Before you go any further, let me say that when I wrote, “Would anyone else agree that there is also a crude pun in the same line?”, I was referring to ‘country pleasures’ in addition to ‘suck’d’.
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Before you go any further, let me say that when I wrote, “Would anyone else agree that there is also a crude pun in the same line?”, I was referring to ‘country pleasures’ in addition to ‘suck’d’.
You mean replace the s in sucked with an f? I don't know. It doesn't quite fit into the sentece. And how far back does that f- word go back? I don't have my Oxford dictionary handy.
Yes. What do you mean that it doesn’t quite fit into the sentence? It looks fine on my screen. What I like about Donne is that he writes the kind of love poetry that I can enjoy without having to disengage my rational faculties. He is, as I see him, honest about love. It includes sex, you know, despite what Auntie Wordsworth might have us believe. So the allusion to what it is about her that he really likes doesn’t destroy the poem for me, it adds another dimension, if you like. Besides, I was not harping on about the ‘f’, ‘s’ pun but the ‘country’ pun as in Hamlet’s ‘country matters’. Please tell me that I don’t need to send you a diagram!Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
Ok, I thought maybe a diagram wasn't such a bad idea given that this keeps cropping up. As I said before, I'm not able to import the image of the original text I'm working from, but I've used the seventeenth century "S" Unnamable provided to write the word as it appears in the first publication of the poem (for any concerned monitors, honestly no censoring is neccesary, this is really the way they made the "s" four hundred years ago and the way the word originally appeared).
The "F" word was very much alive during this period. The OED cites the first use as a verb in 1503, though it wasn't used as a noun until 1680 (there's your four letter word trivia for the day ;)).
As for the "country pleasures," I think you're right on Unnamable (for anyone who doesn't get this one, just say the "count" part of "country" and think of female anatomy--I don't think the site would let me write that word here). As a matter of fact I'm not the only one who agreees with you on this. I looked up the line in Hamlet you refer to, and the note to that line in the Arden 3 edition refers the reader to "The Good Morrow" as another bawdy use of the term "country."
On a totally different topic, Virgil, I just wanted to say that is incredibly sweet. It gives a single girl something to look forward to.:)Quote:
I'm with you Petrarch. It is accurate. Even beyond just metaphor. I've been married 14, closer to 15 years, now and this home we've built and live in is our little world. There is almost a psychic dichotome between the outside world and this home we share.
Also, I'd like to add my echo to Virgil's question: Is there anyone else out there who wants to POST A POEM?
OK, between your post here and Petrarch's post following, you've convinced me it is possible, and knowing Donne's personality, at least in his younger days, it's quite possible he did do it intentionally. Yes, the country pun fits better than the "f" substitution. I didn't catch the country pun.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
Are we having fun with language, or what! :D
Is now a good time to post a new poem? Or should I have waited until Monday? Perhaps, if I've jumped the gun, we can wait until Monday to start talking about it.
I'm posting a poem I like, but barely understand:
Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz
by Wallace Stevens
The truth is that there comes a time
When we can mourn no more over music
That is so much motionless sound.
There comes a time when the waltz
Is no longer a mode of desire, a mode
Of revealing desire and is empty of shadows.
Too many waltzes have ended. And then
There’s that mountain-minded Hoon,
For whom desire was never that of the waltz,
Who found all form and order in solitude,
For whom the shapes were never the figures of men.
Now, for him, his forms have vanished.
There is order in neither sea nor sun.
The shapes have lost their glistening.
There are these sudden mobs of men,
These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
An immense suppression, freed,
These voices crying without knowing for what,
Except to be happy, without knowing how,
Imposing forms they cannot describe,
Requiring order beyond their speech.
Too many waltzes have ended. Yet the shapes
For which the voices cry, these, too, may be
Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire.
Too many waltzes–The epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant.
Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music
Will unite these figures of men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows.
Great blp. I was hoping someone would post. I love Wallace Stevens. He's probably in the top 2 or 3 poets of the 20th century for me. Let me read through this, since I don't recognize it and have some comments tonight.
hi blp I hope your day is good.
I haven't really sunk myself deeply into it yet, but upon skimming it seems to be a rather even blend of french symbolism=music and imagism=sculpture. Very precise and beautiful, it gave me shivers and a dreamy feeling all at the same time. great choice.
I can see exactly what you mean.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
I know Wallace didn't write most of his poetry until later life and there seems to be a theme of looking backwards from age here, "Too many waltzes have ended" starts 2 stanzas and the first 3 words a third. That was my immediate reaction, but I can see that I'm going to have to read it a few more times before I can offer much more.
Thanks for posting it, I'm not familiar with his work so it's completely new to me - I may need to look up some more of his work to build an overview of his themes.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Hi Rachel. My day was OK, thanks. I was a bit sleepy for a lot of it. Hope yours was good.
Can you say a bit more about these symbolism/music, imagism/sculpture relationships?
Thanks for posting BLP. Well, I'll have to agree with you and some of the others who posted. I like the sound of this poem but I feel it is dancing around something I can't quite understand. For the moment a few disjointed impressions: Each of the stanzas has three lines, just like the three beat measure of a waltz. Despite this three beat form, the poem insistently, almost nihilistically seems to reject the notion of any form or stability. I find something profoundly chilling about a poem that can regard music as "so much motionless sound."
And a few questions: I know almost nothing about Steven's life and experiences, but this poem seems to refer to some great change (either personal or social) he experienced. Is it simply the experience of age? Could this poem have been written during the Depression era? Some of the images, such as the crowds of men,
make me think of the crowds of displaced and unemployed that must have suddenly arisen in this era just after the up times in the twenties. That sort of broad social change would certainly account for a sudden distrust in the power of art, music, dancing in the face of a harsh reality. Also, who or what is "Hoon"? I'd be interested to hear from anyone who knows more about the context of this poem or the life of its poet.Quote:
There are these sudden mobs of men,
These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
An immense suppression, freed,
These voices crying without knowing for what,
Just some thoughts. I'll sign off for now and maybe post something more coherent after additional thought.
Thanks Petrarch's Love. Your thoughts are similar to some of the so far vague guesswork I've been doing. I was wondering if the three-line stanzas related to the structure of a waltz and was also thinking about how it might relate to history. Don't know exactly when Stevens was writing, but this poem seems to me to have a similar relationship to chaos to that of other works from the first half of the twentieth century, especially Yeats' 'The Second Coming' (things fall apart, the centre cannot hold etc.) Another Stevens poem is actually called Connoisseur of Chaos and begins, 'A. A violent order is disorder; and/B. a great disorder is an order. These/Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations)'. I wondered if this sort of tendency might be more to do with Einstein and the sudden, shocking modernity of the twentieth century. But the Depression theory works for me too, maybe better - that bit you quoted is my favourite part of the poem, by the way.
I wanted to discuss just impressions for a while, but I know, because I stumbled on it when looking for the text of the poem, that there's an essay about it on the web, which may clear a few things up eventually. Glancing at that I found out that Hoon was a philosopher. Other than that, I know that Stevens was an insurance man for a lot of his life - and is therefore known as 'The insurance man of American Letters'.
I'll use this post to put out what I know of Stevens, and then perhaps tomorrow I'll tackle the poem itself.
Yes, he was an insurance man, and rose to be vice president of the company. He wrote in his spare time and really didn't publish first book until his forties. I had a teacher who told a story that after he had passed away and a biographer went to some of the people who he worked with and they were startled and said something to the effect, "You mean old Wally wrote poems?" There's also a story about him getting into a fight with Hemingway down in the Florida Keys, I think. He lived from 1879-1955. This poem, "Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz" was published in 1936 in a collection he called Ideas of Order. I think title of the book reflects a lot of the themes in the poems. The most famous and often anthologized poem from that collection is called "The Idea of Order at Key West." One other note, in terms of reputation, Wallace Stevens is among the top American poets of the 20th century, and in some critics estimation the top American poet, surpassing even T.S. Eliot. He is very conscious of his American language ("mountain-minded Hoon" for instance), and a friend to that other very American poet of his era, William Carlos Williams.
I must say that as much as I love Stevens, and no matter how often I read him and the same poem over and over, I can never fully grasp him. The posts above reacting in this way are common. It's almost like trying to grasp water; it just flows away. And yes, Rachel I believe he was infleuenced by the Symbolists, at least stylistically.
There are two extreme styles that Stevens uses. One is very sensual (not in the sexual sense, but in the use of tangible hard imagery), spilled over profusely. The other, which is the case with "Sad Strains" is the extreme opposite, sparseness of imagery, almost purely using abstractions. You have to be a great poet writing almost purely with abstract words and get away with it. You almost never see Stevens fail. Even when he does here use tangible nouns, look at how he pushes them away from feeling them: "motionless sound," "empty of shadows," "shapes were never the figures of men," "clouds of faces and arms". The great word in this poem that is so characteristic of Stevens (he just comes up with these things) is "Hoon" and I can't find what the word means. But what's key here is that it's "mountain-minded". I think this means (since I've come across similar in other Stevens poems) is that the poem (or at least part of the poem) is looking through the eyes and mind of Hoon.
Other things about his work. A constant theme is music, as here. Another is understanding how we piece the outside world together in out minds. He shares that in common with Virginia Woolf, in that respect, but I don't know if he ever read her. There is a lot of color symbolism throughout his work, but none I think in this poem. He uses this three line iambic pentameter stanza (almost like an unrhymed terza rima) very frequently. I've never understood it. But there must be a reason for his format. He's constantly writing about aestheitics, so the shape of his works have to be thought through, but I get baffled by it. Plus he's too good a craftsman of poetry to not think that through.
As I look at this poem in my Stevens: Collected Poetry and Prose I notice that the next poem (I believe laid out in the sequence of the original printing) is a counter piece to "Sad Strains" in the opposing style I mentioned above. It's short enough for me to copy it for your pleasure:
Quote:
Dance of the Macabre Mice
In the land of turkeys in turkey weather
At the base of the statue, we go round and round.
What a beautiful history, beautiful surprise!
Monsieur is on horseback. The horse is covered with mice.
This dance has no name. It is a hungry dance.
We dance it out to the tip of Monsieur's sword,
Reading the lordly language of the inscription,
Which is like zithers and tambourines combined:
The Founder of the State. Whoever founded
A state that was free, in the dead of winter, from mice?
What a beautiful tableau tinted and towering,
The arm of bronze outstretched against all evil!
Thanks Virgil.
Another bit about Stevens I would like to add is his interest in different perspectives. I've read a couple Stevens poems that play with the idea of multiple viewpoints (I can't remember the names of two, something about a blackbird, and another about men crossing a bridge; but also The Man with the Blue Guitar).
A reply to Petrarch: Where he mentions "so much motionless sound" I get the impression that he is talking about the waltzes of the past, and so if they are not being played currently there is no motion. This scientific understanding of music interests me, and I always figured Stevens to be influenced by Einstein and modern science, but never really thought about the Depression era influence. Something to think about. In his poem The man with the Blue Guitar, supposedly inspired by a Picasso painting, he is concerned with artistic creation and how this relates to the general society in which the art is created. I think Stevens was influenced by the modern art movement, so much of his work is centered around aesthetics; but also the pre-Existential vein of philosphy.
Also, in The Man with the Blue Guitar Stevens employs the sun, sea, and shadow symbolism. I'll have to get back here with what that means in relation to this poem though.
There's a trajectory to it that you can chart via 'shadows' and 'glistening'. We first learn that both have vanished. By the end, there's a promise that they will return. Shadows are seen as a good thing - perhaps because they provide definition, absent in the clouds, order required beyond speech etc. in the middle of the poem.
This is extremely complicated and does leave me rather cold to be honest. It’s a bit like something that would have been written by a cross between Wittgenstein and TS Eliot. Still, it’s nice to see a clever American. :D
Here’s how I see it:
1. Music has (for a reason I don’t understand) lost some vital quality/purpose that Stevens ascribes to it. It appears that it has simply been reduced to sound, no longer generating the kinds of social interaction that it does when in the form of, say, a waltz. In this sense it is no longer dynamically generating something more than itself. By this, I mean that it isn't just noise/sound but has a social purpose/function. I am assuming that Stevens thinks music should not be ‘motionless’. This is, presumably, a sad state of affairs. However, there comes a time when we must stop lamenting this loss (I don’t mean as in an order – such as ‘You must stop doing that’ but more as in ‘we must simply get on with our lives). He suggests why later (I think).
2. Is he here expanding on the idea of music’s relegation to mere sound? What has been lost from music are those things it signifies beyond the level of mere sound. I assume that to be ‘empty of shadows’ is a negative thing. Shadows are good because they provide the possibility of nuance and uncertainty, which, as long as they don’t become anarchic, are positive things. They are representative of the mysteries that prevent life from being merely mechanical. If we reduce music to sound as a physical phenomenon, as a series of waves (which I suppose it is), then we are left with some impersonal, physical fact. We endow sound with meaning and significance.
Side note - Desire – a longing for something you don’t yet have and shadows are a sign of something that is there but not actually present in the shadow itself.
3 and 4. I have no idea who Hoon is. To me, ‘mountain-minded’ suggests something unchanging, heavy and solid to the point of being impenetrably dense. Hoon is certainly an unusual name (unfortunately, there is a British politician called Geoff Hoon but this is only the second time I’ve seen the name). It’s almost pseudo-biblical, like Onan, to whom he seems similar. The significant thing about Hoon is that he appears to be utterly self-contained, perhaps even solipsistic. He does seem to be taking part in some search for “form and order” but for him, “desire was never that of the waltz”, which I take to mean that his search for “form and order” doesn’t involve social interaction, i.e. other people. This is also why for Hoon, “the shapes were never the figures of men.” He doesn’t register them as an existent other. They are merely shapes in Hoon’s solipsistic world. The passing of waltzes doesn’t affect him. In the past (‘found’) Hoon was able to find order, presumably because his success relied on nothing but himself.
However, even for Hoon the ‘forms have vanished’. Again, I don’t know why. To gather that together, neither the narrator, who registers a world beyond the self, nor Hoon, who doesn’t, is able to find form and order any longer.
5, 6 and 7 The first two end-stopped lines reiterate the loss that has occurred but then he next seven lines are one long, clause-heavy sentence. This has the effect of accelerating our progress through a series of suddenly quite threatening images. It’s as if something has been unleashed. Form and order are fractured.
8. This is where it gets really hard to understand. I think he is being optimistic (no wonder I ‘m having trouble). I think he’s saying that even these “mobs of men” are searching for form and order and, although it’s difficult to see it amid the apparent chaos, they do so in a way that is possibly generative of new forms and orders.
9 and 10 Is the fact that “Too many waltzes -” is not appended by ‘have ended’ a suggestion that he is accepting that there have been too many waltzes and now it’s time for a different mode? The chaos is approaching ever nearer and will soon have dominion (“The epic of disbelief/Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant”). However, there is hope. Someone who is aware of what’s at stake will find a method that enables the dynamic energies of the “mobs of men” to respond to and be channelled by a new mode of expression. Whether that “harmonious skeptic” is the poet and the “skeptical music” his poetry, I don’t know. I think I would favour more the idea that it’s someone or something else.
I take it as a poem about sadly acknowledging the passing of one kind of order for another. This doesn’t happen quietly and without alarm but Stevens nevertheless appears somehow reassured by the end.
As I say, it leaves me rather cold. I can admire it but I can’t warm to it. I have read a few of Stevens’ poems that I like but this was new to me.
Good, yes. I think you're right about most of this, but it's funny how exegisis can kill things a bit. There's another Stevens poems that I'd still rank one of my favourites - The Emperor of Icecream, but it was spoiled just a little for both me and a friend when his college poetry tutor told him what it was about. We'd thought it was all just itself, somehow.
I think I'll get back to liking this one for its language too and maybe I'll even realise there's more to it than you say, but for the moment a lot of that seems right - and a bit banal. Out of order, chaos, out of chaos, order. Ho hum. Still, the sudden mobs of men take it out of abstraction. They work for me for every historical moment in which such mobs arise and brilliantly evoke something seismic and sublime - in the sense of overwhelming, awe-inspiring and frightening. The reminder of that very chaos' desire for order hits me too. The emotion of this - and that, in relation to the sadness and solitude evoked elsewhere - are what hook me and save the thing from being some humdrum discussion of some eternal cycle. It reminds me a lot of the sound of rioting at the beginning of The Smiths' Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me and, I think, works in a very similar way to the way that plays off the sadness and longing of that song. And already I'm back to liking it.
Also, Unnamable, unless I've misunderstood you, I think you've missed a tiny bit at the beginning. Isn't the sound motionless simply because the waltzes have ended? As in All good things - love affairs, just politics etc. And, yes, at some point you get used to it - and become skeptical of the Waltz in general.
I found a reference to 'Hoon' as Stevens' personification of 'Man alone' in a search. But only in one site. I found another that says he is a philosopher, but I can't find a phiolosopher of that name.
Stevens wrote another poem called "Tea at the Palaz of Hoon", which is equally impenetrable.
I will keep digging. Who is Hoon really?
I really didn’t mean to kill it. I’d hoped people would offer different views and some possible answers to the bits I can’t get. Still, it’s early yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
What you call exegesis is simply the way I try to make sense of a poem. I assume that it means something rather than anything and also assume that there is some kind of coherence there. Sometimes the poem tries to be anything rather than something and a lack of coherence is deliberate. You make it sound as if I’ve made a Papal pronouncement on what the poem ‘means’. I’ve just explained what I see it as ‘meaning’ (at least the bits of it that I understand).
I have really mixed feelings about this. Obviously I can sympathise with you. I like The Emperor of Ice-Cream because I know ‘what it’s about’. I don’t mean that I feel like one of the select few! I mean that only by knowing that there is reference to a funeral can I appreciate the absurd humour. There wasn’t much ice cream at most of the funerals I’ve attended. :lol: This raises a very difficult issue. Do you allow students to generate their own meanings or do you push them in a certain direction? If I don’t make them aware of the funeral, then they will miss something that Stevens presumably took the time and effort to include. I know that the author is dead and all but I tend to think that I am not doing justice to the person who wrote it if I allow something that is particularly clever/effective/evocative etc. to go unnoticed. My job as a teacher is to encourage an appreciation of Literature. To do this, I have to demonstrate why certain lines, say, are powerful/effective/clever and so on. My own enthusiasm for what I think is good certainly generates some appreciation. The problem for some people is that they think I am imposing my own readings and to an extent I am. I feel the years of study and reading have given me some degree of authority to do so. People tend to accept this idea when it comes to doctors, lawyers and even many teachers but when it comes to Literature, there is uneasiness.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
Often, students will try to hide a lack of basic understanding by offering nebulous suggestions about what certain lines could ‘mean’. I’m not trying to suggest that you have done this, by the way. These suggestions can be imaginative but when you have a poet like Plath for instance, who writes with almost forensic precision at times, I think similar clarity and precision are needed in the response. You can’t appreciate a line of Plath’s like “the black amnesias of heaven” if you think the phrase refers to a dark-petalled flower.
Oh, dear! Of course there is! I haven’t produced the definitive reading! It hardly amounts to a reading at all. Crushing though it would be, I’d now like to see someone dispose of my reading and offer something totally different and far more convincing.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
I’m not sure what you mean by “liking this one for its language too”. Do you mean as well as for its ‘meaning’? I’m sure that even if you are unable to forget my exegesis (not at all likely), you will still encounter the poem time and again with fresh insights. Have you really lost the ability to enjoy The Emperor of Ice-Cream? Can’t what you know now help you to enjoy it more? Perhaps it’s more a reflection of the context in which you first encountered it. The experience of discussing it with your friend is what made that particular encounter special in some way. It’s as if you’ve suddenly realised that the girl who was your first love was as ugly as sin and nowhere near as interesting. :D
Sometimes (actually, quite often) I remember lines that I have heard or read many times, in a particular context. I don’t know if you know Richard III but there is a scene when Buckingham asks Richard for the lands he had been promised as a reward for helping him to the throne. Richard is suspicious of Buckingham for responding coolly to a suggestion that the princes should be murdered. He delays giving him the land, as punishment. Buckingham pushes and Richard responds,
“I am not in the giving vein today”.
A student once asked me to buy some flower or something for charity. The line popped into my head and I delivered it.
What I wrote or the poem? If you mean the poem, I don’t think it’s banal and as I said, I can admire it. If you mean, what I wrote, I’m sorry.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
I hope that’s not how you think I see the poem. You make me feel as if I’ve torn out a huge swathe of your childhood. “He took my childhood in his stride.” Look out, the Grim Reaper is coming!Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
:D ;) I knew you should have faith in Stevens. I don’t like a lot of his stuff but I don’t think it’s in any way bad – just a bit too cold – like Donne would be without the wit.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
Yes, I agree. I think I dived straight into the bits I found more problematic.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
You make it sound much more like resignation than I think it is. In a way, I think Stevens is celebrating the new as well as lamenting the passing of the old.Quote:
Originally Posted by blp
PS Love affairs are not one of the "good things" on my list. ;)
I think this poem is about a woman.
Her name wouldn’t be Matilda, would it?Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
Sorry, Unnamable, I had no intention of implying your reading was definitive, that you'd killed the poem, that what you'd said was banal, that you'd torn out etc. Gah. Oh well.
All I was trying to say was that I have mixed feelings about the process of interpretation. Sometimes it can be intriguing, sometimes your romantic analogy is more how it feels - but I'd say it's more like realising that someone who'd seemed fascinating is actually quite shallow. I did start to feel something like that (about the poem) reading your post, but that was up to me and it was because I agreed with what (I thought) you said. I didn't resent you for saying what you did. I wasn't saying you shouldn't have said it or accusing you of being dull or authoritarian, just commenting on the risk of let down when interpretation demystifies something - but I posted the poem and I knew the risk and I certainly didn't expect people to not interpret it. I was very curious to see what people would say about it. So thanks for your detailed input, honestly.
No, I still love The Emperor of Icecream. The disappointment was not in finding out that it was about a funeral, which seems clear from the 'spread it so as to cover her face' line, but that, specifically, it was about a Mexican funeral - where all the elements described - wenches in such dress as they are used to wear, concupiscent curds, and the emperor of icecream himself, were said by my friend's teacher to be traditional. What we'd thought was Stevens' brilliant invention turned out to be taken from real life. Well, nothing comes from nothing and it may have been naive of us to think it did.
The thing I said about coming back to the language - no, I don't mean separately from the meaning, but I think on the whole in poetry, the language is what makes the difference. The painter Willem de Kooning said, 'Content is small' and, while it's not a universally applicable statement, it often applies in poetry, where the content can be as small as 'I fancy you', 'I'm sorry you died', 'My dad screwed me up' etc. And the language is the first thing for me with the Waltz poem - as well as the thing that saved it for me when I started to doubt it. Part of that, unsurprisingly, is to do with the meaning it suggests, and in doubting it, I must admit, I started to wonder if it was a smoke and mirrors act - because the poem does a grand job of suggesting that its content might be fairly big and, unfortunately, I really do think now, for now, that it's describing a rather pat transition from order to chaos to order again. I can see there's more to it than that, but just the fact that it's there at all bothers me a little, especially as the thematic structure of the poem. Maybe it's a bit too optimistic for me too. That said, it leaves me with puzzles that are sort of pleasurably troubling.
Yes, I think there is some resignation in the beginning. It doesn't rule out what you say - the end does seem optimistic, but the hope is said to be in skepticism. Also, even at the beginning, there may be optimism: 'mourn no more' implies this, it's just that it sounds like a hope born out of some loss of illusion.
Couldn't be because 'too many have ended' could it? ;) That's what I was driving at in describing a kind of resignation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unnamable
Mmm. At some point I'll crack and look this up too, but I'm still sticking to my impressions. But yeah, I've never heard of a philosopher called Hoon.Quote:
Originally Posted by Grumbleguts
Why?Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
Hi Unnamable. Why Matilda?
PS. Great analysis on post #179
I found it very interesting that you have analysed it by the construction of each verse. There are, or seem to be, a lot of changes in the tone and rhythm between each verse, which you have identified. I like your analysis of verses 5, 6, and 7 about how form and order are fractured by the change of pace and images.
"I take it as a poem about sadly acknowledging the passing of one kind of order for another. This doesn’t happen quietly and without alarm but Stevens nevertheless appears somehow reassured by the end." p#179
Maybe (it's a big maybe, I won't dare challenging you) this poem does not focus on the changes of form and order so much as focusing on the necessary processes that come with it, including mourning, remorse, and moving on. And maybe simply “change” isn’t enough, but loss, rejection may be more appropriate.
Hoon, I think, is the symbol of the ego, the internal perceptions. Hoon "found all form and order in solitude." But none was external; the orders and forms that Hoon found were never real, "for whom the shapes were never the figures of men." That’s why he is unhappy with the order that he found. Hoon, to me, is very lonely, almost imprisoned and tortured. For I can think of no worse torture than being able to find all form and order (meaning everything, or justice perhaps), but still be unsatisfied. What else can Hoon do? And vice versa. Hoon found the "mode of desire, a mode of revealing desire" of the real world through the waltz, only to find that it is not what he wants at all, and that for him "desire was never that of the waltz." Because he had found order and form in solitude before the waltz even started.
Hoon is torn between mourning an inevitable loss and pride. If he is fine in solitude, why should he mourn? But he does mourn, because Hoon is weaker than reality. Hoon is the embodiment of sorrow. Hoon himself is not sorrow, for he clings on to the waltz and doesn't want it to end. He's afraid of being forgotten when changes will be adapted to.
Loss, especially an inevitable loss, is unbearable by the lonely mind. But there comes a time when the mind must wake up and interact with the world, whose sceptics
"Will unite these figures of men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows."
Hoon is dead then, as is the sorrow of loss and being rejected. It will only happen when the waltz ends, but when it plays again, the inevitable process repeats itself.
Am I making any sense?
Good observations above. Here are some of my observatuions, of which I can't still put together the overall theme.
The poem seems to be divided into four parts:
(1) Up through the first sentence of the third stanza, "...waltzes have ended." Here it there is a postive outlook by the narrator. Unpacked it could read as: The time for mourning over motionless sound is no longer possible; music/waltz is no longer in a mode of desire. Mode is a key word here, and I pun on key. Mode in music usually refers to being in a minor or major key. Another loaded word here is "truth." When a writer tells you "the truth" you better take notice.
(2) The second part starts with "And then..." And here the mode shifts to a minor key, a pessimistic outlook from the point of view of Hoon, all because of his solitude. Forms have vanished. A sort of chaos is percieved, no order in "sea or sun." Alone he cannot formulate the world.
(3) Suddenly, "mobs of men" show up, the opposite of Hoon's solitude, a third shift in point of view. And here it jumps back to a major key, "happy, without knowing how/Imposing forms they cannot describe/Requiring order beyond their speech," an abundance of positive associations. And he ties this back to the first section, "Too many waltzes have ended," linking the narrator with the mob or vice versa.
(4) "Yet..." a signal for another and final transition. Who's point of view here? I think it's back to the narrator. Here he glorifies the voices of the mob, equating it to the waltz ("too, may be/Modes of desire"). What is he doing here at the end? Bringing it back full circle? Ostracizing Hoon? He amputates the rondeau lyric, "Too many waltzes--" and then he starts the next sentence "The epic of disbelief." Disbelief? Who's? He then follows that up with the very unmusical "Blares oftener" (ugly and awkward) and repeats the word "soon" three times in two lines. Is "soon" an echo back to Hoon? And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"? I think so, but not sure. And he ends the last stanza with the affirmative "Will" three times, each at the beginning of each line. This fourth section seems to tie the themes together.
So, is Hoon, in his solitude, the creator of the poem? "Mountain-minded I think refers to being with a mind in the clouds, away from the mobs of men. Does it take the solitary mountain-minded Hoon, the one who doesn't feel desire in the waltz, to piece together "men and their shapes" and their happiness?
It's a reading.
I thought you were being humorous when you simply threw in your remark above without explanation. The only woman I could think of with a strong association to waltzes was ‘Waltzing Matilda’.Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
I’d happily accept that. The bit of mine you quoted was just a tired attempt to summarise what I’d said before.Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
I’m not sure about your comments on Hoon. I don’t think he was unhappy or even unfulfilled in his self-contained world, at least not until the change that the narrator registers occurs.
I don’t see this.Quote:
Originally Posted by “blp”
“We cannot know what personal events prompted this 1922 poem, apparently set in Key West (so the poet Elizabeth Bishop conjectured, who knew Key West, where Cubans worked at the machines in cigar factories, where blacks always had ice cream at funerals),”
From The Columbia History of American Poetry Ed. Jay Parini and Brett C. Miller. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.
No – it’s because ‘too many have started’. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by “blp”
Thanks for clearing up the rest.
Virgil,
I agree that the poem is divided into 4 parts and at the points that you suggested. I like the analysis of the word ‘mode’. I think you’re right, the reason that it is there is because the author was referring particularly to music. Maybe he is being very specific and does not want the reader to stray off this line of thinking. Maybe he repeats “too many waltzes have ended” for this purpose.
From your observation, I notice that the author puts a lot of weight on a few words. Besides, as you pointed out, ‘mode’ and ‘truth’ and, of course, ‘waltz’, I think the words ‘form’ and ‘order’ are also important; because they are the only link between Hoon and the mobs of men. Both seek form and order: Hoon “found all form and order in solitude” and the mobs were “Imposing forms they cannot describe/Requiring order beyond their speech.” But only Hoon found form and order, the mobs of men tried but in vain.
The difference between them is that Hoon is alone, and the mobs of men are many. I love the phrase “clouds of faces and arms.” It seems almost an inhuman description of something that is human. When I read it I imagine a cloud of heads and arms sticking out in random places (childish, I know). The mobs, made up of humans of perfect form and order like Hoon, are together mutated in form and order, which is why they cannot define exactly what they want: “These voices crying without know for what.”
I love that you have viewed the poem as a song: “…the mode shifts to a minor key” and “…it jumps back to a major key.” I also thought that the poem should be read in the time frame of the “gay waltz”. All of this happens during the waltz.
“And is Hoon the "harmonious skeptic"?” I don’t think that Hoon is the skeptic. I thought that it is the skeptic who will end Hoon (I think I explained it in my original poster). And the skeptic cannot be the mobs of men, because he “will unite these figures of men.” Maybe the skeptic is a third party, the musician perhaps. The musician plays another waltz, ending solitude and making sense of the mobs of men’s desire. …maybe
Seems to have been some Chinese whisper process going on between my friend's tutor, me and, perhaps, my memory of the whole thing. Presumably it was something more like a Cuban funeral.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
I'll read over the rest of what's been going on when i have a bit of time. Looks interesting.
Thank you for you comments. I think you're right on everything you say. Hoon may not be the skeptic. So let's count the characters: the narrator, the poet if he is different than the narrator (I'm not sure), Hoon, the mob, and the skeptic. So who is the skeptic? Is he the narrator, the poet, or a separate entity? Is the skeptic part of the mob? I also just noticed that the narrator in the second line positions himself as part of a group, "we can mourn..."Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
I don’t see how this can refer to Hoon, either. The phrase itself perhaps tells us enough. In stanza 8, Stevens uses ‘Yet’ and ‘may’ when considering the crowds. He is not certain that they are expressing a ‘rage for order’. They could simply be a destructive, anarchic force that cannot be channelled.Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
When we look back at a past era, we tend to think of it as having been a more innocent time, a time when we could enjoy simpler pleasures. Today we think everyone is more knowing, less satisfied with the unsophisticated. Obviously each succession generation will come to feel this. (On a banal note, I can remember when I first saw the original Star Wars movie. I was amazed by the special effects. Yet when I watched it with my 12 year old niece last year, she said that she thought it was ‘okay’ but that some of the special effects were a bit ‘old-fashioned’.) I think there is something similar going on here – Stevens is positive and assumes that there is the same need for order in these mobs as that which exists in the rest of us. Therefore future harmony will be possible. What the mobs really want could be to kill and destroy but Stevens believes that what they really want is order. However, he is positive but not blindly optimistic - he is also aware that he could simply be underestimating the destructive force of the mobs so he will need to tread carefully. If we think of some of the mobs of twentieth century history, we can see why. Some of those mobs of men went on to be enlisted by Stalin and Hitler.
If the mob’s rage can be brought within some kind of artistic expression, then “their shapes/Will glisten again with motion, the music/Will be motion and full of shadows.” Stevens believes it can but that it will take someone more aware of the potential for evil than those who provided form and order in the past. They will need to be ‘skeptical’ in their attempt to restore harmony. It will take a “harmonious skeptic” producing “skeptical music”.
The reason I suggested earlier that Stevens might be the “harmonious skeptic” and his poetry the “skeptical music” was because of what the mobs are said to be lacking: “they cannot describe” and “order beyond their speech”. So the emphasis is on verbal expression.
Interestingly, you like Stevens’ use of a word that is part of the reason I don’t like the poem.
The definitions of ‘mode’ include usage in Music (as Virgil pointed out), Philosophy, Logic, Statistics, Mathematics, Geology, Physics and Grammar. It’s too impersonal for me – as are his uses of ‘form’ and ‘order’.
Donne does something similar with his uses of the language of Alchemy, Science, Cartography and Geometry to describe human emotions. However, Donne is clever and witty in a way that Stevens isn’t.
Unnamable - You make some good points here, but there is one place where I think you're off target.
Where is that from? "Kill and destroy?" I don't see any suggestion of good/evil association. What I see are distictions of points of view. And the ability of a skeptic, outside the mob, to piece together order, form, and art, while the mob, in it's energy, lacks this ability.Quote:
What the mobs really want could be to kill and destroy but Stevens believes that what they really want is order.
This poem perhaps. But you haven't read all of Stevens. The poem I typed out above that followed this in the collection is very funny. It's comically absurd.Quote:
However, Donne is clever and witty in a way that Stevens isn’t.
Managed to find one, then? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by “Virgil
I didn’t say that it what they will do but what they could do. I base this on the fact that the word Stevens has used is ‘mob’. Does the word itself have any positive or negative connotations? Would you agree that mobs are threatening? Don’t you find the sudden appearance of these men also rather threatening? I do. What do you think might happen when “an immense suppression” is “freed”? You seem aware of this when you wrote, “He then follows that up with the very unmusical "Blares oftener" (ugly and awkward)”. It’s jarring, discordant – as they are. Think about the connotations of “Blares”.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Virgil
I repeat what I said earlier about stanzas 5, 6 and 7: “The first two end-stopped lines reiterate the loss that has occurred but then he next seven lines are one long, clause-heavy sentence. This has the effect of accelerating our progress through a series of suddenly quite threatening images. It’s as if something has been unleashed. Form and order are fractured.”
The fact that it is the artist (in the form of Stevens the poet) ordering these lines indicates that artistic creation can tame chaos. The lines give the impression of encroaching disorder but he has done that through his use of rhyme, commas, etc. – in other words, through his artistry. The idea of Art’s capacity to produce order amid “slovenly wilderness” is explored in Anecdote of the Jar (which I do like). For Stevens, art is simply order.
It doesn’t have to be expressed in those terms – order and disorder will do. However, I don’t think that Stevens suggests that the price of disorder is simply confusion. As I said, those lines are menacing. There is something ominous about the mob’s directionless energy. Even though I think the poem is unnecessarily cerebral, I don’t think it was merely an intellectual exercise (funnily enough, I do feel this with Donne at times). Whatever made Stevens include the mob, I think he perceived some genuine threat in the world around him.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Virgil
But isn’t what the skeptic will do precisely what Stevens has done here? He has created order (a poem) out of his sense of fracture and loss. This is also consistent with the idea that “skeptical music” is poetry.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Virgil
Come on now, Virgil. I wasn’t trying to trash Stevens and enthrone a British poet in his place. :lol: I did make it perfectly clear that I was only referring to this particular poem. I also said that I like some of his stuff. For you he is one of the top poets of the twentieth century; for me, he isn’t. Does it matter? It’s not as if I’m trying to encourage people to dislike him. Be fair to me; if anything, I have tried hard to help people gain a better understanding of what he’s saying and how he’s saying it. Whether they then like him or not is up to them and the comments I made should help them have a better foundation on which to base their decision.Quote:
Originally Posted by “Virgil
And no, I haven’t read every single Stevens poem. So you got me there! ;)
PS The Snowman also leaves me cold. :D
I don't think that the music is referred to here simply as "some kind of artistic expression" (p#193) to describe the mob's rage. I think that the music is the focus of the poem; we shouldn't start to look at a broader meaning of the poem until we have found the very specific points that the author is trying to make.
I do agree that the words 'form' and 'order' may be too impersonal, or not as specific as I'd hope (They don’t just refer to music). But they make a solid point. Form and order surely are the essential means of existence. If something lacks either form or order, it will cease to shape (like the desires of the mob).
Virgil. I think you're right to make the skeptic the focus. The last two verses clearly state that the waltzes, "the epic of disbelief", will be made "constant" by the skeptic's skeptical music; so all will be solved by this character, making him a key character.
We are not told who the skeptic is, but we are told that the skeptic is the creator of the music: "Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music..." Perhaps, it was also the skeptic who played the waltz.
I think that, for that reason, the skeptic cannot be the author himself or the narrator, because the author (who I think is the same as the narrator) is passive in relation to the waltz. (unless the author himself was the creator of the music). I think, as you suggested, he is a separate entity. He must be a musician, for he creates music. And (perhaps I’m way off line here), because the author refers to him as “some …skeptic”, he is a stranger to the author.
Wow, there's been a lot written here since I last checked in. I'm learning a lot about Stevens--super.
I agree with much in the analyses already provided. The thing that keeps bugging me in this poem is why exactly forms have vanished for the Hoon in the third stanza. I somehow feel that this is some key point I am missing. I understand how the passing of the waltz is in some ways the passing of one generation's music soon to be replaced by "some harmonius sceptic soon in some skeptical music" in an "epic of disbelief." But the fact that the forms of the Hoon have vanished as well as the form and order of those who relied on the company of others, seems to indicate not only the loss of the waltz as a social kind of music but the loss of the imagination, almost of music itself. The Hoon did not depend on people, so the loss of the waltz should not affect his forms, which one assumes are the forms created in his own mind. All the same "his forms have vanished." Everything is lost, even the music of the individual? Is this because he has been forced into the company of the mob searching for order? Is he a sort of solitary ivory tower poet whose inward forms have been shattered by the reality of the masses?
By the way, Unnamable, you've got the song "Waltzing Matilda" stuck in my head now. :lol: Oh well, before that it was the waltz from Lehar's "The Merry Widow." I'm obviously taking this poem way too literally.
Sure, I'm not taking offense, and I certainly wasn't making it an American versus British thing. I understand how some don't take to Stevens. What I admire in Stevens the most is his originality of style. No one has written like him before him that I can think of. Perhaps some of the symbolists do have an echo (albeit a translated echo) in his poetic voice.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Unnamable
BTW, you're critical process of analyzing the poem, piecing together the stanzas and their transitions to arrive at a coherent meaning is very Aristitalian. The old man would be proud. ;)
I don’t believe that’s what I said. I referred to it as "some kind of artistic expression" precisely because it needn’t be a waltz or even music. Nor did I say that the mob’s rage would be “described” by that art. I said, “brought within” (which is not very clear, I admit but this is a complex idea). I’ll attempt to explain what I mean.Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
The waltz is enjoyable, exhilarating, fun, etc. but it is also ‘valuable’ in that it provides extra layers to human experience, layers that are in addition to the merely factual. Its role is similar to a religion in this respect. It imbues existence with qualities that are absent from the merely physical, biological and chemical basis of our being. I am just a collection of atoms but that’s not the end of the story. The way that the waltz does this is what I was trying to explain in # 179 above – the bit about the first stanza.
What the artist must attempt to provide is some means for “the shapes For which the voices cry,” to serve as “Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire.” At they moment it's just a possibility.
Could you explain what you mean by this? I assume you are suggesting this is what I have done.Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
I don’t think I've said anything that contradicts that.Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
You see "the epic of disbelief" as being the waltzes. Can you explain why?Quote:
Originally Posted by nguyenngoctue
Too many waltzes–The epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant.
Is the hyphen here used as a sign that what follows is a description of the waltzes? It seems to me as if it’s more to denote a break– On the previous two occasions that the phrase was used, it was completed by ‘have ended.’ This does set up an expectation. My explanation for this is above in the bit about 9 and 10. As Virgil pointed out, “Blares oftener” is ugly and dissonant. Perhaps it does refer to the waltz as it sounds now that it is “empty of shadows” but I think it also refers to what has replaced the waltz. It’s the reason we need a new waltz.
This poem has reminded me of Yeats’s Easter 1916 and The Second Coming, especially the lines,
“The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
and
“A terrible beauty is born.”
I’ll try a comparison now, which might just be nonsense.
Let’s assume for a moment that the context of the poem is the 1930s and the mobs are those who will shortly be wearing swastikas (I know this isn’t the context of Stevens’ poem but I am trying to explain the idea of the “harmonious skeptic”). There is an increasing unease among some artists at the time about some emerging and ominous destructive force. (I think The Second Coming demonstrates this feeling) The world is rushing headlong into destruction and carnage (for a change :D ). Along comes Picasso and paints Guernica. The painting is not an exuberant waltz but a terrifying depiction of mechanised mass slaughter. But it’s a work of high art, a masterpiece that takes the disorder of mass killing and frames it within a form that enables us to see something beyond lumps of charred human flesh. In the act of confronting and giving shape to the horror, the artist has produced order. Picasso is just the sort of figure who could be called a “harmonious skeptic”. He brings order to disorder while retaining his sense of the darker side of human behaviour.
I know that Stevens’ poem doesn’t take us into the dark realm but neither “motion” nor “shadows” are unambiguously positive.
When was the
It’s Monday here! I knew Asia was a good choice. :D
Anyway, I wonder if anyone would like to discuss this poem by Philip Larkin? I’ve chosen it for a number of reasons:
1. Hardly anyone recognised him in the pictures of authors thread;
2. The poem is far more straightforward than a lot of the poems so far posted;
3. There has been a lot of discussion of faith on the board recently and I thought it might be interesting to read a poem about the contemplation of death by someone who had no faith.
4. I think it’s extremely well written;
5. It’s how I feel on a “true dark night of the soul”, which is about three times a week.
Aubade
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.
Philip Larkin
I don’t think the explanation can be found in the poem itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
This highlights our different cultures. My other possible choice was The Band’s The Last Waltz. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love