who wished on his departure
Perils that he could never sail through,
And which, improbable, remote, and true,
Was the one he kept sailing home to?
-W.S. Merwin
-W.S. Merwin
1.3.08
Kate Angus' Poem
On Circe’s Island
I had been given a plant to save me; nacreous white flower ascending from the deep sea-dark of the root. But I did not want--entirely--to be saved. Ithaca’s rocks rise far away. Skin craves pelt sometimes--a forest of hair that the soul can hide in--and I was tired. I wanted to be mountain lion, pig, wolf. I wanted to be animal nature. At Troy, I had been horse--both in its mind and its silence. I was the engenderer of the idea of horse, I impregnated horse with warriors, and, in the dark night, opened the door so that horse birthed men and the death of men. I have been the spume on the waves, I have hidden myself behind my own words so entirely that words become their own body and I am ghost. Do not misunderstand me: I wanted return, but for a moment just as badly I wanted the borders of my flesh to be the only new country I would travel through--I wanted blood and bone alone as home.
-Kate A
I had been given a plant to save me; nacreous white flower ascending from the deep sea-dark of the root. But I did not want--entirely--to be saved. Ithaca’s rocks rise far away. Skin craves pelt sometimes--a forest of hair that the soul can hide in--and I was tired. I wanted to be mountain lion, pig, wolf. I wanted to be animal nature. At Troy, I had been horse--both in its mind and its silence. I was the engenderer of the idea of horse, I impregnated horse with warriors, and, in the dark night, opened the door so that horse birthed men and the death of men. I have been the spume on the waves, I have hidden myself behind my own words so entirely that words become their own body and I am ghost. Do not misunderstand me: I wanted return, but for a moment just as badly I wanted the borders of my flesh to be the only new country I would travel through--I wanted blood and bone alone as home.
-Kate A
Poem from class
Dinner Party Strategy
We must sing or else clouds will reach down and paint our hairs grey
This green tablecloth will replace their flag. Our finest wine, brought from Deer Creek will be sprinkled down upon their heads. If they wish to drink, they need only look up. The clouds will wink at them in a gesture of kindness. Our tubas will be thrown down, for they are instruments of jest and suitable only for parades and birthday parties. Our banjos we will raise to our heads. Everyone knows that eight banjos can overwhelm harps strummed on the ocean floor. Our neighbor fish have been making a racket with their harps and petitions. Yes, the banjos will even reach the Mountains of Saint Abacus Park.
The numbers are unaware, we will sing, they are unaware and content in their respective countries. Then we'll modulate and play the end of the chorus in D-minor --we want to be true to tone of the eagles. This is how we'll entertain our guests. We give each other winks, and before tuning our banjos, we pop cough drops into our mouths.
-Alina
29.2.08
Lotus Lingerings
Home is not as sweet as licking water lilies.
Homer flavors myth with Ziziphus to lengthen the trials of Odysseus.
Wading in psychedelic bliss, we wonder why one might wander from worldly ignorance.
Once forbidden to seek such succulence, the humans served their consequence.
In case we know too much, this is the place to get stuck.
Homer flavors myth with Ziziphus to lengthen the trials of Odysseus.
Wading in psychedelic bliss, we wonder why one might wander from worldly ignorance.
Once forbidden to seek such succulence, the humans served their consequence.
In case we know too much, this is the place to get stuck.
Odyssey Poem
Here's my poem from the last class.
Whatever was Tied to the Mast
“Whatever was tied to the mast
the waves have come— here they are:”
- Mary Ruefle
When they were finished they looked up and tried to remember what they had tied to the mast. A bottle of opalescent wings? A jaunt through the haunted forest by lamplight slash stagecoach? It could have been any number of mistakes. It could have been the baker who made the delicious bread. Or was it the stick above the well? They remembered trying to “do the right thing”. They remembered wrapping slabs of fat around the femur and eating handfuls of flowers in the moonlight. They were about to question what they’d done, but then the music started. If they had known what a waiting room was they would have picked up a magazine.
Whatever was Tied to the Mast
“Whatever was tied to the mast
the waves have come— here they are:”
- Mary Ruefle
When they were finished they looked up and tried to remember what they had tied to the mast. A bottle of opalescent wings? A jaunt through the haunted forest by lamplight slash stagecoach? It could have been any number of mistakes. It could have been the baker who made the delicious bread. Or was it the stick above the well? They remembered trying to “do the right thing”. They remembered wrapping slabs of fat around the femur and eating handfuls of flowers in the moonlight. They were about to question what they’d done, but then the music started. If they had known what a waiting room was they would have picked up a magazine.
Notes From Class
Notes From Class
[Differences Between the Odyssey and the Hebrew Bible]
Odyssey
-Sensual environment
-Feasts: eating meat, drinking wine
-A people defined by what they love: (feasting, drinking, hospitality, sex, sleeping, fertility, courage)
-Upper-class
-The way to understand Greek universe
-Not a sacred book, but sometimes used like one
-A value system is derived
-Not a moral universe
-They are sad when they lose their friends – but there is no retribution from gods - the gods don't seem to care
-Aesthetic universe - They play games
Bible
-Domestic lives (more understandable)
-Considered a Holy book
-Moral universe - When Jacob's brothers kill the rapists, this is not something the Bible likes - they get the last word but are not counted as heroes
[Similarities]
Odyssey/ Bible
1. Curiosity:
-Odysseus is curious about the sirens and wants to be the first man to hear their song and not be consumed by them
-Bible - Adam and Eve are curious
[Differences of morality in two books]
[Different representations of the hero]
Differences between Joseph and Odysseus
Bible:
-Joseph changes and is unrecognizable by his brothers
-He forgives brothers (although they are doubtful and afraid, they soon are convinced and change)
-Physical strength is not especially valued in Old Testament
-We don't know if Joseph is strong or weak
-It's not the physical strength that will get him by; it's his mind and the ability he has to interpret dreams
Odyssey:
-Odysseus and all the characters remain the same throughout - no development
-Physical abilities: strong, fast, athletic, warrior
-Corporeal universe
Similarities between Joseph and Odysseus
-Clever and good with words
-Intellectual
-Good with strategies and plots
_______________
Western movies with shoot outs in the end - that's the Odyssey (See: No Country For Old Men)
1. Why do you think Athena has such a crush on Odysseus?
-They are very similar
-There's one point when Odysseus doesn't even trust Athena
-Athena is Odysseus - in a way
____
-No suspense in Odyssey - Athena will take care of everything
-Deus ex Machina - Latin, literally meaning "a god out of a machine"
(OED definition: A power, event, person, or thing that comes in the nick of time to solve a difficulty; providential interposition, esp. in a novel or play)
-In Media Res - Latin for "in the middle of things"
-The Odyssey starts from the middle of the story
-Virtue of the flashback
-Storytelling is strong in Odyssey
_____
2. Why does Poseidon hate Odysseus?
-Odysseus kills his son (the Cyclops)
____
-The gods take sides
-A god cannot undo anything done by another god
-A god can compensate but not override another god's decision
____
3. What do you think is Penelope's finest moment?
-The unraveling of the yarn
-The testing of the bed (she really is the right one for him)
4. And what is Odysseus' finest moment?
-Shooting arrows at the end
[Differences Between the Odyssey and the Hebrew Bible]
Odyssey
-Sensual environment
-Feasts: eating meat, drinking wine
-A people defined by what they love: (feasting, drinking, hospitality, sex, sleeping, fertility, courage)
-Upper-class
-The way to understand Greek universe
-Not a sacred book, but sometimes used like one
-A value system is derived
-Not a moral universe
-They are sad when they lose their friends – but there is no retribution from gods - the gods don't seem to care
-Aesthetic universe - They play games
Bible
-Domestic lives (more understandable)
-Considered a Holy book
-Moral universe - When Jacob's brothers kill the rapists, this is not something the Bible likes - they get the last word but are not counted as heroes
[Similarities]
Odyssey/ Bible
1. Curiosity:
-Odysseus is curious about the sirens and wants to be the first man to hear their song and not be consumed by them
-Bible - Adam and Eve are curious
[Differences of morality in two books]
[Different representations of the hero]
Differences between Joseph and Odysseus
Bible:
-Joseph changes and is unrecognizable by his brothers
-He forgives brothers (although they are doubtful and afraid, they soon are convinced and change)
-Physical strength is not especially valued in Old Testament
-We don't know if Joseph is strong or weak
-It's not the physical strength that will get him by; it's his mind and the ability he has to interpret dreams
Odyssey:
-Odysseus and all the characters remain the same throughout - no development
-Physical abilities: strong, fast, athletic, warrior
-Corporeal universe
Similarities between Joseph and Odysseus
-Clever and good with words
-Intellectual
-Good with strategies and plots
_______________
Western movies with shoot outs in the end - that's the Odyssey (See: No Country For Old Men)
1. Why do you think Athena has such a crush on Odysseus?
-They are very similar
-There's one point when Odysseus doesn't even trust Athena
-Athena is Odysseus - in a way
____
-No suspense in Odyssey - Athena will take care of everything
-Deus ex Machina - Latin, literally meaning "a god out of a machine"
(OED definition: A power, event, person, or thing that comes in the nick of time to solve a difficulty; providential interposition, esp. in a novel or play)
-In Media Res - Latin for "in the middle of things"
-The Odyssey starts from the middle of the story
-Virtue of the flashback
-Storytelling is strong in Odyssey
_____
2. Why does Poseidon hate Odysseus?
-Odysseus kills his son (the Cyclops)
____
-The gods take sides
-A god cannot undo anything done by another god
-A god can compensate but not override another god's decision
____
3. What do you think is Penelope's finest moment?
-The unraveling of the yarn
-The testing of the bed (she really is the right one for him)
4. And what is Odysseus' finest moment?
-Shooting arrows at the end
"Compensation" variation in the New Yorker
He's no Emerson, but in his Shouts and Murmurs piece, "How things even out," Jack Handy seems to be espousing a similar view of the universe... it's silly...
-Kate M
-Kate M
27.2.08
Mark of Biblical Beasts
Here's an image that Alina pointed out. Thanks Alina! Hope no one was offended by Jesus riding the dinosaur.~Lia
After the Test
Hey Everyone. I'm a fiction writer, so this was my first poem like- ever. Probably,it's not even a poem, it's a prose-thing. It is written from the perspective of Sara.
-Justin
After the Test
Abe came down from the mountain and dumped the child in my lap.
What's this? I asked, tearing at the binding cords--but Abe, he just brushed past me, swatting the flies around his ahead. He fell into a chair in his little sanctuary and closed the door with his foot. I poked the swollen flesh of Isaac's tiny wrist, there was even some blood, where the cords were drawn too tight. I rubbed circulation into his cotton-white toes. He refused food or milk, and stayed silent and still so long that I pinched the nape of his thigh, just to get a rise out of him--he turned his hollow eyes up at me, as if to say,
You too?
When he is older, I will tell him how hunger once drove us to Egypt. I will describe to him rooms of treasure, glinting silver bracelets. I will tell him how I marveled at my luck.
And how Egypt marveled back.
Now, I tickle and tease him.
Go ahead, I say, what else can we do but laugh?
-Justin
After the Test
Abe came down from the mountain and dumped the child in my lap.
What's this? I asked, tearing at the binding cords--but Abe, he just brushed past me, swatting the flies around his ahead. He fell into a chair in his little sanctuary and closed the door with his foot. I poked the swollen flesh of Isaac's tiny wrist, there was even some blood, where the cords were drawn too tight. I rubbed circulation into his cotton-white toes. He refused food or milk, and stayed silent and still so long that I pinched the nape of his thigh, just to get a rise out of him--he turned his hollow eyes up at me, as if to say,
You too?
When he is older, I will tell him how hunger once drove us to Egypt. I will describe to him rooms of treasure, glinting silver bracelets. I will tell him how I marveled at my luck.
And how Egypt marveled back.
Now, I tickle and tease him.
Go ahead, I say, what else can we do but laugh?
24.2.08
Dragons, Unicorns, Behemoths, and Leviathans
Was anyone else unfamiliar with the cameo of these fantastical beasts in Job? If it's common knowledge, I must have been sleeping. I felt that the language and description throughout Job, although verbally taxing, was enjoyable poetry. It was as though I were yawning from Job's woes and then woke to find everyone in the midst of some creatures created on which day? Were they made on Friday and Saturday with the rest of the beasts?
If you search these words (no Bible necessary) in Google, you will see that many others find their biblical mention quite fascinating. Some suggest that behemoths refer to dinosaurs, leviathans are equivalent to sea monsters or whales, unicorn as simply the silhouette vision of an ox, and perhaps the dragon was on holiday from China.
It makes me want to reframe my mind to really imagine the world of Homer and Odysseus' entourage of beasts, gods, goddesses, kings, queens, and the supernatural as natural. It also brings excitement to reading biblical text with a new set of eyes, which were previously disenchanted by a decade and a half of Catholic education. Perhaps I am pining after a childhood saturated in eighties fantasy and adventure films.
Thoughts?
(Lia)
21.2.08
Poetry
Meghan suggested that we post our poetry that we write for the assignments. There are currently 3 poems which were added as comments to her post "Poetry, anyone?"
If you have a poem to share, feel free to write out a new post for it. I'd be excited to read it.
-Alina
16.2.08
Why is monotheism an advancement? Here's one take:
American physical anthropologist, Eugenie Scott, provides an explanation for this question in, Evolution vs. Creationism. According to Scott, the creation story in Genesis derives from other "Middle Eastern traditions from Babylonia and Persia" (54). As the ancient Hebrews were often conquered by various polytheistic/pagan tribes, they avoided acculturation through their distinct belief in one god.
Theologian Conrad Hyers purports "the religious meaning of Genesis." He says that it signals to the Hebrew people and surrounding tribes that "one God of Abraham was superior to the false gods of their neighbors: sky gods [...], earth gods, nature gods, light and darkness, rivers and animals." In the seven days of God's creation he declares superiority over these pagan deities. "Each day [God] dismisses an additional cluster of deities, arranged in a cosmological and symmetrical order" (with regards to chapter one especially). For example, when God says "Let there be light," he is in effect overriding any clout that the "pagan gods of light and darkness" might have.
At the same time, the careful phrasing of the creation serves to show that the Hebrew God is "ever present." Hence, "[I]n the beginning," when "God created heaven and earth," one could say he was not born of a "preexisting force." Also, the story establishes God as separate from nature and when he creates human beings "in his image," he endows human beings with dominion over his creation. But they must first answer to him at all costs. Thus, Scott explains, "Genesis reflects the character of a classic origin myth: it presents in symbolic form the values ancient Hebrew felt were most important: the nature of God, the nature of human beings, and the relationship of God to humankind." They "distinguished their God from those of their neighbors and presented His deeds in their oral traditions and, eventually, in written form" (55).
Is monotheism an advancement? Yes or no answers are clearly relative to what an individual considers an advancement or improvement. At least for the sake of Hebrew tradition, only one God can yoke one people.
Lia
Theologian Conrad Hyers purports "the religious meaning of Genesis." He says that it signals to the Hebrew people and surrounding tribes that "one God of Abraham was superior to the false gods of their neighbors: sky gods [...], earth gods, nature gods, light and darkness, rivers and animals." In the seven days of God's creation he declares superiority over these pagan deities. "Each day [God] dismisses an additional cluster of deities, arranged in a cosmological and symmetrical order" (with regards to chapter one especially). For example, when God says "Let there be light," he is in effect overriding any clout that the "pagan gods of light and darkness" might have.
At the same time, the careful phrasing of the creation serves to show that the Hebrew God is "ever present." Hence, "[I]n the beginning," when "God created heaven and earth," one could say he was not born of a "preexisting force." Also, the story establishes God as separate from nature and when he creates human beings "in his image," he endows human beings with dominion over his creation. But they must first answer to him at all costs. Thus, Scott explains, "Genesis reflects the character of a classic origin myth: it presents in symbolic form the values ancient Hebrew felt were most important: the nature of God, the nature of human beings, and the relationship of God to humankind." They "distinguished their God from those of their neighbors and presented His deeds in their oral traditions and, eventually, in written form" (55).
Is monotheism an advancement? Yes or no answers are clearly relative to what an individual considers an advancement or improvement. At least for the sake of Hebrew tradition, only one God can yoke one people.
Lia
15.2.08
poetry, anyone?
Is anyone interested in posting poems written for DL's class? This nonfiction student sure would like to read some non nonfiction...
meghan
meghan
14.2.08
Substitutes for God
Thank you, Lia, for setting up the blog. I hope all will contribute as and when the inspiration strikes.
I propose that we sign our posts. . .
Mark Van Doren has an essay entitled "Substitutes for God" in which he quotes Henshaw Ward to the effect that God has been made to disappear "beneath a heap of definitions, a universe of words." There follows this arresting sentence:"Scientists, sociologists, professors of divinity and liberal clergymen had conspired, no doubt unwillingly, to convert god into a theory, and so to remove him forever from our modst, since theories are neither true nor untrue but merely everlastingly discussable."
From The Mark Van Doren Reader (1942), pp. 29-30.
Please check out the Best American Poetry web site - and blog. From February 7 through the 15th (and possibly longer), a different guest blogger is at it every day. See http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/
-- DL
I propose that we sign our posts. . .
Mark Van Doren has an essay entitled "Substitutes for God" in which he quotes Henshaw Ward to the effect that God has been made to disappear "beneath a heap of definitions, a universe of words." There follows this arresting sentence:"Scientists, sociologists, professors of divinity and liberal clergymen had conspired, no doubt unwillingly, to convert god into a theory, and so to remove him forever from our modst, since theories are neither true nor untrue but merely everlastingly discussable."
From The Mark Van Doren Reader (1942), pp. 29-30.
Please check out the Best American Poetry web site - and blog. From February 7 through the 15th (and possibly longer), a different guest blogger is at it every day. See http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/
-- DL
9.2.08
Source of Inspiration
"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7, KJV).
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the literal (physical) senses of inspiration are:
the action of blowing on or into;
the action, or an act, of breathing in or inhaling; the drawing in of the breath into the lungs in respiration (Opp. to expiration);
a drawing in of air; the absorption of air in the 'respiration' of plants.
The figurative sense are:
a breathing in or infusion of some idea, purpose, etc. into the mind; the suggestion, awakening, or creation of some feeling or impulse, esp. of an exalted kind;
the suggestion or prompting(from some influential quarter) of the utterance or publication of particular views of information on some public matter;
something inspired or infused into the mind; an inspired utterance of product.
I think this relevant piece of the literal definition adds yet another layer to our understanding:
the action of inspiring; the fact or condition of being inspired; a breathing or infusion into the mind or soul. (Theol. etc.) A special immediate action or influence of the Spirit of God (or of some divinity or supernatural being) upon the human mind or soul; said esp. of that divine influence under which the books of Scripture are held to have been written.
(The last entry is the oldest dating back to 1303 AD.)
*There are similar concepts regarding breath, life energy, and inspiration in many other belief systems. A couple that cross my mind are prana in Hinduism and qi in Taoism.
Feel free to investigate. (Click on the title for the O.E.D)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)