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I take it that one has to go throught the mortal phase in order to reach "the artifice of eternity." The artists of the sixth century, the "sages" perhaps, have gone through it have reached "such a form."Quote:
Originally Posted by jackyyyy
How much does this owe (and how much does it contrast with) Keat's Odes, "To A Grecian Urn," and To A Nightingale"
I would take that pill in a heartbeat. I love life. you just got to know how to live it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
Unnamable--Think he'd been hanging out with these guys too long? ;) :Quote:
I see a lot of pretentious and rather precious aesthetic fartiness. The idea is silly and, as I said above, Yeats champions what I would consider gaudy artifice over what is natural and ‘real’. I don’t really care how ‘beautiful’ his imagery is, the idea of wanting to be a golden bird sitting in a golden tree in some imaginary place is laughable. I think he needed to get out of his Tower more.
The Scholars
Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?
The mortal phase, as I think you are referring, would be along Christian lines. Many of us have a picture of immortality and how to arrive, whether 30 is the resignation point or its 75, or if its been shoved down our throats or we were actually suddenly enlightened. We may face death situations at any time of life, and many times. Facing it is tough, or you neglect it, or you resign.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Who says eternity is an artifice? The Sages. Yeats may have been so collected in 'his' vision, that he was simply applying these images (Byzantium, Gold, etc) to further his message. Finally, what I see is a resignation, but also an offer: 'you might as well be useful'. Yes, be a Greek Urn.... as in dust to dust, be returned to the soil, to be useful, instead of a tattered up derelict, without use. I don't know enough of his other works to comment, but I can see he is fascinated with mythology, and that would be his education. We explain best by analogizing what we know the most against/for what we are projecting in discussion, as a poem in this case. Here, he is using his knowledge of Byzantium (a utopia of blind beauty and surrealism) to propell futility. When I wrote earlier that I wondered if he was being sarcastic or black humoured, atheist makes an easier envelope for the message, unless we are not atheist ourselves, of course.
I had just been about to post the same question. Much as I do like the Yeats, I have always felt a little of what Unnamable expresses about this poem. I must say, given a choice, I prefer the Keats because both the poems you mention do seem--to me at least--to address the issue in a slightly deeper or more emotionally relateable way. Perhaps it is because Keats' urn is an object he is contemplating, not only as some symbol of the "artifice of eternity", but as an actual object created by someone not unlike himself. In Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn" the eternity of art is rooted in the way the member of one generation can identify with what is produced by someone from a previous generation. Eternity is not for the individual but for the beauty in the world that will continue to be enjoyed by future people just as it was for the speaker of the poem. Art is not the provider, so much as the reminder of that beauty, and the acknowledgment of mortality and sadness is not only present but central to the argument of the poem.Quote:
How much does this owe (and how much does it contrast with) Keat's Odes, "To A Grecian Urn," and To A Nightingale"
Yeats personalizes this by specifically making himself a golden artifact, and hence he and his art are in some way handed the authority of being set apart from the rest of humanity. What the "golden bird" image lacks is that connection between the artwork and the flawed human maker of that object. It seems to suggest that Yeats himself is art itself in some way, rather than simply someone who creates things in order to remind people about the beauty in life. I think the last line is what saves him from coming across as too absurd though. The "what is past or passing or to come" does seem to acknowledge some sort of ongoing connection with life, a desire for immortality not seperate from the mortal world, to paraphrase someone earlier on this thread (ktd?).
It’s far less convincing than either and seems to miss the point of both. Keats’s bird is a real one, even though he endows with a kind of immortality. His awareness of the real world is much more affecting than Yeats’s:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.”
I’ve known enough of “the weariness, the fever and the fret” to prefer the Keats by miles (and I’m not that much of a fan of him, either) as well as find the Yeats pretentious, self-indulgent and silly.
Keats is no less concerned with aesthetics than Yeats but I agree with Petrarch’s Love here, especially “Perhaps it is because Keats' urn is an object he is contemplating, not only as some symbol of the "artifice of eternity", but as an actual object created by someone not unlike himself.”
When I wrote earlier that I didn’t see the tension in the Yeats poem, I had in mind the kind of tension that is in Keats. Remember that the scene on the urn is described as a “Cold Pastoral!” The 'Bold Lover' will never 'die' but he'll never plant that kiss either.
PS Do you know Desmond Skirrow’s parody of Ode on a Grecian Urn? -
“Gods chase
'round vase.
What say?
What play?
Don't know.
Nice, though.”
I didn't make a point. I asked a question. I would agree. I don't have time now. Although you're (all, not just you) partially right, you guys are being a little harsh. He's an old man who has gone through the life and is now searching for something more. He's not saying this is how we should lead the bulk of our lives; he's talking about an after life.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
I didn’t mean that you’d missed the point but that Yeats had.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
However, I don’t feel that he is talking about an afterlife so much as a state beyond life. Where’s “the fury and the mire of human veins”, Virgil? (Don’t tell me it’s in a different poem, I know that.)
Oh, Ok.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
I agree, but you (and the rest) are implying that it's at the expense of life. I don't feel that way. He has lived life. He understands the "sensual music" of those "dying generations." After all, what is the bird singing of, but the sensual music of life, of "what is past, or passing, or to come."Quote:
However, I don’t feel that he is talking about an afterlife so much as a state beyond life.
Yes, I know, that's "Byzantium" and he wrote that a few years after this one. Perhaps he had the same qualms you are pointing out here. While there is an element of escapisim here in "STB", I think the state beyond life requires him to experience life. Look there are plenty of Yeats poems that emphasize life's experience: his love poems, "Easter 1916", "A Prayer For My Daughter," (quite touching) and his "Crazy Jane" poems. In fact the Crazy Jane poems emphasizes the same things you want him to emphasize.Quote:
Where’s “the fury and the mire of human veins”, Virgil? (Don’t tell me it’s in a different poem, I know that.)
But even here I don't think he is minimizing the importance of life's experience. Look at the first stanza:
Let me bring you back to that question I asked about "commend." From M-W:Quote:
The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
He is commending life. Here that bird is a real life bird, a Keatsian nightinggale, if you will. But now he is an "aged man," a "dying animal," and now is searching for eternal permanence, and he finds it in art (well, he's an artist). I take the purging in the third stanza as a metaphor for the dying process. And then, "once out of nature" he can become through his art, through his poem, the golden bird which will sing to subsequent generations. He going through the process of the "dying generations" (not avoiding it) is what allows him to sing.Quote:
commend
Main Entry: com·mend
Pronunciation: k&-'mend
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin commendare, from com- + mandare to entrust -- more at MANDATE
transitive senses
1 : to entrust for care or preservation
2 : to recommend as worthy of confidence or notice
3 : to mention with approbation : PRAISE
intransitive senses : to commend or serve as a commendation of something
I agree with a lot of the posts here. This is not one of my favourite Yeats Poems. To my mind Yeats was at his best when he stuck to Ireland and Irish politics, most of his metaphysical works leave me cold, with the exception of Second Coming. I have never seen why this poem is vaunted as one of his greatest and I am glad to see that I am not alone in that.
Read No Second Troy, Easter 1916 or The Lake Isle of Innisfree. They are among his best, this is just Muzak, it sounds dramating and meaningful but is essentially nothing but empty masturbation in rhyme.
Wasn’t that an early Led Zeppelin album? It included their hugely overrated “Stairway to Onan”.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grumbleguts
Lest I be too quickly lumped in with "the rest," I thought I'd clarify that I agree with this point. Compared with Keats, I don't think this Yeats is as thorough and as deeply rooted in the human experience, but I don't think it's uprooted either. Considered purely on its own merits, rather than comparatively speaking, I don't know that I would classify it as completely absurd as Unnamable seems to think it is. As I said in my last post, that final line "what is past, or passing or to come" (partly a chiasmatic echo of the earlier "whatever is begotten, born or dies") in particular for me brings what might have otherwise escalated into an aesthetic daydream, back to a sympathy with the human experience, a return of the "sensual music of life" as Virg. so aptly puts it. So I'm somewhere between the two extremes in this debate. I do think it's quite a beautiful poem, but not perhaps as deeply reflective as some others I've come across.Quote:
I agree, but you (and the rest) are implying that it's at the expense of life. I don't feel that way. He has lived life. He understands the "sensual music" of those "dying generations." After all, what is the bird singing of, but the sensual music of life, of "what is past, or passing, or to come."
There's a whole genre of poetry across the ages in which the poet expresses the idea of his own immortality through his art. For example, it's all over Shakespeare's sonnets (take #55: "Not marble nor the gilded monuments/ Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme"). This conversation has me thinking about the way poets chose to couch what is essentially the same claim about immortality through art. What is at stake when Shakespeare is contemplating immortality by describing his lover, another mortal creature; when Keat's is describing a man-made artifact; when Yeats is describing an imagined artifact? What claims are they making about the power of art over life when they give it power over death? Because "Sailing to Byzantium" is more abstracted from "the fury and the mire of human veins" so to speak, does that mean that it is in some way making a larger claim for the power and authority of the poet/artist who now stands in an omniscient god-like state with a body not "from any natural thing"? Is this in some way a stronger or weaker claim about the power of art than one in which art is more a reminder than an embodiment of the immortality of beauty?
OK, I'll stop throwing out questions now. Just thought that since Unnamable has alluded to it more than once and others might not be catching the allusion I'd post "Byzantium" (which isn't here on Lit. Net for some odd reason) with the appropriate line in bold (you can also find the signature of one of the members here ;) ):
Quote:
Byzantium
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after Spirit! The smithies break the flood.
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
--W.B. Yeats
:lol: Thanks Unnamable, I hadn't come across that before. Maybe I can make it easy on myself and assign this version rather than the original to my students next year. They might actually read all of this one without any recourse to spark notes. :nod:Quote:
“Gods chase
'round vase.
What say?
What play?
Don't know.
Nice, though.”
Hey, you know I beginning to think we agree on lots of things.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Here, he is maybe not so romantic compared to some, but I think he could have painted it up a lot more that he actually did. Especially when I compare with the Keats that someone just posted. Yeats used his word space to build a picture of humanity and myth. I can't give any of the myth part a grain of salt, thats why its myth. But, the human part I can. I think this is where the Keats impression wins over with people, he is more relatable. As for efficacy, a golden bird endowed with supernatural powers is really no different to a live bird endowered with a something else, except in One Flew Over the Cookoos Nest. All poets colourize with different brushes and what Yeats did was more focused. I mean, it was not that hard to read, other than the perne gyre he threw in. Apart from Virgil, and I think I did with some reservations, no one else has really summed it up. What was his message, even if you think its silly or ludricous, what did he intend?
The bird is sitting in front of Lords and Ladies singing, "you silly fools" or "whos a pretty polly?". Its being compared to the Keats but I don't think there is any comparison to be made because he has a different message.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
It is at the expense of his life. Hes obsessive about what had been. He doesn't want to let go, even if retaining life in this world means not being in possession of his own heart, his own soul. Hes 'sick with desire...' Hes clinging to whatever part of this world that will let him be a part of this world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
I don't know if 'what is past, or passing, or to come' means what you say, or means that people can't let go of the good part of their life.
A good analogy, although at a lower scope, are people like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzy, etc, who come back from retirement believing they are still as good as they once were-just to find out that their not. This may not affect their past legacies, but it definity does tarnish the latter part of their life.
I see something like this happening in this Yeat's poem, but on a larger scale: his soul's life trapped in this mortal world.
This does not mean that I don't like this poem because I do.
Frankly, ktd, I don't understand your point. It is at the expense of life, but he doesn't want to let life go? I thought the point was that he wants to let life go. It's not at the expense of life, because he's at the end of life. He's already lived it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
I don't follow. I don't feel this analogy is apt.Quote:
I don't know if 'what is past, or passing, or to come' means what you say, or means that people can't let go of the good part of their life.
A good analogy, although at a lower scope, are people like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzy, etc, who come back from retirement believing they are still as good as they once were-just to find out that their not. This may not affect their past legacies, but it definity does tarnish the latter part of their life.
I see something like this happening in this Yeat's poem, but on a larger scale: his soul's life trapped in this mortal world.
Ok, so when do you think life ends, when your in your 50's, 60's? Is he talking from beyond the grave?Quote:
He's already lived it.
Thats because your stern with your point-of-view.Quote:
I don't follow. I don't feel this analogy is apt
Is this one of those statements where you pretend not to understand me. Once you live you life(in this world) thats it! move on. And he can't move on.Quote:
Frankly, ktd, I don't understand your point. It is at the expense of life, but he doesn't want to let life go? I thought the point was that he wants to let life go. It's not at the expense of life, because he's at the end of life.
Wouldn't you rather do something else with the latter part of your life than dwell on the past?
I don't know what "chiasmatic" means but it sounds great! ;) There are all sorts of echoes and sound interconnections that make this such high art, for me. And yet it reads so smoothly as if no work actually went into it, as if it just rolled off his tongue. And perhaps it did.Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
It goes back at least to Horace, that I can think of. It must go back even further.Quote:
There's a whole genre of poetry across the ages in which the poet expresses the idea of his own immortality through his art. For example, it's all over Shakespeare's sonnets (take #55: "Not marble nor the gilded monuments/ Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme"). This conversation has me thinking about the way poets chose to couch what is essentially the same claim about immortality through art...
Too many questions. I'll just answer this one. I would characterize it as supernatural state, not "ominiscient god-like state," if we can percieve a difference. I still maintain that even in his supernatural state he's intimately linked to nature: singing of "the dying generations," and of "the mortal dress". I'm not sure I would characterize it as "power and authority." All the golden bird is doing is entertaining, as far as we can see. In fact, the Emperor doesn't seem to even want to be entertained. It seems the singing is for beauty's sake. Art for art's sake, perhaps?Quote:
Because "Sailing to Byzantium" is more abstracted from "the fury and the mire of human veins" so to speak, does that mean that it is in some way making a larger claim for the power and authority of the poet/artist who now stands in an omniscient god-like state with a body not "from any natural thing"?
Why do you say he can't move on. I read it as he questing for it. He's desiring it. I can't read the third stanza any other way:Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
"Come...and be" and "Consume," and "gather me."Quote:
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
:lol: Well, so are you. :nod:Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
Oops, I didn't see this last question before. He's not dwelling on his personal past. He will sing of the sensual music (admittedly abstract) of life in a genereal sense, of the mortal dress. He's not being specific, I don't think.Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
Look at the next post. I was playing with Image Insert and posted multiple times without knowing.
Ok then, does he achieve his quest? And if he does, what form does he take? I read the third stanza as a resignation:'be the singing-masters of my soul./consume my heart away/sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal it knows not what it is(as if); and gather me into the artifice.'Quote:
Why do you say he can't move on. I read it as he questing for it. He's desiring it. I can't read the third stanza any other way:
Check out this link:
http://courses.washington.edu/englht...l481/dali.html
Then we, ourselves are resigned to our point-of-view.Quote:
Well, so are you
I'm sorry, it won't let me open the link. But those are active verbs in the third stanza. I just don't see the resignation. I read it as he achieving his quest.Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
I guess so.Quote:
Then we, ourselves are resigned to our point-of-view.
We'll then, paste it into the address box above. I agree they are active verbs. And yes I do think he achieves his quest, but not in the way same way as you think. The resignation comes from the form he must take to be immortalized in this world.Quote:
I'm sorry, it won't let me open the link. But those are active verbs in the third stanza. I just don't see the resignation. I read it as he achieving his quest.
OK, I was able to open it. It's a Dali painting on time. So?Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222
To quote Morrissey, “The passing of time and all of its sickening crimes”.Quote:
Originally Posted by “jackyyyy”
I didn’t know the word ‘Chiasmatic’, either. Having looked it up, I still don’t understand what it means in relation to the poem. I think the line ‘whatever is begotten, born, and dies’ is proleptic of the final line, which I take simply to refer to the past, present and future – the realm of time and change, which is the only place we exist. So the irony is that his wish to escape time by becoming a golden bird, a supreme work of art, if granted, means that he will be singing about the very things he had supposedly gotten away from. And look who his audience is. Perhaps that’s the fate of all art – to become some object no longer alive in the human sense, dispensing observations on being alive, to some elite. I suppose that’s sort of what has happened to Yeats.
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' You are all admiring the cut and quality of the Emperor’s new clothes. The idea of Yeats having written something absurd won’t strike you as quite so extreme if you read his guff about history as the movement of gyres in A Vision. Imagine if TS Eliot had put all his intellectual energy into astrology and then dropped acid. There is an unfeasibly sensible website dedicated to this nonsense. It has a nice animation of a ‘widening gyre’, though:Quote:
Originally Posted by “Petrarch’s Love”
http://www.yeatsvision.com/
Give me the Yeats who wrote The Scholars and these lines any day:
“I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.”
“And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!”
This is where we differ. I’m not really interested in abstract, rarefied discussions about the power of art. I like my art with snot and blood on it. To quote from another of his poems,Quote:
Originally Posted by “Petrarch’s Love”
”only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.”
“In moderation placing all my glory,Quote:
Originally Posted by “Petrarch’s Love”
While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.”
Alexander Pope The First Satire of the Second
Book of Horace, Imitated
So there’s me on the one side as a curmudgeonly Swift, you as Pope the moderate and…does this mean Virgil is Gay?
ktd222’s comments are an interesting reading of the poem. “The resignation comes from the form he must take to be immortalized in this world,” suggests that Yeats is aware of the absurdity of achieving immortality in the way he describes. The point of the Dali link is more in the bit of accompanying text than in the painting itself; “that which stands still stagnates”. Without the passing of time, there is no decay but no growth either, so no life. Both words are significant in ‘dying generations’.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Virgil”
What poem is that from, BTW?Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Hey, I think that's the second time in a week you questioned my sexual orientation. :lol: Seriously, though, to my disgrace I am not familiar with the eighteen century poets. A class on them seems to have eluded me. I kind of get your references to Swift and Pope, but I'm not familiar with Gay.Quote:
So there’s me on the one side as a curmudgeonly Swift, you as Pope the moderate and…does this mean Virgil is Gay?
Perhaps it is more of a wish than something he really expects. But the third stanza is an elaborate description of his transfiguration, and the fourth stanza he does talk of hammering his post life form into the golden bird. And I want to emphasize again, post life form. I still don't see the resignation.Quote:
ktd222’s comments are an interesting reading of the poem. “The resignation comes from the form he must take to be immortalized in this world,” suggests that Yeats is aware of the absurdity of achieving immortality in the way he describes. The point of the Dali link is more in the bit of accompanying text than in the painting itself; “that which stands still stagnates”. Without the passing of time, there is no decay but no growth either, so no life. Both words are significant in ‘dying generations’
Now I would like to ask the million dollar question that I have a hard time answering: Why is that "no country for old men?"
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Notice the rythme here.
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
This only means he has past thus far through life. It does not mean he has 'searched' the seas.... for something. He was resigned to his fate before he started the first Stanza.
Not until the fourth stanza does he go up a tone with renewed resolve...
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
But such a form 'as'....
He is not saying he would be a Grecian goldsmith piece/ornament. He is saying he would be 'as'.
Its not alive in any sense, its an artifact. This is where he is mocking the blissful ignorant of Byzantium, inclusive the O sages, and why he 'pretends' himself to sit on a bough, to point it out to Lord and Ladies, which is exactly what art does, sitting in it's art galleries as a reminder. Nihilism means zero, you are gone, whoosh. I think this is his message, might as well be a trinket on the wall. When I think about it, thats a lot of paint for a little message, a quickie.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Old people don't look good hanging around discos.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Quote:
I don't know what "chiasmatic" means but it sounds great!
Sorry guys, I properly meant "chiastic," the adjective for "chiasmus." I usually use "chiastic," in fact I have no idea whatsoever where "chiasmatic" came from. Not sure where my brain was. :brickwall Chiasmatic has sometimes been used in this way, but evidently not for at least a century, and (as I found upon looking it up in the OED) is evidently usually used as some sort of medical term. Perhaps it's a sign I've been studying too hard when I'm starting to make up words--at least this one turned out to actually be a word. :lol: Well, lesson learned not to post absentmindedly while trying to relax the brain after a three hour poetics workshop with Derek Attridge (literary critic) encompassing everything from the new critics to the deconstructionists. :nod:Quote:
I didn’t know the word ‘Chiasmatic’, either. Having looked it up, I still don’t understand what it means in relation to the poem.
Anyway, I meant that I had seen the two lines as chiastic, in that I saw the elements in the first line--"begotten," "born," and "dies"--reversed in the final line with "past" corresponding to death, "passing" corresponding to birth into life, and "to come" corresponding with "begotten." Of course, after your justifiable confusion over my lamentable word choice made me look at these lines again, I realized that they could also be taken as much more straightforward parallelism, with "begotten" being what is past, birth, what is passing, and death what is to come. I suppose it's all a question of how you view the life cycle and how much you've allowed yourself to have been compelled by Yeats' artistic notion of rebirth.
Lord, I was out of it when I posted. How could I have applied such an unseemly word as "seems" to The Unnamable?! Did I ever say Yeats couldn't write anything absurd? I am certain that he did so on more than one occasion. I only meant that in my opinion he is not being quite as absurd in this particular piece as you definitely (not seemingly) think he is. I'm not admiring the gold embroidery on the emperor's non-existent sleeve, but it looks to me as though he's still got on some boxers and an undershirt. (If you want to picture him naked that's your business).Quote:
Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' You are all admiring the cut and quality of the Emperor’s new clothes. The idea of Yeats having written something absurd won’t strike you as quite so extreme if you read his guff about history as the movement of gyres in A Vision.
:lol: Thanks Unnamable. I think this is the first time anyone's made me the object of a quote from a Pope satire, and I've always liked this one. I'm honored. I'll let Virgil defend himself against this shocking innuendo that he wrote the Beggar's Opera. (Oh, I just saw Virg.'s post. Here's a link to the Wiki. info on John Gay, in case you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gay)Quote:
“In moderation placing all my glory,
While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.”
Alexander Pope The First Satire of the Second
Book of Horace, Imitated
So there’s me on the one side as a curmudgeonly Swift, you as Pope the moderate and…does this mean Virgil is Gay?
Meditations In Time Of Civil War (section 3, My Table). The poem also contains the line, “Yet if no change appears/ No moon;”Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
John Gay was a friend of Pope and Swift. His most famous work was The Beggar’s Opera:Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
“Mackie was not Brecht’s original creation. Even the idea of The Threepenny Opera was not his, but was suggested to him in 1928 by Elisabeth Hauptmann, one of the more enduring of his throng of willing women. With her knowledge of English, she had been searching through material for him to use, and had come across The Beggar’s Opera, John Gay’s hugely successful 1728 parody of Italian opera, made by taking popular songs of the day and singing them to new satirical texts, lampooning politicians and opera singers alike. Gay’s central figure, the highwayman Macheath, became Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife.”
I agree with Jackyyy about why “That is no country…”. He simply feels that the country he is leaving is unsuitable for the aged – it’s teeming with life and full of young people enjoying themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
No need to be self-critical. I can only ever be thankful when someone sets me up with an opportunity to recite some of Hamlet’s lines. I still can’t believe that I’ll never tread the boards as the Dane. :( And I look so good in black doublet and hose.Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
Thanks.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Oh, that is very interesting. I never knew any of that.Quote:
John Gay was a friend of Pope and Swift. His most famous work was The Beggar’s Opera:
“Mackie was not Brecht’s original creation. Even the idea of The Threepenny Opera was not his, but was suggested to him in 1928 by Elisabeth Hauptmann, one of the more enduring of his throng of willing women. With her knowledge of English, she had been searching through material for him to use, and had come across The Beggar’s Opera, John Gay’s hugely successful 1728 parody of Italian opera, made by taking popular songs of the day and singing them to new satirical texts, lampooning politicians and opera singers alike. Gay’s central figure, the highwayman Macheath, became Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife.”
Oh, you guys are saying the country is not Byzantium, but where he's coming from? I've always assumed Byzantium, but I think you're right. I've misread that all these years.Quote:
I agree with Jackyyy about why “That is no country…”. He simply feels that the country he is leaving is unsuitable for the aged – it’s teeming with life and full of young people enjoying themselves.
:lol: Now there's a performance I'd love to see.Quote:
I still can’t believe that I’ll never tread the boards as the Dane. And I look so good in black doublet and hose.
Quote:
the country he is leaving is unsuitable for the aged – it’s teeming with life and full of young people enjoying themselves.
The country he is leaving is 'his younger age', it was never Byzantium. Byzantium is 'this' point in time or 'this' condition and state.Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
It’s Monday here and I haven’t posted a new one for 6 weeks so here goes.
In light of the kinds of discussions that have been taking place on the forum recently, this poem caught my eye. Should I even call it a poem? I’d be interested to see how people respond to it.
A Paragraph Made Up of
Seven Sentences Which Have
Entered My Memory Via Hearing Them
or Reading Them and Have Each
Left an Impression There Like the
Slender Scar Left by a Salamander
in a Piece of Rapidly Cooling
Igneous Rock
Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night. There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue. It's forty-eight WABC degrees. We control the horizontal. Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia. Missing coed found slain. All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More…
CHUCK WACHTEL
Very interesting. Is the bold preface part of the poem and is there a title?Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
I'm pretty sure that the bold type is the title - I've seen this before somewhere, I think.
Fun, gossip, weather, television, sex, news and advertising; take your pick. I can select any one to get more, or let my car auto-search do it for me, and deepen the scar. As wearing as nature on our bodies, this time on our minds and souls, we are reshaped. I can guess the result will be seen ten thousand years from now.
I can already see something ''artbitrary'' about all of the things the author has written above. The Outline set by someone else so that we can then begin to interpret.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Our circumstances for different interpretations of the previous weeks poem(or any poem) is dependent on what we know of the world(our set outlines): What we've experienced; the type of information that we use to interpret situations, and so on.
LOL! its dependent on what you believe a poem is.Quote:
Should I even call it a poem
What classifications are needed to indentify something as a vegetable?
Is this something to do with American culture or lifestyle???
Married life maybe...
Maybe even more specific: the individual.Quote:
Is this something to do with American culture or lifestyle???
Well, TN it sounds like lines from TV shows. The first one I can almost bet was from The Newlywed Game, a TV game show in the US back in the 1970s. The show asked friviolous questions to newlyweds and the spouse had to match the mate's answer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Yes, the question is asked in way that will allow the person to lend their viewpoint. What shapes the viewpoint of each individuals response? To me all three vegetables seem too similar for me to tell the difference. Is their an option 4, 5, 6, 7...?Quote:
Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night
Let me explain further:
Maybe when I interpret the same poem as say, Unnamable, or Virgil, or Jackyll, or Petrarch, or Xamonas, Im working with the options 1,2,3; But Unnamable is working with options 1,2,3,4,5,6,7; and Virgil with options 2,3,4,5,6,7,8. These are different sets of options each individual has to work to shape their interpretion on 'something.' I don't have option 4 to interpret with but Unnamable and Virgil do, so I reject interpretation with option 4 because I don't have an understanding of it, even though it exist and may be more apt to interpret 'something.'
I know this may be going too far, but what I'm getting at is that everyone
may, indeed, interpret with different viewpoints(options available). A word can mean something to one person and something different to another person. Who or what is responsible for our viewpoints(interpretations)?
Any other ideas?
To some degree I agree but some of us are older and have more experience at it. When I was your age, there was no way I could interpret as well as you do. Some of it is experience built up through college and reading and some through personal experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by ktd222