Deconstructionist Reading of Keats

The use of the word “form” in the very first line undermines the possibility a cohesive unity to the poem as a whole. Read superficially, the speaker seems to wish to be male so that her/his/its message may have the appropriate effect upon the listener. However, in wishing for “a man’s fair form” the speaker is, perhaps unconsciously, obfuscating the potential for any meaning within the desire. The word form, which is derived from the ancient Latin forma, has come to include nearly antithetical meanings. In its earlier sense it means a primary shape or configuration; later on its meanings came to include an image, representation, or likeness. Such a duality of almost dichotomous meanings calls the speaker’s actual desire into question. Taking the word in its binary state, the speaker seems to desire either the fundamental essence of manhood or, rather, merely representative characteristics of manhood. Such a Structuralist division no doubt sufficiently complicates the nature of the longing, but it misses the impossibility of separating manhood and manly characteristics. From this then, the question of what characterizes the “essence” of manhood is raised. For if the speaker wishes to possess a sufficient quantity of the representative characteristics of manhood, then surely this “sufficiency” can only be had under a complete transformation into a man. Of further note is Aristotle’s division of all entities into two elements: form, that with which it has in differs from others, and matter, that with which it is similar to others. Form then, is taken to be the thing that cannot be missing in order to be considered a certain something: in this case, a man. Furthermore, in theological considerations of the sacrament, the bread and wine are labeled the matter, whereas the form is the essential formulary words. Both the philosophical and theological definitions of form lead to the belief that it encapsulates a certain something that is essential to distinctive existence. Then the speaker’s desire to possess merely the “form” of man begs the question of why the speaker does not seek to be a man. If, on the other hand, we take the contrary definition of form, that meaning an image or representation, then the desire to possess the form of man may indicate that it is a non-organic speaker, most feasibly the poem itself. Such a deconstruction of the poem renders the meaning nearly unintelligible, as the antithetical definitions of form lead to many possible interpretations that any possibility of accuracy of portrayal is completely foregone.

In this piece, there is a sense of absence, even from the beginning., with the blotting out of letters in the name of the person the piece is being written for. There is a lack of identity there, an absence of person. This in turn, makes the piece more universal in ways, but holistically less personal and unidentifiable in terms of placement. It also creates a gap in presence, whether or not the poem was originally intended for anyone specific is unclear.  Keats spends the entire poem talking about himself if he were someone else, there is never a sense of definitiveness in identity in himself or in whomever he is speaking to. ("Had I a man's fair form", "I am no happy sheperd of the dell") There are references to "thee," which are not specific, predicting future happenings such as "I'll gather some by spells, and incantation," which are uncertain as well. His desire towards this person marks another spacing between, as they are seemingly not together and there must exist reasons for why they are not, why the poet decided to blot out the name of the person he was speaking to.

Putting the Wo- back in Man

In Keats' sonnet the opening line, "Had I a man's fair form," sets the poem up to be a statement of the logos of the primacy of the male over the female. If the speaker were a man, then the speaker would be able to adequately express his or her love and act on it. However, even in those first six words, the poem begins to unravel its own thesis through the use of feminine language when describing the masculine.

Describing a man's form as "fair" calls up the idea of beauty, "chiefly with reference to the face, almost exclusively of women"(OED). Sighs also belong to the realm of women. The strong male concepts that appear in the poem are presented in negation -- "no knight," "no...shepherd." Knight also possesses the meaning of "one devoted to the service of a lady as her attendant." No armor is found on the speaker's "bosom's swell," an allusion to the breasts of a woman.

"Dell" possess the alternative definition of "a wench," and maiden also refers to a man without experience in sexual intercourse. Using these definitions, the "shepherd of the dell / Whose lips have trembled with a maiden's eyes" can be read as a role reversal -- now the man is filled with fear of the sexual prowess of the woman as opposed to the traditional idea of the contrary.

By the end of the poem, the purported primacy of the male has undermined itself by deferring to the language of the female to describe itself.

A Short Deconstruction of a Keats' Sonnet

In Keats’ sonnet "Had I a man's fair form..." the word "meet" in the antepenultimate line is an inherent binarism. Upon an initial reading, I assumed that “meet” was a noun--perhaps a pun on "meat" as to echo the phrase before it, "I will taste the dew." The verb form of meet “to encounter or experience" is generally the privileged form or definition, for example, “I will meet her here at 3 o’ clock”. However in this case, the adjective meaning of “meet” as "proper, fitting or suitable" is privileged for it makes the most contextual sense—tasting the dew is proper, perhaps pleasant. These two meanings of “meet” though, are not naturally hierarchized oppositions but are constructed, implied by the poem’s usage. For to meet someone, as given in the example, often suggests the harmonious, face-to-face gathering of two people. This positive connotation is suggestive of the union of two similar or complementary elements that are compatible with each other as to be “proper, fitting or suitable”. The two definitions are dependent on each other. The adjective denotation and connotation of “meet” is strained however, by the previous line where the dew is referred to as “rich to intoxication” but remains “meet’ to the speaker. Intoxication has a negative connotation of infatuation or obsession with a person or object, which thereby distances you from others and disrupts emotional balance.

Deconstructing Keats

For Keats’ love sonnet (and most other love sonnets), the most basic binary structuring the poem is male/female. Heterosexual desire drives the man to address the nameless woman and woo her with his words. However, through the underlying purpose of the sonnet is to bridge absence between lovers, neither of them are clearly present in the poem. As a paradoxically invisible addressee, the woman is merely denoted as a series of asterisks, showing from the outset of the poem that the binary may not be as clearly defined as the structure and assumptions behind the poetic form might suggest. For the man, rather than describe himself as what he is, he spends the poem explaining what he is not and the actions that will occur in the future rather than the present. This implies a lack even within the stable category of “man” that, in a patriarchal society, is always privileged above the woman.

He begins the poem, “Had I a man’s fair form, then might my sighs/ be echoed.” From the outset, he blurs the distinctions between male and female. The quality of being “fair” as well as “sighs” are not instinctively associated with men, but with women. According to the OED, fair is often applied to women, expressing a quality characteristic to their sex (i.e. the fair sex). Here in the poem, the speaker applies it to himself in addition to the sighs that define feminine sentimentality. The very negation of reality created by “Had I…” describes a masculine insufficiency in the speaker that he will perpetuate throughout the poem. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is when he evokes the knight/maiden complementary pairing. “I am no knight,” but at the same time, his lips do not tremble “with a maiden’s eyes.” He is neither maiden nor knight. But he has shown from the outset, that the privileging of one sex over the other is unstable, since he contains attributes of both and emphasizes his effeminate manhood. Yet, heterosexual passion requires both male and female, so in deconstructing gender, the speaker also can be said to deconstruct the idea of love as a unified entity.

((Keats))

To ******: to the unnamable Essence, but why six asterisks? Perhaps to draw together completeness and in-completeness, thereby dispelling the dichotomy. Six signifies Earthliness, a totally bound system, as one divides into two, two couples with one to make three, and three interacts with two to make six, and ad infinitum; Seven is the crown, somehow set off from six, yet the asymptotic goal beyond that system, constantly drawing it near (these ideas come from Philo).

So let’s imagine an aquarium. Fish swim about in the water, eating food and each other, copulating, moving about amongst the coral and anemone. Objects interact, but water holds them. Water is the ethereal Essence, and its waves and vibrations control all action, paradoxically, by receiving all action. Water captures the interactions that are ungraspable, since they unfold in time and space, yet water is eternal and cannot be captured. As the crown of Seven receives all asymptotic strivings of the six-systems, yet they never reach Seven. Moreover, objects interact only because Seven exists beyond the boundary.

The sonnet, then, is the water of the fishbowl: ungraspable yet unified, lucid, clear, and tasteless. Concepts hang suspended like water, unable to reach out, only able to receive and react to movements as a pure matrix.

“Had I a man’s fair form,” the sonnet says, “then might my sighs/ Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell/ Thine ear, and find they gentle heart.” Had water some source of will, it would move fish, yet fish move themselves only by pushing against water. Thus the sighs of the sonnet cannot echo but may only receive the thoughts of the reader, out there in the Ether, as he throws a stone into its pond, making ripples. Some irony surfaces: men are but shells, as are their ears.

To place Essence in passionate communication-out-there—speaking, stabbing (“I am no knight whose foeman dies”), wearing armor—because it reaches the frail, temporary heart is to miss the point.

“Essence” is the inability of matter to fuse essentially, no matter how hard the atoms fuse. Real fusion occurs through metaphor, in the literary space of the poetic matrix, separated off into the Crown of Seven through differance. Thus, the shepherds lips may only tremble with maiden’s eyes, and not into them.

The shepherd offers the maiden the poem (“Yet must I [the sonnet] dote on thee”) as if he could offer her water in an envelope, or a pond in his hand. It can only give to her what she throws into the deep, and each rippling never occurs the same way twice. The poem can call her “Sweeter by far than Hybla’s honied roses/ When steep’d in dew rich to intoxication.” Only the poem captures metaphor; only the poem can fuse matter in the set-off space of Essential Concept. Yet the Essence falls away without isolated objects. Objects give meaning to the Essence by reaching wildly into its infinitely receptive waters. When the interior Earth-world reaches for the isolated, eternal, unified space of metaphor and difference, the differance reaches back with incantations and the ‘face of the moon.’

Week 6 Posting

Please post by midnight on Sunday (2/22) your deconstructive (post-structuralist) reading of Keat's sonnet, "To *****."

As we discussed in class, you might look to Derrida's reading of Rousseau or J. Hillis Miller's reading of M.H. Abrams's critical essay for models, but remember: these are readings of critical, or meta-languages and so the goal of Derrida's or Miller's reading is to show how such languages' structuring oppositions (speech/writing, copulation/masturbation, host/parasite) are untenable. The languages of science, philosophy, criticism, and so on (meta-languages in that they purport to speak "about" something) suppress differance where literary language calls attention to it. And so, your reading of Keats might focus on how this poem itself meditates on differance -- what it has to teach us about the writtenness, absence, deferral, difference -- differance -- of all language.

Brooks and Stevens

Michael Kleinman
Engl 261 Essay 1

“The Emperor of Ice Cream”

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

-Wallace Stevens

Wallace Steven’ The Emperor of Ice Cream, when analyzed from a Brooksian perspective, creates in the mind a central tension between vibrant concupiscence and austere decay. A close reading reveals two interrelated paradoxes: that mold and decay generates all pleasure and, conversely, that the greatest pleasure is knowing the source of mold and decay. By critically unifying two highly energized and paradoxical scenes, readers experience feelings of satirical irony, shocking repulsion, and finally, enlightened appreciation of the Now Moment.

In order to procure these paradoxes, we must first live within the experience of the poem. By this I mean that we must feel how the different connotative meanings of the poem support one another, as if to draw a defined space for our mind. Now, to procure this ‘architectural meaning,’ it would be wise to look for structural similarities. We have before us two stanzas of nearly identical shape, each containing the same ending line. The two stanzas then procure a same sense, albeit in a different way. Thus they are like two beams supporting the same roof, or two rooms sharing the same house. Ultimately, our goal is to look at the ceiling and feel inspired.

Living in the first room feels like a party, but we sense some paradoxical tension:

“Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds”

The speaker calls out to the reader to fetch a Latino cigar roller. He uses haughty, proper language. Imperialist, aristocratic words like bid, cigar, and concupiscent mix with slave-like words: muscular and whip. The speaker-and-reader, sharing this linguistic bond, yet participates in the party (strange indeed). We let ‘the wenches’ dawdle in housedresses, and we let the ‘boys’ bring flowers wrapped in newspapers. So that when we let be be finale of seem, we are admitting something. Dropping all pretensions, we pay homage to utility and celebrate the democracies of pleasure. Thus, fraternity shines behind paternalism, and the bonds strengthen paradoxically for the fact that paternalism still exists.

But we have to leave the party room, and so we mysteriously enter a bedroom:

“Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once”

The lower-class theme continues: the dresser of deal consists of cheap wood, the knobs have fallen out, the sheet hosts the humble embroidery of someone skilled in manual labor. Perhaps the sheet is for a tablecloth: we don’t want ice cream melting all over the table. But now comes the shocker and the poem’s main dramatic movement. We, the readers, are to take the sheet and cover the face of a cold, pronate woman: a corpse! The language reflects the drama of our discovery: the feet protrude just as we, the readers, discover the nature of our circumstance. We’re reveling at a wake, so let the lamp affix its beam saith the speaker ironically, not only to the democracy of pleasure, but to the totality of concupiscence.

Our curtain lifted for us, we begin to draw metaphorical connections along a structural framework, and the irony only strengthens and bites harder. For instance, the first three lines of each stanza signify an imperative action. Calling the cigar-roller insists indulgence, while preparing the sheet insists resolution, and both actions assume equal significance. Our justified lust “shakes the knobs from the dresser” as the three nails fall from the cross. In this house, we fear not the sins of concupiscence. Further, while the wenches dawdle and the boys bring flowers, the corpse lies stiff. Too bad for her, the ‘dumb’ broad; she had her chance at ‘horniness.’ Now she must have her face covered while her living relatives enjoy exposing themselves.

To tie up a loose end: We may be asking at this point, “Why the class-discussion from the first stanza?” Just to satirize the aristocratic tendency to conceal the unsavory, biological aspects of highly-charged human moments. The wenches display sexual familiarity and slurp down ice cream while dawdling at a wake. This image contrasts sharply with the aristocratic counterpart. There the guests would wear suits and eat hors d’oeuvres with toothpicks. As the upper class aestheticizes death and sex, the lower class draws little distinction, thereby displaying a more open disposition generally toward the crudeness of human realities.

Through all this talk, something draws us closer to that ceiling; we want to really inhabit the space of that affixed lamp; we want to dig deeper into the meaning of let be be finale of seem. That couplet becomes our space of poetic unification, and we read outwards from that point as the reflective line between an object and its image. Sounds nice, but soon our pleasant irony turns disgustingly sour.

The wenches dawdle in such dress as they are used to wear; maybe grandma embroidered some of their clothing. As they wear grandma’s spirit, we begin to see them dawdling in the far future: as senile folk, even corpses dawdling underground. Underneath the affixed beam of the poetic lamp, a suspended moment of young lust becomes unbound from time. We see future carrion engaging in a revolting display of carnality. And it gets worse. Grandma’s human face is covered, but her ‘horny’ feet protrude. Her skin being pale, the feet look kind of like globules of ice cream. Naturally, the ‘concupiscence’ of the ice cream links with the ‘horniness’ of the feet, and sweet food fuses with carrion into a unified Frankensteinian flesh. Now that the ice cream reminds us of flesh, the cigars remind us of phalluses. The anticipated ‘concupiscent’ curds recall semen. Finally, Grandma’s corpse appears as the later stages of huge ejaculation. Let be be finale of seem: ‘knowing’ life requires experiencing it as the drawn-out echo of an un-graspable orgasm. Makes sense, because that’s how life starts. Still, what a revolting way to expose the mold and decay behind all life and pleasure.

This can’t be it: we are doing poetry, and poetry is beautiful. Our lamps affixed on runny, messy comedown, we scramble away from science to the poetic source of the orgasm. Soon we will know, beyond words, the unifying meaning of let be be finale of seem.

Scientific lamps often shine on the corpse, on the semen, on the
metaphysical ‘ice cream’ of reality. In poetry, however, the lamp shines on the whipping of curds, the beautiful dawdling of ladies, the incomprehensible miracle of love that produces Grandmother. Let “be” be [always the] finale of SEEM: allow so-called being to always appear as the constantly unfolding finale of ‘seem,’ which is the ungraspable NOW of perpetual orgasm. Cover the ‘Corpse’s’ face with a sheet and enjoy your ice cream in the moment, before it melts.

Which takes us to the over-looked image: let the boys bring flowers in last month’s newspapers. NOW we see it; it’s not the ice cream, it’s the flower! Wrapped in last month’s newspaper, it feeds off the death printed on the pages as it yet shines forth brilliantly. When it dies, more flowers spring up from the dead carrion. And this is existence. Viewing the flower wrapped up this way, we come asymptotically close to capturing in an image the Godly love-explosion, the life-wrapped-in death and the death-wrapped-in-life.

A final word on poetry: given that ‘reality’ is only the runny, messy residue of divine whipping, what is the poem on the page? Is it just an unholy ejaculation? A cigar rolled up to be smoked? Is it ice cream slowly melting and molding? Yes, it is all three, but it becomes newly alive through close, meditative reading.

Eliot's Use of Literary Reference

In seeking out the reference of Philomel in Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, Ovid’s tale of Tereus’s savagery added an unexpected level of insight into the poem. Eliot’s text reveals the circumstances to a large extent, in that it is clear that she was “rudely forced” by a “barbarous king”, but the exact nature of Philomel's injuries remains vague without the reversion to Ovid’s text. This revelation then forced a further consideration into the nature of the other works that are cited in the opening. Not only is the adulterous, cruel, and sordid nature of Tereus’s actions uncovered, but Satan’s betrayal of God and Cleopatra’s betrayal of Antony lends meaning to the circumstances of Lil’s relationship with Albert. From Eliot’s text alone there remains an ambiguity as to the level of separation between the war-torn couple. It is evident from the pills Lil took “to bring it off” that there was an unwanted repercussion to a past sexual exploit. The reader is then left in a state of uncertainty regarding Lil’s fidelity to Albert. Lil claims that the pills are what made her look “antique”, and as this is assumed to be a look that may shock the recently “demobbed” Albert, the potential implication is that she has been unfaithful. However, by analyzing the earlier references in the opening of the section, particularly those of Ovid, Shakespeare, and Milton, there is a pattern of infidelities and betrayals that arises and presents a level of certainty to the reader that Lil has indeed been disloyal. While the extent to which Eliot expected his readers to know or research the references of his poem is unknown, the similarities found between the literary allusion leads to the belief that a more complete understanding can be had by inspecting his references. If we take this similarity to be intentional, the juxtaposition of the earlier textual infidelities in Ovid, Shakespeare, and Milton with Eliot’s own portrayal of betrayal forces the idea that Eliot is attempting to place his own work into the major literary canon. This section of the poem then becomes more than a critique of the degradation of modernity and modern love, but also reveals Eliot’s intentions of asserting himself among the most celebrated poets of earlier eras.

Lil as Cleopatra

Understanding the reference to Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” in the first line of Eliot’s “A Game of Chess” establishes a specific frame of reference through which the reader should consider the woman throughout the rest of the poem.

The Cleopatra of Shakespeare’s play is vain and self-absorbed. She is called a lustful gypsy, a whore, an enchantress. She deserts her lover Antony twice in battle, the second time only to take the side of his opponent Octavius. Antony cries out: “This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me.” By noting the reference to Shakespeare, Eliot is able to conjure up all these characteristics and actions in just a single line. The reader is inclined to be skeptical of the woman or women of the poem from the get-go.

This throws new light on the final stanza about Lil and her husband returning from war. After a four year absence, Albert is coming home and will question his wife as to where the money he left her to get new teeth has gone. It is implied that Lil has spent it on “them pills [she] took, to bring it off,” or more bluntly, an abortion. If Albert has been away at war for the last four years the logical conclusion is that Lil had an affair – she betrayed her lover while he was in battle, just like Cleopatra.

From here, one can work back and see that the earlier stanzas can be read as an account of the adultery. Understanding the significance of the reference to "Antony and Cleopatra" allows the reader to draw the parallels between the events of the play and the events of the poem that Eliot intended.

The Game of Chess

The Game of Chess is an excerpt from Eliot's "The Wasteland" that describes two different scenes of women, one being a high society woman and her evening in a lavish room while the other references a group of women sitting at a bar. Eliot's piece was particularly well known for the footnotes he decided to attach to the piece and we were asked to examine whether or not any of these contributed to a deeper understanding of the reading. Through examining other pieces in class, it's evident that I've found value in other footnote like pieces, particularly in Coleridge's journal entry concerning the baked beans he ate as a child. Unlike Wimsatt & Beardsley's perception of what is most useful in close reading, I found that his personal relationship to what beans meant to him growing up was interesting and contributed to his work as a writer. In "The Game of Chess," however, I felt like the story was and contrast between high society and lower class interactions was clear enough without most of them. The only footnote that really contributes to the story is the one that clarifies "the game of chess" as denoting a seduction in the piece Middleton's "Women beware women." It seems the woman is speaking to an unknown lover or suffering from a hallucination about a lover in the lines just before. This entirely adds validity to his reference of chess in line 137. However, my skepticism of the other footnotes is merely in the words that he uses to launch into description, for example "laquearia" reference in the Aeneid. As a reader, I understood the lavishness of the room she was in without knowing exactly where that reference came from, whereas the seduction denotation really solidified the piece for me.

"Game of Chess" reference

While this was touched upon in Friday’s class, I read the plot synopsis from a “New York Times” theater review of Middleton’s “Women Beware of Women” to fully understand Eliot’s “game of chess” referenced in line 137 of “The Waste Land”. Apparently, the chess scene is the most famous of the play where the protagonist distracts one person with chess while the other makes sexual advances on a third person. I hadn’t recognized the other sexual references in the poem like the Philomel painting in line 99 until I researched this one. The speaker’s mention of the Cupidon on the frame of the mirror too adds to the romantic theme. Similarly, the glittering jewels that “[rise] to meet” (line 84) the reflections of light from the sevenbranched candelabra as well as the perfume fumes and breeze that “ascended/In fattening the prolonged candle-flames” (line 91) is sexually suggestive as well. These references though are of negative sexual experiences—that of rape in Philomel’s case and of manipulation in the “game of chess.” The aforementioned adds further texture to the tone of the poem of gloom and echoes the relationship troubles of Lil and her husband Albert in the second half. Lil is being pressured by her husband and the speaker of the second part of “A Game of Chess” to fix her appearance to become more sexually desirable. Ironically though, Lil fell into this unattractive state because she attempted to abort their fifth child and has no desire to bear more of Albert’s children.

The Tempest in "The Game of Chess"

“Those are pearls that were his eyes” is a quote from one of Ariel’s songs in The Tempest (Act I, Scene II). Ferdinand, who has only recently arrived on Prospero’s island, hears the song and follows the nameless and invisible voice to Prospero and Miranda. Ariel’s song refers to Ferdinand’s drowned father who assisted in the treachery that overthrew Prospero, Duke of Milan.

Unlike the evocations of Cleopatra, Dido, and Philomel, The Tempest reference seems a little harder to place in the context of “The Game of Chess.” It is not just a story, but a specific quote that Eliot uses, forcing a closer look at the Shakespearean play. Ferdinand has just landed on a magical island as a result of a shipwreck orchestrated by Prospero. Unsure of where he is or whether any of his fellow mates have survived, Ferdinand laments his ill-fortune, in addition to the death of his father. The knowledge of the allusion slightly changes the reading of the poem. It offers a smoother transition to the “Shakespeherian Rag,” because it is about Shakespeare. Yet it makes the jump from Shakespeare of the past to Shakespeare of the present (represented by a phonograph tune). For Eliot, who throughout the poem juggles time and space on a strange continuum, this is just one more example of the range her covers. The Shakespeare connection also heightens the depth of the man’s despair in response to the aggressive woman who asks “Do you remember nothing?” Apparently the man remembers something, but rather than answer, he thinks the words from Ariel’s song. The fact that Ariel is invisible when he sings to lure Ferdinand also potentially has bearing on the Eliot poem. In many ways, the man is invisible, he neither talks, nor seems to think without prompting.

In researching the Tempest, I also came across another game of chess that Eliot may or may not have had in mind. At the end of the play, Prospero pulls back a curtain and reveals Miranda and Ferdinand playing chess. At this point they are already engaged and Prospero has warned Ferdinand against “untying [Miranda’s] virginal knot” until marriage. In light of the sexual politics suggested by a game of chess, it was interesting to find it in Shakespeare as well.

Philomela, A Game of Chess

I read A Game of Chess as a fractal point in space time representing the formal concept of fornication. This mystic scene unfolds in a fabulous room beyond imagination, suggesting an interconnected concept rather than a single scene. In this conceptual space, the viewer looks backward to Eve's first bite of the apple, hangs suspended in Cleopatra's ostentatious and seductive palace, and peers forward to a modern bar scene. Always we have perfumes, be they from glands, vials, or modern commodities. The 'room' transforms through time yet stays tied to that first fornication. Standing inside of it feels like a psychedelic time-travel experience: the walls transform and the characters morph, yet I remain in the same point in interconnected space-time.

The reference to Philomela adds an extra dimension of meaning and space to this fractal point. We ascend from the human drama of fornication into the space of 'the rape of modernity,' for just as Philomela, having been raped, exits humanity and yet retains her soul, the Earth constantly evades the foolish attempts to subdue Her. Now, 'fornication' comes in to stand for man's gradual rape of the Earth's surface.

Besides Philomela's transformation, the reference suggests 'the rape of modernity' for the fact that modernity holds the privelleged position of integrated knowledge. The Modern Scholar looks out of the window of the conceptual room and sees not just a scene of human eroticism but instead a highly symbolic artwork unfolding. As he connects they symbolism with the image, he raises the trope of fornication from the humanistic sphere and into the global.

Week 4 posting

For this weekend, look up a single reference from Eliot's "A Game of Chess" and blog (by midnight on Sunday 2/8) about how understanding the reference changes or doesn't change your interpretation of the poem.

Prufrock.

T.S. Eliot has composed this piece in what acts like a stream of thought, as if the imagery is coming directly as he is writing. His audience is unclear, potentially he is speaking to another or these thoughts are within himself, as an older man. He often refers to imagery of thinning hair and lonely existence, propelling the idea that he is alone and seeks companionship. The piece centers around his inability to make a decision about some sort of action of thought he wants to express, and he struggles with this throughout (Do i dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time, for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.) He attributes his nervousness to women (Is it perfume from a dress that makes me so digress?) and seems to be self conscious about his outward aged appearance. 

Brooks readings of close poetry often center around paradoxical themes. He believes that all poetry inevitably reflects these contradictions, even without the authors intent to do so. Arguably he believes that every poem can be interpreted as a poem about poetry. In Prufrock, the title of the poem including the word "Lovesong" is a contradiction to the theme of the poem, in which Eliot does nothing to suggest that the piece is a reflection of any serious love affair, rather of a man's struggle to understand how to express his own feelings. A lovesong often expresses concrete feelings without doubt, and Eliot torments himself with whether or not his thoughts are important enough to say, whether or not he'd communicate his sentiments poorly (And turning toward the window, should say: That is not it at all, that is not what I meant at all.) I am skeptical about Brooks' theory behind all poetry being a reflection of poetry. The ideas and imagery presented in poetry are in themselves enough of a description of poetic form, without attributing it to any sort of formula from piece to piece.

Prufrock, Brooks

We can tackle the powerful prologue by looking closely at re-occuring elements in this lengthy poem.

The basic paradox in this poem pitches the bodily description of a lonely aging bachelor (Time to turn back and descend the stair,/ With a bald spot in the middle of my hair) with the spiritual description of the human soul, the All-Ether that penetrates each body in a crumbling modernity (The yellow fog...and fell asleep). Modernity incarnates this indescribable, universal ether in various scenes of urban despair.

Eliot creates this paradox by assigning opposing senses to identical phrases (And indeed there will be time/ To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?") Likewise, different schemata attach to associated stanza. Stanza 4 references Godly ether, Stanza 5 references one life, but combining the senses reveals the Ether in man and the Man in the ether.

Through this paradoxical unity, the reader feels one with the poet and the ether of the speaker. Feeling this, he understands poetry.

Some meta-readings

"Let us go, you and I": The bachelor speaking to himself, the Ether speaking to Itself, Eliot calling the reader along

"Like a patient etherised upon a table": the bachelor is comfortably numb/drunk, the Soul is numbed by modernity, the reader is numb to prejudices when reading poetry

"Streets that follow like a tedious argument/Of insidious intent": The bachelor navigates society like an argument, the city argues against spirituality, historicized reading is insidious

"Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'/ Let us go and make our visit."

Brooksian Close Reading of "Prufrock"

The potentially rhetorical questions in one of the final stanzas (the first of the two beginning in “And would it have been worth it, after all”) reflect the very structure and composition of the poem. “Would it have been worth it” questions the limits of interpersonal communication, whether between speaker and listener or between female and desirer. Prufrock, in lamenting his own inaction, doubts the nature of his own desire to initiate a connection with an “other”; the underlying question is whether or not the justification or the success of the attempt is to be judged by the success of the connection. Prufrock’s neurotic self-doubt reflects that of the would-be poet in choosing to compose or not. Eliot’s portrayal of Prufrock’s dilemma ironically mirrors the possibility of his potential audience successfully recognizing what his works attempt to put forth. For Prufrock and Eliot, having established nothing beyond a superficial bond of “cups”, “tea”, and “talk of you and me”, the overwhelming concern is if the true elements of their minds may be expressed with any accuracy or if the plight of human connection lies in the impossibility of shared understanding: the “That is not what I meant at all”. Prufrock’s own invocation of Lazarus and a “her” as object of carnal desire furthers the question. If the poet, potential-prophet, or would-be lover wishes to reveal a truth, Prufrock seemingly recognizes that it must be a self-justified action, as meaning may not rely upon an “other”. Such doubt proves to be the essence of Prufrock’s immobility and the source of his reliance on discursive inner-dialogue rather than action; however, it may be posited that Eliot’s own composition of the poem, itself at times intentionally obfuscated, expresses the poet’s faith in communication, albeit imperfect communication in which a transcendent meaning may be implicitly ascertained.

Brooksian Reading of Prufrock

The obvious underlying paradox that supposedly governs the “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is strangely absent. In its place becomes a plethora of synecdoches—identifying the parts without the concrete acknowledgement of the whole. This knowledge in itself can be construed as evidence that the poem is about the nature of poetry and Brooks’ insistence that poetry revolves around paradoxical (ambiguous, metaphorical and ironic) language. The entire poem hinges on the absent lady and almost every stanza suggests or alludes to an empty central figure. It is a paradox of meaning in a poem impossible to paraphrase.

Just as Prufrock identifies himself indirectly with Polonius in stanza on Hamlet, earlier in the poem he aligns himself with a well-known biblical figure in King Solomon, who is the widely accepted author of Ecclesiastes (a book in the Hebrew Bible), which states: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up…” (King James Version, Ecclesiastes 3:1-3). The idea that there is “nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9) emphasizes the bleak emptiness of Prufrock’s reflections and constructed realities. The poem memorably alludes to the words in the Bible saying, “And indeed there will be time…There will be time, there will be time/ To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;/There will be a time to murder and create,/And time for all the works and days of hands…” Prufrock, like Solomon, begins to fathom the world’s sheer meaninglessness. Yet, within the emptiness, Prufrock seems to find paradoxical significance in the mere awareness. Though it could seem a comfort to know there is an unoriginal time for everything, Prufrock also points out that it includes “time..for a hundred indecisions/ and for a hundred visions and revisions.” Ironically, in this stanza, Prufrock identifies with a wise biblical king. For most of the poem, Prufrock’s hyperconsciousness welcomes a peculiar suspension of space and time, yet the constant references to a much older literary tradition create ambiguity, not only in finding what I.A. Richards would call the “Total Meaning,” but also in pinpointing exactly where the governing paradox lies if there are so many (often initially overlooked) possibilities hidden deep within the poem.

A Poem by a Poem about a Poem

Brooks believes that all poems are on some level about poetry. In Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" the poetic speaker can be read himself as the personification of poetry.

Before leading the reader through his lines, or "streets that follow like a tedious argument," the speaker warns against the heresy of paraphrase. "Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" / Let us go and make our visit." The couplet calls to mind Brooks' comparison of poetry and drama: both are "something which arrives at its conclusion through conflict." The conflict can be found in the "hundred visions and revisions" that there is time for over the course of reading the poem.

Certain lines also read as the poetic speaker's concerns regarding being misread. When he presents himself with a bald spot in the middle of his head, "They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!'" The literal or paraphrastic reading of the bald spot misses entirely the reason for its inclusion in the first place. Hence the speaker's trepidation when he is fixed "in a formulated phrase" by the eyes of his readers -- "When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, / Then how should I begin." Whatever meaning he intended himself to possess has passed out of his hands and into those of his readers. This brings us back to a central concern when composing poetry and also the factor that necessitates all of the paradox and conflict of poems: "It is impossible to say just what I mean!"

Close Reading of "Prufrock" a la Brooks

This tension in the first stanza of Prufrock as created by the contrasting imagery could be, as all metaphors in poetry, a greater metaphor for poetry itself. Brooks’ notion that all poetry, regardless of the poet’s intention, is paradoxical and self-referential merely by the nature of poetic language is supported here. Poetic language is necessarily paradoxical because of the presence of metaphor. Metaphor serves to compare two superficially unlike similar to reveal a mutual similarity. Here, “etherised” compares and contrasts “evening” on several different levels. The evening is described as though it were viscous, syrupy substance separate from the sky rather simply a darkening of it. The evening that generally connotes the calm and mysterious is contrasted with the gruesome image of a human body sprawled against a cold, impersonal medical table. “Etherised” in the immediate poetic context denotes a hospital patient under the influence of ether, an inhalation anesthetic. But ether’s secondary definitions include “the clear sky” and images of the divine cosmos, which supplements the positive connotation of “evening”. Additionally, as Mike had offered in Friday’s class, the last two lines of the first stanza are meta-poetic as well. “Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’” could be a direct address to those who attempt to simply paraphrase poetry as well as historicists who look for contextually dependent references. Instead the speaker recommends that we, as readers of poetry, “go and make our visit”. Poetry is an experience of the paradoxical, unlike an epigram that compares two unlike elements as a metaphor does, but is merely a witty statement—a moment in time rather than a progression of such.