[2015 07-28] lecture 22: ... Nothing, Something

Lecture 22: … Nothing,
Something
PATRICK MOONEY, M.A.
ENGLISH 10, SUMMER SESSION A
27 JULY 2015

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982)
● Taught at UCSB, 1968–1973.
● Wrote the Encyclopaedia Britannica
article on “Literature.”
● MCed the famous poetry reading at
Six Gallery, San Francisco, California.
● Later was Allen Ginsberg’s defense
witness at his obscenity trial over the
Six Gallery reading.
● “Father of the Beats”
● “An entomologist is not a bug.”Rexroth in 1982
Photo by Morgan Gibson

Misery is all the lot of the unlovable ones,
And of rejected lovers,
But not one of these knows the empty horror
Of the slow conquering, long fought off,
Realization that love assumed and trusted
Through years of mutual life
Had never been there at all.
The bells of St. Lawrence
Sprinkle their music over the town.
Silver drops, gathered in Bermuda
Shimmer and are lost in the brown English water.
It is all just like the poet said.
(end of “The Hanged Man”)

Remember that breakfast one November—
Cold black grapes smelling faintly
Of the cork they were packed in,
Hard rolls with hot, white flesh,
And thick, honey sweetened chocolate
And the parties at night; the gin and the tangos?
The torn hair nets, the lost cuff links?
Where have they all gone to,
The beautiful girls, the abandoned hours?
They said we were lost, mad and immoral,
And interfered with the plans of the management.
And today, millions and millions, shut alive
In the coffins of circumstance,
Beat on the buried lids,
Huddle in the cellars of ruins, and quarrel
Over their own fragmented flesh.
(“Between Two Wars”)

we believed we
Would see with our own eyes the new
World where man was no longer
Wolf to man, but men and women
Were all brothers and lovers
Together. We will not see it.
We will not see it, none of us.
It is farther off than we thought.
[…..........................................................................]
We know now
We have failed for a long time.
And we do not care. We few will
Remember as long as we can.,
Our children may remember.
(“For Eli Jacobson,” lines 3–10, 40–44)

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013)
●
Eldest of 9 siblings, raised on a farm
in County Derry, Northern Ireland.
●
Nobel Prize in Literature, 1996.
●
Lived and taught in Northern Ireland,
England, California, and the Republic
of Ireland.
●
Occupied uncomfortably overlapping
subject positions: Catholic,Northern
Irish, British, Irish, rural, educated, …
●
Consciously works with multiple
literary traditions (British, Irish, Greek).Heaney in 1970.
Photo by Simon Garb.utt

I’m writing just after an encounter
With an English journalist in search of ‘views
On the Irish thing.’ I’m back in winter
Quarters where bad news is no longer news,
Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,
Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads
Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint
But I incline as much to rosary beads
As to the jottings and analyses
Of politicians and newspapermen
Who’ve scribbled down the long campaign from gas
And protest to gelignite and sten,
[….......................................................................................]

Who proved upon their pulses ‘escalate’,
‘Backlash’ and ‘crack down’, ‘the provisional wing’,
‘Polarization’ and ‘long-standing hate’.
Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing,
Expertly civil tongued with civil neighbours
On the high wires of first wireless reports,
Sucking the fake taste, the stony flavours
Of those sanctioned, old, elaborate retorts:
‘Oh, it’s disgraceful, surely, I agree,’
‘Where’s it going to end?’ ‘It’s getting worse.’
‘They’re murderers.’ ‘Internment, understandably . . .’
The ‘voice of sanity’ is getting hoarse.
(“Whatever You Say / Say Nothing,” section I)

He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
(“Casualty,” section I, lines 1–10)

He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew
Others obeyed, three nights
After they shot dead
The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,
BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday
Everybody held
Their breath and trembled.
(section I, lines 38–46)

Prophesy who struck thee! When soldiers mocked
Blindfolded Jesus and he didn’t strike back
They were neither shamed nor edified, although
Something was made manifest—the power
Of power not exercised, of hope inferred
By the powerless forever. Still, for Jesus’ sake,
Do me a favour, would you, just this once?
Prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone.
(“Weighing In,” 3rd section)

How culpable was he
That night when he broke
Our tribe’s complicity?
‘Now you’re supposed to be
an educated man,’
I hear him say. ‘Puzzle me
The right answer to that one.’
(“Casualty” II, lines 32–38)

The coding problem
The liberal papist note sounds hollow
When amplified and mixed in with the bangs
That shake all hearts and windows day and night
(It’s tempting here to rhyme on ‘labour pangs’
And diagnose a rebirth in our plight
But that would be to ignore other symptoms.
Last night you didn’t need a stethoscope
To hear the eructation of Orange drums
Allergic equally to Pearse and Pope.)
(“Whatever You Say,” section II)

The Bog Bodies
●
Naturally mummified bodies
intermittently found across northern
Europe.
●
PV Glob’s book The Bog People:
Iron-Age Man Preserved, translated
into English from Danish in 1969.
●
Most bodies found are connected to
a tribal society, just becoming
agricultural, approx 500 BCE–500
CE.
●
Many are assumed to have died
violently and/or as ritual sacrifices.
Tollund Man

“The early Iron Age in Northern Europe is a period
that offers very satisfactory imaginative parallels to
the history of Ireland at the moment … You have a
society in the Iron Age where there was ritual blood-
letting. You have a society where girls’ heads were
shaved for adultery, you have a religion centring on
the territory, on a goddess of the ground and of the
land, and associated with sacrifice. In many ways
the fury of Irish republicanism is associated with a
religion like this.”
– Seamus Heaney, “Mother Ireland” (1972
discussion)

but he now lies
perfected in my memory,
down to the red horn
of his nails,
hung in the scales
with beauty and atrocity:
with the Dying Gaul
too strictly compassed
on his shield,
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.
(“Grauballe Man,” last 3
stanzas)
Little adulteress,
before they punished you
you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,
I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
(“Punishment,” lines 23–31)

"Grauballe Man." Photo by Sven Rosborn

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur
of your brain’s exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles’ webbing
and all your numbered bones:
I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,
who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
(“Punishment,” lines 29–44)

Smoke signals are loud-mouthed compared with us:
Manoeurvrings to find out name and school,
Subtle discrimination by addresses
With hardly an exception to the rule
That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod
And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape.
O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,
Of open minds as open as a trap,
Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,
Where half of us, as in a wooden horse,
Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks,
Besieged within the siege, whispering Morse.
(“Whatever You Say,” section III)

What Is To Be Done? (I)
A cobble thrown a hundred years ago
Keeps coming at me, the first stone
Aimed at a great-grandmother’s turncoat brow.
The pony jerks and the riot’s on.
[…...........................................................................]
Call her ‘The Convert,’ ‘The Exogamous Bride’.
Anyhow, it is a genre piece
Inherited on my mother’s side
And mine to dispose with now she’s gone.
Instead of silver and Victorian lace,
The exonerating, exonerated stone.
(“Clearances” I, lines 1–4, 9–14)

The old man rose and gazed into my face
and said that was official recognition
that I was now a dual citizen.
He therefore desired me when I got home
to consider myself a representative
and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.
Their embassies, he said, were everywhere
but operated independently
and no ambassador would ever be relieved.
(“From the Republic of Conscience,”
last three stanzas)

Media credits
● The photo of Kenneth Rexroth (slide 2), by Morgan Gibson, is not in the public domain, but is a
low-resolution version selected as a teaching tool because no freely available alternative can be
found. Original source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rexroth#/media/File:Kenneth_Rexroth.jpg
● The photo of Seamus Heaney (slide 6) has been released by Simon Garbutt under a Creative
Commons-Attribution license. Original source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SeamusHeaneyLowRes.jpg
● The photo of Tollund Man (slide 14) is out of copyright because it is very old. Original source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tollundmanden#/media/File:Moorleiche_von_
Tollund_J%C3%BCtland_um_100_n_Chr_hingerichtet.jpg
● The photo of Grauballe Man (slide 17) has been released into the public domain by Sven Rosborn.
Original source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Grauballemanden#/media/File:Grauballeman
nen1.jpg

[2015 07-28] lecture 22: ... Nothing, Something

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