PoemoftheWeek

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It's not just the tangible natural world. It is charged with spirituality that mortality cannot fully grasp.

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And so it becomes a religious experience, this interaction with nature. It is a babtismal experience, that is an acceptance of a new life, knowledge gained. It projects I think ahead to her death and the old man's death, another transmutation, bitter knowledge.

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I also like ktd222's summation of the main themes in the three stanzas (very similar to the way I had been schematizing things) but I'm glad that Virgil is pushing us to address stanza three to mean not just nature but some sort of transcendental realm of experience. I think the suggestion that this foreshadows her own death and that of the old man is an interesting one. It certainly expresses what seems to be one aspect of the poignancy of the last line, "our knowledge is historical, flowing and flown." The move in this line from the present to the past tense is as simple and direct as the phrase "here today and gone tomorrow," yet at the same time it really wonderfully poetic and somehow grand. It seems to imply simultaneously that we as individuals are flowing and flown, that history as a whole is flowing and flown, and that, indeed all of human knowledge is flowing and flown--both here and gone--eternally mortal.

I also think "transmutation" is an important word here, and that it stands at an important turn in the poem. It stood out to me the first time I read it in the way that words sometimes stand out without you really being aware why. Now I'm beginning to see that it might stands ambiguously for the potential to be "transmuted" (changed) by either birth in a kind of baptism, or by death. The distinction between birth and death seems to be blurred, just as the distinction between the elements of fire and water is blurred. At the end of the poem there seems to be a sense of a mortal cycle of birth and death, and of something which, to quote Virgil "mortality cannot fully grasp." Do you feel that in the conclusion there is some way in which we are to understand that it is possible for us to attain that elusive knowledge--perhaps almost by virtue of our own inevitable mortality--or does this ultimate knowledge remain firmly out of our reach--never accessible by any but the creatures of the sea. I wondered what people thought?

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Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love

Do you feel that in the conclusion there is some way in which we are to understand that it is possible for us to attain that elusive knowledge--perhaps almost by virtue of our own inevitable mortality--or does this ultimate knowledge remain firmly out of our reach--never accessible by any but the creatures of the sea. I wondered what people thought?

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A critical question! I would guess that she feels it's not invitable: "If you tasted it..." with emphasis on "if". Does the old man in the first stanza have this knowledge? I don't know. Does the seal have it? I'm not certain but I would suspect yes. Does the narrator have it? She tastes it, but is that complete knowledge? If knowledge is historical, what about the declining population from the first stanza? Here's a great metaphor: "drawn from the cold hard mouth/of the world". So the world/ocean is envision as a mouth, "derived from the rocky breasts" (mother nature?). The mouth of the world counterpoints the narrator's mouth above it that tastes the bitter brine. Again duality, opposites.

Lots of other questions: Why in the third stanza does she shift to predominantly past tense? And notice she jumps back to present when she returns to the trees: "Back behind us,/the dignified tall firs begin./Bluish, associating with their shadows,/a million Christmas trees stand/waiting for Christmas." The "firs begin" what? She doesn't complete the sentence. And of course Christmas brings it to another ritual of birth. And then the stanza goes to the subjuntive tense, "If".

I was just imagining by looking at the whole, not in depth reading the third stanza, yet. I do agree with you Virgil that there is another world of existence—Spiritual. But I didn't know about a spiritual world until reading stanza 3. Aren’t these three lines odd:

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals…

Fish and seals are mortal too, right? So what do fish and seals have that human do not that allows them to live in a place where no mortal can bear? Both seals and the narrator are believers in total immersion. Yet, the seal, and maybe the narrator(I'm not sure), is the only able to immerse in this spiritual world of cold dark deep and absolutely clear. I think, apart from the narrator, the difference is humans have a need to ‘know’. It seems to me belief in the spiritual world is not enough. We have a need to dissect the wholeness, by breaking it into elements, and studying those elements.
The seal’s scene is fluid: cold dark deep and absolutely clear. We view the same scene in segments. The water seems suspended above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones…above the stones and then the world. And in the case at the bottom of stanza 3, the you learnt how the body would respond in this environment:

If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.

And unwisely extrapolating over to imagine how scenes unimaginable would look and feel:

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

The knowledge is what immerses us. And that knowledge is what develops ‘worlds’ in which we cannot fully grasp, like the spiritual world.

Transmutation is a very prevalent theme in this poem. It is the change in function of objects that we see developing throughout. At which viewpoint(for lack of a better word) must certain objects be viewed for their true un-mutated function? In this poems case: not through knowledge immersion can we grasp spiritual immersion.

It's Monday here, so I'm going to dive in with a new poem.

It's by James Joyce from Pomes Penyeach and it's very short but no less interesting for all that.

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Tilly

He travels after a winter sun,
Urging the cattle along a cold red road,
Calling to them, a voce they know,
He drives his beasts above Cabra.

The voice tells them home is warm.
They moo and make brute music with their hoofs.
He drives them with a flowering branch before him,
Smoke pluming their foreheads.

Boor, bond of the herd,
Tonight stretch full by the fire!
I bleed by the black stream
For my torn bough!

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I was reminded of this because the 'A meditation upon a broomstick' mentioned a torn off branch and there was a lot of talk about Joyce in the overrated authors thread. So I dug it out and posted it.

The origin of the name is interesting:

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These poems were offered to Ezra Pound in 1926, who said "They belong in the Bible or in the family album with the portraits." In March 1927, though, Archibald MacLeish responded very favorably so Joyce went ahead with publication.

First published 6 (or 7) July 1927 by Shakespeare & Co, with a pale-green cover (the color of Joyce's favorite 'Caville' apples), selling for a shilling (twelvepence) or twelve francs, according to Ellmann. The lone review was in the 'Daily Herald'.

Jeffares and Kennelly explain: "This book cost a shilling, so that we might have expected from its title a dozen poems, but Joyce followed an Irish custom in adding a 'tilly' (from Irish tuilleadh, an added measure), a thirteenth poem, the first poem in the book being titled 'Tilly'. He probably had in mind the custom of Dublin milkmen and milkwomen of pouring an extra amount of milk into the purchaser's receptacle from the small, usually pint-sized, tilly can that accompanied a larger can or churn."

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I love the idea that the tree that provided the drovers goad is actually the narrator. The rest of the book is interesting too. Short, simple poems with a lot of depth.

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Originally Posted by ktd222

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals…

Fish and seals are mortal too, right? So what do fish and seals have that human do not that allows them to live in a place where no mortal can bear? Both seals and the narrator are believers in total immersion. Yet, the seal, and maybe the narrator(I'm not sure), is the only able to immerse in this spiritual world of cold dark deep and absolutely clear. I think, apart from the narrator, the difference is humans have a need to ‘know’.

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I took the difference btween humans and seals to be that the seals are immortatal, in the sense that every seal is a continuation of the previous. There are no personality distinctions between them as humans. Therefore they are connected to the infinite, unlike man, who can only reach the infinte through knowledge, ritual, death. I don't know if I'm correct. This is how I read it though.

When I started this, I thought this was a fine poem. Now I think this is a GREAT poem!

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

I was reminded of this because the 'A meditation upon a broomstick' mentioned a torn off branch and there was a lot of talk about Joyce in the overrated authors thread. So I dug it out and posted it.

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Xamonas - I didn't read the "Broomstick" thread. But the torn bough here reminds me of Frazier's The Golden Bough. The golden bough was a branch broken from a sacred tree by Aeneas before going into the underworld. Do you think Joyce is alluding to that? I'm not familiar with this poem, so I've got some homework. For instance, where or what is "Cabra?" And what is the significance of the name, "Boor?" And what is a "bond of the herd"?

My first impressions on this is that Joyce is recreating a mythic scene. In addition to the Golden Bough allusion, if that's what it is, cattle were linked to many myths and rituals for the Greeks, Romans, and Celts. This could be a start, or I could be leading you down a wrong path. Other thoughts?

[QUOTE=Virgil]I took the difference btween humans and seals to be that the seals are immortatal, in the sense that every seal is a continuation of the previous. There are no personality distinctions between them as humans. Therefore they are connected to the infinite, unlike man, who can only reach the infinte through knowledge, ritual, death. I don't know if I'm correct. This is how I read it though.QUOTE]

Your right! I think from our view. But I also think from the seal's perspective, a sense of differentiation exist too.

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One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music

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Out of a population of seals in the sea, the narrator connects with a 'particular' seal with a curious nature. An interest in music. She shows us that personality distinctions exists in all species.

So in a literal sense, both humans and seals are not mortal, but their is some aspect of the sense that the seal knows cannot be used to accurately imagine the spiritual world.

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Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.

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The seal knows better than to take part in the ritual for total immersion.
So I think she is making a connection with all species. Showing that we all have the capability, and through the use of the wrong senses, are misguided and unable to become totally immersed like the seal.

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Now I think this is a GREAT poem!

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I agree!!!
I need another day before even reading another poem.

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Now I think this is a GREAT poem!

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Took the words right out of my mouth. I really enjoyed discussing it.

Now on to this week's poem. I'm not quite sure what I think yet. I feel there's some meaning to it that I havn't grasped on my first reading. There were certain lines that struck my fancy. I like the association of the voice with the warmth of home and the making of "brute music with their hooves."

I also agree that having the narrator turn out to be the tree which is bleeding and bereft of its bough is powerful, but I'm not sure what sort of statement he is trying to make with this. Virgil may be on to something with the golden bough reference. Actually a closer parallel is from earlier in the Aeneid (book three I believe) when Aeneas plucks a bough from a tree only to find that it bleeds. It turns out that the tree is inhabited by the spirit of his fellow Trojan, Polydorus, who speaks to the hero about how he was betrayed and killed. I don't remember that there was any bleeding associated with the later episode of the Golden Bough (although this may just be faulty memory), but its association with the underworld would tie in with the "black stream" mentioned in Joyce's poem.

Joyce may also have been thinking of a scene from Dante's Inferno which was itself inspired by the Polydorus episode in the Aeneid and would account for both the bleeding tree and a possible reference to the "black stream" of the underworld. In canto 13 Dante encounters a tree which bleeds when he snaps off one of its branches. He then has a conversation with the spirit inside the tree, which is condemned in this way for commiting suicide. There are a few other references to bleeding trees in epics (in Tasso's Gerusaleme Liberata for example) but I think the Dante and the original in the Aeneid are probably the most relevant.

Cabra is evidently a suburb of Dublin in Ireland.

I thought Boor was probably the sheep dog who works to "bind" the sheep together, but I could be wrong. Any other suggestions?

Also, what does the "smoke plumming their foreheads" refer to? Is this a reference to rising dust that looks like smoke? I found it a confusing image.

"Boor" means uneducated oaf or ruffian. It's an insult hurled by the tree.

I think "bond of the herd" implies that the young man is himself the slave of the cattle, and is another insult, but I may be wrong on that score.

And I think the "smoke plumming their foreheads" refers to steam rising from them on a cool day.

I like the 'Golden Bough', 'Aeneid' & 'Inferno' connections. I always had the impression that there was something else going on in this poem, and these are all good ideas.

Personally, I absolutely love the way we are led to blithely accept this as a quiet, pastoral sketch, not even considering who the narrator might be, if we think of a narrator at all. But then this is turned on it's head in the last stanza. We are forced to examine our own assumptions - if you like, shown the meta-narrative.

I also like the fact that there is so much crammed into such a short poem. Joyce's writing is always word-rich, full of imagery and subtext. You always feel that there's more going on than the obvious.

Whoever mentioned Dante's Inferno is probably correct. Here's from a paragraph from Spark Notes:

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Summary: Canto XIII
In the Second Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, Virgil and Dante enter a strange wood filled with black and gnarled trees. Dante hears many cries of suffering but cannot see the souls that utter them. Virgil cryptically advises him to snap a twig off of one of the trees. He does so, and the tree cries out in pain, to Dante’s amazement. Blood begins to trickle down its bark. The souls in this ring—those who were violent against themselves or their possessions (Suicides and Squanderers, respectively)—have been transformed into trees.

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And here are the first 6o lines from Canto XIII, Inferno:

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Nessus had not yet reached the other bank
When we on this side moved into a wood
That was not marked at all by any path:

No leaves of green but of a blackish color,
5 No branches smooth but gnarled and tangled up,
No fruits were growing, only thorns of poison.

No wild beasts, shunning the furrowed farmlands
Between Cecina and Corneto, burrow
Underbrush that is so thick and barbed.

10 Inside here nest the repugnant Harpies
Who chased the Trojans from the Strophades
With foul prophecies of coming losses.

They have wide wings, human necks and faces,
Feet with claws, and big feathered bellies;
15 They shriek laments from up in the strange trees.

"Before you enter farther," my kind master
Began saying to me, "know you are here
Within the second circle and will remain

"Until you come out to the dreadful sand.
20 Look carefully, then, and you shall witness things
That would destroy your faith in words of mine."

I heard deep wailings rising from all sides,
Without discerning anyone who made them,
So that, completely baffled, I stopped short.

25 I think he thought that I was thinking that
All of the voices from among the trunks
Rose up from people who were hiding from us.

My master said to me, "If you tear off
A tiny twig from one of the growths here,
30 Your thoughts will also be nipped in the bud."

Then reaching out my hand a bit ahead,
I snapped a shoot off from a massive thornbush,
And the trunk of it cried, "Why do you break me?"

And after it had darkened with its blood,
35 It started up again, "Why do you rip me?
Do you possess no pity in your soul?

"Men we were and now we are mere stumps.
Surely your hand ought to have been kinder
Even if we had been the souls of serpents."

40 Just as a green log blazing at one end
Oozes sap out of the other, all the while
Hissing with the air that it blows out,

So from that broken bough issued together
Words and blood: at that I let the tip
45 Fall, standing like a man stricken with fear.

To him my sage responded, "Wounded spirit,
Had he been able to believe before
What he had witnessed only in my verses,

"He would not have raised his hand against you.
50 But so incredible a thing caused me
To urge him to an act I now regret.

"But tell him who you were, to make amends
By refreshing your fame in the world above
To which he is permitted to return."

55 And the trunk: "Your sweet words so attract me
I cannot remain still, and be not loath
If I become caught up in conversation.

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I think that there are four or five streams/rivers in Inferno, but I'm not sure which one is the black stream.

Xamonas - Meta-narrative? I don't see what you mean.

By meta-narrative, I mean that we only realise at the end that the identity of the narrator has a bearing on the poem; that is important at all. This is a level of the poem that we never usually think about. Do we consider the identity of the narrator in "Ode to Autumn", for example?

We are used to reading bucolic idylls about pastoral scenes and assume this is one more of the same. But the last 2 lines smash that notion. It's a lovely twist. It's like an actor in a film winking at the camera. Or (since I've just finished rereading it) John Fowles's anachronistic asides in "The French Lieutenant's Woman".

Meta-narrative - a layer of meaning above the obvious.

I'm beginning to think that Dante was probably a big influence on this poem too. Although I see it as an inspiration rather than another layer of meaning. Thanks for the quote.

I still don't get the meta-narrative part. I assume meta-narrative is the same thing as meta-fiction.

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Metafiction is fiction about fiction: novels and stories that call attention to their fictional status and their own compositional procedures.

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-From The Art of Fiction by David Lodge.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas

Do we consider the identity of the narrator in "Ode to Autumn", for example?

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Of course we do. Who's actually speaking is critical to understanding any work.

Two possibilities:
(1) An omniscient narrator's voice for the first two stanzas and a different voice for the third.
(2) The voice of the third stanza is far-reaching enough to observe the events of the first two stanzas and then address Boor in the third.

Interestingly the word "voice" is mentioned twice in the poem, and probably is the key to it all. I think the second possiblity is the most likely (although one hesitates with Joyce when it comes to multiple point of views). All in all, given the allusions and this voice shifting, I still don't know what to make of this poem.

Another (and my preferred) possibility - and the reason for my use of the term meta-narrative.
(3) The realisation of the origin of the narrator's voice in the third stanza, forces us to re-examine our feelings / thoughts about the first two.

Consider an example from a completely different artform: You are watching the opening sequence of a film. You see a battleship carving through a calm sea. You can make out sailors on the decks, swapping cigarettes, laughing and joking. The camera pulls back and you realise that you are watching this scene through the periscope of a submarine. You hear the first line of dialogue, "Fire one!"

The poem presents a similar change of POV in my view. The scene is altered by the realisation of the identity of the viewer. At first we (quite naturally, because we are meant to!) assume it is Joyce himself, watching this boy and his cattle pass by above Cabra. The switcheroo takes us by surprise - at least it did me.

PS

The best (worst) thing about this poem is that you can't recapture that moment of realisation. It only happens the very first time you read the poem (unless you have a really bad memory!). After that, your thoughts are coloured from the very start by what you know is coming. (This just occurred to me whilst writing this post and it opens up a whole new level of meaning - It's moments like this that make me realise why I like poetry so much!)

I wonder if Joyce thought of that when he wrote the thing.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

Another (and my preferred) possibility - and the reason for my use of the term meta-narrative.
(3) The realisation of the origin of the narrator's voice in the third stanza, forces us to re-examine our feelings / thoughts about the first two.

Consider an example from a completely different artform: You are watching the opening sequence of a film. You see a battleship carving through a calm sea. You can make out sailors on the decks, swapping cigarettes, laughing and joking. The camera pulls back and you realise that you are watching this scene through the periscope of a submarine. You hear the first line of dialogue, "Fire one!"

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Yes, I agree with you here. Your term meta-narrative threw me off. Do you think that the shift is the whole point of the poem? I get the feeling that there's more to what Joyce is saying, but I can't for the life of me pin it down. All these allusions, to what end?

Here's some other observations, none of which adds up to an epiphany for me:
The poem starts in day time ("winter sun") and ends at night. Joyce sets up opposing motifs: cold road versus warm home, warm fire. Why is a branch flowering in the winter time? There's a lot of speaking in the poem: He calling, voice they know, cows moo. Perhaps within the context of the collected poems of that book, this one poem may make more sense.