Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Final Blog Post
So the moment is here that I must write the blog I really don't want to write. I'm not sure if it is because it is almost midnight, and I am stressed and overwhelmed by school and therefore sleep deprived or what but just trying to write this post has me feeling like maybe my tear ducts which have seemed to be completely incapable of producing tears for the last 5 years might not be entirely broken. I hate knowing that this is not only my last blog for this class but also my last blog entry for all of school because how could i possibly make it say everything that it should? I have decided not to try to force this blog to say anything at all but instead i will just let it be a bit of a memorial to both my time in this capstone class and my time as an English major.
As i finish school and get ready to move and start a very different life I feel excited, anxious, confused, scared, and basically every other adjective there is. These feeling don't arise so much from the beginning of a new chapter as they do the closing of the other one. I spent the large majority of my time as an English major feeling a bit out of place, not sure if i had chosen the right major and not sure if English lit was really for me. It took me until the very end to figure it out but i am so grateful that i finally did. Even though I sometimes felt like i didn't belong or I didn't understand what everyone else seemed to know I chose the right major and even if I am unemployed and broke because of it for the rest of my life i would sign up for this again if i had the choice. Sure there are some things i would do differently (probably worked my absolute hardest during all my years in school) but i would never chose a different major! I guess my biggest regret right now is writing this blog entitled "Final Blog Post" because i feel like i have so many posts left in me and so many questions still unanswered, however this is just the way of life, i will probably always fell this way. So while i still feel like i haven't accomplished everything i wanted to or had all my questions answered i can leave this class feeling only happy about this experience, mostly because this class was so great.
I could not have been luckier when it came to my capstone class, it really seemed to me to be sort of perfect, comprised of really great peers and an excellent instructor which makes it that much harder to see it end. I feel like i still have so many more blog posts left in me, I still have so much more to say about The Four Quartets and The Bhagavad Gita and Hamlet and The Wind in the Willows, but instead this last blog is really just going to say thank you. Thank you to Dr. Sexson who really was the best teacher I could of ever hoped to have for this class, and really for any class. Thank you to Jennie Lynn and Sam and anyone else who joined us at the coffee shop for teaching me just as much outside of class as I learned in it. Thank you to my group for absolutely everything. Thank you to Kari,Erin, Zuzu, Nick, Tai, Kevin, Lisa and Lisa, Taylor, Doug, Adam, Mick, Vistoria, Rian, Amy, Pat, Craig, and anyone else who i might have possibly missed for adding so much to m education, reading our blogs was like reading a book written just for me answering the questions that I asked and telling me what I wanted to know! So thanks to everyone in the class for helping me to finally figure out that I made the right choice in my major, and now i can leave school maybe knowing that while i didn't always work my absolute hardest and maybe skipped a class i shouldn't have i have no regrets.
First Group Presentations
So the first two group presentations set the bar VERY high, frighteningly so! I was really amazed at the way both were able to tie so many thing into such a short amount of time! I must admit while it was actually going on the presentation Sam and Tai's group went a bit over my head, however after it was over and they explained it all I realized that it was completely brilliant. I was also really surprised to see that Tai was such a great violinist, it never ceases to amaze me that all of my classmates have so many hidden talents. Kevin and Pats group did a great job of following this presentation because they both had such different feels to them. While the first presentation was more somber and elegiac the second one was much more humorous and fun. I fully agree with Kari that Hamlet the Prequel needs to be made into a movie! Overall I was very impressed (this seems to be a common thing in this class) and I hope that we can live up to such high standards that have been set for the rest of us!
Monday, April 26, 2010
While I was working on my final paper I went back and re-read Eliot's Four Quartets another 12-15 times, and was completely struck by how much it had to say to me every new time I picked it up. While i had read it numerous times already for this class it had never seemed as amazing as it has recently. With each new line that I read I realize how beautiful it is and I start to get a sense of what I think Eliot is saying. While completely and disgustingly sick over the weekend I picked up my copy to try and memorize my allotted lines and of course got side tracked reading the whole poem over and over again, in doing this I suddenly started to feel very sad about graduating, graduating without understanding everything that the poem is saying. I feel unprepared and unready. When will I ever be given the chance to have incredible literature already picked out for me and then explained to me by a professor and an entire class? What if after enough years out of school working at some soul-sucking bureaucratic job I become the person who reads Nicholas Sparks and Dan Brown? And even worse considers it literature? My last reading of The Four Quartets left me feeling like a bit of an English major fraud, unsure that I would be able to enjoy Nabokov without an entire class guiding me or read poetry without a teacher picking the best ones out of the anthology for me. I have absolutely loved being an English major, honestly I picked this major for all the wrong reasons but in some twist of fate it turned out to be what I really loved, and it is my hope that the things I have learned wont be entirely lost once I leave school. So as I have started to pack up my house, deciding what will make it onto the plane with me and what will be left behind- bidding sad farewells to most of my books- I have decided that my now ratty and marked-up copy of The Four Quartets will without a doubt be moving with me. I guess even if I forget most of what I have learned as the years pass by I hope that being an English major has at least made me into the type of person who will keep reading this poem and keep looking for all the different things that it says.
Final Paper Presentations
Really all I can say after hearing every ones presentations of their papers is wow! I was so impressed with every ones papers that by the end of them all I wanted to do was go home and re-write mine. I think that everyone in the class completed the assignment of writing the best paper they have ever written and i really enjoyed getting to hear about every ones, a few that stick out in my mind are Robert's Nabokovian story, Lisa's story in which she realized that each rain drop was a little epiphany, Taylor's amazing paper about children and epiphanies with her own insightful journal entries, Sam's unbelievably cool reading journal, Jennie Lynn's paper on the still point, and both Ty and Kari's hilarious presentations. If I didn't mention you it doesn't mean your paper wasn't as good it just means that after writing a paper all about the importance of memory I still am left being completely forgetful! All I know is that I wish I had been able to present last now because every single persons presentation helped me to better understand all the things that we have been talking about in class and made me want to write something worthy of such amazing company! So congratulations to everyone on such awesome, epiphany inspiring capstone papers!
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Final Paper
Wow, after listening to everyone's presentations so far I have to admit i feel pretty nervous about putting this up, but here you go, my final paper!
Almost a Remembrance:
Memory in literature and literature as memory
“Memory is the scribe of the soul”
-Aristotle
Five years ago a man gave a very confused girl some valuable advice. He told her to think long and hard about what she would chose to major in during her time in college, for the decision would most certainly affect her future. He told her something that would take five years for her to truly appreciate. He advised, “Remember, studying stories doesn’t really help you do anything in real life; it doesn’t prepare you for any real job.” Although the girl barely knew the man, she decided that to spite him and his unsolicited input she would study literature. After studying a subject for five years that she had chosen to some degree out of malice, it became clear that the man had in fact imparted on her a lesson of the utmost significance and importance. His words had been trying to teach her the same lesson that all the stories she would read would give her. She just hadn’t been listening to the right ones. He had said the same thing to her that the divine beings from Jesus to Krishna imparted in their holy texts. The same thing that the characters in the works from Shakespeare to Joyce came to know and the same thing that all stories tell to those who break open their covers and read their pages: remember.
Thomas Mann began the work that he considered his magnum opus, Joseph and His Brothers, with the line “Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?”(Mann, 3) Mann resonates a feeling of awe at both the measureless and mysterious nature that is universal and has led mankind to ask so many cliché questions about the existential ponderings on life and death and time and the divine. In turn literature endeavored to provide answers, offering the characters moments of revelations, bestowing an understanding of the absolute truths for which humankind has always searched. These literary epiphanies provide answers to the characters on the page, if only for a moment, but they can only try to capture an overwhelming feeling in words for its readers. While the epiphanies on the page may not provide answers themselves to the reader they instead present the means--memory. Mann deemed the past to be a bottomless well, yet literature is the bucket carrying what seemed to be lost to the surface.
While some works of literature provide the means to recognize epiphanies and understanding in a hidden or ambiguous manner, many works literally come right out and say it. Alas, like the confused student, most readers simply don’t listen to the right words. In Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet the ghost of the king asserts “remember me.” In the sacred Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita Krishna similarly says “remember me.” In the book of Luke Jesus says “do this in remembrance of me.” James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake ends with Anna Livia Plurabelle’s command to “mememormee.” The message of these works is clear, yet knowing what it means is much more uncertain. While it first may seem that the characters and texts only require one to remember them individually, literature as a whole suggests a different option--just remember. Remember the king’s ghost, remember Christ and Krishna and Anna Livia, remember it all for it is this ability—remembrance--that connects the reader to the literature and the epiphanies in them. It is this ability that allows the great epiphanies of literature to transcend the pages on which they were written and reach the reader. The only genuine experiences, and therefore the only experiences which can provide meaning and understanding and answers to the eternally-asked questions, are those that come about through the agency of remembering.
T.S. Eliot wrote in what he called “his finest and most profound poem,” The Four Quartets, “We had the experience but missed the meaning, / And approach to the meaning restores the experience/ In a different form, beyond any meaning/ We can assign happiness. I have said before/ That the past experience revived in the meaning/ Is not the experience of one life only/ But of many generations-not forgetting/ Something that is probably quite ineffable” (Eliot, 39). It is in this line, and throughout the entire poem, that Eliot gives his rendition if the line “Remember me.” His vision of the restoration of the past reflects the crucial ways in which memory affects meaning and time in all of literature. The beauty of The Four Quartets is overwhelming, its lessons innumerable and its meaning seemingly immeasurable. The opening quartet begins as the narrator and the audience follows a bird into a rose garden only to enter a labyrinth that will take them down “Into the perpetual world of solitude”(Eliot, 18) and back into the sunlight where “rises the hidden laughter/ Of children”(Eliot, 20). From the “open field” of East Coker, to the river and sea of The Dry Salvages and the isolated street of Little Gidding, Eliot seems to weave literature and philosophy, understanding and confusion, questions and answers into an eternally unfolding design. After reading the poem over and over again, and each time finding new and greater understandings from it, I resign myself to it. In order to understand memory I find that I must heed Eliot’s genius, take his hand and follow the bird into the rose garden. Eliot writes, “There is only the fight to recover what has been lost/ And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions/ That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. / For us there is only the trying” (Eliot, 31). Well, here is to the trying.
Memory itself is overall a fairly abstract matter, in its most basic sense it is the ability to collect and preserve information and recall it at a later time. This is considered to be a function of the brain. However, the question arises whether there is more to memory than this and if perhaps at a much higher level, memory becomes less a function of the brain and more a function of the soul. Through literature, memory not only works to recall information in the most rudimentary way, bringing back to mind experiences and scenes that one has encountered, it also is the agency that allows transcendence of time and what could be called divinity. As the functions of memory increase one is able to ascend higher, like rungs on a ladder, in order to find the very features that are an epiphany, a greater, eternal truth.
The Greek word for truth came from the same word used to describe the river of forgetfulness, the River Lethe, which had to be navigated by the deceased in order to enter Hades. Souls entered the underworld and in doing so lost their memory, so it comes as little surprise that the word for truth in Greek is “alethela” which translates to “un-forgetfulness.” Beginning with the ancient Greek tradition, forgetfulness became an image associated with losing oneself and death, while the ability to overcome forgetfulness became associated with an idea of truth. If one must forget in order to reach the underworld, by maintaining memory one might be preserved from mortality, finding eternal truth and transcendence. Throughout literary epiphanies one constant remains: the presence of a greater truth. However, this truth changes forms throughout different pieces of literature acting as either an actual divine being such as Jesus, Krishna, or Buddha or simply just a higher level of transcendence, a total awakening. Regardless of truths changing forms, invariably one must look to their memory in order to retrieve it. For St. Augustine, this awakening lies in the form of God. He writes in his Confessions, “for when I seek you, my God, I seek the happy life. Let me seek you ‘so that my soul may live.’ My body lives by my soul and my soul lives by you” (Augustine, 248).
Just as St. Augustine searches for unity in his truth of God, the great warrior Arjuna is told in The Bhagavad Gita to find the same thing in his truth of Krishna: “Delivered from selfish attachment, fear, and anger, filled with me, surrendering themselves to me, purified in the fire of my being, many have reached the state of unity in me” (Easwaran, 117). This state of unity and truth is not found only in divine beings such as Krishna or God; instead it is the highest level of transcendence found within oneself. As written in The Upanishads, “The Atman is the Brahman,” the soul, or Atman, is the divine, Brahman. They exist within each other, just as in the Christian tradition man is made in the image of God. The divinity or eternal truth is there for everyone, although for each Atman, it takes a different representation. If the truth already exists within the soul, the only way to know it is through turning inward and remembering where to find it.
Memory is incredibly difficult to completely understand or control, and for the most part memory performs only its most basic functions of necessity: restoring the experience alone to its possessor, connecting only enough dots in order to function in daily life. One way to understand this aspect is through the relationship between memory and time, best illustrated in the use of sound and language. Fundamentally speech does not exist without memory as the words we say can only be remembered. By the time they are heard they have already danced through our minds, across our tongues, out our mouths and like the fleeting instant they were conceived in, they disappear. Each syllable and sound of every word follows it predecessor into the past, and “Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning” (Eliot, 58). These disappearing moments can only be united and formed into an idea through remembering each individual instant and sound, as Eliot writes “Words, after speech, reach/ into the silence” (Eliot, 19). The words we remember are what exists after the sounds that comprise them have already been lost to the past. Moments in time, like words, are made up of many small instances, all remembered into a complete experience. Therefore experience exists only in our memory as it must be accumulated and assembled together through recollection. Without a complete memory each instant is lost and we exist only in the world of fragmented moments. It is fortunate then, that all living beings are given the gift of memory.
At the most basic level we are able to remember sequences of time. We are able to connect the long thread of ephemeral moments and make some basic sense out of them. From memory we are able to recognize the experience. Eliot observes that for the majority of people we exist in a world where the fleeting moments are allowed to pass by without further examination: “For most of us, there is only the unattended/ Moment, the moment in and out of time,/ The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight” (Eliot, 44). This most basic level of memory allows us to piece together the fragments of time in order to form a comprehension of the events that these instants form. Memory in this manner is utilized in the everyday life of most people. This is analogous to reading a book and remembering the story, being able to bring back to mind the most basic elements, the characters and the plot.
Eliot comments that the reason most of us remain only in the realm of the unattended moment is that the examined moment sometimes is too overwhelming for us to endure. He writes in The Four Quartets, “Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing. / Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning./ The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,/ The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy/ Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony/ Of death and birth” (Eliot, 28). In Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, Rat and Mole are able to have a profound experience, an epiphany, but it is too much for them to bear and therefore it must be forgotten. For Rat and Mole the absolute truth, the experience of the divine, and the understanding of complete memory would be too much. The animal characters’ ascension on the ladder of memory would bring the possibility of less joy, as the old cliché goes: ignorance is bliss. Therefore following their epiphanic moment Rat and Mole are affected when with “a soft touch came instant oblivion.” This is necessary for Rat and Mole, according to Grahame, “For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before” (Grahame, 126). The only reminder of the encounter lies in the song of the wind in the reeds, whispering “forget, forget” (Grahame, 130), yet the actual event has been wiped from their memories. The profound meaning of the experience would not allow Rat and Mole to live their “lighthearted” and “little animal” lives. They could only have the experience, but they could not remember it and have the meaning. However, for characters that must achieve more than lighthearted little animal lives and achieve a higher sense of understanding, the experiences must be remembered.
Eliot’s poem goes further to explain the relationship between reality and memory. As the little bird tells us upon entering the garden: “human kind/ cannot bear very much reality./ Time past and time future/ What might have been and what has been/ Point to one end, which is always present”(Eliot, 14). If everything, both the past and the future, are contained in the present, then it only makes sense that it is impossible to comprehend “very much reality.” Therefore the only possible defense against this much overwhelming reality is the lack of remembering it. The only way of truly coming to appreciate and recognize this much reality is through remembering it. Experience itself is nothing without reexamination through the process of memory. Eliot says” “There is, it seems to us,/ At best, only a limited value/ In the knowledge derived from experience./ The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,/ For the pattern is new in every moment/ And every moment is new and shocking/ Valuation of all that we have been” (Eliot, 26).
If too much reality is more than Rat and Mole, as well as mankind, can endure, then memory becomes the means of examining experiences outside of the new and shocking moments they occurred in. By piecing together all of these moments and using memory to reflect upon them, the meaning of the moment can be further understood in a greater way. In William Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey” the poet must return to a place five years later in order to understand all that it means to him and in revisiting this place from the past, the poet gains a greater awareness of the importance of memory. It is in remembering this place that the poet transcends himself into a higher understanding, a greater sense of harmony: “Nor less, I trust, / To them I may have owed another gift, / Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, / In which the burthen of the mystery, / In which the heavy and the weary weight/ Of all this unintelligible world, / Is lightened.” This thought is then concluded with the lines, “While with an eye made quiet by the power/ Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things” (blupete). While everything that surrounds the poet while at Tintern Abbey is too much for him to comprehend at the time, by remembering it he is able to reach state of epiphany.
Similarly Annie Dillard revisits a past experience of observing a solar eclipse in her short story “Total Eclipse.” The story is written two years after the encounter and reflects back on the moments she experienced in order to find the meaning in them. While the actual moment is profound, it is too profound, so Dillard must return to each instant and each emotion of the moment in order to understand it and what it meant to her. Dillard writes that “the meaning of the sight overwhelmed its fascination” (Dillard, 19) .When the reality is too overwhelming, the only meaning that can be found is in the recollection of it. Dillard writes that, like Wordsworth, remembering back not only gave her a deeper appreciation of the moment but also of memory itself: “Our minds were light years distant, forgetful of almost everything. Only an extraordinary act of will could recall to us our former, living selves and our contexts in matter and time. We had, it seems, loved the planet and loved our lives, but could no longer remember the way of them. We got the light wrong” (Dillard, 18).
Dillard points out that it takes an “act of will” to remind those who had forgotten the way that they had loved the planet and their lives. This act of will seems to be the actual act of reminding oneself to remember. Memory in this way allows for one to remember not only the happening they forgot but something much larger. This is memory not of simply of an event or experience, but instead more importantly it is remembering forgetfulness. In this way a deeper truth is recognized and a character must do more than merely remember. Instead they must actively examine and strain their memory in search of meaning. Eliot tells us that we had the experience but missed the meaning; this level is simply the recognition of this, and in this recognition comes the ability to find the meaning. In order to reach the state of epiphany here there must be an acknowledgment of something forgotten and an effort to recall it. Eliot points out this choice that one must make: either remember that you have forgotten something or remain in the state of forgetfulness. He writes “footfalls echo in the memory? Down the passage which we did not take/ Towards the door we never opened/ Into the rose-garden. My words echo/ Thus, in your mind. / But to what purpose/ Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves/ I do not know” (Eliot, 13). The image shows the door we didn’t open as the path to the truth that has been forgotten and the memory being evoked as “My words echo/ Thus in your mind.” When Eliot asks “to what purpose” the question is posed if the dust on the rose leaves will be disturbed just as the dust of the years accumulated on forgotten objects is swept away when it is recovered.
Marcel Proust gives the most visible example of the effort needed to both recognize and recall what has been forgotten. In Remembrance of Things Past the narrator realizes that the petite madeleine he is eating with his tea evokes something in him that he has forgotten yet is vital to his very being. Upon the first bite, he notes “An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.” This same pleasure also gives the narrator a transcendental quality as he claims that he had ceased to feel mortal. He then must make an effort to try to remember what it is that this seemingly unexceptional cookie means to him. He recognizes that it is not the actual cookie or the actual cup of tea that stirs such profound feelings, but instead the way they remind him that he has forgotten something. They are linked somehow to him and his past, yet he has forgotten why. It is in his memory that the answer lies. The cookie and tea have only acted as a catalyst to his memory, and he confesses: “It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself. The drink has called it into being, but does not know it, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a progressive diminution of strength, the same message which I cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call it forth again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth.” Proust and his narrator have made the decision to find the meaning within the experience, to admit that there is something that has been forgotten, a part of him that needs to be remembered. The account then illustrates an important aspect of achieving recollection and epiphany: the mental distress that is felt when reaching into the depths of memory and transcending into a greater state of truth. He writes, “I decide to attempt to make it reappear… But its struggles are too far off, too confused and chaotic; scarcely can I perceive the neutral glow into which the elusive whirling medley of stirred-up colours is fused, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate for me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste, cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, from what period in my past life” (Proust, 48-51). Proust has taken the advice of Eliot, “not fare well, / But fare forward” (Eliot, 42). In forcing his memory to find this truth, the simple path of seemingly blissful forgetfulness--the path restored to Rat and Mole--has been forgone for the meaningful one.
In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Lily asks herself to recognize something more and she must look to her memory to find it. “And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was so apt to particularize itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life?” It is after asking herself this question that Lily reexamines the “little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark” and finds her epiphany, in realizing that she has forgotten. Lily looks to her past and remembers a whirlwind of experiences, including Mrs. Ramsey telling life to “stand still here.” In the midst of her collection of memories Lily is described as coming to a epiphanic realization: “Mrs. Ramsay saying ‘life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent ( as in another sphere lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent) – this was the nature of a revelation” (Woolf, 161). Once Lily has revisited experiences from the past and recalled Mrs. Ramsay telling life to stand still, she is able to see the meaning in the experience and able to achieve a greater understanding of herself, her own truth, her own Atman and her own Brahman.
Lily is shown that the nature of a revelation is “making of the moment something permanent” and it is only through the act of remembering that something that vanishes as quickly as a moment can be made into something permanent, eternally stored in the great warehouse of memory. Instead of reading the book and remembering the story, this level of remembrance can be equated with the role of the English major searching for underlying meaning; it is the understanding that the book contains more than just the plot.
In order to pass on this same message of remembrance, pieces of literature like Hamlet and The Four Quartets employ ghosts not just as supplementary characters in the plot, but as reminders to both the characters and the reader. Ghosts are used as physical representations of memory; in essence all ghosts are memories of the past that “haunt” our present. Hamlet is haunted by the ghost of his father because he remembers his father; he laments “O heavens! Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet!” (Shakespeare, 137). However his memory discouraged as those around him urge him to forget his father. Hamlets mother tells him to “cast thy knighted color off, / And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. / Do not forever with thy veiled lids/ Seek for thy noble father in the dust” (Shakespeare, 23). The ghost of his father appears to remind him not to forget, imparting the all important phrase “remember me” to him, reminding Hamlet that forgetting is the worst thing that he could do. A realization that he comes to in the end of the play when he begs Horatio not to kill himself so that he may remember him and tell his story, saying “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story” (Shakespeare, 271).
The ghost that appears in Eliot’s, Little Gidding plays a similar role. Like Hamlet’s father, the ghost is composed of “some dead master” known once by the narrator. Instead of one singular character, this ghost seems to be comprised of all those who are in the memory of the narrator, described as “both one and many” and a “familiar compound ghost” (Eliot, 53). The narrator, like Hamlet, is portrayed as being in danger of forgetting this ghost. He recognizes that the ghost is someone “Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled.” He continues by admitting his own lack of ability to remember telling the ghost, “The wonder that I feel is easy, / Yet ease is cause for wonder. Therefore speak: / I may not comprehend, may not remember.” The ghost that he comes upon in the streets of Little Gidding has the same message that Hamlet’s father’s ghost had: remember. He tells the narrator, and the reader as well, “I am not eager to rehearse/ My thought and theory which you have forgotten. / These things have served their purpose let them be” (Eliot, 53). The ghost then goes on to pass the “gifts reserved for age” to the narrator, lest he forget again. The fact that the narrator of The Four Quartets comes across the ghost in Little Gidding is hardly insignificant. The quartet previous to it is The Dry Salvages, in which the narrator and the reader must pass through the depiction of the “strong brown god” which is the river, which resides “within us.” As if guided by Charon himself, the river must be negotiated by the reader in order to come to Little Gidding, the quartet related to fire in which lost souls are met. The river is like that of the River Lethe, and it is after crossing it that the ghost must remind us of that most imperative ability: remembrance. Both the ghosts are memory, and in their meetings with the characters they truly only have one message, “remember me,” remember memory, remember to remember.
Eliot and Shakespeare use ghosts to remind their characters to remember and Dillard, Proust, and Woolf all force their characters to remember back in order to find their epiphany. All characters are forced to develop a greater memory in order to find a deeper meaning, or epiphany. Northrop Frye defines an epiphany as exactly this, remembering something that we have forgotten. “Epiphany is the theological equivalent of what in literature is called anagnosis or recognition.” The idea of recognition is inherently tied to the idea of memory as St. Augustine points out. In order to recognize something you must have already known it and therefore are simply being reminded of it. Similarly Plato’s concept of anamnesis involves memory recalling knowledge that has always been known, stored within us for all of eternity however lost in the farthest depths of the self and the memory. Like Plato, Eliot comments on this when he tells us that we missed the meaning. “I have said it before/ That the past experience revived in the meaning/ Is not the experience of one life only/ But of many generations/ Not forgetting” (Eliot, 39). This eternal knowledge, this knowledge of truth is both stored in everyone and their memory, but is also comprised of everyone and their memory. To Eliot it is made up of a collective and unified memory. However epiphanies and their fleeting nature suggest that they are only a brief insight into this collective memory, this eternal truth. Mere mortals are not able to completely remember, to have full access to all things past. This characteristic seems saved for the divine.
The highest level of memory, the divine memory, is less the ability to remember as much as the inability to forget. This most elevated type of remembrance consists of a complete memory in the most comprehensive and encompassing way. When Eliot writes that “for us there is only the trying” he ends the line with “The rest in not our business.” Eliot appears to be saying that while for humans the constant effort to recover what we have forgotten, remembering without forgetfulness is reserved for a much higher being. The Hindu God, Krishna, tells Arjuna that “You and I have passed through many births, Ajruna. You have forgotten, but I remember them all” (Easwaran, 116). Krishna goes on to tell Arjuna that he is “unborn and changeless,” that he “dwells in every creature,” and that he is “changeless and beyond all action” (Easwaran, 117). Unlike characters who are able to come to a moment of epiphany through memory, using it to find the meaning to the experience, the characters who have a complete memory become the source of epiphany. They have finally reached the stage where “the Atman is Brahman” and have transcended to the level of eternal truth. They have not conquered a moment in time, restoring it through memory; instead these divine characters have conquered all of time. As Philostratus said “all things fade away in time, but time itself is made fadeless and undying by recollection”(Yates, 42). This evokes Eliot’s line that “only in time can the moment in the rose garden … be remembered/ only through time time is conquered” (Eliot, 16). No longer does memory allow for epiphanic moments or moments of divinity; instead memory in this sense allows the character to become the higher truth.
In the Buddhist tradition the Dali Lama is considered the reincarnation of Buddha and it is only through the agency of memory that the divine is distinguished from the mortal. As monks scour the country for the child who will be the next Dali Lama, they carry objects that belonged to the old Dali Lama and objects that did not. The child who is able to remember more than just his own life and remembers his former incarnation picks out the objects that belonged to the Dali Lama before him. While the memory that allows for meaning recalls what has been forgotten, the memory that allows for divinity does not need to recall anything since it has never forgotten. In this sense the divine has realized a sense of memory so complete that it has almost transcended it; it becomes memory itself, and it becomes what we must remember.
Krishna tells Arjuna that his role is to remind people, saying “Whenever dharma declines and the purpose of life is forgotten, I manifest myself on earth. I am born in every age to protect the good, to destroy evil, and to reestablish dharma” (Easwaran, 117). This role is the one taken on by the poet, the recorder of stories, eternalizing memories for all to know. In this same way literature is memory itself, the physical preservation of memories on pages for all to read. In reading books we add to our own memory and climb a bit higher on the ladder towards eternal truth. With each book we read we become one memory closer to remembering our Brahman within our Atman. It is literature that makes us more divine. Literature is memory, written down and made eternal, reminding those who read it of what they have forgotten, telling them: remember me.
Almost a Remembrance:
Memory in literature and literature as memory
“Memory is the scribe of the soul”
-Aristotle
Five years ago a man gave a very confused girl some valuable advice. He told her to think long and hard about what she would chose to major in during her time in college, for the decision would most certainly affect her future. He told her something that would take five years for her to truly appreciate. He advised, “Remember, studying stories doesn’t really help you do anything in real life; it doesn’t prepare you for any real job.” Although the girl barely knew the man, she decided that to spite him and his unsolicited input she would study literature. After studying a subject for five years that she had chosen to some degree out of malice, it became clear that the man had in fact imparted on her a lesson of the utmost significance and importance. His words had been trying to teach her the same lesson that all the stories she would read would give her. She just hadn’t been listening to the right ones. He had said the same thing to her that the divine beings from Jesus to Krishna imparted in their holy texts. The same thing that the characters in the works from Shakespeare to Joyce came to know and the same thing that all stories tell to those who break open their covers and read their pages: remember.
Thomas Mann began the work that he considered his magnum opus, Joseph and His Brothers, with the line “Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?”(Mann, 3) Mann resonates a feeling of awe at both the measureless and mysterious nature that is universal and has led mankind to ask so many cliché questions about the existential ponderings on life and death and time and the divine. In turn literature endeavored to provide answers, offering the characters moments of revelations, bestowing an understanding of the absolute truths for which humankind has always searched. These literary epiphanies provide answers to the characters on the page, if only for a moment, but they can only try to capture an overwhelming feeling in words for its readers. While the epiphanies on the page may not provide answers themselves to the reader they instead present the means--memory. Mann deemed the past to be a bottomless well, yet literature is the bucket carrying what seemed to be lost to the surface.
While some works of literature provide the means to recognize epiphanies and understanding in a hidden or ambiguous manner, many works literally come right out and say it. Alas, like the confused student, most readers simply don’t listen to the right words. In Shakespeare’s masterpiece Hamlet the ghost of the king asserts “remember me.” In the sacred Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita Krishna similarly says “remember me.” In the book of Luke Jesus says “do this in remembrance of me.” James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake ends with Anna Livia Plurabelle’s command to “mememormee.” The message of these works is clear, yet knowing what it means is much more uncertain. While it first may seem that the characters and texts only require one to remember them individually, literature as a whole suggests a different option--just remember. Remember the king’s ghost, remember Christ and Krishna and Anna Livia, remember it all for it is this ability—remembrance--that connects the reader to the literature and the epiphanies in them. It is this ability that allows the great epiphanies of literature to transcend the pages on which they were written and reach the reader. The only genuine experiences, and therefore the only experiences which can provide meaning and understanding and answers to the eternally-asked questions, are those that come about through the agency of remembering.
T.S. Eliot wrote in what he called “his finest and most profound poem,” The Four Quartets, “We had the experience but missed the meaning, / And approach to the meaning restores the experience/ In a different form, beyond any meaning/ We can assign happiness. I have said before/ That the past experience revived in the meaning/ Is not the experience of one life only/ But of many generations-not forgetting/ Something that is probably quite ineffable” (Eliot, 39). It is in this line, and throughout the entire poem, that Eliot gives his rendition if the line “Remember me.” His vision of the restoration of the past reflects the crucial ways in which memory affects meaning and time in all of literature. The beauty of The Four Quartets is overwhelming, its lessons innumerable and its meaning seemingly immeasurable. The opening quartet begins as the narrator and the audience follows a bird into a rose garden only to enter a labyrinth that will take them down “Into the perpetual world of solitude”(Eliot, 18) and back into the sunlight where “rises the hidden laughter/ Of children”(Eliot, 20). From the “open field” of East Coker, to the river and sea of The Dry Salvages and the isolated street of Little Gidding, Eliot seems to weave literature and philosophy, understanding and confusion, questions and answers into an eternally unfolding design. After reading the poem over and over again, and each time finding new and greater understandings from it, I resign myself to it. In order to understand memory I find that I must heed Eliot’s genius, take his hand and follow the bird into the rose garden. Eliot writes, “There is only the fight to recover what has been lost/ And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions/ That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. / For us there is only the trying” (Eliot, 31). Well, here is to the trying.
Memory itself is overall a fairly abstract matter, in its most basic sense it is the ability to collect and preserve information and recall it at a later time. This is considered to be a function of the brain. However, the question arises whether there is more to memory than this and if perhaps at a much higher level, memory becomes less a function of the brain and more a function of the soul. Through literature, memory not only works to recall information in the most rudimentary way, bringing back to mind experiences and scenes that one has encountered, it also is the agency that allows transcendence of time and what could be called divinity. As the functions of memory increase one is able to ascend higher, like rungs on a ladder, in order to find the very features that are an epiphany, a greater, eternal truth.
The Greek word for truth came from the same word used to describe the river of forgetfulness, the River Lethe, which had to be navigated by the deceased in order to enter Hades. Souls entered the underworld and in doing so lost their memory, so it comes as little surprise that the word for truth in Greek is “alethela” which translates to “un-forgetfulness.” Beginning with the ancient Greek tradition, forgetfulness became an image associated with losing oneself and death, while the ability to overcome forgetfulness became associated with an idea of truth. If one must forget in order to reach the underworld, by maintaining memory one might be preserved from mortality, finding eternal truth and transcendence. Throughout literary epiphanies one constant remains: the presence of a greater truth. However, this truth changes forms throughout different pieces of literature acting as either an actual divine being such as Jesus, Krishna, or Buddha or simply just a higher level of transcendence, a total awakening. Regardless of truths changing forms, invariably one must look to their memory in order to retrieve it. For St. Augustine, this awakening lies in the form of God. He writes in his Confessions, “for when I seek you, my God, I seek the happy life. Let me seek you ‘so that my soul may live.’ My body lives by my soul and my soul lives by you” (Augustine, 248).
Just as St. Augustine searches for unity in his truth of God, the great warrior Arjuna is told in The Bhagavad Gita to find the same thing in his truth of Krishna: “Delivered from selfish attachment, fear, and anger, filled with me, surrendering themselves to me, purified in the fire of my being, many have reached the state of unity in me” (Easwaran, 117). This state of unity and truth is not found only in divine beings such as Krishna or God; instead it is the highest level of transcendence found within oneself. As written in The Upanishads, “The Atman is the Brahman,” the soul, or Atman, is the divine, Brahman. They exist within each other, just as in the Christian tradition man is made in the image of God. The divinity or eternal truth is there for everyone, although for each Atman, it takes a different representation. If the truth already exists within the soul, the only way to know it is through turning inward and remembering where to find it.
Memory is incredibly difficult to completely understand or control, and for the most part memory performs only its most basic functions of necessity: restoring the experience alone to its possessor, connecting only enough dots in order to function in daily life. One way to understand this aspect is through the relationship between memory and time, best illustrated in the use of sound and language. Fundamentally speech does not exist without memory as the words we say can only be remembered. By the time they are heard they have already danced through our minds, across our tongues, out our mouths and like the fleeting instant they were conceived in, they disappear. Each syllable and sound of every word follows it predecessor into the past, and “Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning” (Eliot, 58). These disappearing moments can only be united and formed into an idea through remembering each individual instant and sound, as Eliot writes “Words, after speech, reach/ into the silence” (Eliot, 19). The words we remember are what exists after the sounds that comprise them have already been lost to the past. Moments in time, like words, are made up of many small instances, all remembered into a complete experience. Therefore experience exists only in our memory as it must be accumulated and assembled together through recollection. Without a complete memory each instant is lost and we exist only in the world of fragmented moments. It is fortunate then, that all living beings are given the gift of memory.
At the most basic level we are able to remember sequences of time. We are able to connect the long thread of ephemeral moments and make some basic sense out of them. From memory we are able to recognize the experience. Eliot observes that for the majority of people we exist in a world where the fleeting moments are allowed to pass by without further examination: “For most of us, there is only the unattended/ Moment, the moment in and out of time,/ The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight” (Eliot, 44). This most basic level of memory allows us to piece together the fragments of time in order to form a comprehension of the events that these instants form. Memory in this manner is utilized in the everyday life of most people. This is analogous to reading a book and remembering the story, being able to bring back to mind the most basic elements, the characters and the plot.
Eliot comments that the reason most of us remain only in the realm of the unattended moment is that the examined moment sometimes is too overwhelming for us to endure. He writes in The Four Quartets, “Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing. / Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning./ The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,/ The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy/ Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony/ Of death and birth” (Eliot, 28). In Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, Rat and Mole are able to have a profound experience, an epiphany, but it is too much for them to bear and therefore it must be forgotten. For Rat and Mole the absolute truth, the experience of the divine, and the understanding of complete memory would be too much. The animal characters’ ascension on the ladder of memory would bring the possibility of less joy, as the old cliché goes: ignorance is bliss. Therefore following their epiphanic moment Rat and Mole are affected when with “a soft touch came instant oblivion.” This is necessary for Rat and Mole, according to Grahame, “For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before” (Grahame, 126). The only reminder of the encounter lies in the song of the wind in the reeds, whispering “forget, forget” (Grahame, 130), yet the actual event has been wiped from their memories. The profound meaning of the experience would not allow Rat and Mole to live their “lighthearted” and “little animal” lives. They could only have the experience, but they could not remember it and have the meaning. However, for characters that must achieve more than lighthearted little animal lives and achieve a higher sense of understanding, the experiences must be remembered.
Eliot’s poem goes further to explain the relationship between reality and memory. As the little bird tells us upon entering the garden: “human kind/ cannot bear very much reality./ Time past and time future/ What might have been and what has been/ Point to one end, which is always present”(Eliot, 14). If everything, both the past and the future, are contained in the present, then it only makes sense that it is impossible to comprehend “very much reality.” Therefore the only possible defense against this much overwhelming reality is the lack of remembering it. The only way of truly coming to appreciate and recognize this much reality is through remembering it. Experience itself is nothing without reexamination through the process of memory. Eliot says” “There is, it seems to us,/ At best, only a limited value/ In the knowledge derived from experience./ The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,/ For the pattern is new in every moment/ And every moment is new and shocking/ Valuation of all that we have been” (Eliot, 26).
If too much reality is more than Rat and Mole, as well as mankind, can endure, then memory becomes the means of examining experiences outside of the new and shocking moments they occurred in. By piecing together all of these moments and using memory to reflect upon them, the meaning of the moment can be further understood in a greater way. In William Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey” the poet must return to a place five years later in order to understand all that it means to him and in revisiting this place from the past, the poet gains a greater awareness of the importance of memory. It is in remembering this place that the poet transcends himself into a higher understanding, a greater sense of harmony: “Nor less, I trust, / To them I may have owed another gift, / Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, / In which the burthen of the mystery, / In which the heavy and the weary weight/ Of all this unintelligible world, / Is lightened.” This thought is then concluded with the lines, “While with an eye made quiet by the power/ Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, / We see into the life of things” (blupete). While everything that surrounds the poet while at Tintern Abbey is too much for him to comprehend at the time, by remembering it he is able to reach state of epiphany.
Similarly Annie Dillard revisits a past experience of observing a solar eclipse in her short story “Total Eclipse.” The story is written two years after the encounter and reflects back on the moments she experienced in order to find the meaning in them. While the actual moment is profound, it is too profound, so Dillard must return to each instant and each emotion of the moment in order to understand it and what it meant to her. Dillard writes that “the meaning of the sight overwhelmed its fascination” (Dillard, 19) .When the reality is too overwhelming, the only meaning that can be found is in the recollection of it. Dillard writes that, like Wordsworth, remembering back not only gave her a deeper appreciation of the moment but also of memory itself: “Our minds were light years distant, forgetful of almost everything. Only an extraordinary act of will could recall to us our former, living selves and our contexts in matter and time. We had, it seems, loved the planet and loved our lives, but could no longer remember the way of them. We got the light wrong” (Dillard, 18).
Dillard points out that it takes an “act of will” to remind those who had forgotten the way that they had loved the planet and their lives. This act of will seems to be the actual act of reminding oneself to remember. Memory in this way allows for one to remember not only the happening they forgot but something much larger. This is memory not of simply of an event or experience, but instead more importantly it is remembering forgetfulness. In this way a deeper truth is recognized and a character must do more than merely remember. Instead they must actively examine and strain their memory in search of meaning. Eliot tells us that we had the experience but missed the meaning; this level is simply the recognition of this, and in this recognition comes the ability to find the meaning. In order to reach the state of epiphany here there must be an acknowledgment of something forgotten and an effort to recall it. Eliot points out this choice that one must make: either remember that you have forgotten something or remain in the state of forgetfulness. He writes “footfalls echo in the memory? Down the passage which we did not take/ Towards the door we never opened/ Into the rose-garden. My words echo/ Thus, in your mind. / But to what purpose/ Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves/ I do not know” (Eliot, 13). The image shows the door we didn’t open as the path to the truth that has been forgotten and the memory being evoked as “My words echo/ Thus in your mind.” When Eliot asks “to what purpose” the question is posed if the dust on the rose leaves will be disturbed just as the dust of the years accumulated on forgotten objects is swept away when it is recovered.
Marcel Proust gives the most visible example of the effort needed to both recognize and recall what has been forgotten. In Remembrance of Things Past the narrator realizes that the petite madeleine he is eating with his tea evokes something in him that he has forgotten yet is vital to his very being. Upon the first bite, he notes “An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.” This same pleasure also gives the narrator a transcendental quality as he claims that he had ceased to feel mortal. He then must make an effort to try to remember what it is that this seemingly unexceptional cookie means to him. He recognizes that it is not the actual cookie or the actual cup of tea that stirs such profound feelings, but instead the way they remind him that he has forgotten something. They are linked somehow to him and his past, yet he has forgotten why. It is in his memory that the answer lies. The cookie and tea have only acted as a catalyst to his memory, and he confesses: “It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself. The drink has called it into being, but does not know it, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a progressive diminution of strength, the same message which I cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call it forth again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth.” Proust and his narrator have made the decision to find the meaning within the experience, to admit that there is something that has been forgotten, a part of him that needs to be remembered. The account then illustrates an important aspect of achieving recollection and epiphany: the mental distress that is felt when reaching into the depths of memory and transcending into a greater state of truth. He writes, “I decide to attempt to make it reappear… But its struggles are too far off, too confused and chaotic; scarcely can I perceive the neutral glow into which the elusive whirling medley of stirred-up colours is fused, and I cannot distinguish its form, cannot invite it, as the one possible interpreter, to translate for me the evidence of its contemporary, its inseparable paramour, the taste, cannot ask it to inform me what special circumstance is in question, from what period in my past life” (Proust, 48-51). Proust has taken the advice of Eliot, “not fare well, / But fare forward” (Eliot, 42). In forcing his memory to find this truth, the simple path of seemingly blissful forgetfulness--the path restored to Rat and Mole--has been forgone for the meaningful one.
In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Lily asks herself to recognize something more and she must look to her memory to find it. “And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was so apt to particularize itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life?” It is after asking herself this question that Lily reexamines the “little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark” and finds her epiphany, in realizing that she has forgotten. Lily looks to her past and remembers a whirlwind of experiences, including Mrs. Ramsey telling life to “stand still here.” In the midst of her collection of memories Lily is described as coming to a epiphanic realization: “Mrs. Ramsay saying ‘life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent ( as in another sphere lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent) – this was the nature of a revelation” (Woolf, 161). Once Lily has revisited experiences from the past and recalled Mrs. Ramsay telling life to stand still, she is able to see the meaning in the experience and able to achieve a greater understanding of herself, her own truth, her own Atman and her own Brahman.
Lily is shown that the nature of a revelation is “making of the moment something permanent” and it is only through the act of remembering that something that vanishes as quickly as a moment can be made into something permanent, eternally stored in the great warehouse of memory. Instead of reading the book and remembering the story, this level of remembrance can be equated with the role of the English major searching for underlying meaning; it is the understanding that the book contains more than just the plot.
In order to pass on this same message of remembrance, pieces of literature like Hamlet and The Four Quartets employ ghosts not just as supplementary characters in the plot, but as reminders to both the characters and the reader. Ghosts are used as physical representations of memory; in essence all ghosts are memories of the past that “haunt” our present. Hamlet is haunted by the ghost of his father because he remembers his father; he laments “O heavens! Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet!” (Shakespeare, 137). However his memory discouraged as those around him urge him to forget his father. Hamlets mother tells him to “cast thy knighted color off, / And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark. / Do not forever with thy veiled lids/ Seek for thy noble father in the dust” (Shakespeare, 23). The ghost of his father appears to remind him not to forget, imparting the all important phrase “remember me” to him, reminding Hamlet that forgetting is the worst thing that he could do. A realization that he comes to in the end of the play when he begs Horatio not to kill himself so that he may remember him and tell his story, saying “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, absent thee from felicity awhile, and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story” (Shakespeare, 271).
The ghost that appears in Eliot’s, Little Gidding plays a similar role. Like Hamlet’s father, the ghost is composed of “some dead master” known once by the narrator. Instead of one singular character, this ghost seems to be comprised of all those who are in the memory of the narrator, described as “both one and many” and a “familiar compound ghost” (Eliot, 53). The narrator, like Hamlet, is portrayed as being in danger of forgetting this ghost. He recognizes that the ghost is someone “Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled.” He continues by admitting his own lack of ability to remember telling the ghost, “The wonder that I feel is easy, / Yet ease is cause for wonder. Therefore speak: / I may not comprehend, may not remember.” The ghost that he comes upon in the streets of Little Gidding has the same message that Hamlet’s father’s ghost had: remember. He tells the narrator, and the reader as well, “I am not eager to rehearse/ My thought and theory which you have forgotten. / These things have served their purpose let them be” (Eliot, 53). The ghost then goes on to pass the “gifts reserved for age” to the narrator, lest he forget again. The fact that the narrator of The Four Quartets comes across the ghost in Little Gidding is hardly insignificant. The quartet previous to it is The Dry Salvages, in which the narrator and the reader must pass through the depiction of the “strong brown god” which is the river, which resides “within us.” As if guided by Charon himself, the river must be negotiated by the reader in order to come to Little Gidding, the quartet related to fire in which lost souls are met. The river is like that of the River Lethe, and it is after crossing it that the ghost must remind us of that most imperative ability: remembrance. Both the ghosts are memory, and in their meetings with the characters they truly only have one message, “remember me,” remember memory, remember to remember.
Eliot and Shakespeare use ghosts to remind their characters to remember and Dillard, Proust, and Woolf all force their characters to remember back in order to find their epiphany. All characters are forced to develop a greater memory in order to find a deeper meaning, or epiphany. Northrop Frye defines an epiphany as exactly this, remembering something that we have forgotten. “Epiphany is the theological equivalent of what in literature is called anagnosis or recognition.” The idea of recognition is inherently tied to the idea of memory as St. Augustine points out. In order to recognize something you must have already known it and therefore are simply being reminded of it. Similarly Plato’s concept of anamnesis involves memory recalling knowledge that has always been known, stored within us for all of eternity however lost in the farthest depths of the self and the memory. Like Plato, Eliot comments on this when he tells us that we missed the meaning. “I have said it before/ That the past experience revived in the meaning/ Is not the experience of one life only/ But of many generations/ Not forgetting” (Eliot, 39). This eternal knowledge, this knowledge of truth is both stored in everyone and their memory, but is also comprised of everyone and their memory. To Eliot it is made up of a collective and unified memory. However epiphanies and their fleeting nature suggest that they are only a brief insight into this collective memory, this eternal truth. Mere mortals are not able to completely remember, to have full access to all things past. This characteristic seems saved for the divine.
The highest level of memory, the divine memory, is less the ability to remember as much as the inability to forget. This most elevated type of remembrance consists of a complete memory in the most comprehensive and encompassing way. When Eliot writes that “for us there is only the trying” he ends the line with “The rest in not our business.” Eliot appears to be saying that while for humans the constant effort to recover what we have forgotten, remembering without forgetfulness is reserved for a much higher being. The Hindu God, Krishna, tells Arjuna that “You and I have passed through many births, Ajruna. You have forgotten, but I remember them all” (Easwaran, 116). Krishna goes on to tell Arjuna that he is “unborn and changeless,” that he “dwells in every creature,” and that he is “changeless and beyond all action” (Easwaran, 117). Unlike characters who are able to come to a moment of epiphany through memory, using it to find the meaning to the experience, the characters who have a complete memory become the source of epiphany. They have finally reached the stage where “the Atman is Brahman” and have transcended to the level of eternal truth. They have not conquered a moment in time, restoring it through memory; instead these divine characters have conquered all of time. As Philostratus said “all things fade away in time, but time itself is made fadeless and undying by recollection”(Yates, 42). This evokes Eliot’s line that “only in time can the moment in the rose garden … be remembered/ only through time time is conquered” (Eliot, 16). No longer does memory allow for epiphanic moments or moments of divinity; instead memory in this sense allows the character to become the higher truth.
In the Buddhist tradition the Dali Lama is considered the reincarnation of Buddha and it is only through the agency of memory that the divine is distinguished from the mortal. As monks scour the country for the child who will be the next Dali Lama, they carry objects that belonged to the old Dali Lama and objects that did not. The child who is able to remember more than just his own life and remembers his former incarnation picks out the objects that belonged to the Dali Lama before him. While the memory that allows for meaning recalls what has been forgotten, the memory that allows for divinity does not need to recall anything since it has never forgotten. In this sense the divine has realized a sense of memory so complete that it has almost transcended it; it becomes memory itself, and it becomes what we must remember.
Krishna tells Arjuna that his role is to remind people, saying “Whenever dharma declines and the purpose of life is forgotten, I manifest myself on earth. I am born in every age to protect the good, to destroy evil, and to reestablish dharma” (Easwaran, 117). This role is the one taken on by the poet, the recorder of stories, eternalizing memories for all to know. In this same way literature is memory itself, the physical preservation of memories on pages for all to read. In reading books we add to our own memory and climb a bit higher on the ladder towards eternal truth. With each book we read we become one memory closer to remembering our Brahman within our Atman. It is literature that makes us more divine. Literature is memory, written down and made eternal, reminding those who read it of what they have forgotten, telling them: remember me.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
P.S.
Quick side note: I am trying to still navigate my way through memory and epiphany and while looking at some of the things dealing with St.Augustine I got to thinking about something Sam quoted from the Upanishads earlier this year: "atman is brahman."
If the divine rests in the individual and like Krishna says we become able to see ourselves in all and all in ourselves I think I know why it is important to look into our own selves and memory to find the divine and epiphany. Augustine thought it necessary to look inward into his own memory in order to find God, as a catholic I'm not sure he would agree with this but maybe it is because of the fact that the atman is the brahman, god already exists inside of us, the divine (whatever it is) is already contained within our memories. Sorry about the tangent it is just that I FINALLY put those two things together and felt excited enough to blog about it!
If the divine rests in the individual and like Krishna says we become able to see ourselves in all and all in ourselves I think I know why it is important to look into our own selves and memory to find the divine and epiphany. Augustine thought it necessary to look inward into his own memory in order to find God, as a catholic I'm not sure he would agree with this but maybe it is because of the fact that the atman is the brahman, god already exists inside of us, the divine (whatever it is) is already contained within our memories. Sorry about the tangent it is just that I FINALLY put those two things together and felt excited enough to blog about it!
The Rose-Garden
So while working on my final paper I have reread The Four Quartets numerous times each time I do i find that i both understand a little more and am much more confused. I think this is the type of poem that someone could spend their whole life studying and possibly still never completely understand everything that it is saying. So during a lat night rereading i started to think about the question Dr.Sexson asked us on the first day of class- When is the epiphany in this poem? I suppose i would like to possibly change my answer now to say that I'm not sure the epiphany is a moment but i am starting to think that maybe in this poem it is a place, the rose garden in specific. In Burnt Norton it seems like the rose garden is that moment of timelessness (that still point- in case Jennie Lynn reads this) where memory takes us. the line " I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where/ And I cannot say how long, for that is to place it in time" makes me think of this moment in time where time does not exist, like during epiphanies where time seems to go by but in fact it remains still. And in my topic of memory the rose garden seems to be the place of possibly remembering what we have forgotten, when we are first introduced to the garden we are led there by our memory: "footfalls echo in the memory/ Down the passage which we did not take/ Towards the rose-garden" The bird then also leads us into the rose garden with the line "other echoes/Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow them?/ Quick , said the bird, find them , find them" All these various echoes seemed to me to be sort of like a collective conscious or a collective memory. Or now that i write this maybe the rose-garden is the realm of memory, or maybe it is the realm of epiphany, or maybe they are one in the same. Maybe i should get back to my paper before i confuse myself even further.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Thesis Statement- ish
So we are meant to have posted a thesis statement for our paper today, while I am still working on my actual thesis statement I can further explain what my paper will be on. So here it goes...
Eliot says that "We had the experience but missed the meaning" my paper will look at how in literature it is not the experience that provides meaning but instead the remembrance of the experience. It is through memory that past, present, and future are able to become one and hopefully i will show that memory is necessary to epiphanies. Different texts employ memory in different ways but memory is vital in all of them.
I think maybe one way of looking at memory is through St.Augustine: Sheri Katz sums up his ideas on memory saying that Augustine wonders "whether God can be sought if God is not already known. The answer to this initial and central question of how a mere human can know God lies in memory. That is, Augustine will find God (and himself), and the answers to all of his questions, and the font and guarantee of all knowledge by turning inward and reflecting on his own memory."
This same idea of finding the answers to ones questions or finding epiphanies through memory ties in to dharma and sacred duty as well as detachment. I plan on using the Four Quartets as a primary text and then weaving all the other texts in. To be completely honest right now I feel a little bit like I am starting to see all the puzzle pieces but I cant make them fit together yet. While all these ideas sound disjointed it is my hope to make a cohesive understandable argument out of them.
Eliot says that "We had the experience but missed the meaning" my paper will look at how in literature it is not the experience that provides meaning but instead the remembrance of the experience. It is through memory that past, present, and future are able to become one and hopefully i will show that memory is necessary to epiphanies. Different texts employ memory in different ways but memory is vital in all of them.
I think maybe one way of looking at memory is through St.Augustine: Sheri Katz sums up his ideas on memory saying that Augustine wonders "whether God can be sought if God is not already known. The answer to this initial and central question of how a mere human can know God lies in memory. That is, Augustine will find God (and himself), and the answers to all of his questions, and the font and guarantee of all knowledge by turning inward and reflecting on his own memory."
This same idea of finding the answers to ones questions or finding epiphanies through memory ties in to dharma and sacred duty as well as detachment. I plan on using the Four Quartets as a primary text and then weaving all the other texts in. To be completely honest right now I feel a little bit like I am starting to see all the puzzle pieces but I cant make them fit together yet. While all these ideas sound disjointed it is my hope to make a cohesive understandable argument out of them.
So I have been trying to navigate my way through everything we have read this semester and everything I have learned as an English major all in order to write the best paper I have ever written and I am starting to feel like my brain is going to explode. So I have decided for this blog to take a different approach and navigate away from the texts and try to understand some things in terms of my own life, I have noticed that most people’s blogs have accounts of their own experiences and so I figured since I really haven’t I would do that now. Over this last weekend I was lucky enough to get to spend a few days with my Grandma, I am sort of blessed with one of those perfect story book grandmothers! Whenever I spend time with my family stories of me as a child usually come up and although I have heard these stories my entire life I was sort of struck by them in a different way this weekend. Each family member uses different word choices to describe me as a child: my grandmother says that I had a mind of my own, my mom says I was eccentric and that she loved my oddities as long as they never went too far, my sisters say I was a freak. Until this weekend it never actually hit me that all things considered I in fact actually was a freak. I was introverted and counted my pet cats as my primary friends (I even took framed photos of them with me when we traveled). Family videos of me show me asking not to be disturbed while doing serious work in the sandbox or putting Kleenex on the seats of swings before sitting down so as not to get dirty. My family often imitates me telling my mother over and over again that the mysterious scar on my knee was a result of being bitten by a zebra in Africa long before she was born. These have been things that my friends and family have always teased me about and I usually don’t admit them to a class of peers but when I came to the realization recently that I was in fact a total weirdo growing up I also realized why it took me so long to see what everyone else had always seen when they looked at me. To others I might have been weird but I never felt weird, instead I always felt like I was exactly who I was meant to be and I was where I belonged. Moments of complete clarity and understanding that are reached in epiphanic moments seemed pretty commonplace to me for much of my childhood. This has me wondering about what it is that ties memories and epiphanies, or at the very least understanding of self, together. Is it possible that when we have moments of revelation where we feel like we really understand all that we never did, we are not discovering anything new but simply just remembering something we had always forgotten? In the Gita, Krishna is in a higher state than mortals knowing the truths of the world because he is able to remember his many past forms and lives. Maybe as children we are closer to these past selves and therefore we understand the cyclical nature of time and everything that Eliot is trying to tell us and everything that Krishna is trying to tell Arjuna, as we age we forget and we then must remember to truly understand ourselves and our dharma. At 22 I no longer know exactly who I am and don’t know where I am meant to be but I can’t shake the feeling that maybe I was on to something when I was a kid and who knows, maybe the mysterious scar on my knee might just be from a zebra. Perhaps we have all just forgotten and epiphanies are moments of remembering.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Eliot begins part III of Little Gidding addressing the issue of attachment, indifference and detachment, he says that they are “three conditions which often look alike/ Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow.” While all three states may appear similar attachment and are opposing one another while indifference remains between them. Eliot then talks about what I think is detachment, but this is something that I had trouble reading and am not sure about. From what I read I think he is saying that detachment comes from an understanding of the things in our past, of memory, he says: “This is the use of memory: / For liberation- not less of love but expanding/ Of love beyond desire.” So while the use of memory is detachment, detachment is preferable because it allows for a greater type of love, a love beyond desire. Eliot goes on to discuss detachment in terms of action, he says “Thus, love of a country/ begins as attachment to our own field of action/ And comes to find that action of little importance/ Though never indifferent. History may be servitude, / History may be freedom. See, now they vanish, / The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved/them, / To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern. ” Yet again I might be completely off base on this but what I think Eliot is saying here is that the importance we believe to accompany our actions is fleeting over time is lost allowing for detachment. It is this detachment and not indifference that is important, while indifference is not caring at all detachment is important because of its connection to memory: memory allows us to see the real importance of our action and their meaning but does not control our actions, it remains in the past. Wow, I think this might be one of those things that makes sense in my head but doesn’t really translate into a cohesive though on paper, sorry! But I guess what I am trying to say here is that detachment doesn’t mean the same thing as indifference, it is something that allows us to recognize and give meaning to actions but still keeps us above them enough so that they do not control our actions. Our memory allows us to be liberated beyond things like desire and to gain a real understanding of ourselves, our atman, if you will. We are able to “see, now they vanish, The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, to become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.” Memory allows us to become detached and then understand the transcendental nature of ourselves and the things around us, how we are able to be constantly renewed in the cyclical nature of things… I think.
This whole idea of detachment seems to me to be basically taken right out of the Gita, Krishna explains to Sanjaya the importance of detachment and the ways that everything is “renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.” He tells him, “the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead. There has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered here have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist…The wise are not deluded by these changes” (this is from lines 11-14 in chapter 2 of my translation). Like Eliot, Krishna that the idea of love is central in the idea of detachment and finding happiness, he tells Arjuna that “This supreme Lord who pervades all existence, the true Self of all creatures, may be realized through undivided love.” It seems that in both the Gita and Four Quartets memory is more than just being able to remember something from the past instead it seems more of an all encompassing force, remembering Krishna is remembering everything since he is comprised of all things, equally Eliot seems to describe moments in time as made up of both the past and present, while I am still a little confused on both things it seems that both view memory as a comprehensive understanding of things. However it is memory that remains of vital importance to both Eliot and Krishna, echoed in Krishna’s directions to Arjuna to “Remember me.” So while I am not all that sure what I have actually come to say in this blog I think that the main thing is that both Eliot and the Gita place an importance on memory and detachment, yet how those two fit together is still a bit foggy to me!
This whole idea of detachment seems to me to be basically taken right out of the Gita, Krishna explains to Sanjaya the importance of detachment and the ways that everything is “renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.” He tells him, “the wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead. There has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered here have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist…The wise are not deluded by these changes” (this is from lines 11-14 in chapter 2 of my translation). Like Eliot, Krishna that the idea of love is central in the idea of detachment and finding happiness, he tells Arjuna that “This supreme Lord who pervades all existence, the true Self of all creatures, may be realized through undivided love.” It seems that in both the Gita and Four Quartets memory is more than just being able to remember something from the past instead it seems more of an all encompassing force, remembering Krishna is remembering everything since he is comprised of all things, equally Eliot seems to describe moments in time as made up of both the past and present, while I am still a little confused on both things it seems that both view memory as a comprehensive understanding of things. However it is memory that remains of vital importance to both Eliot and Krishna, echoed in Krishna’s directions to Arjuna to “Remember me.” So while I am not all that sure what I have actually come to say in this blog I think that the main thing is that both Eliot and the Gita place an importance on memory and detachment, yet how those two fit together is still a bit foggy to me!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Paper Topic Idea
As I was trying to brainstorm a paper topic I thought back on all that we have talked about in this class and I thought back on my years as an English major, and I felt completely lost and overwhelmed. Than I realized that I was continually thinking back to things, revisiting memories and I figured that maybe this was something I could write my paper on. I am not sure if this is just entirely too broad (and I know that right now it is VERY rough) but I thought I would write my paper on, as Proust's editor put it, remembrance of things past. In so many of the texts we have read we have encountered characters being told "remember me" and as an English major about to graduate I cant see a better time than now to reflect on the idea of past memories. I want to basically say that epiphanies are a by-product of memories revisited, like Sexson said "it is not so much visiting a place but re-visiting it" so now after 5 (yes 5!) years of English lit I want to re-visit the world of literature and see why remembering our past is so important, specifically when it comes to Epiphanies. Obviously this is an extremely rough idea as of now, so we will see what happens with it!
My favorite posts
So I think that it is much too difficult to chose only one blog that i have really enjoyed and has influenced me, so after a bit of work i was able to narrow it down to two. First Kari's blog about the displacement of myth in To The Lighthouse and second Jennie Lynn's blog regarding sestina in The Four Quartets. I felt like both of these blogs reminded me of the many ways that you can read a text and all that you can do with them. Sometimes as a consistently late blogger it is easy to feel like maybe everything has already been said and there is nothing left for you to say, but both these blogs reminded me to slap myself if I ever think that again because it is never, ever true. While some blogs discuss things where I think to myself 'why didn't I think of that' both of these blogs were ones that I never would think of because both Kari and Jennie Lynn did things that I habitually forget to do when reading a text: drawing in correlations from other things you have read and taking a close look at the actual composition and layout instead of just the words themselves. It is the blogs like these of other people that remind us as English majors just how vast our major really is and how many different ways there are to look at books!
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Hamlet as a closet Hindu?
Something that caught my eye when I was reading Hamlet was a part of Hamlets conversation with Horatio in act III scene II when Hamlet says:
"Sh'hath sealed thee for herself: for thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing,
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and blest are those
Whose blood and judgement are so well commenddled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not a passions slave, and I will wear him
In my heart' core, ay, in my heart of heart."
This particular quote seemed to be relevant to The Bhagavad Gita in a few different ways which i will attempt to explain but will probably only further confuse. First is the way that hamlet describes "one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing" this reminded me of the importance of unity in Krishna's counsel of Arjuna. Krishna says "They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them" when I read this with Hamlets line "A man that Fortunes buffets and rewards/ Hast ta'en with equal thanks" I was immediately reminded of the way that Krishna advises Arjuna to remain above and unaffected by both pleasure and pain, good and bad:
"When the senses contact sense objects, a person
experiences cold or heat, pleasure or pain. These
experiences are fleeting; they come and go.
Bear them patiently, Arjuna. Those who are
unaffected by these changes, who are the same
in pleasure and pain, are truly wise and fit for
immortality. Assert your strength and realize this!" ch 2 lines 14-16
By finding a sense of unity and remaining unaffected man is able to reach a higher state and "suffer nothing." Krishna goes on to say more about this saying:
"They are completely fulfilled by spiritual wisdom and Self-realization. Having conquered their senses, they have climbed to the summit of human consciousness...Because they are impartial, they rise to great heights." (ch 6 lines 8-10)
"The supreme Reality stands revealed in the consciousness of those who have conquered themselves. They live in peace, alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame." (ch6 lines 7-8)
It would seem to me that when Hamlet says "Give me that man/That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him/ In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart" he is basically asking for Krishna, finding the same ideas valuable as demonstrated in The Bhagavad Gita. I am not really sure if this is actually what is going on or not, or if I was just reading this looking for something that related to The Gita!
Some Similarities Between The Bhagavad Gita and Hamlet
After first reading The Bhagavad Gita and Hamlet I searched for the reason why we were reading them together, looking for an epiphany if you will, about the correlation between the two works. I am still searching because i haven't found it yet, however i did find some smaller connections between the two stories. Both Hamlet and Arjuna are princes, Hamlet is the son of the King of Denmark and Arjuna is the son of Indra, king of the gods. I think that both Hamlet and Arjuna being princes allows them to symbolize not just one character but instead their entire society. Both characters find themselves in situations which require them to kill family members, both characters are faced with a difficult internal dilemma. if the characters are both representative of something larger than one person than the necessity of murdering a relative seems to be an interesting aspect. I suppose that to me this does not necessarily mean that society is faced with the conflict over murdering a family member, instead I think that being forced to kill someone in your family is shown as one of the worst things someone could be forced to do. Therefore this is more representative of the struggles between doing something you know that you must even though it seems like the worst thing possible.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Total Eclipse
When I first read Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse" my initial reaction was basically wondering why everyone was being so dramatic about this natural event. When Dillard described the scene as "From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching." I could only think that the people watching this event most certainly couldn't be living in 1979, they would have known that a total solar eclipse is simply the moon passing between the sun and the earth obstructing the view of the sun from some parts of the earth. But then I started to understand that sometimes regardless of all logic and knowledge, things happen that are inexplicable and impossible to understand in logical terms. Epiphanies in the most logical sense are simply the firing of synapses and receptors in your brain right? But what I got out of Dillard is the importance of letting go of logic sometimes, understanding that regardless of what you KNOW about an eclipse, it still FEELS scary, and regardless of what you know about the functions of your brain you still must be able to feel something in order to have an epiphany.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Fisher King
So, Dr.Sexson asked us to google Fisher King since it is that name you come up with when you invert the words of Kingfisher from the poem we looked at on Monday. Fisher King is a character associated with Arthurian legend, he is also called "The Wounded King" because he is always depicted as injured in either the legs or groin which renders him unable to move on his own (and infertile) and so all he can do is fish. Basically when he is injured his country suffers as well without a strong virile king, but the most interesting part of the story is that the fisher king is the man in charge of keeping the holy grail. What seems of note about the holy grail in a class about epiphanies to me is the miraculous powers it possesses and the constant search for it. Supposedly the grail is something that cannot be found until the knight or searcher is able to prove himself to be worthy of finding it. According to some the grail is symbolic of the grace of god and while it is possible for everyone to find it, only those who become spiritually worthy are able to. Since an epiphany in the religious sense is the appearance of a deity could the holy grail as a symbol of god be an epiphanic object? Yes I know that epiphanic object makes really no sense but if it is the symbol of a deity and an epiphany is the appearance of a deity couldn't finding the holy grail be in essence finding an epiphany? If we are to follow this twisted mess of logic then couldn't we further deduce that this makes the Fisher King a guardian or keeper of epiphanies? Yes well, I think this line of reasoning is pretty clear proof that I really shouldn't try and blog before my first cup of coffee, so I will leave you with that.
Monday, March 1, 2010
In both Tintern Abbey and To The Lighthouse one thing that i noticed about both experiences of epiphany is how incredibly all encompassing they both are. They are both divine and secular in the sense that there seems to be an understanding of everything. In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth writes, 'A presence that disturbs me with the joy/Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime/Of something far more deeply interfused' (lines 93-96). By being both sublime AND "something far more deeply" it would seem that Wordsworth is turning the epiphany into something far more that a religious experience, even noting that there are things far deeper than a religious epiphany- I doubt the church at the time loved that.
At the end of To The Lighthouse, Lily says that "I have had my vision" and it would seem that this vision is something that is not just regarding Mrs.Ramsay or herself but instead everything. Suzette Henke writes in her essay on To The Lighthouse "The vision is artistic and epiphanic, mystical and materialist- a revelation that proves to be so all-encompassing that it is difficult to envisage its scope or (en)gendering radiance..." How could I possibly say it better than that!
So when i read Kari's Blog, her mention of an epiphany possibly being the experience of "seeing into the life of things" struck me as really interesting, even though i am not entirely sure i fully understand it. However i like the idea, maybe Lily's epiphany is a result and product of her being able to see into the life of Mrs. Ramsay, someone who has absolutely befuddled her for so long. The ability to take oneself out of your own body and experiences and understand others possibly allows for epiphanies?
At the end of To The Lighthouse, Lily says that "I have had my vision" and it would seem that this vision is something that is not just regarding Mrs.Ramsay or herself but instead everything. Suzette Henke writes in her essay on To The Lighthouse "The vision is artistic and epiphanic, mystical and materialist- a revelation that proves to be so all-encompassing that it is difficult to envisage its scope or (en)gendering radiance..." How could I possibly say it better than that!
So when i read Kari's Blog, her mention of an epiphany possibly being the experience of "seeing into the life of things" struck me as really interesting, even though i am not entirely sure i fully understand it. However i like the idea, maybe Lily's epiphany is a result and product of her being able to see into the life of Mrs. Ramsay, someone who has absolutely befuddled her for so long. The ability to take oneself out of your own body and experiences and understand others possibly allows for epiphanies?
Monday, February 22, 2010
The Four Quartets- Little Gidding and Dante
So I found it especially hard to do a presentation on Little Gidding because as Dr. Sexson said, there is just so much there that it is almost hard to first nail down a singular meaning and second to try to fit everything in to a 45 minute presentation. So here are some things that i know i left out of my section and that i think deserve further exploration. I feel it is also important to point out that the section i had to present on was difficult, really difficult, so jam packed with imagery and meaning and allusion that it would seem almost impossible to fully understand and flush out. Eliot himself even remarked on this part of the poem as one of the hardest things he had ever written saying once that "This section of a poem-not the length of one canto of the Divine Comedy- cost me far more time and trouble and vexation than any passage of the same length that I have ever written."
Dante in Little Gidding Part II:
The meeting of the ghost in this part is very similar to Dante's meeting with Ser Brunetto. In book 15 of the Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil come upon Dante's former master who was a politician and writer but is now among the sodomites. What seems important to me here is that in this meeting in the Inferno, the questions of immortality and death are brought up as Dante learns from Ser Brunetto that immortality can be found in ones literature which can last forever. This is an interesting moment in time in the poem as it is right after an air raid ( "After the dark dove with the flickering tongue/ Had passed below the horizon of his homing") and the fire that would be raining down upon Eliot in England is mirrored by the fire that is falling on the sodomites in Dante's Inferno. This image also brings to mind the fire that rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, but that is for a different blog post all together. Upon seeing his former master Dante says "Siete voi qui, Ser Brunetto" or "Are you here, Ser Bruneto?" This is one of the lines that Eliot echoes in Little Gidding with the line " What! are you here?" Further Eliot makes use of Dante's description of Ser Brunettos in his use of the line "brown baked features" which is taken from Dante's exact same description of "lo cotto aspetto." This again happens in the lines " I fixed upon the down turned face" which comes directly from Dante's "Ficcai...la sua facia." It becomes clear that the influence of Dante in this part of the poem is overwhelming yet i still stick to my original conclusion that while Dante's work certainly played a large role in the section he also does not entirely make up the character of the ghost that Eliot encounters. Instead this "familiar compound ghost" in my understanding is, as Helen Gardener put it "both one and many" and is both "intimate and unidentifiable."
Dante in Little Gidding Part II:
The meeting of the ghost in this part is very similar to Dante's meeting with Ser Brunetto. In book 15 of the Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil come upon Dante's former master who was a politician and writer but is now among the sodomites. What seems important to me here is that in this meeting in the Inferno, the questions of immortality and death are brought up as Dante learns from Ser Brunetto that immortality can be found in ones literature which can last forever. This is an interesting moment in time in the poem as it is right after an air raid ( "After the dark dove with the flickering tongue/ Had passed below the horizon of his homing") and the fire that would be raining down upon Eliot in England is mirrored by the fire that is falling on the sodomites in Dante's Inferno. This image also brings to mind the fire that rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis, but that is for a different blog post all together. Upon seeing his former master Dante says "Siete voi qui, Ser Brunetto" or "Are you here, Ser Bruneto?" This is one of the lines that Eliot echoes in Little Gidding with the line " What! are you here?" Further Eliot makes use of Dante's description of Ser Brunettos in his use of the line "brown baked features" which is taken from Dante's exact same description of "lo cotto aspetto." This again happens in the lines " I fixed upon the down turned face" which comes directly from Dante's "Ficcai...la sua facia." It becomes clear that the influence of Dante in this part of the poem is overwhelming yet i still stick to my original conclusion that while Dante's work certainly played a large role in the section he also does not entirely make up the character of the ghost that Eliot encounters. Instead this "familiar compound ghost" in my understanding is, as Helen Gardener put it "both one and many" and is both "intimate and unidentifiable."
Monday, February 1, 2010
Gretta Conroy and Nora Barnacle
I just came across an interesting correlation between the character of Gretta Conroy and Joyce's wife, Nora Barnacle (shown in the picture above). Both women were from Galway, both women lived with their grandmothers, both studied in a convent, and more importantly both knew a Michael Furey character. Like Gretta, Nora knew a boy as a young girl in Galway who died from illness named Michael, only in Nora's case Michael's last name was Feeney instead of Furey. The similarities between the two women are pretty astounding! Not sure that this means anything to the text itself but I thought it was pretty neat.
Looking for Diamonds in "The Dead"
So after scouring through the "The Dead" trying to find "ooh" and "aah" moments, or as Dr.Sexson has coined them, diamonds, I have come across a few different points of interest. I am not sure these count as diamonds though so instead I will deem them to be a less precious stone like a garnet as i am still "mining" for diamonds.
First off Gabriel's name seemed like an interesting choice to me, because even with my severe lack of biblical knowledge I knew that the name had at least something to do with religion. So with a little research I came to learn that Gabriel was an archangel in the Bible who plays a few different roles. He is said to be the one to announce the end of time or the last judgement with the blowing of a horn and he is also present during both the passion and Resurrection of Jesus, it is Gabriel that announces Christ's Resurrection to the women outside his tomb, called the "Myrrh-bearing women." One of these women is Christ's mother Mary, who is often given the symbol of the lily, further, depictions of Gabriel often show him holding a lily. Interestingly enough Lily is the name of the young housekeeper in the story. I am still trying to work out what this means for the two individual characters but it does seem that in a larger sense both characters are linked to the story of the Resurrection, possibly alluding to a Resurrection or rebirth in the story (last page anyone?) but again this is all conjecture, so do with it what you may.
Dubliners: The Dead
I saw this song by Thomas Moore called "Oh, Ye Dead!" the poem is set to traditional Irish music and was published as part of Moore's "Irish Melodies" between 1808 and 1834. Apparently Joyce was often heard humming these tunes (according to the Internet, so this could be just a rumor) so it would make sense that this song was an influence of Joyce's story The Dead, it certainly seems to share many similarities.
Oh, ye Dead! oh, ye Dead! whom we know by the light you give
From your cold gleaming eyes, though you move like men who live.
Why leave you thus your graves,
In far off fields and waves,
Where the worm and the sea-bird only know your bed,
To haunt this spot where all
Those eyes that wept your fall,
And the hearts that wail'd you, like your own, lie dead?
It is true, it is true, we are shadows cold and wan;
And the fair and the brave whom we lov'd on earth are gone,
But still thus even in death
So sweet the living breath
Of the fields and the flow'rs in our youth we wander9d o9er
That ere, condemn'd, we go
To freeze mid Hecla's snow,
We would taste it awhile, and think we live once more!
I also figured I would add a photo of Dublin from about two years ago just to get us in the mood!
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Attempt to define Epiphany from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
So in an attempt to keep with Professor Sexson’s suggestion that we start with the details and form a general definition from that I figured that I would begin with actual passages from the book, try and figure out what each individual passage is saying about epiphany and then try to form those ideas into a more cohesive definition. So, here it goes a list of passages and my thoughts on them hopefully followed by some sort of rough idea of what exactly an epiphany entails.
1. The first clear sign of an epiphanic moment I saw in the chapter was on page 121 when both Mole and Rat are in the boat. The line goes, “Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them.”
These lines suggest in such a beautiful way not a complete moment of clarity but instead a process of elucidation where surroundings are suddenly seen better
2. “O, Mole! The beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole row! For the music and the call must be for us.”(Page 122)
The way that Rat remarks that “the call must be for us” made me think that maybe an epiphany is not just a great illumination or understanding but maybe also an illumination of a direction or a call toward a specific course. So instead of my original view of epiphany as a moment maybe it is also a movement, a pull forward towards some sort of further revelation?
3.“Breathless and transfixed the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade’s cheeks, and bowed his head and understood. For a space they hung there, brushed by the purple loosestrife that fringed the bank; then the clear imperious summons that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody imposed its will on Mole, and mechanically he bent to his oars again. And the light grew steadily stronger, but no birds sang as they were wont to do at the approach of dawn; and but for the heavenly music all was marvelously still.”(Page 123)
A few different parts of this passage particularly stuck out to me and added to my own definition of epiphany. In specific the description of an epiphany as something forceful and invasive and almost controlling with phrases such as “possessed him utterly” and “imposed its will” were new to my original idea of epiphany. This passage changed an epiphany to me from just an experience of incredible awe and clarity to a moment and feeling so overwhelmingly engulfing that one has no choice but to become completely absorbed by it, whether they want to or not.
So from the chapter as a whole and from looking at some specific passages I have come to view an epiphany as not only a feeling but also a force. Something so powerful it cannot be ignored (and should not be ignored) as it seemingly completely overtakes the person (or rat or mole) who is experiencing it. A point in time where “the mystery begins to drop away” and a moment of such complete illumination and clarity occurs that the way towards what you seek is undeniable. It would also seem that this specific sensation is full of feeling “wonderfully as peace and happy” while still remaining powerless against its greatness. I have a feeling that as this class goes on this very rough, working definition will grow from a few lines to a few paragraphs that will hopefully become a bit clearer than this. Overall from what I can tell and epiphany is something so contained within one’s own mind and experience that it is simply indescribable.
1. The first clear sign of an epiphanic moment I saw in the chapter was on page 121 when both Mole and Rat are in the boat. The line goes, “Then a change began slowly to declare itself. The horizon became clearer, field and tree came more into sight, and somehow with a different look; the mystery began to drop away from them.”
These lines suggest in such a beautiful way not a complete moment of clarity but instead a process of elucidation where surroundings are suddenly seen better
2. “O, Mole! The beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole row! For the music and the call must be for us.”(Page 122)
The way that Rat remarks that “the call must be for us” made me think that maybe an epiphany is not just a great illumination or understanding but maybe also an illumination of a direction or a call toward a specific course. So instead of my original view of epiphany as a moment maybe it is also a movement, a pull forward towards some sort of further revelation?
3.“Breathless and transfixed the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade’s cheeks, and bowed his head and understood. For a space they hung there, brushed by the purple loosestrife that fringed the bank; then the clear imperious summons that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody imposed its will on Mole, and mechanically he bent to his oars again. And the light grew steadily stronger, but no birds sang as they were wont to do at the approach of dawn; and but for the heavenly music all was marvelously still.”(Page 123)
A few different parts of this passage particularly stuck out to me and added to my own definition of epiphany. In specific the description of an epiphany as something forceful and invasive and almost controlling with phrases such as “possessed him utterly” and “imposed its will” were new to my original idea of epiphany. This passage changed an epiphany to me from just an experience of incredible awe and clarity to a moment and feeling so overwhelmingly engulfing that one has no choice but to become completely absorbed by it, whether they want to or not.
So from the chapter as a whole and from looking at some specific passages I have come to view an epiphany as not only a feeling but also a force. Something so powerful it cannot be ignored (and should not be ignored) as it seemingly completely overtakes the person (or rat or mole) who is experiencing it. A point in time where “the mystery begins to drop away” and a moment of such complete illumination and clarity occurs that the way towards what you seek is undeniable. It would also seem that this specific sensation is full of feeling “wonderfully as peace and happy” while still remaining powerless against its greatness. I have a feeling that as this class goes on this very rough, working definition will grow from a few lines to a few paragraphs that will hopefully become a bit clearer than this. Overall from what I can tell and epiphany is something so contained within one’s own mind and experience that it is simply indescribable.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Epiphanies as an English Major
Before I begin my search for former epiphanies in my life as an English major I must first take exception to something Professor Sexon said in our last class. While I understand his thought between the distinction of "oh" or small epiphanies and "aah" or large epiphanies I have to argue with him in the matter of epiphanies found in good meals. As a strong follower of the James Beard lifestyle I have to admit that my only "aah" epiphany moments have been brought on by good meals, specifically the oxtail at cul-de-sac in Rome incident of 2008. If music can be a medium for an epiphany than experiencing the absolute genius of Thomas Keller certainly has to be an "aah" moment of perfect clarity and awakening. With that said I will now try to explore how literature has been a close second to food in my experience with epiphanies.
I suppose my first English "oh" epiphany came in high school when I first read William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. It was then that I realized that pieces of literature could be so much more than just a story, that they could be instead an intricate puzzle of meaning and allusions that the reader put together as they read. It was because of this that I chose English as my major, who wouldn't want to read great books all day, putting together each puzzle all while receiving college credit! In English 429, Professional Writing with Professor Downs last year I experienced another small epiphany when it finally hit me that literature majors have a very small range of job options after graduation and that the future was real and not like the fiction i had spent the last years immersed in. I assume for every novel i have read, there has been a small lightbulb moment where i finally understand a reference or allusion or put everything together, i am assuming however that there are too many of these to recall. This May I hope to revisit this post and write something more conclusive, a final epiphany about how i have spent my college life
I suppose my first English "oh" epiphany came in high school when I first read William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. It was then that I realized that pieces of literature could be so much more than just a story, that they could be instead an intricate puzzle of meaning and allusions that the reader put together as they read. It was because of this that I chose English as my major, who wouldn't want to read great books all day, putting together each puzzle all while receiving college credit! In English 429, Professional Writing with Professor Downs last year I experienced another small epiphany when it finally hit me that literature majors have a very small range of job options after graduation and that the future was real and not like the fiction i had spent the last years immersed in. I assume for every novel i have read, there has been a small lightbulb moment where i finally understand a reference or allusion or put everything together, i am assuming however that there are too many of these to recall. This May I hope to revisit this post and write something more conclusive, a final epiphany about how i have spent my college life
Thursday, January 14, 2010
First Thoughts on Epiphany
So from what I could find regarding the root of the word it appears that it comes from the Latin word epiphania which came from the Greek word epiphaneia or epiphainein . epiphainein is broken down to epi meaning “over or on” and phainein, meaning “to show” so the word came to mean “manifestation or display.” This definition makes sense as an epiphany, to the best of my understanding, is a sort of revelation in which things suddenly become clear or are finally shown. The word also seems to be strongly influenced by religion as it also is defined as the appearance of a divine being or deity to man. Both definitions seem to relate the same basic concept, that an epiphany is an awakening or realization of something bigger than what was previously understood. As an English Literature major who will soon be forced to enter the real world and pursue some sort of career, I would love to experience my own sort of epiphany in this class but I will gladly settle for simply coming to a comprehensive understanding of epiphanies in literature. Throughout all my years studying literature I must admit that I have not once delved into the topic of epiphany in the books I have read and I am now very excited to look into such a fascinating topic!
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