Every Thought...
Week 35: Water
This was a whimsical experiment, taking up the pen and hoping to be inspired. I know well that life, or any moment of it, cannot reduce to words, but I would still try to capture the beauty of it.
08/26:
TWL, Part IV: Translations
311.5 IV. Death by Water
ACT FOUR: This is the water section, the fourth of five sections of The Waste Land that adopt the themes of the classical elements of earth, air, fire, water and wind (see note 0.5). Eliot foreshadowed the title and theme of this section pages earlier when Madame Sosostris generally warned her patron to “Fear death by water” (line 55). Like the previous sections, this shorter section is full of allusions, but the primary source of the text is now Eliot’s own voice, loosely translated from a poem he first wrote in French. See notes 312-321.
“YOU” THE READER are in this poem. One might argue that the poet could just as easily have been talking to himself (see line 17) or addressing a particular audience (see the Son of Man at lines 20-30 or the “hypocrite lecteur” at 69-76), or setting up a conversation between characters (see the hyacinth girl and her companion at lines 35-42; Madame Sosostris and her patron at lines 43-59; or the nervous companion at lines 113-126) or playing a single character’s part (see Hieronymo at line 432).
But the passage in this fourth part seems to be spoken through a crack in the fourth wall, directed more to the “you” of the moment: you, whether transient audience or fellow pilgrim, Gentile or Jew (line 319), who would seek answers through the figurative reading of the cards and the various surrounding elements. At line 320 it is you who turns the wheel of the seasons, and also you who would turn with the poet towards the wind, that fifth classical element about to be introduced in Part V.
Maybe, Gentile or Jew, it has been you in the poem all along, at every instance.
DECONSTRUCTION comes first, however. Before moving windward, consider at lines 312-321 what the water has done, and compare this to how each of the classical elements is deconstructed in turn, beginning at the end of Part I, when the reader is asked to consider what happens to a body planted in the earth (see lines 69-76); then near the end of Part II, when the poet asks, in response to the “you” of lines 113-126, what “we” can ever do in the empty air (see lines 131-138); and finally at the end of Part III, amidst the consumption of fire, when you are turned through the poet’s prodding (see note 308) to the Sermon on the Mount, addressed very much to “you.” See Matthew 6:23 (note 0.5):
“If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
TRANSLATIONS: For a final take on the identity of “you,” consider the multiple languages used throughout Eliot’s poem and notes, with at least 27 passages that Eliot deliberately left untranslated, including Greek (line 0.3), Italian (lines 0.4 and 428 and notes 64, 293 and 428), German (lines 12, 31-34 and 42 and note 367), French (lines 76 and 202 and note 60), Nymphic (lines 77-278, 290-291 and 306), Birdsong (lines 103, 203-206, 358 and 393), Old Occitan (line 428 and note 428), Latin (line 429 and notes 92 and 218), Old English (line 432) and Sanskrit (433-434; Sanskrit also appears with translation at lines 402, 412 and 419 and note 434). This use of many voices, like the children’s voices singing in the dome (see line 202 ad note 202), may suggest an appeal to a universal audience, with you being all who have ears (see Matthew 11:14 (note 0.5): “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”). Yet it is in this Part IV that Eliot departs from this aloofness by translating Dans Le Restaurant, one of his own earlier poems (see note 321) that had previously been published only in French. He is still addressing a universal audience by appealing ecumenically to Gentile or Jew (line 319), but even in doing this he is addressing a singular reader: you, having not only ears but a part in the action (line 320) and striking similarities to the victim (line 321).
08/27:
Poetry Discovered On A Rainy Day
Poetry is trying to find
a thousand words without a camera,
to compose an image, more, to capture
the message of a chance alignment
will serve you better than your cell phone’s
snapshot “can you hear me now?”
Poetry is taking the time,
waiting for lighting, adjusting the speed
and exposure. I, on a rainy day,
once found the perfect picture
when sunshine filtered through rolling gray
to give the raindrops their color. Now
and then looking for reason
you discover the art of a thousand words.
08/28:
1. Snapshot
...I, on a rainy day, once found the perfect picture
when sunshine filtered through rolling gray
to give raindrops their color. Now
cameras are useless brushes, should some sudden need occur
, forever missing pixels, looking past contrast, losing focus;
paint (oil, acrylic, maybe watercolor?) too cannot capture our
climate’s spectral shades, frameless moments, shifting facts;
language isn’t any better, not very, but if you’ll pardon
contractions and count them anyhow (allow poetic cheats,
permit imperfections), my pen is drawn. I’m ready. I’ll try.
08/29:
2. Snapchat
(...trying to find a thousand words without a camera...)
subtitle: 1,000 imperfect words; thesis: an impossible sudoku.
opening paragraph, initial sentencing: possessive noun,
adjectives, subjective action verb, adverbs, et cetera... already
skeptical critics would criticize, deconstruct, misconstrue &
decompose what I’ve proposed / begun composing:
meanwhile, earth’s atmosphere weeps / continues weeping;
another imitative artist cries, his ink unerasably flowing.
08/30:
3. Twitter
(...to compose an image, more, to capture...)
precipitation’s plain dull pallette shivers endlessly, above
below around: today we wait, anticipating better fronts, left
listening for conclusive punctuation, getting only ellipses,
gradual premonitions hinting what’s coming: distant booms
first telegraphed in whiplashed flashes; later followed by
smells, electricity’s ominous odor, dampened dust, stirred up
dirt, awakened earth; finally touch, feel: rainfall taking over.
08/31:
4. Messaging
(...the message of a chance alignment...)
rain: cold colorless falling wet hard relentless dominating,
weather offputting, setting aside coatless hatless daylight
hours, nature’s nowcast, never mind forecast, upsetting social
structures, cancelling performances played, attended,
offering lightning’s unsubscribed sizzle instead, deceptively
dry; thunder, decidedly loud exclamations without explana-
tion; patter, splatter, drizzle, less music than noise then pour.
09/01:
Moleskin 4.7: New World
Meanwhile, for all the resistance to change this old man was showing, my own world was like Richard Nixon: full of it, with a banner headline of unasked for, unexpected news. Not only the house and the dad, but we were dropped into a new neighborhood with none of my old friends. I had to give up the paper route job, and in the fall I would be going to a new school —a bigger junior high school, no less. We started going to a new church, a Baptist church, where my mom was now working as an organist and where my step-dad was the treasurer. And the change kept a-coming: I was given chores: mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage; and a behavior code: being told to speak more courteously to adults, or better, not to speak at all. At ages eight and five my malleable, eager to please brothers seemed impervious to all this, but they had not had more than incidental friendships and didn’t have to quit a job and were still in the first half of elementary school. But I was almost a teenager, brimming with angst and anger, and I did not want all this change.
No comments:
Post a Comment