Shakespeare Sonnet 4

21 Wednesday Aug 2019

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Beauty, Literature, poem, Poetry, Shakespeare, Sonnet, Sonnet 4

[1] Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

[2] Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?

[3] Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,

[4] And being frank, she lends to those are free.

[5] Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

[6] The bounteous largess given thee to give?

[7] Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

[8] So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?

[9] For, having traffic with thyself alone,

[10] Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

[11] Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,

[12] What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

[13] Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

[14] Which usèd lives th’ executor to be.

First stanza:

[1] Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

[2] Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?

[3] Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,

[4] And being frank, she lends to those are free.

The first two lines set up the basic conceit of the poem: the proper investment of human beauty. The argument of this poem is profoundly countercultural to present moment. Our lives are considered our own to dispose of as we each individually please (“it’s my life and I’ll do what I want”).

We can choose our own identity to the point of actual restructuring our bodies and changing our sex in the name of gender identity.

The arguments of sexual freedom in all its related issues ultimately rest upon the proposition of a profound human autonomy in the area of sexual practice (it is interesting that the very same people most insistent upon radical sexual freedom are the most insistent upon conformity in other aspects).

Here Shakespeare attacks an “unthrifty loveliness”: beauty being wasted, misspent. It is misspent because it devolves back upon the self: why dost thou spend/Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy”. This continues the thematic strand from the other sonnets on the aspect of humanity being one of continuity and unity: there is the lineal descent from and hopefully through the object of the poem; as well as the duty to, the unity with the rest of humanity.

Thus, there is something anti-human, something unnatural in seeking to spend one’s beauty on one’s self.

The autonomy of the self is further attacked by positing in relation to nature: Your beauty does not come from you: it has been lent to you by nature to used rightly:

Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,/And being frank, she lends to those are free.

You have been given something you did not earn: it was lent to you by nature (and nature ultimately leads to God).

The last concept “those are free”: not horders, move the conceit to the next stanza.

Second stanza:

[5] Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

[6] The bounteous largess given thee to give?

[7] Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

[8] So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?

This stanza then argues to the paradox of selfishness. You are given a great deal, but you hoard it (“niggard”); and in so doing abuse the wealth you were given. In fact, you are a usurer – which would normally result in a tremendous profit to the usurer, but in this case, it creates no profit. The irony of your hoarding is that are losing what you are hoarding: it does you no good to hoard this beauty, because not only is it unnatural and unhuman, it does you positive harm.

Compare this concept with the idea in our culture who refuses children because it will interfere with career or beauty? The one who spends the beauty youth on one’s own desire is an ideal. It is foolish to plunge into the great stream of human history: nothing is owed to the past or to the future. In fact, to bear children is either foolishness or evil.

So here is Shakespeare, a paragon of culture: here speaking directly against our current culture.

Third stanza:

[9] For, having traffic with thyself alone,

[10] Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

[11] Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,

[12] What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

The final stanza turns to death: because sex and death are profoundly related and in direct competition. Birth is a race against death, and there is no ultimate Darwinian advancement. Death always works.

And so to the object: you are engaged in commerce, trade (traffic here means trade), but there is no other in your trade. You are seller and buyer, but is so doing, you are ultimately hurting yourself the most. You are deceiving yourself.

This then comes to judgment: when you die, what will be the profit of this life? You have done nothing.

Here, Shakespeare becomes even more counter cultural: not only is birth incumbent upon human beings, but without such birth, what have you actually done? What have you done to perpetuate life?

At this point, I think a word of kindness is appropriate. Many people through no fault of their own are unable to bear children. Shakespeare is not speaking to them. This is to one who is deliberately selfish. Shakespeare’s critique is of a self-centeredness which is far different than inability.

Moreover, even though it goes beyond scope of this narrow poem, it should also be known that Shakespeare world would have deep biblical roots, even among the less devoted. Shakespeare’s use of the Bible has been well documented. There are biblical promises to those without children:

Isaiah 56:4–5 (ESV)

⁴ For thus says the Lord:

“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,

who choose the things that please me

and hold fast my covenant,

⁵ I will give in my house and within my walls

a monument and a name

better than sons and daughters;

I will give them an everlasting name

that shall not be cut off.

And:

Isaiah 54:1 (ESV)

54 “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;

break forth into singing and cry aloud,

you who have not been in labor!

For the children of the desolate one will be more

than the children of her who is married,” says the Lord.

The application of these passages being beyond the scope of this piece, I will not explain them beyond just point to the fact of such ideas in Shakespeare’s world.

Couplet

[13] Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

[14] Which usèd lives th’ executor to be.

Your beauty will be buried. The final line means that if you used your beauty, it would remain behind to be your executor: If your beauty were used it would be your executor and deliver your estate to another.

But there may be an irony here (the line contains some ambiguity): It may be possible to read the final line as the tomb – which are are in fact using – is the only thing which lives and is your executor: delivering to your death your beauty.

Shakespeare Sonnet 2

05 Monday Aug 2019

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children, Livery, poem, Poetry, Shakespeare, Sonnet

Notes on the first Sonnet are here.

[1] When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

[2] And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

[3] Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,

[4] Will be a tattered weed of small worth held.

[5] Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,

[6] Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

[7] To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes

[8] Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

[9] How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use

[10] If thou couldst answer “This fair child of mine

[11] Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,”

[12] Proving his beauty by succession thine.

[13] This were to be new made when thou art old

[14] And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

The first stanza raises the issue to be addressed:

[1] When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

[2] And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field,

[3] Thy youth’s proud livery, so gazed on now,

[4] Will be a tattered weed of small worth held.

The basic idea here is simple enough: When grow older, your physical beauty will wear out. He expands this idea along two lines: The primary image is of a field which has been over used. The field will have forty years, but forty “winters”. There will be no spring or summer to rejuvenate the field, only years of snow and death.

The only hint of planting is in the plowing. Shakespeare makes even this unhelpful. There are not ploughed fields but “trenches”. The use of three accented syllables in a row and the alliteration on the Ds/T underscore the point:

and DIG DEEP TRENches

There will be nothing of value in the field at the end, merely “tattered weed”.

But he complicates this image of a field with the image of a “livery”:

Thy youth’s proud livery

Calling beauty the livery of youth makes instant sense: beauty is a custom of nobility worn by the youth. But Shakespeare has body of work which demonstrates a fascination with words. Livery as a custom is out-of-place in an abandoned field.

We could solve this issue by thinking of the livery as the original costume of the field – which is possible.

However, there is another possibility suggested by the origin of the word

1300, “household allowance of any kind (food, provisions, clothing) to retainers or servants,” from Anglo-French livere(late 13c.; Old French liveree, Modern French livrée), “allowance, ration, pay,” originally “(clothes) delivered by a master to his retinue,” from fem. past participle of livrer“to dispense, deliver, hand over,” from Latin liberare “to set free” (see liberate).

The sense later was reduced to “servants’ rations” and “provender for horses” (mid-15c.). The former led to the meaning “distinctive clothing given to servants” (early 14c.); the latter now is obsolete, unless livery stable (1705) survives. Related: Liveried.

A farm field is something which would yield a living. But over run and unproductive, it would cease to yield a living. The poem’s object has used beauty as a living: he makes a livery off the custom of his beauty. And thus, livery has dual usage.

The concept of livery as costume may suggest the adjective of the fourth line: “tattered”. It is unusual to think of a field as “tattered”; although that makes perfect sense of clothing.

One more thing: note that the winters will “besiege”. They will come as an army; and thus in the livery of a king. You and your livery will lose.

Second Stanza

[5] Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,

[6] Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

[7] To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes

[8] Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

The question: What happened to your beauty/your treasure: your costume and living? What answer will you have then: It lies within these deep-sunken eyes. Here, can’t you see it?

That will merely be “all-eating shame” (a shame which devours everything) and a praise which does not profit.

If you allow your beauty to be lost, you will not merely lose your beauty; you will be covered in praise.

Thus, the first two stanza develop the problem which the poem seeks to resolve.

Note this is the basic structure of persuasion: set up an issue and then provide a resolution. Well, Shakespeare, if you’re so smart; what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to never get old? How could that happen?

Third Stanza

[9] How much more praise deserved thy beauty’s use

[10] If thou couldst answer “This fair child of mine

[11] Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,”

[12] Proving his beauty by succession thine

If you had a child, you could point this child (who would be beautiful). This will solve two points: First, you would display your beauty. Second, you prove your present beauty by maintaining it in the future, in this child.

Rather than allowing your beauty to whither, like someone who misuses a farm; but your beauty to use and have a child.

The word “succession” is interesting here. Succession has to do with inheritance (and is used that way in Sonnet 127, the only other use of that word by Shakespeare). Whether Shakespeare would have made the association of the word to the throne, I can’t tell. Although the question of succession is a theme in some plays.

The Couplet

This is really a brilliant end to the poem, because it picks up the strands of the poem

[13] This were to be new made when thou art old

[14] And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st it cold.

Here the winter and forty years of the first line return as “old” and “cold”. Here is the succession and child in “thy warm blood”. The blood is cold in him; just as the forty winters will dig deep trenches in your beauty. But your field will also be productive. The blood which is cold in your body will be warm in the successor’s body: and that blood will be “thy blood”.

Also to return to the besieging winters: A war draws blood; and blood which runs cold is death. But here the besieging army of time will be overcome in the warm blood of a child.

It is a strange at one level to bear a child so that will replace me.

Shakespeare Sonnet 1

26 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Shakespeare, Uncategorized

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Beauty, Death, Edward De Vere, Golden Age, History, poem, Poetry, Shakespeare, Sonnet

Sonnets1609titlepage

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

[3] But, as the riper should by time decease,

[4] His tender heir might bear his memory.

[5] But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

[6] Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

[7] Making a famine where abundance lies,

[8] Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

[9] Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

[10] And only herald to the gaudy spring

[11] Within thine own bud buriest thy content

[12] And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

[13] Pity the world, or else this glutton be—

[14] To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

The sonnet fits perfectly into three quatrains and a couplet. The argument fits into the form with the first line of each quatrain a topic sentence and the couplet a conclusion.

The poem is a request that the recipient of the poem (a person of endless speculation) would have children. By having children you achieve a kind of immorality and bless the world. But selfishness is a gluttony where you spend yourself upon yourself in death.

The first stanza sets out the primary argument of the poem: have children! Shakespeare gives two reasons: It is a good to the world for the best to have children; and, it is a good to you to have one who carries on your memory:

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

[3] But, as the riper should by time decease,

[4] His tender heir might bear his memory.

The argument skillfully weaves the two argument into one.

The Perpetuation of Beauty

The first argument appears in lines 1-2.

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

There are two elements to this argument: (a) origin, and (b) desire.

Origin of Beauty

This argument would be easily missed, because it is a concept so foreign to our “modern is best” understanding. We are anxious over the newest; we think the present is best and the future is better. We have a Hegelian progress of history (I don’t mean in some technical Hegelian manner, but as a general understanding) in which the present is better than the past.

This understandings of the progress of history is precisely the opposite of pre-Hegelian forebears. The earth at the first was pristine: It was best at first. This concept appears worldview which would have been available to Shakespeare. First, the Bible begins with the Garden of Eden. The original world was pristine. But world was altered, through the Fall of Adam into sin; and then, through the devastation of the Flood.

Second, classical mythology understands the history of the world to have progressed through a series of ages beginning with the Golden Age:

First of all [110] the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods [115] without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, [120] rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.

Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Works and Days. (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1914). “Then” a second, silver age of men were found upon the earth:

then they who dwell on Olympus made a second generation which was of silver and less noble by far. It was like the golden race neither in body nor in spirit.

Thus, when we think of a great good like beauty, we think of it as an artifact of the pristine world. Beauty was something in the world from an earlier age and now descended to us. The ancient was not a place of foolish superstition and bad science, it was an age of greater truth and beauty. We are not the accumulation of wisdom but the running down of the world.

With that idea in mind, consider the second line of the sonnet

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

The rose of beauty can be lost — indeed, it will be lost if we are not careful to preserve it.

This idea, when it exists in our present age, exists in our understanding of non-human nature. This curious, but not necessarily without foundation. Remember that the Greek concept of a Golden Age comes from a Pagan conception of the universe without a Creator-Creature divide. Moreover, the relationship of human beings to the created order is fundamentally different. The concept of the “image of God” does not appear in the same way in pagan anthropology.

On that issue, the best starting place would be Peter Jone’s, The Other Worldview.

The concept of a pristine earlier age does exist in environmentalism. There is an ecological understanding of the human beings as the agent of defection, the means of devastation. The absence of human activity is good; the presence of human activity is what makes the world worse.

The Desire for Beauty

Beauty — with truth — is also an object of desire and the charm and foundation of life. Keats in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn famously wrote:

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Christianity would posit this triad, the true, the beautiful and the good.

We desire the best creatures to reproduce (increase) so that beauty will continue in the world. We – the rest of the world – desire all of the best creatures to fill the world. There is a faint echo of a biblical theme. Prosperity is always marked as “increase”:

Psalm 115:14 (KJV): The Lord shall increase you more and more,

You and your children.

“Fairest” is the praise of Canticles 1.8, 5.9, 6.1. But this is mixed with a Roman theme of an heir to bear one’s memory.

The Beautiful Should Desire the Continuation of Beauty: Memory as Immortality

The movement of lines 2-4 take this public theme of all the world desires the perpetuating of this beauty to this continuing the beauty is a private benefit of one’s memory.

The trick in the argument is the world “But” at the beginning of line 3. The But shifts the argument to a second theme. We don’t know the rhetorical trick because the But is followed by a parenthetical which distracts us.

A second But turns the private argument on its head. But you are so concerned with yourself that you do not even consider your memory.

This stanza says you have no sense of time. A theme Shakespeare will repeatedly consider is the ever present fact of death.

Stanza Two: The effect upon you for your folly

You are consuming your beauty and youth while not even considering the effect this will have upon yourself and upon others:

5] But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

[6] Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

[7] Making a famine where abundance lies,

[8] Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

You are making a famine of yourself.

Ironically, the poet cares for the subject than the subject does to his or her self.

The final stanza moves from argument to rebuke:

9] Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

[10] And only herald to the gaudy spring

[11] Within thine own bud buriest thy content

[12] And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

You are the spring of the world, but you do not care. You the Spring of the world. Your stinginess, your “niggarding” is a waste.

The beauty of your life and body can only be preserved by having a child.

One theory of Shakespeare is that Shakespeare was the front for Edward DeVere. If so, this poem makes sense as a complaint to Elizabeth Queen.

I am unaware of anyone advancing that theory and it may be just nonsense — but then most of the speculation on the “reality” behind the sonnets is nonsense. All or anyone of the sonnets could be fabrications of his imagination. Shakespeare was at the very least inventive.

The couplet draws these themes together into a rebuke

13] Pity the world, or else this glutton be—

[14] To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

It also multiples implications by the sheer compression of the languag.

You are a glutton who eats what is due another by dying- because you will die. You could do us good, but you will not.

The grave is a glutton and eats people. You are a glutton to yourself by giving yourself to the grave.

Selfishness is death in life and a severer death of being forgotten after death.

W.H. Auden, A Shilling Life Will Give You All Facts

18 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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Literature, poem, Poetry

A shilling life will give you all the facts:

How Father beat him, how he ran away,

What were the struggles of his youth, what acts

Made him the greatest figure of his day;

Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,

Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea;

Some of the last researchers even write

Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

With all his honours on, he sighed for one

Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;

Did little jobs about the house with skill

And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still

Or potter round the garden; answered some

Of his long marvellous letters but kept none

Observations:

First, this is a Shakespearean Sonnet: three quatrains with end rhymes on alternating lines; pentameter lines; ended with a couplet. He breaks the form somewhat in that line 13 carries on a thought from the previous quatrain; whereas, Shakespeare typically set the lines of the couplet off more distinctly.

1 A shilling life will give you all the facts:

2 How Father beat him, how he ran away,

3 What were the struggles of his youth, what acts

4 Made him the greatest figure of his day;

The first stanza introduces us to an unnamed “hero”. First, he is sufficiently well-known to be the subject of a biography. Line 4 tells us he was a great man “the greatest figure of his day”.

Line two is interesting in its cadence, because it breaks down into two five syllable section each which begin with “how”. In context, these are given almost as clichés.

It is not until the second stanza that we learned what made him great:

5 Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,

6 Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea;

7 Some of the last researchers even write

8 Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

The fifth line gives us a series of action verbs: fight, fish, hunt, work. He did not merely work, he “worked all night” (at what or when we are not told; but we are to be impressed). He was an explorer of land and sea (even naming a sea).

This was a tremendous man of action.

Lines 7 and 8 foreshadow the last section of the poem and act as a transition. First, “last researchers” will be paralleled by “astonished critics”. And we also must wonder at the object of this love which made him weep.

That it was “last researchers” is even more interesting, because these were people who peered beneath the surface of this great man. Why was he such a great man?

9 With all his honours on, he sighed for one

10 Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;

11 Did little jobs about the house with skill

12 And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still

13 Or potter round the garden; answered some

14 Of his long marvellous letters but kept none

With all his honours: This man was lauded by everyone, but he sought the honor of someone else, who we will learn, did not even keep his letters.

Why wasn’t the love of the whole world enough for him? Where was this one at home? Was it his mother or his father? (He did run away from home). Was it a woman whose love he could not gain?

The critics are astonished: why? Did think that such great acts necessarily were motivated by some cause which would inspire everyone?

With this Auden is getting at something profound about human beings. Even the most famous person, the most powerful, the wealthiest, the most well-loved, the most talented, or whatnot, is still in the end a human being whose world really involves very few. He ran away from home because of his father. There was someone at home whose love he struggled to gain and who would not even keep the “marvelous letters” from the “greatest figure of his day”.

And so in the end it is love and acceptance – not of everyone, because those others don’t really know us (only the “latest researchers” even uncovered the facts; and when they did, they became “astonished critics”).

That you love, that you know me, that you remember matters than all else.

In a culture so wildly driven with celebrity and so willing to make idols and to slander and destroy such celebrities, it might be useful to contemplate this poem. There is a sympathy here which is lacking in so much public discourse.

Housman, When I watch the living meet

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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A Shopshire Lad, A. E. Housman, Death, poem, Poetry, Stoicism

Number XII, A Shopshire Lad

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street
Where I lodge a little while,

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

Rhyme: The stanzas rhyme A-B/A-B, which is a typical “ballad” form.

Meter: The meter is interesting. Other common ballad structure would be iambic lines of 8-6-8-6 syllables, such as number XVIII

Oh, when I was in love with you
Then I was clean and brave
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave

Or, number II, 8-8-8-8

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough

Each of these forms give a different feel. Number XII uses 7 syllable lines. This forces the first syllable to be accented. The effect is to give the feel a forced march: the step is quite, the pace insistent.

This matches the imagery of the first stanza: There is a march along the street “the moving pageant file”. The poet is watching a parade pass-by: the whole world is marching from this world into the next.

Basic theme: Be mindful of death, because it is coming and will bring all this life to naught.

Perspective: The poet writes in the first person. He realizes himself to be temporarily alive. He thinks of what will happen when he (and everyone else) dies.

Imagery:

Parade:

When I watch the living meet,
And the moving pageant file
Warm and breathing through the street

A lodger:

Where I lodge a little while,

Heat/inside a hot house:

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,

Dust/Lodging

Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

The imagery is interesting, because it picks up on the imagery of the parade and heat. The parade could easily be on a dirt street — the poem was published in 1896. The combination of dirt, heat and parade naturally suggest “dust”. Dust alludes to “dust-to-dust”. Here is the selection from the Book of Common Prayer, which Housman would have heard:

Then, while the earth shall be cast upon the Body by some standing by, the Minister shall say,

Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the earth and the sea shall give up their dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his own glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.
Nation:

In the nation that is not
Nothing stands that stood before;

Passions:
There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

Love, marriage, sleep, death:

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.
Observations:

The heat, passions and pageantry of life, and even more the brevity of it all, are contrasted with the silence and endlessness of death. He makes the observation that while he lives, he must come to the realization that he will die and all this will be nothing, will be silent, will be unknown to the citizens of that “nation”. Even the most profound of relationships, marriage, will have no effect upon one after death.

What does not happen here is the most interesting: Housman draws no conclusion, he merely observes. He has no answer to death.

There is an implicit argument for stoicism:

If the heats of hate and lust
In the house of flesh are strong,
[The] Let me mind the house of dust
Where my sojourn shall be long.

If I am feeling passion (hate and lust); remember, these passions will soon become nothing. The effect of such a realization would be to deflate the importance of the present passion. If I am filled with hate, right now, remember this “revenge [will be] forgot.” If I am filled with sexual desire (lust), even that — even if there is a marriage — that will have no effect upon in the very near future.

The poem merely counsels, at most, resignation and detachment from the present loves and hates. In this sounds a stoic theme (such this from book 4 of Aurelius’ Meditations):

It is a vulgar, but still a useful help towards contempt of death, to pass in review those who have tenaciously stuck to life. What more then have they gained than those who have died early? Certainly they lie in their tombs somewhere at last, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or any one else like them, who have carried out many to be buried, and then were carried out themselves. Altogether the interval is small between birth and death; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people and in what a feeble body this interval is laboriously passed. Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?

It is very difficult for this resignation to bring one to any action. Yes, it may alleviate at times the pain of some current event: who cares, I’ll soon be dead. But that also has a tendency to drain lovely things of their beauty:

Lovers lying two and two
Ask not whom they sleep beside,
And the bridegroom all night through
Never turns him to the bride.

This offers a freedom from fear of vengeance,

There revenges are forgot,
And the hater hates no more;

But it also robs us love. It is good to contrast this with Shakespeare’s sonnet 73:

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.).

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams, Part Three (A sight of a cynic)

17 Sunday Feb 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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Cynic, Dignity, Diogenes, Diogenes Laertius, Honesty, Literature, poem, Poetry, Pretense, Reverence, William Carlos Williams

The third poem in what appears to be a triptych of Williams is again named “Pastoral” as was the first in the series. Williams again takes the part of a detached but certainly not disinterested observer. While he does not involve himself in the matter under consideration, he deeply cares about it. Indeed, in this final poem he is “astonish me beyond words”.

This poem again comes around to the poor and their dignity — unknown and unobserved by those of Williams’ native world — but this time he begins with “little sparrows”:

The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.

The scene is easy to understand for anyone who has ever seen a sparrow: the small birds are hoping about doing something and making their sharp sounds. But there are a few things here which are interesting:

First the intensity of the birds’ conduct: they hop, they quarrel, their voices are sharp. There is a great intensity to their conduct.

44706650454_41bdb91cd1_k

(Photo by Jorma Peltoniemi)

Second, the birds have no concern for the poet watching them at their business: the birds hop ‘ingenuously’. There is a complete unstudied and unconcerned freedom about the birds conduct. They have their own world and the poet may not enter: he can see, but not participate. Also, the subject of their quarrel is their own concern: “those things/that interest them.” They simply don’t care about Williams.

The birds’ unconcern is matched by the human detachment:

But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.

We people “shut ourselves in”. We are “wiser” and so we don’t concern ourselves with these matters. We certainly do not tell anyone, “no one knows whether we think good/or evil.” We — in seeming dignity (as opposed to the undignified “ingenuous” birds) — do not let on our judgment.

There is an ironic allusion here to the Fall: our wisdom (“we who are wiser”) does not lead to us to judgment; no one even knows whether we judge this good or evil. The Fall described in Genesis 3, concerns the temptation of the shrewd serpent who tricked Eve into believing that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would make her wise and she would become as God (of the gods):

Genesis 3:5–6 (NASB95)
5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

All of this wisdom has resulted in a stultified judgment: we simply don’t concern ourselves with these lowly animals.

The faint allusion to the Bible is again hinted at in the next stanza.

Meanwhile
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.

Dog-lime is a riddle. Doing a little looking I found a message board of similarly stumped readers, and someone suggested that it may mean trying to find something to eat in the gutter, or possibly some residue of dog-feces. Whatever the meaning, it is obviously unbecoming: it is a mark of this man “in the gutter” who never looks up: he is the precise opposite of the Episcopal minister on a Sunday morning (the most dignified of men). But here is another use of “dog” and this rather unreverent man which we will consider in a moment.

The reference to “dog” is the exact opposite of “god” (which is an obvious joke made at length by Joyce in Ulysses — which Williams would not have known).

But there is a patent allusion to Wilde in Lady Windermere’s Fan:

Lord Darlington. No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. [Sits down at C. table.]
Dumby. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars? Upon my word, you are very romantic to-night, Darlington.

Our old man, very unromantically, does not even look up from the gutter: he is scrounging for some offal of some sort.

The old man is like the sparrows: he is about something intently. It is a matter of life and death to him, and he bears no pretense. He has no concern about the poet or anyone else. Like the sparrow he carries on his life in public.

Now let us return to the vague reference to dog-lime which seems to invoke the Cynic Diogenes who carried on his live in public, like a dog, with no concern about the thoughts of others.

Waterhouse-Diogenes

(John William Waterhouse, Diogenes)

Here are some references from Diogenes Laertius which may help explicate this poem. He writes of the first great cynic Diogenes as follows:

Through watching a mouse running about, says Theophrastus in the Megarian dialogue, not looking for a place to lie down in, not afraid of the dark, not seeking any of the things which are considered to be dainties, he discovered the means of adapting himself to circumstances. He was the first, say some, to fold his cloak because he was obliged to sleep in it as well, and he carried a wallet to hold his victuals, and he used any place for any purpose, for breakfasting, sleeping, or conversing. And then he would say, pointing to the portico of Zeus and the Hall of Processions, that the Athenians had provided him with places to live in.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 25–27.

And one day when Plato had invited to his house friends coming from Dionysius, Diogenes trampled upon his carpets and said, “I trample upon Plato’s vainglory.” Plato’s reply was, “How much pride you expose to view, Diogenes, by seeming not to be proud.” Others tell us that what Diogenes said was, “I trample upon the pride of Plato,” who retorted, “Yes, Diogenes, with pride of another sort.”

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 27–29.

He would say that men strive in digging and kicking to outdo one another, but no one strives to become a good man and true.

And he would wonder that the grammarians should investigate the ills of Odysseus, while they were ignorant of their own. Or that the musicians should tune the strings of the lyre, while leaving the dispositions of their own souls discordant; [28] that the mathematicians should gaze at the sun and the moon, but overlook matters close at hand; that the orators should make a fuss about justice in their speeches, but never practise it; or that the avaricious should cry out against money, while inordinately fond of it. He used also to condemn those who praised honest men for being superior to money, while themselves envying the very rich.

At a feast certain people kept throwing all the bones to him as they would have done to a dog.Thereupon he played a dog’s trick and drenched them.

So I think it safe to say that this old man in the gutter seeking dog-lime is no romantic; rather, he is the precise opposite of the romantic. But he is also a man utterly without pretense or deception (although he is possessed of a very different pretense; yet, he is an animal and in parallel to the sparrows).

By setting the old man up as a cynic, Williams displays this old man as an honest man. The most famous incident of Diogenes involves a lamp, “He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, “I am looking for a man.” (λύχνον μεθʼ ἡμέραν ἅψας περιῄει λέγων “ἄνθρωπον ζητῶ.”)

Diogenes_looking_for_a_man_-_attributed_to_JHW_Tischbein

This dog-man is set up in direct contrast to the great master of dignity and civilization and Williams finds the Cynic (Greek for “dog”) more “majestic” than the minister.

The poem then ends with the self-abnegating lines:

These things
Astonish me beyond words.

The irony here is that Williams has actually provided words, may precise and well-calibrated words which make allusion to Oscar Wilde and a Greek philosopher. He is so “astonished” “beyond words” that he has given us words. What this must mean is that his poem aims at but does not achieve the end which he sought (which is the common element of anyone who has written and judged himself honestly).

So what then is the summary of Williams’ attitude to the poor? First, he cannot enter into their world. He is observes from a distance; he is astonished and finds great beauty and dignity; but he is still a world-apart. Second, he sees in them a dignity which transcends their circumstance. They are more “majestic” than the height of Williams’ own class and world. It is a sort of barbaric dignity and beauty which he sees.

Third, his poem is the connection which draws him into their world. He sees, frames, understands and makes their lives something intelligible him; even if that intelligibility leaves him at a distance. His words do something, but they cannot do all.

A poem by Thomas Hardy

13 Wednesday Feb 2019

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poem, Poetry, Thomas Hardy

Fame and power in human beings is a relative thing. I knew a man who was quite famous in one country. His picture was on billboards and posters. He was on tv. People would wait for hours to great him. Yet in his home country, he was unknown. A lovely pleasant interesting man, but not the least famous.

Power too is all in perception. A king is only a king because others think him so.

Time is distance too. When time makes a king unknown; the king’s power is all in the people who visit – and in this case it is those who died nearby. The king is now a lamppost, a sign or marker. He is nothing himself.

ROME AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS (1887)

Who, then, was Cestius,

And what is he to me?

-Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous

One thought alone brings he.

I can recall no word

Of anything he did;

For me he is a man who died and was interred

To leave a pyramid

Whose purpose was exprest

Not with its first design,

Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest

Two countrymen of mine.

Cestius in life, maybe,

Slew, breathed out threatening;

I know not. This I know: in death all silently

He does a kindlier thing,

In beckoning pilgrim feet

With marble finger high

To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,

Those matchless singers lie . . .

—Say, then, he lived and died

That stones which bear his name

Should mark, through Time, where two immortal

Shades abide;

It is an ample fame.

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams, Part Two

02 Saturday Feb 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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Al Que Quiere!, Apology, Literature, poem, Poetry, William Carlos Williams

Al Que Quiere! - Wikipedia

In a previous post we noted that Williams wrote a series of three poems (published in Al Que Quiere! (1917)) concerning the poor. There was a certain ambiguity in the first poem Pastoral (there is a second poem also named “Pastoral”) concerning Williams’ relationship with the subject: was he mocking the poor or the pastoral form? Was he objectifying the poor and thus dehumanizing their plight? How should we resolve these questions.

In the second poem of the series, Apology, Williams considers not the home of the poor, but the poor themselves:

Apology

Why do I write today?

The beauty of

the terrible faces

of our nonentities

stirs me to it:

colored women

day workers –

old and experienced –

return home at dusk

in cast off clothing

faces like

old Florentine oak.

Also

the set pieces

of your faces stir me –

leading citizens-

but not in the same way.

Here, Williams considers the “terrible faces” of “our nonentities”. First we must note that “terrible” does not have the connotations of extremely bad, poor quality, et cetera. Here are some contemporary uses of the phrase “terrible face”:

Quo Vadis, “She imagined him having a terrible face, an immovable malice in the features”. (1899) The Clash, 1922, “the terrible face of the wounded man”. A short story in Good Housekeeping, The River’s End, “It was a haunting and terrible face, a face heavy and deeply lined”. The courage of Captain Plum, 1924, “Nathaniel tried to stifle the cry on his lips, tried to smile, to speak — but the terrible face that stared up into his own held him silent, motionless.” [Both The River’s End and Captain Plum were written by James Oliver Curwood, he apparently like that phrase.] In fact, 1919, was the highpoint in the use of the phrase “terrible face”!

These faces are thus peculiarly striking, they are faces that do something to the observer.

Williams does not speak of horror of these faces, for he refers to the “beauty” of these “terrible faces”. He is walking along and arrested by the horror which has marked and the beauty which shows from the faces of these poor “colored women”. Here are the most downtrodden and he sees them.

There is nothing romanticized about their appearance, and he yet finds elegance here: their faces are beautiful and like “Florentine oak”: a phrase which has a whiff of the ancient world. When combined with the phrase “terrible face” it may not be reading too much allusion to think of some Roman demigod. Their castoff clothing is then a kind of disguise.

But at the same time, these are poor women in poor clothes walking home from a difficult job as night descends. These women have become real to him. It is as if he has just noticed them.

And note the title, the poem is an “apology”: I am sorry, dear reader, leading citizen, that I have noticed the beauty and humanity of these fellow-creatures whom you have seeming not seen.

He then addresses his “leading citizens” directly: “your faces” — which are “set pieces” also have an affect upon me.

The last line then comes as a cut, “but not in the same way.”

There is nothing smug in Williams consideration of the poor. Rather than objectifying the poor, they have intruded into his conscious as real people. This is not to say he does not recognize a profound distance. He does not pretend to enter into their world. He offers no help. He does nothing to change a thing.

This is only a poem: not a call to some action. But I think for making itself a bare poem — without the pomposity and politics which mar most (all?) contemporary poetry (nothing is so dull and limiting as politics in poetry — the politics are jejune and the poetry is mundane) — makes it more powerful.

The poor who are so often not recognized have become quite real. They are there in beauty with their “terrible faces”. The “leading citizens” are criticized because they have missed what he has found.

These poor women must first become human beings in the eyes of the “leading citizens” before anything can be done. Otherwise, the response to these women will be render them something less than human, lacking agency: objects of the leading citizens’ largesse rather than human being deserving of respect on the same ground as any human: both good and bad.

These women, after all, have “terrible faces” and “beauty”.

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams (Part One)

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Uncategorized

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Literature, poem, Poetry, William Carlos Williams

There are series of three poems from Al Que Quiere! (1917) which concern the same matter of the persons perhaps most likely neglected as objects of poetry. This attention would not be interesting in and of itself today: looking for outcasts, portraying the outcast is sure sign of artistic integrity.

Two of the poems are entitled “Pastoral”, their companion is “Apology”. The first pastoral begins:

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself

The patter is five – five – eight. The longer line exhausts the idea and makes a bit of closure. What then is the idea: ambition: which ambition is going to contrasted with the wisdom of age:

Older now

I walk back streets

How the opposite of ambition. He is not in a place to be seen, here is in backstreets.

Admiring the houses

Of the very poor:

He then lists out the items he sees:

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong;

the fences and outhouses

built of barrel-staves

and parts of boxes, all,

if I am fortunate

smeared a bluish green

that properly weathered

pleases me best

of all colors.

Before we come to the conclusion, we are left with a bit of a question: Is he ironic? Not ironic in finding the items visually interesting. There is something visually interesting in decay. Any number of photographers have used such things as either the subject or the backdrop for their images.

But the irony of saying such a color “pleases” him. There is a strange tone in the pastoral subject of poetry were the poet idealizes another’s poverty as a place of serenity and tranquill beauty – away from whatever ambition and hurry has ceased the poet and his world. But we never see the poet volunteer to become poor. (Dickens, to his credit may idealize some poor people, but he does not romanticize poverty per se.)

Is Williams merely finding beauty where it can be found – is it a realization that his ambition is of little good except for beauty? Is there a mocking of the “pastoral”?

He ends with

No one

will believe this

of vast importance to the nation.

What is of no importance? His vision of beauty? The fact that he likes the color? The lives of the poor?

We know that he has gotten something wrong – his early ambition has given way to looking at the poor and seeking beauty in their ramshackle existence.

The next poem, “Apology” may help understand the first (assuming he holds a consistent position).

Why the Scripture Uses Poetry (Hosea 2:14-15)

10 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Hosea, Uncategorized

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God's Speech, Hebrew Poetry, Hosea, Hosea 2, Hosea 2:14-15, poem, Poetry

Morning in the Vinyard

[Photograph by Michael Pardo]

Hosea 2:14–15 (ESV)

¹⁴ “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,

and bring her into the wilderness,

and speak tenderly to her.

¹⁵ And there I will give her her vineyards

and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.

Notice the structure here:

Speech: allure

Land: wilderness

Speech: speak tenderly

Land: Vineyard

[Valley of Achor]

The Scripture relies upon a variety of types of writing/speaking: there are stories, contracts, law codes, letters (public and personal), poems. The prophets seem particularly drawn to poety.

Why is this? Why does the Bible rely upon poetry? Poetry doesn’t mean symbols, images, rhythms, rhymes or patterns. Poetry certainly uses all those elements; but so do other forms of language. In fact all good writing and speaking must be cognizant all such elements (and more). I say this, because there is a bizarre belief that poetry means “symbolic” (this is seen in the strange argument that if Genesis 1 is poetry it somehow is non-literal; such an argument could only be made someone who knows little to nothing about poetry). Poetry can be quite “literal” (read some Homer or Alexander Pope).

What poetry does in particular is to compress language with great deliberate intricacy. The purpose of poetry is both pleasure and to change how we think.

The pleasure of poetry’s compression is typically lost on contemporary readers: we are not a people who treasure words. We are a distinctly anti-rhetorical people. And so, I will pass over pleasure at this point.

But the compression and difficulty of poetry forces us to think along lines and in patterns which differ greatly from our “normal” life. Just the use of deliberate rhythm and sound makes poetry different from common speech.

This makes poetry especially useful for achieving one of the principle features of the Scripture: to change the way we think. We think wrongly – and poorly. We think up is down, evil is good. We desire those things which will destroy us; we ignore those things which will save us. We kill Christ and make a king of Herod. We count the rich man at his dinner in the best of positions; and ignore Lazarus at the gate.

And so the Scripture has been given not merely to inform us like a manual (yes there is much information in the Scripture), but to transform us:

Romans 12:2 (ESV)

²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

The patterns and complications of poetry make us stop and think slowly and carefully. We cannot breeze through poetry and still maintain a high degree of comprehension. Hebrew poetry emphasizes the complication of thought – often in ways which can be discerned only after puzzling upon a pair of lines.

While we tend to think of poetry as defined by verse (metrical writing often with rhyming), Hebrew poetry depends primarily upon the rhyming and dissonance of ideas. Yes, Hebrew does concern itself with sound and rhythm (for instance in the passage quoted above, the word “wilderness” sounds very similar to the word “speak” in the next line; there is a reason for this).

This fact of Hebrew poetry relying so heavily upon the concept as opposed to the end rhyme is a boon to translation. Translation of rhymed verse is very difficult to achieve in a second language; but the translation of ideas can be done without repeated the sound qualities of the original language. This is an instance of providence, that God chose the Hebrew language.

The patterns of ideas are meant to force us to compare and contrast the parts. We hold up two ideas for careful examination, noting how they compare and differ: in so doing, we learn both elements better.

Pick up any common object: a coffee mug, say. Describe it. Then choose a second cup and compare the two. You will easily learn more elements of each by means of the comparison than you would have noticed by considering one. This process is especially true when ideas are compared and contrasted.

Hosea purposefully sets up a contrast and comparison here. First there are two lines about speaking:

I will allure

I will speak tenderly

Then are two lines about the land and plants

Wilderness

Vineyards

The overall pattern is

Allure

In the wilderness

Speak tenderly

Give vineyards.

Let us consider first the two descriptions of speech:

Allure and speak tenderly.

The English translation “allure” does not quite capture the range of the Hebrew:

PIEL פִּתָּה.—(1) to persuade any one (πείθω), Jer. 20:7; especially in a bad sense, 1 Ki. 22:20, seq.; Jud. 14:15; 16:5; 2 Sam. 3:25; hence to entice, to seduce, Ex. 22:15; Prov. 1:10; 16:29.

(2) to deceive any one, to delude with words (Gr. ἀπατάω, to which Greek etymologists commonly assign an incorrect derivation), Psa. 78:36; Prov. 24:28, הֲפִתִּיתָ בִּשְׂפָתֶיךָ “wilt thou deceive with thy lips?” i.e. deceive not, see הֲ No. 1, a.

Wilhelm Gesenius and Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2003), 696. The word used to describe God’s speech to his wayward wife is a word which means something like entice, seduce, deceive. The Septuagint (the ancient translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek) uses the word which means “lead into error” to translate the word pettah here.

That word alone is arresting: God is going to deceive his wife? But that word is then paired with the line “speak tenderly to” (literally speak upon her heart). The words are used to describe careful, tender speech between lovers. How then should we think about the manner in which God speaks to Israel?

Next we have speech in the connection with wilderness and cultivated plants of a garden (a vineyard). This harkens back to the wilderness of Exodus and the land of Canaan. It also harkens to the Garden of Eden and the wilderness outside the garden. It also reminds us of the difference in the world before and after Adam’s fall.

These allusions are coupled to God speaking. All of these instances are marked by the speech of God:

Deuteronomy 4:33 (ESV)

³³Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live?

Compare that to the idols which have been viciously seducing Israel to her harm:

Psalm 115:5 (ESV)

⁵ They [idols] have mouths, but do not speak;

eyes, but do not see.

Next: the idols whom Israel worshipped in the hope of obtaining luxuriant vineyards brought them to exile and wilderness (when in reality it has been the Lord):

Hosea 2:8–9 (ESV)

⁸ And she did not know

that it was I who gave her

the grain, the wine, and the oil,

and who lavished on her silver and gold,

which they used for Baal.

⁹ Therefore I will take back

my grain in its time,

and my wine in its season,

and I will take away my wool and my flax,

which were to cover her nakedness.

— This only begins to uncover the complications and allusions in the text. The allusions and complications are developed even further in reference to Achor and then the discussion of the wife’s response (which again brings about speech and a remembrance of the wilderness). Further speech by God brings about even greater degrees of transformation.

This then raises the question of precisely how is God going to “allure” and “speak tenderly”? Will it be speech from Mount Sinai again? That hardly sounds like a tender and ardent lover:

Hebrews 12:18–21 (ESV)

¹⁸For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest ¹⁹and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. ²⁰For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.” ²¹Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”

How then does he speak? What does he say? You start to see how the layering and patterns of the language require careful thought and attention to understand. This is one reason why the prophets are so often skipped over and thought to be obscure. Yet the prophecy here is not obscure, it is only very dense.