Marcus Aurelius

I went to the library Monday to do some research on Pater. I found an article on his Renaissance by Jeffrey Wallen called "Alive in the Grave: Walter Pater's Renaissance." Though I very much enjoy the title, I am not inordinately thrilled with the content (maybe not so much the content exactly, but the style of the writing?). Anyhow, I went ahead and checked out the book itself as well. Then I found Marcus Aurelius (I am a fan of his Meditations.) I checked it out since my copy got lost somewhere in Poughkeepsie. Though the entire book is relevant, below are just a few select passages. I apologize for such extensive quoting, but some things must be done (it is just so good.)

"17. In human life time is but a point, reality a flux, perception indistinct, the composition of the body subject to easy corruption, the soul a spinning top, fortune hard to make out, fame confused. To put it briefly: physical things are but a flowing stream, things of the soul dreams and vanity; life is but a struggle and the visit to a strange land, posthumous fame but a forgetting." (Aurelius 16-7)

Only just a little bleak, just like Eliot. Time is now, but life is just a struggle that is essentially lost to the world at some point. We all decay. We all are doomed to decay. Stephen ruminates in Ulysses:
"Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy tidbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a ruinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun" (Joyce 41-2).

Talk about decay! Though he didn't sleep in his coffin nightly, Stephen reminded himself of his corporeality frequently and mercilessly.
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is . . ." (Eliot 15-6)
The dance of death? or the dance of life? Dr. Sexson keeps mentioning the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I had only been familiar with the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

In class, Dr. Sexson mentioned the Four Noble Truths. (Thanks to sasana.org:)
1. All life knows suffering. Nobody gets what they want out of life.
2. The cause of suffering is ignorance and clinging. Wanting it is the problem.
3. There is a way to end suffering. By learning not to want it.
4. This is the way to end suffering: The Eightfold Path.
1. Right Understanding Learning the nature of reality and the truth about life.
2. Right Aspiration Making the commitment to living in such a way that our suffering can end.
3. Right Effort Just Do It. No Excuses.
4. Right Speech Speaking the truth in a helpful and compassionate way.
5. Right Conduct Living a life consistent with our values.
6. Right Livelihood Earning a living in a way that doesn’t hurt others.
7. Right Mindfulness Recognizing the value of the moment; living where we are.
8. Right Concentration Expanding our consciousness through meditation.
"right action" (Eliot)

Along a similar vein, I like that Pat brought up koans in his presentation. Koans drive me nuts. They are a question or riddle. However, koans do not have answers(even if they do.) For me this delves into Kevin's ponderance on paradoxes in a recent blog. As far as actually answering a koan, the key is to admit that you do not know the answer, nor can you ever know the answer. You see my Western frustration. I get it though. I understand that enlightenment comes in the form of letting go, emptying out (not feeling obliged to have answers for all, not feeling distressed at not knowing.) Kenosis. Autumn.

Example koans:
What is the color of wind?
What is the sound of one hand clapping?

M. Aurelius again:
"33. We shall very soon be only ashes or dry bones, merely a name or not even a name, while a name in any case is only a noise and an echo. The things much honored in life are vain, corruptible, and of no import. The living are like puppies who bite, or quarrelsome children who laugh and then immediately weep. Faith and Reverence and Justice and Truth "have left the wide-pathed earth for Heaven."11 What is it which holds us here, if indeed the objects of sense are ever changing and last not, the senses themselves are blurred and variable as wax, our soul is but an exhalation from the blood, and good repute among such is vain? What holds us? To await death with good grace, whether it be extinction or a going elsewhere. And until the time for it comes, what suffices? What else but to honor the gods and praise them, to do good to men, bear with them and forbear. As for all that lies within the limits of mere flesh and mere life, remember that none of it belongs to you or is within your power." (47)

Why do we go on living when we see the inevitable death? Aurelius references a passage from Hesiod's Works and Days that details Aidos (Reverence) and Nemesis abandoning the earth to return to Olympus. So why don't we choose this path, the path into the rose garden through the door that was never opened.

I suppose Eliot answers this in his own way at the end of the Dry Salvages section. "And right action is freedom from past and future also. For most of us, this is the aim never here to be realized; who are only undefeated because we have gone on trying; we, content at the last if our temporal reversion nourish (not so far from the yew-tree) the life of significant soil" (45). As Aurelius points out that "none of it belongs to you or is within your power," all we can do is water the earth, the significant soil, with our contributions.

Things change, Kundun.
"21. Before long you will not be anybody or exist anywhere, nor will any of the things you now see, or anyone of those now living. For all things are by nature intended to change, to be altered and destroyed, in order that other things in their turn may come to be." (Aurelius 126)
In my opinion this is the key to epiphany. All things are meant to change. When a sudden change or shift occurs, so does an epiphany. Stasis does not bode well for the livelihood of epiphanies. There must be change to foster them. Also, in my opinion, when a manifestation of clarity, beauty, or even darkness occurs to a person, his or her brain is forever changed.

So where did Pater go? next blog I suppose.

Botticelli's Primavera

Left to right: Mercury, the Three Graces, Venus, Flora, Chloris, Zephyrus.

• Mercury, also Hermes the trickster

• The Three Graces: Aglaea (goddess of beauty), Euphrosyne (goddess of mirth), and Thalia (goddess of good cheer)-- all three are associated with the underworld and the Eleusinian mysteries

• Venus, also Aphrodite, goddess of love

• Flora, goddess of flowers and springtime (also Chloris)
• Chloris (Greek version of Flora)
• Zephyrus, west wind, fructifying wind, bringer of springtime

Dry Salvages (Images)

Neal T. Walsh


Leonardo da Vinci (Uffizi, Florence, Italy)


Note the rose-like inverted center.
To me, it looks like a little dancing lady. " . . . at the still point, there the dance is" (BN 63).

Sestina

I just read an article on JSTOR by Tahita Fulkerson about Eliot's sestina in Dry Salvages at the beginning of section II. She cites the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, calling the sestina the "most complicated of . . . verse forms."
Here is a link to the article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111675

Via wiki: "A sestina (also, sextina, sestine, or sextain) is a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet (called its envoy or tornada), for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time."

However, Eliot seems to stray from the traditional sestina because he completely omits the tercet at the end. He also does not change the order of the ending words of each line. Rather, he maintains the order, 123456, but slightly modifies the word that ends each line.
For example, the first stanza's first line ends with the word wailing; the second stanza's first line ends with trailing. Upon reaching the first line of the sixth stanza, Eliot brings us full circle back to the word wailing.

Here are the cycles of the last words of each of the six stanzas:
1st line: wailing, trailing, failing, sailing, bailing, wailing
2nd: flowers, hours, powers, cowers, lowers, flowers
3rd: motionless, emotionles, devotionless, oceanless, erosionless, motionless
4th: wreckage, breakage, leakage, wastage, dockage, wreckage
5th: unprayable, reliable, undeniable, liable, unpayable, prayable
6th: annunciation, renunciation, annunciation, destination, examination, Annunciation.

Where is there an end of it, the soundless wailing,
The silent withering of autumn flowers
Dropping their petals and remaining motionless;
Where is there an end to the drifting wreckage,
The prayer of the bone on the beach, the unprayable
Prayer at the calamitous annunciation?

There is no end, but addition: the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours,
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation.

There is the final addition, the failing
Pride or resentment at failing powers,
The unattached devotion which might pass for devotionless,
In a drifting boat with a slow leakage,
The silent listening to the undeniable
Clamour of the bell of the last annunciation.

Where is the end of them, the fisherman sailing
Into the wind's tail, where the fog cowers?
We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.

We have to think of them as forever bailing,
Setting and hauling, while the North East lowers
Over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
For a haul that will not bear examination.

There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
The bone's prayer to Death its God. Only the hardly, barely prayable
Prayer of the one Annunciation.

Mom, Look!

You know the feeling when you first realize you're riding your bike (sans training wheels) and Dad's not holding on anymore?
For me, it was definitely an epiphany.

Ha, this kid definitely had some sort of epiphanic moment to make him act like Actaeon.

E Bishop & Epiphanies

I'm frustrated that the library does not have any of the articles I would like to read accessible online.
Here are the url's if anyone is interested and knows how to access them:
"Pater's Epiphanies and the Open Form" by Jay B. Losey
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3189653

"The Purpose and Permanence of the Joycean Epiphany" by David Hayman
http://www.jstor.org/pss/25473944

"From Pater to Wilde to Joyce: Modernist Epiphany and the Soulful Self" by John McGowan
(lost url sorry)
Also, this might be an interesting read:

I was, however, able to access an article by Martin Bidney that deals with Elizabeth Bishop and epiphanies.

I'm not sure I entirely understand Bidney's technique in studying the epiphany, but I do like his contention that "each epiphany maker establishes a uniquely individual recurrent pattern that correlates with a personal configuration of psychological concerns, fears, and desires. In creating epiphanies . . . one becomes most intensely who one is."

Books I couldn't put down

I think it was in 5th grade that I discovered a certain zeal for The Hobbit. I couldn't put it down! And then I read it again and possibly a third time. I had a similar experience with Matilda (but for very different reasons.) The Hobbit mesmerized me by inciting my imagination. I could so clearly see Bilbo and his little house in a small little hillock in a very perfectly green valley. I remember seeing the roundness of his house and the roundness of his door; and, of course, the movie disappointed me because that is NOT at all how Bilbo's abode should have looked.



Matilda. Unfortunately, I don't remember my version of Matilda because the movie seems to have bumped her out of my head. That's sad! Hmm. I know i know i know i know this is almost always the case, but the book is FAR better than the movie version. In fact, I loathe the movie in comparison to the novel.
Matilda mesmerizes me because of the way she can apply her mind. Don't think I'm too crazy, but I do think the mind is extremely powerful if we allow it to be. I'm not saying that I, myself, can tip over a glass of water with my mind, I'm just saying I don't think we have learned to use our minds to the full extent. Ok you can call me crazy.
I liked Matilda because of her precocious manner and for the fact that she would spend so much time in the library.

Superbowl & Enlightenment

Happy Supersalsabowl day. I'm not a football fan, I'm more the other kind of futbol fan. Come to think of it, I don't actually know who's playing today. I suppose I will enlighten myself before I head over to a friend's for the big game.

On to enlightenment. I know I make a radical jump from football to Eliot, but I will say that a football has four quarters just like the quartets. I think it's just a nice, symmetrically asthetic way to divide up most anything.
Every time I read passages from the Four Quartets, I feel a bit more enlightened. The first time I read it, I thought Ok this is beautiful. Since then, I seem to have little 'ahs' of recognition where I focus in on a small piece that begins to make sense. Today I like this section:

V
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mass of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. (30-1)

How often does one struggle to find the words to encompass what one feels? I personally will settle for a word that serves to get the overall point across because I know that anything else is futile. I've tried before to explain an extreme emotion I felt from a book, a song, a sunset, etc, and the response typically is "mhmmm." It is so Frustrating! They have no idea what you felt because they didn't.
Only rarely can one share an experience with another, and usually the sharing does not come in the form of words.
Words can explain the mundane, but they can only stretch and reach and attempt to explain the extreme.
Now it seems fitting to make my own attempt to flesh out an understanding of epiphany. I do like what Ellmann says of Joyce's epiphany in his Ulysses on the Liffey though I don't have his book in front of me at this moment. It was something about a "sudden turn about." There comes a moment when one must suddenly shift one's mind to comprehend that which mundane words cannot. One's mind seems to shift out of the world of words (seeing that they are incapable) and into a realm that occupies a level that does not have a word (excepting the word 'epiphanic.') In my opinion, epiphanies are mesmeric because they have no words. How often do we get to experience something and not talk about it?
Words take up every day all the time. We are always introducing words to say something, mean something, tick away the clock.
So then, without words, we can pause the clock and have a wordless moment that means more than a thousand words.

Groundhog Day-feb2

I woke up with a jolt to say the least. I am usually not too deep a sleeper come about 6am, but Feb 2 was different. It was 8am, and Reid, holding our cat Gosu, said, "I missed class!" I had intended to get up at 6 with him in honor of Groundhog day, but both of us slept straight through his alarm. After talking to Sam, I realize I am 1/2 way redeemed because I woke at 8 to honor Bloomsday (even though that's Jun16.)? Anyhow, I made myself a breakfast sandwich like i do every morning - 2 eggs, 2 pieces bacon, 1 bagel. Then, I sat down with coffee and did a few hours of homework. 19th c. british literature at 11am. I parked on 3rd street where i always park, slipped a few times on the icy sidewalks where no one shovels the snow, and then talked about binaries in "The Coming Race" for 1.25 hrs. After class my shakespeare group met on a porch on 13th street and read Much ado about nothing outloud. my feet froze. Gave 2 people rides back to campus. Visited the bookstore to purchase more texts for class. Someone tried to be overly helpful.
Drove home. by this time it is nearly 2pm. Reid and i went to laparilla for a blackwater bayou and 1jambalaya, then to smiths for the atm machine. then home again. had a long conversation about careers and how on earth we were to make use of our majors (his being physics, mine obviously being lit.) I then read ulysses for a few hours before receiving a text message from abby asking if i was at sams yet. at 7pm we met at sams to watch the skin of our teeth over a few glasses of malbec, and to be reminded that today was just yesterday all over again. we watched sabina run the show and discussed how inordinately funny it would be if the actors could ever actually make the audience truly believe that the entire cast had fallen ill due to food poisoning. Olie watched sam's feet and growled and barked. Copper snuggled with abby and by the end of the play was in bliss with a wonderful mohawk hairdo. then sutter taught us about ineluctable modality, diaphane and adiaphane, snotgreen - the mother inside of us, and all in only 1 paragraph! the beginning of proteus, stephen's walk by the water.
sutter and sam gifted me my very own copy of finnegans wake that i can write in! THANk YOU.
Drove home with 1 headlight - need to get that fixed. Read more ulysses and shakespeare. went to bed.
And after all that, i still didn't get everything done I needed to get done.
Happy anniversary Dr. Sexson

music up above

When Gabriel stands at the base of the stairs and watches Gretta in a silhouetted light listening to the music from the floor above her, I realized that there was some sanity amidst the drama and bustle of this annual dinner.

Also, if you've ever listened to the muted sounds of music from another room, they often seem unworldly. One hears different notes, etc. than one would ordinarily notice.