English Literature III
13/11/2023, Introduction to Modernism and Vorticism
The lessons will cover authors from the 20th and 21st century, especially T.S.
Elliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf; E. Pound, W. Owen, W.B. Yeats, D.H.
Lawrence, J. Conrad, E.M. Forster, G. Orwell, S. Beckett, M. Atwood, K.
Ishiguro and I. McEwan are included.
Some of the novels from these authors are required to be read from start to
finish in English and are to be brought to the oral exam:
- To the Lighthouse, by V. Woolf
- The Dead (from Dubliners), by J. Joyce
- 1984, by G. Orwell
As for the last two authors which require a novel, Prof. Leonardi leaves us a
choice:
- Either Never Let Me Go, or Klara and the Sun, both by K. Ishiguro
- Either Machines Like Me, or Lessons, both by I. McEwan
It is not forbidden to read aided by an Italian translation, nor it is forbidden to
read summaries and/or watch adaptions, but beware, the exam will be about
the novel in its entirety, and specifically the novel. You’ve been advised.
The vision of the following movies is also required:
- Apocalypse Now, adaption directed by Francis Coppola based on
Heart of Darkness, by Conrad.
- A Room with a View, directed by James Ivory, based on Forster’s
homonymous novel.
- A Passage to India, directed by David Lean.
- The Remains of the day, directed by James Ivory, based on Ishiguro’s
homonymous novel.
- The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry.
- The Handmaid’s Tale, a Netflix production.
Finally, one of the following critical texts must be read:
- T.S. Elliot, “La terra desolata”, by Alessandro Serpieri, Bur, 1982
Milano (both introductions and notes).
- T.S. Elliot, “La terra devastata”, C. Gallo, Il Saggiatore, 2021 (both
introduction and notes).
- “Il pensiero e la visione. Virginia Woolf Saggista”, by A. Leonardi,
Pacini, 2021.
- “James Joyce”, by S. Manferlotti, Rubbettino, 2012.
Modernists struggle to return to a connection with nature and a sense of
normality that they think they’ve lost with time and the experience of
traumatic events.
Historically, we’re at the start of the 20th century, or the first decades of the
1900s: the first World War leaves a mark on the conscience and culture of the
time, so much so that we can talk about a time before and after the events,
specifically distinguishing each year. A rejection for old and trite customs and
values was already poking its head through some parts of Europe, and just
like Italy had futurism even before the Great War, the British had vorticism,
which became known thanks to the Blast, a short-lived literary magazine that
started publications in 1914 and ended just a year later. Baudelaire described
reality (and modernism) as “the transient, the fleeting, the contingent”, seeing
it as something so much less established and set in stone compared to before,
that new tools to analyze it were required. Publications such as On the Origin
of Species, by Darwin, and later on The Theory of General Relativity, by
Einsteins, led to a weakening of established theories and ideas and to a
change in perspective: reality was no longer objective, it was instead
observable only through the subjective point of view of someone, and as such,
distorted (just like Picasso’s squared faces). Poets were no different, they
abandoned the 19th century novel and the romantic movement in favor of new
techniques and ideas, like the stream of consciousness, the transitory nature
of existence, the emptiness of pre-existing values and models and most of all
the individual experience (pervaded by a sense of skepticism and
resignation).
Everything was changing at an alarmingly fast pace, breeding a sense of
indeterminacy, uncertainty and disorientation. As a consequence of the
newborn society, alienation became widespread and expanded even more
violently after World War I’s outbreak and aftermath. Aside from the changes
in anthropology, philosophy, math and physics, other fields like religion were
also influenced: Sir James Frazer published The Golden Bough in 1890, where
western religions, myths and values were linked to primitive religions and
values, recontextualizing Jesus Christ himself as nothing more than a
(simple) evolution of old fertility gods, which were said to die and be reborn
in concert with seasons; originally met with disregard exactly because of
Victorian values, it received its just consideration during this movement.
17/11/2023 Space, time, identity and imagism
The new interpretation of Christ and the subjective reality brought on by
Einstein’s revolution of space and time became important topics for novelists.
The discovery of subconscious and the subsequent study “The Interpretations
of Dreams” by Freud, which saw the subconscious as the invisible forces
affecting human behavior in an irrational and mysterious way (though
observable more clearly in dreams), is yet another theory disproving a secular
principle, that of the cartesian view of humans as a rational and aware specie
and yet another revolution in matters of science; it led to psychoanalysis and
to the understanding of the sexual sphere, with the Oedipus complex among
other phenomena (a central theme in Sons and Lovers, by Lawrence, who also
dealt more broadly with sexuality in Lady Chatterley’s Lover).
In philosophy, Henri Bergson is one of the most influential names. He
developed, even before Einstein’s scientific theories, a new understanding
and perception of time and history: he splits the concept of time
psychological and chronological, something that was never seen before at the
time. He suggests that our brains perceive time as distorted based on the
occasion, expanding in times of hardship, contracting it during pleasant
moments, retaining stronger memories of more impactful events or forgetting
others… this means that real time and the time inside our head don’t
necessarily coincide. Time is subjective, and so can be the time of narration in
a novel, Ulysses first and Mrs. Dalloway then are stories that manage to fill an
entire book with a single day’s worth of time. Mrs. Dalloway in particular
manages to write an entire page about a single memory of a young man with
whom the homonymous protagonist was once in love. Marcel Prust is also
emblematic of the potential of memory and the distortion of time; he’s the
author of Au recherche du temps perdu, or In Search of Lost Time, which is
describable as a collection of recollections from the author’s memory growing
up, like the madeleine of his aunt. The protagonist even lacks a real name and
is simply known as the Narrator, defined by his memories and the realities
he’s lived, which sometimes even contrast each other.
For all this various reasons, which all can be summarized as the loss of a stable
and established understanding of reality, this has come to be known as the
age of anxiety. Pessimism, stoicism and despair were common sentiments.
Imagism is a movement flourished in the 1910s. It was named by Ezra Pound
retroactively, based on Hulme’s Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the
Philosophy of Art. Hulme met Bergson and was profoundly influenced by his
ideology and the importance of images and specifically of the immediate
perception of reality. It tries to produce the sensations and emotions felt at
the moment of seeing something or someone. If we consider awareness as
intellectual and instinctual, we could say that imagism tries to provoke the
second kind of response in its readers and viewers: not some processed and
rationalized explanation of what’s been experienced, but a primordial
spontaneous reflex.
Other principles are:
1. Free choice of any subject matter, there’s no limit to the available topics;
2. Short musical lines, opposed to conventional prosody and metrics, to
cause the appropriate instant reaction (free verse and vocabulary);
3. Poems as a response to a scene or object seen by its author;
4. Avoid abstraction and symbolism and paint a clear and precise
description of images (“The natural object is always the adequate
symbol”, -Ezra Pound).
Freedom is thus a fil rouge in the imagist movement, so much so that it
generally disregards established rules and conventions. The aim of poetry
specifically was to achieve “the exact curve of the thing” (-Ezra Pound); he
believed that some images could be compared to the greatest works of art,
provoking a sense of liberation from the limits of space and time much like
catharsis. Quoting other works of art is also common in imagism, showing a
cosmopolitan interest.
“In Station of the Metro”, 1913, strongly resembles a Haiku, though composed
of two verses, one short of the 3 from Japanese poetry:
“The appearance of these faces in a crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.”
Imagism can be interpreted as a movement that tries to keep ties with reality
and define it in its most bare simple state, a leit motiv in the history of
literature that seem to always juxtapose the exploration of the human internal
sphere with a necessity to redefine the external world; Elliot himself tries to
establish “exact formulas, which are as no other can be”, roughly paraphrased.
20/11/2023 Wilfred Owen and the Great War
One of the most famous poets of the first WWI, together with Sigfried
Sassoon, Rupert Brook and Isaac Rosenberg, he was born in 1893, in the
suburbs of a small town north of Birmingham and died in 1918 at the young
age of 25. He enrolled at the London University but never graduated,
preferring work instead; that too didn’t go quite well, which led him to teach
English in France.
These were the years where he started writing poetry and taking inspiration
specifically from John Keats and the second romantic movement. These first
works were never published but were titled “Minor poems – in Minor Keys –
by a Minor”. The most important compositions would become those written
in the years of war, filled with compassion, dedicated to the poor and the last
and sharing a common human sensation of pain.
Then came the breakout of the Great War, which he spent in a Hospital in
France unsure whether to enroll in the army or not; he quickly made up his
resolve however and not only enlisted back in England, but also became a
figure of importance on the Wester Front. This was surely thanks in part to
the huge role propaganda played at the time, which had the goal of spurring a
sense of patriotism and defense of the homeland in the young minds to boost
the rank of the army.
Owen got injured in the battle of Somme (1916) and hid himself in a trench,
from which he was then saved and brought to a hospital in Edinburgh. There,
he was diagnosed with shell shock (nowadays known as Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder, or PTSD for short) and ended up in the same room with Sassoon.
Sassoon was already a poet writing bitter verses about the consequences of the
war in a satirical, realistic style; he would have a great influence on Owen,
who matured quickly and returned to the battlefield both as a great soldier
and poet (he even received a medal of honor, the Military Cross). He
ultimately died in the battle of the Sambre-Oise Canal, seven days prior to the
signing of the armistice, and was honorarily promoted to Lieutenant.
Anthem for Doomed Youth, Apologia Pro Poemate Meo, Miners, Dulce et
Decorum Est, Strange Meeting, Futility, Disabled, Owen’s letters to his
mother are his most important poems and writings.
Owen’s poems make great use of alliteration, onomatopoeias, similitudes,
metaphors, and assonances enhanced by great musicality. He also
invented/pioneered the “pararhyme”, which uses two words identical in
consonants but with different stressed vowels; this gives them a characteristic
“disrupted” feeling, like the rhymes didn’t quite fit each other and something
was missing or out of place. It also conveys a feeling of being failed, unfulfilled
works reminiscent of the way the war changed people.
Dulce et Decorum Est is written after the battle of Somme, incentivized from
Sassoon, and features images and scenes from his recurring nightmares (a
symptom of PTSD). The idea was to relay, with the same realism used by
Sassoon, the true meaning and effect that war had on people (both those who
died, as well as those who stayed alive) and even more to provoke a sense of
“pity of the war” to the future generation. The title comes from the Odes by
Horace, subverting the original meaning by writing a sarcastic, bitter gas
attack on a platoon of soldiers marching. Follows a rough translation:
“Piegati in due come vecchi mendicanti sotto i sacchi,
con le ginocchia ricurve, tossendo come streghe, imprecavamo nel fango,
finché volgemmo le spalle ai bagliori minacciosi
e cominciammo ad arrancare verso il nostro distante riposo.
Gli uomini marciavano nel sonno/addormentati, molti avendo perso gli stivali,
ma procedevano zoppicando, vestiti di sangue. Tutti zoppi; tutti ciechi;
ubriachi di stanchezza, sordi persino ai sibili delle stanche e lontane Five-Nines
(tipo di granata da 5 inches 9 ) che cadevano alle loro spalle.
Gas! GAS! In fretta ragazzi! – Un estasi di movimenti coordinati e sgraziati
nel mettersi goffamente l’elmo giusto in tempo,
ma qualcuno ancora urlava e inciampava
e si dimenava come un uomo a fuoco o nella calce viva.
Offuscato attraverso i vetri appannati e densa luce verde,
sotto un mare verde, lo vedevo annegare.
In tutti i miei sogni davanti al mio sguardo impotente,
si tuffa verso di me, affondando, soffocando, annegando.
Se in qualche sogno asfissiante anche tu potessi metterti al passo
dietro il furgone in cui lo scaraventammo,
e vedere i suoi occhi bianchi torti in volto,
la sua faccia appesa, come un demonio sazio di peccato;
se potessi sentire, ad ogni sobbalzo, il sangue
fuoriuscire gorgogliante dai polmoni corrotti dalla bava,
osceno come il cancro, amaro come il rigurgito
di disgustose incurabili piaghe di lingue innocenti, Amico/a mia, non diresti con così tanto fervore
ai bambini che ardono per qualche disperata gloria,
la vecchia bugia: Dolce e decoroso è
morire per la patria.”
The poem starts out with three quatrains in crossed rhyme, followed by (we
predict) what would be a couplet (to mimic the sonnets’ structure, ABAB
CDCD EFEF GG) but becomes instead yet another quatrain (GHGH…),
making the reader realize it’s not a simple short sonnet, but what feels like an
unending cross rhymed poem; just like the war, it can’t be contained in old,
established expectations. The first lines also use “we” as a pronoun but that
changes after the 12th line, to mark this shift and denial of expectations, to a
more personal “I”. Similitudes are also used throughout the poem, alongside
kennings (Knock-kneed, ginocchia ricurve) and the purposeful avoidance of
the term “walk”, to which Owen prefers basically any other verb with a
straining, fatigued connotation (curse through sludge, trudge, marched
asleep, limped on). These slow-moving verbs are opposed by frantic
descriptions and actions in the gas attack part. He also calls his comrades
“boys” and not “men”, both out of a sense of friendship and familyhood and
because of their young age. The dying soldier is the recurring nightmare
provoked by Owen’s PTSD. Alliteration of W with “Watch white eyes
writhing” and of D in “all blind, Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots of
tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind”. The reference to a
“distant rest” in the fourth line is also partially metaphorical: the soldiers are
marching towards a nearby camp to sleep, but it is both much farther away
than it seems as is their eventual death, the only real respite and salvation
from this earthly hell. Blod-shod is a neologism, meaning vaguely “clad
in/wearing blood”.
The poem is addressed to a “you” introduced after the end of the dream; it’s
confirmed this “you” is Jessie Pope, a journalist and poet herself that wrote
jingoistic verses (to enlist young man into the army). This and the namesake
of Dolce et Decorum Est paint a clear picture: the first and immediately
apparent message is that war is basically only a source of suffering, traumas,
death and unimaginable terror and devastation; the underlying point being,
this is apparent only to the soldiers on the frontlines as it is completely
disregarded by anyone in the aristocracy and generically the higher-class of
society. The supporters of the war are also the ones that stand to benefit way
more than they stand to lose if they can lose anything at all.
We mentioned Pope prior, now it’s a good time to read The Call, by Pope
herself, which is a typical jingoistic poem that both glorifies the courage and
honor of those young ones that defend their homeland, as well as shunning
and laughing at those who still question or outright refuse the war.
24/11/2023 Sigfried Sassoon and T.S. Eliot
Christ and the Soldier, by Sassoon, roughly translated:
[Il soldato disperse si fermò
fissò lo sguardo su di Lui
poi con moto scomposto si gettò in ginocchio,
e ansimando disse “o santo crocifisso, sono a pezzi!”
E Cristo, scortato dai suoi serafini,
presso la linea del fronte, in mezzo a due alberi scheggiati,
gli parlò: “Figlio mio, guarda queste mani e questi piedi”.
Il soldato alzò lo sguardo e guardò attentamente, arto dopo arto,
fermò l’occhio sul Volto, poi sussurrò:
“Ferite come queste assicurerebbero a chiunque un bel rimpatrio!”
Cristo, abbassando su di lui lo sguardo, dolente ma non truce, sussurrò:
“Per te ho creato i misteri,
al di sopra di ogni battaglia avanza il Paracleto*” […]
“Signore Gesù Cristo, non hai altro da dire?”
La testa restò china sotto la corona di spine
Il soldato si spostò, raccolse lo zaino,
si mise il fucile a tracolla e riprese barcollando il suo cammino.
“Oh Dio”, gemette, “ma perché sono nato?”
La battaglia riprese il suo fragore e non si udì nessuna risposta.]
*Paracleto, or paraclete, is a pretty sophisticated and technical term referring
t to the holy spirit, which together with his seemingly out of place appearance
(escorted by seraphim) paints Christ as a sort of hostile, or at least not-sokind figure; this is reinforced by the notion that the battle is advancing WITH
the holy spirit, not against it, meaning in some form or shape he is not
condemning the war. Christ feels almost alien and basically doesn’t help with
clarifying or justifying anything by the end of the poem, it only makes the
soldier question whether there’s any purpose at all in life.
Thomas Stearns Eliot, 1888 – 1965, author of The Waste Land. He entered
Harvard and developed a passion for Metaphysical poets in his 20s,
specifically for John Donne, as well as for Italian poets and Dante Alighieri
most of all. Kind of like Dante himself, Eliot’s poems can be divided in two
periods, the early ones, or the period before his conversion to Christianity,
and the ones post-conversion. French modern symbolists also were a source
of influence for him, especially in the early years; some names are Rimbaud,
Verlaine, Mallarmé and even more LaForgue.
After Harvard he continued his studies in Paris, at the Sorbonne, where he
attended every course held by Bergson. Then he continued in Germany and
Oxford, where he studied Greek philosophy, and lastly settled in London (and
obtained a job at Lloyds Bank after a gig for a school). There he met Ezra
Pound, and so also Imagism and Vorticism; Pound strongly criticized his
poems but not without reason: he would act like a teacher to the young Eliot,
whose poetry had lots of potential but was also cryptic. Basically, all his works
were first checked (and even corrected) by Pound, so much so that it could be
argued Eliot’s work are in fact a joint effort with Pound. The Waste Land itself
has a dedication for Pound with a quote from Dante, calling it a “Fabbro*”,
shaping his works. His first publications were featured on BLAST in 1915 and
were called “Preludes” and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”.
*The quote is in Italian, directly from Dante, even in original
In 1915 he married Vivienne Haighwood, a ballet dancer suffering from strong
psychological turmoil. It was the age of psychoanalysis but also one of
transition, where the remedies weren’t perfect, if healthy at all (dark rooms,
electrocution…); in his quest to try and help his wife, Eliot had his first
psychological breakdown, and the marriage proved a disaster. They divorced
in 1933. She would be eventually hospitalized and the sent to an asylum where
she would die in 1947, something Eliot would blame on himself for the rest of
his life; Eliot would get recovered in a Swiss hospital. Ten years later he would
happily marry his secretary, Valerie Fletcher (jokingly it is said this is such a
happy period that for the first time we saw his teeth while smiling). After his
recovery he stopped briefly in Paris, on his way to London, to give Pound what
he had written in the 2 months that passed in Switzerland: a manuscript of
The Waste Land. This portion of Eliot’s life was crucial to the development of
his masterpiece, as were Pound’s revision.
He published The Waste Land in 1922 and founded the critical magazine “The
Criterion”. In 1925 he becomes director of “Faber and Faber” and two years
later not only he acquired British citizenship but converted to Anglicanism
too after a life of Atheism. He became one of the most important literary
figures for the next thirty years or so in the English-speaking world,
culminating in a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. In his last years, he wrote
plays for theaters too. He died in 1965.
(1922 is considered “Annus mirabilis” for the publication of The Waste Land,
Ulysses, and Jacob’s Room)
Eliot’s poems before the conversion are rather pessimistic and include
“Prufrock and Other Observation”, 1917, “The Waste Land”, 1922, and “The
Hollow Men”, 1925
After the conversion in 1930 he published Ash Wednesday, a meditative poem
on the strains and hardship of the acceptance of a religious belief. Hope, joy
and purification become the keyword of this second period. His poetry gains
a musicality and relaxed tone, contrasting the dramatic elements of his early
years. Following, we have “Murder in the Cathedral”, 1935, “The Family
Reunion”, 1939, and “Four Quartets”, 1943.
A recurring theme of Eliot is the impersonality of the artist: it’s a choice
shared with James Joyce and is summarized as the “separation of the man who
suffers from the mind which creates”. An apparently shallow principle, but
one with many repercussions. The poet becomes a medium for the art, a
being with no emotion or personality whose role is basically that of a
“translator”, because art needs to be universal. There must never be an excess
of emotion.
The Mythical method is “a way of giving significance to present futility”: by
drawing upon images and names of classical myth, now devoid of meaning or
importance, it helps the author relay a sense of contrast between the past and
the present. Tiresias is a good example of this: the prophet that once told tales
of Odyssey, Heracles, and other myths in Thebes, in The Waste Land he’s
shown observing the disorganized apartment of a poor woman who works as a
typist while she has intercourse, from which only the guy comes out satisfied.
After reading Ulysses by Joyce, Eliot describes the Mythic method as follows:
“It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a
significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is
contemporary history.” Myths become a grid of meanings and images that
create order and stability in what would otherwise be only a day in the life of
someone.
Fundamental in his works is the Objective Correlative: “The only way of
expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative";
in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be
the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts,
which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is
immediately evoked. (from “Hamlet and his problems”, in the collection “The
Sacred Wood”, 1920).
27/11/2023
Do I dare Disturb / the Universe? This is a central question for Eliot in his
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, and questioning in general about the
meaning of life, existence and poetry are the themes. This is in line with the
necessary research of new tools with which relate to reality, which is a typical
modernist goal. As with other poems, it has been looked over by Pound (his
corrections can be seen written with a pen on the original manuscript).
Starting with the title, it is established that we’re going to read a love song,
reminding us of medieval songs and nature and ballads; it’s actually revealed,
reading the poem, that it’s a love song that cuts all ties with old themes.
Basically the only thing that sticks are some stylistic elements, like anaphors,
rhymes and repetitions (all of which sarcastic), but the lack of a loved
someone, sadder sentiments and uneven metrics are clearly not part of the
standard. Prufrock is actually just an alter ego for Eliot; fun fact, it gets his
name from a furniture company in St. Louis, where Eliot was born – it serves
both as a historical snapshot (they used this name to say their products were
“proof-rock”, resistant to even rock) and a comical subversion of its original
meaning: the poetic ego of Prufrock is already shattered before even the first
verses begin. From a social standpoint, the company is also a symbol of that
sterile and cold society which made the author moody in the first place.
The Epigraph is a reference to Dante’s Inferno, specifically the 27th Canto,
lines 61-66 (the eight out of ten circles that make up the traitor’s circle). Here
a damned soul (Guido da Montefeltro, once a counselor) talks about his woes
and everything he’s done because he’s under the assumption that Dante,
much like him, can’t go back to the living; the same way Eliot wants to open
up to us. Of course, it also features Objective Correlatives.
Follows a rough translation.
[Andiamo dunque, io e te,
quando la sera si staglia contro il cielo
come un paziente anestetizzato sul tavolo;
andiamo, lungo certe strade mezze deserte,
i ritrovi mormoranti
di notti senza riposo in hotel economici a ore
e ristoranti sporchi di segatura con gusci d’ostrica;
strade che ci seguono come un argomento noioso
dall’intento fastidioso
che ti conducono ad una domanda soverchiante…
Ma non chiedere “che cos’è?”
andiamo a fare la nostra visita.
Nella stanza le donne vanno e vengono,
parlando di Michelangelo
La nebbia gialla che gratta la sua schiena sui vetri delle finestre,
il fumo giallo che struscia il suo muso sui vetri delle finestre,
lambì con la lingua i quattro angoli della sera,
indugiò sulle pozzanghere che stanno sugli scoli,
lasciò cadere sulla schiena la fuliggine caduta dai camini,
scivolò dai terrazzi, con un balzo improvviso,
e vide che era una dolce notte d’Ottobre,
si arrotolò dalle parti della casa, e si addormentò.
E infatti ci sarà tempo
per il fumo giallo che scorre per le strade
strusciando la sua schiena sui vetri delle finestre;
Ci sarà tempo, ci sarà tempo
per preparare un viso per incontrare gli altri visi che incontri;
ci sarà tempo per ammazzare e creare,
e un tempo per tutti i lavori e il giorno delle mani
che sollevano e lasciano cadere domande sul tuo piatto;
Tempo per te e tempo per me,
E tempo ancora per centinaia di indecisioni,
e per centinaia di visioni e revisioni,
prima di prendere un pan tostato con il the.
Nella stanza le donne vanno e vengono
Parlando di Michelangelo.
E infatti ci sarà tempo
mi chiedo, “Oso?” e, “Oso?”
Il tempo di tornare indietro e scendere le scale,
con una zona calva tra i miei capelli (diranno: “Come stanno diventando radi i suoi capelli!”)
Il mio cappotto mattutino, il mio colletto fermamente incorniciato sul mento,
La mia cravatta ricca e modesta, ma asserita da una singola spilla (diranno: “ma come sono esili le sue braccia e le sue gambe!”)
Oso
disturbare l’universo?
In un minuto c’è tempo
per decisioni e revisioni che un minuto annullerà.
Perché le ho già conosciute, tutte le ho conosciute:
Ho conosciuto le sere, le mattine e i pomeriggi,
Ho misurato la mia vita con cucchiaini per il caffè,
Ho conosciuto le voci di chi è morto per una caduta
sotto la musica di una camera lontana.
Quindi, come potrei osare?
Ed ho conosciuti già gli occhi, li ho conosciuti tutti Occhi che ti fissano in una frase formulata,
E quando io sono formulato, appuntato su uno spillo,
Quando sarò affisso e mi contorcerò sul muro,
Come dovrei iniziare
A sputare tutte le cicche dei miei giorni e delle mie abitudini?
E come dovrei presumere?
E ho conosciuto le braccia già, tutte loro braccia che sono adornate di braccialetti bianche e nude
(Ma alla luce delle lampade, coperte di peluria marrone chiaro!)
È forse il profumo da un vestito
Che mi rende così confuso?
Braccia che si stendono sul tavolo, o avvolte in uno scialle,
E come dovrei presumere?
E come dovrei iniziare?
Dovrei dire, che sono andato attraverso le strade al crepuscolo
e ho visto il fumo alzarsi dalle pipe
di uomini soli in camicia corta, sporgenti dalle finestre?...
Avrei dovuto essere un paio di chele frantumate
squagliandomela sui fondali di mari silenziosi.
E il pomeriggio, la sera, dorme così pacificamente!
Levigata da lunghe dita,
Addormentata… stanca… o fingendosi malata,
distesa sul pavimento, accanto a te e me.
Dovrei, dopo il the e la torta e i gelati,
avere la forza di spingere il momento verso la sua crisi?
Ma anche se ho pianto e digiunato, pianto e pregato,
Anche se ho visto il mio capo (un po’ calvo) portato su un piatto,
non sono un profeta – e non c’è niente d’importante;
Ho visto il momento della mia grandezza vacillare,
E ho visto l’eterno Domestico tenere il mio cappotto, e ridere sotto i baffi,
E in breve, ero spaventato.
E ne sarebbe valsa la pena, dopotutto,
dopo le tazze, le marmellate ed il the,
tra la porcellana, in mezzo a qualche chiacchiera fra te e me,
ne sarebbe valsa la pena,
aver affrontato la cosa col sorriso,
aver compresso l’universo in una palla
averla rotolato verso qualche domanda opprimente,
per dire “Sono Lazzaro, vengo dai morti,
torno a dirvi tutto, dirò tutto a voi”–
Se qualcuno, aggiustandole un cuscino alla testa
dovesse dire: “ Non è affatto ciò che intendevo,
non è questo, per niente.”
E ne sarebbe valso la pena, dopotutto,
ne sarebbe valsa la pena,
dopo i tramonti, i cortili e le strade bagnate,
dopo i romanzi, dopo le tazze di the, dopo le gonne che strascicavano sul
pavimento–
e questo, e tanto altro ancora?–
È impossibile dire semplicemente ciò che voglio!
Ma se una lanterna magica proiettasse lo schema dei nervi su uno schermo:
ne sarebbe valsa la pena
se qualcuno, aggiustando un cuscino o gettando uno scialle,
e girandosi verso la finestra, avesse detto:
“Non è questo,
Non è ciò che intendevo, affatto.”
No! Non sono il Principe Hamlet, né era destino che lo fossi;
Sono un cortigiano, uno che basterebbe
ad ingrossare un corteo, iniziare una o due scene,
consigliare il principe; senza dubbio, uno strumento semplice,
devoto, felice d’esser d’aiuto,
prudente, cauto, e meticoloso:
pieno di belle frasi, ma un po’ ottuso;
alle volte, invero, quasi ridicolo–
Quasi, ogni tanto, il Folle.
Divento vecchio… divento vecchio…
Mi toccherà portare il fondo dei pantaloni arrotolato.
Dovrei forse dividere i capelli sulla nuca? Oso mangiare una pesca?
Porterò i pantaloni di flanella bianchi, e camminerò sulla spiagga.
Ho sentito le sirene che cantano, l’una alle altre.
Non penso che canteranno per me.
Le ho viste cavalcare le onde verso il mare
pettinandosi i capelli bianchi delle onde all’indietro
Quando il vento soffia l’acqua del mare bianca e nera.
Siamo rimasti nelle camere del mare
accanto a donne marine incoronate con alghe rosse e marroni
finché voci umani ci svegliano e anneghiamo.
The poem starts basically halfway through something, asking us to follow him
somewhere we don’t know yet and shouldn’t ask about. We are asked multiple
times to go, yet the sensation it gives is that of immobility, like the etherized
(anesthetized) patient on the table: we’re being asked to go but are clearly
either unable or unwilling to go. Down we go to the depths of the mind, the
poem becomes a stream of sad, still, annoying sensation, images and smells
(Eliot is only 22 when he writes Prufrock, but in interviews he admits to
feeling like 50 years old already, showing early symptoms of his later
depression).
The two lines about women and Michelangelo is some kind of mental image,
probably lived by Eliot, which calls to mind superficial and trivial
conversations. It conveys an uneasy feeling, it clashes with the deep thinking
in the rest of the poem. Technically speaking, we can call it “poiesis”, the
emergence of something previously not there.
Follows a depiction of the evening that, basically like a cat, stretches, jumps,
and finally coils around a house to sleep. It is a depiction of a heavy, sleepy
subject that nonetheless moves even if it fails.
When he talks about murdering and creating (juxtaposition), he’s referring to
the scriptures, recalling a time where the link with nature was stronger and of
which the absence is now felt.
“days of hands” is a reference to Hesiod’s “Works and Days”, reminiscent of
older times where honest, manual work was enough and when the evening
was but a background to fatigue and satisfaction. The fall of a question, the
same question repeated throughout the poem, “Do I dare”, is caused by
someone’s head (metaphorically) falling on said plate: it’s John the Baptist,
the greatest prophet of wester human history, prophet of the coming of Jesus
Christ. What this means precisely, we’ll talk about later.
Generally speaking, the multiple reference to fertility, nature, old and bygone
times, almost in a mythical way, depicts a longing and melancholy for simpler
happier times; now those hands can only fall limp and be useless towards
questions of the caliber of “what’s the meaning of life”, consequences of an
alienation and unnatural modern lifestyle that’s damaging the minds of
people.
30/11/2023
Continuing from where we left before with Prufrock, going down the stairs is
a metaphor for escaping human, artistic, civil responsibilities (escaping from
the hall with ladies talking about Michelangelo), with the bald spot being a
reference to Zeno.
The woman chat about his baldness and he tries to keep his self-esteem high
by underlining his elegant clothes; whatever he tries, the women just keep on
chit-chatting, this time about his arms and legs growing slimmer and
slimmer, as if he was growing so thing he’s about to disappear.
This vanishing of his form (and ego) is so severe he gets to the point of
questioning if he’s being a disturbance to the universe, if his mere presence is
worth a thought, even at the risk of disturbing the universe’s order (this
uneasiness towards the universe can be interpreted both as the insecurity
about the value of his artistic production, or even that of his life). This is a
question, much like others, which can’t have a true truthful and real solution,
meaning that whatever he thinks the answer is, “a minute will reverse” it if he
only wishes. Nothing can be real; everything is just what it is in that moment.
His evanescent, fleeting presence here is the first stage of a modernist art,
when the artist feels anxious and overwhelmed by the world he lives in. It
should not be connected directly, or be considered a direct continuation, of his
later theories about the poet being transparent and non-personal in his works:
these are formulations and ideas that come fifteen to twenty years after
Prufrock and are influenced by Joyce. It means that the two concept are
unlikely to be linked, but the connection cannot be disproven, and eventual
research about this can prove interesting.
According to “The Therapy of Depression”, by Beck, 1979, Eliot fits most of
the symptoms for severe depression at this point: a negative consideration of
oneself, a tendency to interpret the events of life negatively, and a cynical view
of the future; these symptoms seems to be born out of a “faulty information
process”, a literal systematic error of the brain in computing a person’s
memories in a destructive perspective, retroactively so. This means that even
if Eliot’s experience of Prufrock’s furniture might’ve been positive when he
was a kid, let’s take this as an example, his brain would later rewrite it as a
negative and damaging memory, leading to the poem’s thoughts. This
becomes a vicious cycle of sorts, making positive memory into negative ones,
which sour the mood, leading to a pessimistic view of life that feeds on the
memory it itself has created. Two crucial points in this process are the
“Selective Abstraction”, a focusing on details taken out of context, basically
ignoring everything else, and the “Arbitrary Inference”, a conclusion that is
reached without sufficient (or any) proof of it. Beck would go on to research
and identify further symptoms and signs of depression, building one of the
most commonly used psychometric “inventories” to this day to ascertain the
presence and severity of depression. Prufrock, to conclude, possesses sixteen
out of the twenty-one symptoms in its poetical structure and imagery: mood,
pessimism, sense of failure, lack of satisfaction, guilty-feeling, sense of
punishment, self-hate, self-accusations, self-punitive wishes, irritability,
social withdrawal, indecisiveness, body image, work inhibition, fatigability,
loss of libido.
The poem continues with Prufrock trying to regain a bit of self-esteem with
that typical bohemian attitude of omniscience and superiority… only to fail at
that too. The pin becomes a double-edged sword, once a reason to keep his
self-esteem high, now a torture device to keep him still. He becomes unable to
do the only thing a poet should be able to, that is, spitting verses about his life
and daily experiences.
Then comes the loss of libido: the arms, covered in hairs, are lying on the
tables of wrapped in clothes, but rather than being a source of sexual
impulses, they become reminiscent of the dying patient on the surgery table
(the one anesthetized at the start of the poem); we are uncertain even about
the smell, since it could come from the perfumed ladies or the sick patient.
The claws become the Objective Correlative for the poet himself: a pair of
dead, detached ruined (and thus useless) claws slithering away in silence and
darkness on the bottom of the seas, unable to do the only thing they should
be able to: grasp at something, anything, that is part of that reality they live in.
He sees himself as less than an animal, a mutilated carcass devoid of any
capacity and thus purpose, he is not just inhuman, he is not alive at all. A
regression from human, to inhuman, to invertebrate, to a fraction of an
invertebrate, a carcass. (We can remember something similar from Othello,
where the protagonist talked about being a toad). This also ties with the
disappearance mentioned before, when he was growing thin, in the end he
did lose both arms and legs.
The prophet and ascetism, put together with the head on a plate, are a clear
reference to John the Baptist, but Prufrock is no prophet even if he does
foretell, and the last thing he sees is simply death, that snickers at him while
he cowers in fear.
01/12/2023
Another juxtaposition is that of the hope and failure of the poetic ego,
Prufrock more than once tries to come back from its slump and more than
once he fails – this is paralleled also in the writing, that juxtaposes the
normal, everyday activities with more philosophical and existential matters
(of which, John the Baptist also mimics the trend, he’s defeated too, his head
on a plate). The presence of such daily events on one hand seems to devalue
the importance of the existential discourse, but the poetic ego actually finds
some comfort in those images – once again, the strive to make art and create
is soothed when he doesn’t focus on himself. The details of everyday life,
living in the present in other words, with little to no regard for everything past
and future, is something that actually brought a semblance of peace (or even
ecstasy) to other modernist artists too, like Joyce and Woolf. This passage
from the inner world to the outer world, to contact with nature and reality
(nature in particular for Woolf) helps us reveal their perceived meaning of life
and existence: to achieve a communion, such a complete and total fusion with
one’s surroundings as to experience true joy and fulfillment. These moments
are also known as the “moment of being” or Joycean epiphanies, exemplified
in the Dubliners.
Towards the end of the poem, Prufrock seems to either have found the
resolve, or to have lost all attachment to, abide by his responsibilities and
moves to take the situation in his own hands – rolling the universe into a ball,
he throws it, not away, but towards the fatidic question. The goal is still that
of facing the issue and Prufrock, now in metaphorical control of literally his
reality, seems ready; he’s so full of himself, he talks as if he’s Lazarus for a
moment. Ironic, since Lazarus (and Prufrock too in the poem) is resurrected
by Jesus only to never speak a word. Once again, nothing comes out of his
mouth.
The parallel with Hamlet repeats this dynamic, given that he shortly
afterwards describes himself in a supportive role, more akin to Polonius than
the protagonist of the play. He also describes this way of being in a negative
way, reminding us of self-hate as one of the depressive behaviors.
The Fool completes the metaphor, being an highly intelligent individual
stopped by his incapacity to communicate in a comprehensible fashion.
The peach is believed to be a reference to Adam and his apple, his very
existence is now tantamount to sinning; other interpretations are of the fruit
as a symbol of femininity. The point still stands, he feels like being himself or
doing something he’d like would be sacrilegious.
The short lines at the end of the stanzas that talk about pillows and “not
being that at all” don’t have a clear cut interpretation, but it’s fair to assume, if
anything, they’re symptoms of an unfulfilled love and even more of a
dissatisfaction of the author with relationships as much as his incapacity to
live (and have lived) them.
The misunderstanding really stings and it leads to a outright frustration with
the incapacity to communicate: he would throw his nerves on a projector to
show his thoughts physically if he could – this is a recurring theme in the
literary movements of the last century.
The final images of sirens and the beach, with long white hair reminiscent of
old age, close the poem. Prufrock tries to evade his modernist reality going
into what feels like a dream, only to find one again women ignoring him. He
fails at that too, waking up to the reality he belongs to.
On to The Waste Land. It’s a poem written in the fall of 1921, during Eliot’s
healing of a nervous breakdown. Its manuscript was shortly afterwards given
to Pound to be revised and, as a fact, has been extensively changed and
shortened. The poem starts with the epigraph, this time from Petronio’s
Satyricon: it’s a passage describing Sibyl; the quote is written in the original
Latin, which has its own quote in Greek. This use of multiple language carries
through in the poem itself, which speaks at times both in English, French and
German, alternated.
“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et
cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: άποθανεîν θέλω.”
For once I myself saw with my own eyes the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a cage,
and when the boys said to her 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she replied, 'I want to
die.”
This image of a mythological creature caged in a bottle for the fun of some
children whishing to die is basically a representation of the entire poem:
existing in a reality so bleak and negative, that even the most powerful and
important beings to have ever lived on this planet would only want to get away
from it as quick as possible, and yet seem to be unable to do so. The reality we
speak of is one that was universal at the time; we have talked about his
marriage and the consequences it had on Eliot’s psyche, but the overworking
at the bank certainly didn’t help.
What appears as a personal struggle is actually a shared feeling of an entire
generation. It is for this reason considered one of, if not The, most important
poem of the 20th century. It leads to a sense of disillusionment with the
modern world and the desire to leave it behind in search of a new tradition, a
new home. The modern panorama is fragmented, historically, socially,
economically, politically. All these are concentrated in three themes in the
poem: fertility and sterility in contrast with each other, the positivity of the
past, and the chaos and devastation of the present.
4/12/2023
Eliot doesn’t use any actual quote from classical myth but chooses instead its
parody, from Petronio’s Satyricon; during a banquet where the participant try
to show off a culture they don’t actually have, Sybil, a powerful prophetess
now reduced to a joke in a bottle, so that children might poke at her and have
fun, answers questions no more and only wishes to die.
The poem itself presents many quotes, so much so that to avoid being
accused of plagiarism (and it did happen before) he wrote long notes that
detailed the reasons and manner in which their presence was justified. It was
published ultimately, after Pound’s revisions (to which the poem itself is
dedicated, “il miglior fabbro”, which was actually in turn Dante’s tribute to
Arnaud Daniel), under Hogarth Press, Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s own
publishing company.
The essential themes and the uneven structure are consistent with that of
Prufrock; according to Serpieri, the continuous logical correlations and
clashes between opposite images are typical of Eliot, who portrays them to
underline an omnipresent sensation of fragmentation and disconnection.
The homonymous “Waste Land” is a reference too: it’s derived from a text by
Miss Jessie Weston, titled “From Ritual to Romance”; she was spurred by
Frazer’s The Golden Bough when it came out and studied up on medieval
Christianity, from which a particular legend of the Arthurian and Holy Grail
cycle of stories was rediscovered: it’s that of the Fisher King. The myth itself
has had many iterations and variations, but for the sake of brevity and
analysis, what’s important is this: the Fisher King, or Maimed King (Re
Ferito/Menomato/Mutilato) is a monarch who suffers an incapacity to move
and procreate, which is the reason he’s always out near a pond fishing – it is
heavily implied that whatever wound he suffered, it was a punishment for his
sins. This sterile and barren state of being is spread across his kingdom, that
suffers the same fate: forever uncapable of bearing life until someone who can
heal him comes along. In the stories many try and fail, until a righteous
knight in search of the Grail (usually Percival) asks him for help in his quest
and this helps the king remind he was, in fact, the protector of the Grail. The
King is thus saved from his misery, the land fertile anew and the story ends.
Thus I can say it’s clear that either the poet, the reality he lives in or both, are
that “Fisher King” and by extension his “Waste Land”, a barren infertile old
man, almost grown senile, passing his days without something of importance
to do. A side-character in his own story, waiting for some “righteous knight” to
help him along the way, not some Hamlet but maybe a Polonius. A reality with
no future of its own, only waiting to be saved (if that’s even possible).
(The Holy Grail, for those who forgot, is the cup in which, according to
Christian mythology, the blood of Christ was collected by Joseph of
Arimathea).
Out of all these references, quotes, mythology and explanation written by
Eliot, Pound likely hasn’t read a line: they meant nothing to him, he
considered the poem itself beautiful even without them. Eliot, on the
contrary, considered the poem but an annoying lullaby, some “rhythmical
grumbling”.
The poem is divided into five sections: The Burial of the Dead, The Game of
Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water, What the Tunder Said. Each is
representing a certain impulse and the modern degradation it is subject to.
The name of the second section is a reference to Thomas Middleton and his
“Game of Chess”, 1624. The whole play is basically a chess match where the
pieces are the characters – the moves being actual moves, but also
representation of the stage of seduction between noble houses (the play, on
top of his dual visualization as a court and a chess match, was also
representing of the current political state of affairs).
The Fire Sermon is about Buddha inviting his followers to abandon earthly
desires and obtain Nirvana, talks about eating and nature too.
Death by Water is about the impossibility of resurrection; dying by drowning
in the western culture is not a peaceful way to die and has been in fact used as
a punishment.
What the Tunder said finishes off with an Indian legend where a thunder
speaks and answers, but in the poem they turn out to be pessimistic, or nonexistent at all.
Translation of some verses from the full poem:
1. Burial of the Dead
Aprile è il mese più crudele, fa nascere
lillà dalla terra morta, mischiando
memorie e desideri, mescolando
radici spente con pioggia primaverile.
L’inverno ci ha tenuto caldi, coprendo
la terra di neve smemorata, sfamando
un po’ di vita con tuberi essiccati.
{vv. 1-7}
…
Città irreale,
sotto la nebbia bruna di un’alba invernale,
una folla fluiva sul London Bridge, così tanti,
non credevo che la morte ne avesse disfatti così tanti.*
{vv. 60-63}
*Reference to Dante, Inferno, Canto III, vv. 55-57: “Ch’io non avrei mai
creduto / che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta” (di gente
April is usually regarded as the month of death and rebirth, one of renewal,
tied with the coming of spring – here it becomes the bringer of death and
“wasting”. Winter, paradoxically, is a far warmer and beloved sight.
…
2. The Game of Chess
Non abbiamo né leggeremo niente da qui
…
3. The Fire Sermon
Città irreale
sotto la nebbia bruna di un pomeriggio invernale
{vv.207-208}
…
All’ora viola, quando gli occhi e la schiena
si sollevano dalla scrivania, quando il motore umano aspetta
come un taxi pulsante nell’attesa.
Io Tiresia, anche se cieco, pulso tra due vite,
un vecchio con mammelle di donna avvizzite, posso vedere
all’ora viola, l’ora serale che si sforza
al ritorno, e porta il marinaio a casa dal mare,
la tipografa a casa per l’ora del the, le pulisce la colazione, accende
la sua stufa, e apre il cibo in scatola.
Dalla finestra si spande pericolosamente
le sue combinazioni (di vestiti) ad asciugare, agli ultimi raggi del sole,
Sul divano sono accumulate (di notte sul letto)
calze, mutande, camicette e laccetti.
Io Tiresia, vecchio dal seno avvizzito
ho percepito la scena, e predetto il resto–
Anch’io ho aspettato l’ospite atteso,
lui, il giovane pustoloso, arriva,
un agente di una piccola agenzia di locazione, con sguardo baldanzoso,
uno dal basso sul quale la presunzione sta
come un cappello di seta su un milionario di Bradford.*
Il tempo ora è propizio, come immagina,
il pranzo è finivo, lei è annoiata e svogliata,
fa per ingaggiare in carezze
che non sono respinte, se indesiderate.
Eccitato e deciso, l’assalta d’un tratto;
le mani esploranti non incontrano difese;
la sua vanità non ha bisogno di risposta,
e genera crede che l’indifferenza sia un benvenuto.
(E io Tiresia ho pre-sofferto tutto
quello che succede su questo stesso divano o letto;
io che sedetti sotto le mura di Tebe
e camminai fra i più umili morti.)
Le dona un ultimo bacio accondiscendente,
e va via a tentoni, trovando le scale nel buio…
Lei si gira e guarda un momento allo specchio,
appena cosciente dell’amante che se n’è andato;
il suo cervello concede ad un mezzo pensiero di passare:
“Oh beh, ora che è fatto, sono contenta sia finito.”
Quando una donna amorevole scende nella follia e
passeggia avanti e indietro per la stanza, da sola,
si liscia i capelli con mano automatica,
e mette un disco sul grammofono.
{vv.215-256}
*Modo di dire per “cafone, arrogante”
The hours of the day here are linked with the human daily activities, that are
not the pleasant and antique farming of the land, but the tired and sore eyes
and backs getting up from the desks where they’re working, more like
machines now than living being. We’ve talked about Tiresias before;
according to his myth, he was locked in the quarrel of two divinities, Zeus and
Junon, over which of the two sex feels more pleasures. Tiresias was a man that
in the process of unlocking two intertwined serpents became a woman;
similarly, seven years later he went back to being a man the same way: this
makes him the perfect judge for this predicament. Tiresias thinks Zeus is right
and Junon punishes Tiresias by making him blind – Zeus takes pity on him
and even if he can’t give him his sight back, he can give him the gift of
foresight. This is the story of how he became one of the greatest prophets.
What does this man see nowadays? A young woman, a typist, quickly tidying
up her house and cooks with tinned food. This section too was anticipated a
bit, but the gist is that Tiresias is now reduced to foretelling no more of great
heroes and mythological events, but dismal simple lives like this one: a typist,
quickly coming back from work like a sailor would after his adventures. Her
life though is far more mundane, made of simple bleak things like drying the
clothes with the sun rays, preparing tin-canned food and having shallow,
unsatisfying intercourse with some ugly man. Tiresias, the metaphorical
“window” through which we observe this scene, is as deluded by reality as we
are. Sexuality becomes almost a nuisance and what would be luscious skin
and inviting dresses are replaced with pustulous folks (who treats the woman
like a prey or a thing; she, on the other hand, is so occupied by her own
thoughts she’s not even paying attention) and wet laundry.
William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, is yet another most important poet of the last
century. His poetry is characterized by two symbols, one is the Celtic cross,
the other was invented by he himself: he called it “gyre” and is composed of
two tridimensional spiral, opposite and intertwined.
He was born into an Anglo-Irish family and thus has always felt thorn apart
between England and Ireland – he didn’t choose either in the end and might
be the only artist so far to represent an intellectual coexistence of the two
nations, especially in a period of Irish independence. This makes his style and
poetic traditions typically English, but thematically closer to Ireland. He’s also
pretty invested in occultism, he wrote a book about it and said to have seen
history as a gyre (= a violent transition from an era to another, in the 1920s we
transitioned from the Christian era to one dominated by the Anti-Christ;
pretty wild stuff for someone who worked as an Irish senator, if you ask me, but
apart from this small parenthesis, the guy was more than sane and sound of
mind). He won a Nobel prize in 1923 for “his always inspired poetry, which in a
highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole new nation”. He
also founded a theater.
Yeats believed poems should have an oneiric and ethereal language – this is
because of the traditions and peasantry life gained around Sligo, Ireland, in
his youth; it is exemplified in The Stolen Child, an exemplary poem of his
earlier years.
Innisfree, on the other hand, was written out of nostalgia for the lake water of
Innisfree, ??? by hearing a dripping fountain outside a shop in UK. He had
always dreamed of owning a small house at the center of a lake, and during
his time in UK, where he maintained a stable residence in the first part of his
adult life, he spent some periods reminiscing Ireland. Follows a rough
translation:
“Mi alzerò ora, ed andrò a Innisfree,
e lì costruirò una piccola cabina, fatta da argilla e canne;
Nove file di fagioli avrò là, e un alveare per il miele delle api,
e vivrò solo nella radura rumorosa di api.
E avrò della pace là, perché la pace arriva calando piano,
calando dal velo della mattina quando i grilli cantano;
Là la mezzanotte è tutto un brillio, e il mezzodì un bagliore viola,
e la sera piena di piume di fanello*.
Mi alzerò e andrò ora, perché sempre giorno e notte
odo l’acqua del lago lambire la sponda con suoni bassi;
Mentre sto sulla strada, o sul pavimento grigio,
la sento nel profondo del nucleo del mio cuore.”
*Il fanello è un uccello di piccole dimensioni.
07/12/2023
Innisfree was a symptom of the author’s will for a more peaceful and quiet life.
The return to nature and to an autonomous, physical life is common among
modernists, like Eliot. The name Innisfree is an anglicization of “Inis Fraoch”,
which means “Heather Island” and is in fact a common name for Irish islands
– for Yeats though it specifically refers to an island in Lough Gill, a small lake
island near Sligo, Ireland.
By the way, it’s pronounced “innishfree”.
And beware, it’s important to study Auerbach’s “calzerotto marrone”, where a
passage from To the Lighthouse is used as a symbol for the modernist novel as
a whole.
His philosophy was characterized by a strong believe in Irish independency:
as much as he felt both English and Irish, those were times where the conflict
between the two population was reaching its maximum point (the Easter
Rising, 1916). The Irish people reclaimed their independency and agency to
establish their own people, state and culture – and Yeats was among them –
but the English answered with imprisonment and execution. It was a
premonition of an independence war, one that would come just three years
later and would last 18 months. We should understand that from the point of
view of the UK, Ireland was basically a colony and that their coexistence is far
less placid than what we see now.
The Second Coming is constructed based on Platon and Dante’s diagram but
inspired by Christ’s own words in the Bible, which talk about a “second
coming” at the end of times. This poem deals exactly with Yeats’ ideas about
time, war and the fear of the future.
As we’ve already established, Yeats was interested in occultism and magic: he
specifically had a somewhat spiritual and esoteric conception of souls and the
world as a whole and believed in a series of concept like the Spiritus Mundi, or
Soul of the World (akin in practice to the collective consciousness that Jung
would later theorize), the “dreaming back”, where people would live their lives
backwards after death, and the gyre.
This last one we’ve already explained, is a symbol of sort invented by Yeats
himself. It’s composed of two cones, opposed and intertwined, spinning in
opposing verses; it’s further analyzed and represented in “A Vision”, 1925, a
book by Yeats that explains his theories about history, philosophy, astrology
and poetry. The gyre serves a symbol of historical periods and eras,
specifically about the process of transition between eras, the uneasiness and
the shift this creates socially, culturally, etc.
The gyre aptly represents the period of Yeats and becomes for him the way to
portray the end of Christianity and the coming and age of the Anti-Christ:
this is the theme of The Second Coming, the terror and anxiety felt when
realizing something was uncontrollably and irreversibly changing forever.
Follows a rough translation:
“Girando e girando nel gyre (che si espande)
il falco non riesce a sentire il falconiere;
tutto va a pezzi e il centro non può tenere,
l’assoluta anarchia dilaga nel mondo,
la marea sporca di sangue si diffonde e ovunque
la cerimonia dell’innocenza è annegata;
i migliori perdono ogni convinzione e i peggiori
sono in preda ad un’euforia appassionata.
Di certo qualche rivelazione è vicina,
sicuramente la Seconda Venuta è vicina.
La Seconda Venuta! Non appena queste parole
vengono pronunciate una grande immagine dallo Spiritus Mundi
mi turba la vista: qualcosa nelle sabbie del deserto
una figura con corpo di leone e testa d’uomo,
uno sguardo vuoto e impietoso come il sole
sta muovendo le sue cosce lente mentre tutto intorno
vorticano le ombre di sdegnanti uccelli del deserto.
L’oscurità cala di nuovo; ma ora so
che venti secoli di sonno di pietra
furono vessati fino all’incubo da una culla oscillante
e che rozza bestia, il suo momento finalmente giunto,
arranca verso Betlemme per nascere?”
Things in this poem quite literally “spiral out of control”, like a gyre, which
widens symbolizing the end of his cone and the beginning of a new one. As
with every cycle and force of the universe, an equal but opposed push is the
obvious consequence, meaning that after two-thousand years of Christianity,
its opposite would be let loose, unshackled, awoken.
Virginia Woolf is among the most influent authors of modern European
literature, with a unique and experimental style that became emblematic of
said literary period.
She was born in 1882, London, and she and her siblings would spend a lot of
time in their father’s library reading Walter Scott, an author that would have
an influence on her life. Her father was accultured, but her mother was a
model, one of the first for Julia Cameron, among the earliest professional
photographer. Leslie Steven and Julia Duckworth both came from previous
marriage and boasted a high social status, nevertheless they still had children
among which was Virginia. Woolf always suffered from psychic disturbance,
some probably innate, others most likely provoked by her half-brother
George, who abused her during childhood. He’s been described by her as “an
helpless buffoon that lives in the thickest emotional haze […] one felt like an
unfortunate minnow (fish) shut up in the same tank with an unwieldy and
turbulent whale.”
Her childhood was spent homeschooled – spawning a lifelong grudge because
of her parents’ refusal of an academic career – by her mother and father.
Indeed, Steven was a man of immense culture, who worked as a critic, author
and editor, rendering their house the center of the intellectual life in Hyde
Park Gate, where they lived – Woolf mustered the courage to publish her own
novels only after her father’s death. They also possessed a house in Cornwall,
which would later become the inspiration for To the Lighthouse, Jacob’s
Room and an influence on her imagery as a whole.
Woolf suffered from several periods of mental illness starting when she was
just thirteen; the death of her mother and later her father, both when she was
young, left an emotional scar on her that she’d battle her whole life. Toby, one
of her brother, also died shortly after their father passed away at the
shockingly young age of 26. This trauma is then faced but never actually
resolved in Jacob’s Room, a novel made of external point of views on the main
character (photographic representation), who ultimately dies in war.
Ms. Dalloway as a novel is representing of Woolf and her own fights, both
internal (with depression and traumas as seen with Septimus Warren Smith)
and external (a character has a dream about her dead parents and tries to
show them a shiny orb to share it with them, the metaphorical representation
of the life they never got to see).
All her life seemed to regain a bit of joy afterwards, especially considered her
marriage to Leonard Woolf in 1912, but not even a year and several mental
complications later (anorexia, depression, delusions) she tried to kill herself,
again, by overdosing. The advent of WWII equals introspection (Leonard was
Jewish). The bombing of London led to a deep depression and an incomplete
novel, “Between the Acts” – she “hears voices again”, that this time it would be
harder and doesn’t want to weigh down on Leonard, which are among the
main reason for her suicide. She leaves only a letter to her husband. Leonard
is of course not the cause of this, at least not directly: her marriage proved to
be a most happy occurrence and her whole life she’ll consider him and their
union one of the happiest that could have ever been – perhaps, as revealed in
her final suicide note (this time, she actually died) in 1941, it was exactly
because their marriage was so happy that she felt her disturbs and her
incapacity to manage them was only becoming stronger and uncontrollable, a
danger for her and a weight on her husband’s shoulders. Lastly, she discovered
herself a bisexual after an intense infatuation for Vita Sackville West, an
aristocratic with whom she’ll cherish an intense friendship tributed in Woolf’s
“Orlando”.
With Leonard, she founded Hogarth Press, which published both hers as well
as several of their contemporaries’ works; Freud, Eliot, Mansfield and Forster
among others. It became a renowned and influential publishing house that
stands strong to this day. Thus she worked her whole life as a critic and
reviewer, for The Times Literary Supplement, and as a novelist, starting in the
earliest 1910s. This period also proved one of important changes given the
exhibition held by Roger Fry in 1910, London, titled “Manet and the PostImpressionist”, featuring paintings from the likes of Cezanne, Gauguin, Van
Gogh and Matisse – this marked the irrevocable shift from the previous
conception of reality to a world of subjectivism and perception.
Her first novel is published in 1915, “The Voyage Out”. This also started a sort
of pendulum that waved from a period of sickness to one of healthiness, from
the publishing of one of her novels to the next one.
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The Voyage Out, as a piece of art, is still pretty conventional but also shows
the underlying themes of Woolf’s writing: the plot is about a young maiden
named Rachel, orphan of mother, who goes on a cruise (a voyage) to discover
the world and other people – she meets Terence, a young intellectual. They
fall in love, but Rachel mysteriously contracts a deadly disease and perishes.
The cruise itself becomes a sort of window on life, a speckle of the world that
acts as a small world; she develops at a really rapid pace, her character of
course rather than her age, facing all the phases of life until (literal) death,
gaining an understanding of the meaning of life and love during this
exploration. The fall in love is aptly placed in the middle of the novel, acting
as a climax.
Here Mrs. Dalloway makes her first appearance as a side character.
From her own personal diaries, we have discovered that she considered Joyce
insufferable: not him specifically, but rather his Ulysses. It was plain at the
time, but looking at it from our perspective it feels strange. He was published
under Hogarth Press and Woolf herself, writing Mrs. Dalloway, takes
inspiration from him (both are a day in someone’s life), so what gives? Simple
antipathy seems to be the case, her critiques were always fair and
acknowledged Joyce as a great author, but private ones vent the frustration felt
when reading.
Night and Day, 1919, is already showing signs of that experimental vein of
hers. The novel revolves around two pair of characters, two couples, Katherine
and Ralph, Mary and William. They are confronted and analyzed without any
real event happening, at best there are some meetings described but basically
the novel is about this “night and day” contrast. Katherine is a noble woman,
Ralph is a self-made young lawyer who wishes to become independent but
feels like he owes his family. Mary is the daughter of an Anglican pastor who
turns to the feminist movement, while William is a civil servant whose love is
not corresponded. Their conflicts start out as external and progressively show
their true color as internal turmoil.
Jacob’s Room, 1922, as we’ve discussed, is about the titular Jacob, a stand-in
for Woolf’s dead brother Toby. He never actually speaks for himself
throughout the novel but is described (and exists) through other characters’
eyes (cumulative technique, multiple perspective); the novel starts and ends
with signs of death, first little Jacob finds a cow’s jaw on a beach and plays
with it, lastly he dies in the WW I.
Mrs. Dalloway, 1925, this is the novel that made her famous in her lifetime.
It’s a tale about one of Clarissa Dalloway’s single day, where she tries to
organize a reception. The “camera” follows her and her thoughts, those of
other characters and in particular Septimus Warren Smith, an old veteran,
metaphoric of the traumas of death and mental illness – he’s also a way for
the author to criticize the treatments for said psychological problems, which
consisted back then of enclosure in dark rooms, drugs and electroshock.
Smith will be announced dead by suicide during this day, leading to a
moment of reflection.
Follows a short passage from Jacob’s Room: Betty Flanders, Jacob’s mom, is
writing about her husband’s death.
Then, a short extract from Mrs. Dalloway which features Woolf’s typical
indirect monologue (while Joyce uses the direct and the extreme ones). This
means basically that the narrator still hasn’t disappeared, while Joyce gets rid
of it. More about this in the auxiliary files (I think I’ll cover them later). It’s
about Mrs. Dalloway going outside to buy flowers; the event is narrated with a
mixture of past (flashbacks), present and future (flashforwards). Her first
love, Peter Walsh, is going to be at the reception; he’ll be back from India and
she’s reminded of him by the scent of the air – strangely, she seems to
remember only what was annoying or boring, but that’s still lots of details,
like his opinion on cabbages.
14/12/2023
We continue from where we left and the point of view shifts from Mrs.
Dalloway to that of someone else, who looks at her, enchanted by her beauty
and uniqueness despite her past illness, that whitened her hair a bit, and
middle age (she’s 50). The point of view shifts yet again to the narrator and an
internal monologue, on her part of town, begins – time is felt only by the
ticking of the Big Ben, space is experienced by the name of London streets;
Mrs. Dalloway loves every detail and peculiarity of her city.
Orlando, 1928, is light and ironic, a comical novel that tries to embrace and
show every facet of the human mind. The plot is about Young Orlando, who
writes a poem called “The Oak Tree” and becomes ambassador for the court of
Queen Elizabeth (and later King Charles); one night though he wakes up
turned into a woman after a night with a dancer and seven days of sleep,
which leads him to live as a creative woman; in those centuries (in the 1800)
marries to achieve respectability and in the end, in 1928, she finds someone
who is willing to publish her poem. She sits under a great oak and reminisces
her adventures.
This novel is a clear love letter to Sackville West (confirmed by her sons and
the correspondence between Woolf and West), which inspired the novel to
begin with. It’s also an important novel for Woolf as an author, as we see her
experiment with the different style depending on the century Orlando’s living
in, deal with the concept of androgyny (Coleridge himself said femininity and
masculinity were both necessary for a complete sensibility) and ended
Hogarth Press’ worries as it was a spectacular financial success.
The Waves, 1931, is another (if not The) experimental book, described by
Woolf as “abstract, mystic and eyeless” which has psychic entities as
characters. The entire text is composed of six of those entities that monologue
alternately and rhythmically, as if they were the sun and the tides.
A room of one’s own, 1929, is a feminist essay, precisely a collection of two
speeches she gave at the Newnham and Girton College conferences. The room
becomes a symbol of independence and the creative process, not a place to
rest from the fatigue of house cleanings but a private space (why not, even
with a glass of wine) where to be alone and express ourselves on paper. She
also goes back and traces the story of women writers, both those who
succeeded and failed, that influenced or just tried to emerge. One of the most
interesting parts is when she imagines how would the life of an imaginary
sister of Shakespeare have been, one Judith Shakespeare: she’s as talented and
adventurous as him, but without the permission to go to school, stuck at
home to clean and cook, reprimanded by her parents in a gentle but still
serious way. She is forced in a marriage she doesn’t want, hides her writings in
the attic and runs away at 17 to avoid all that – only to end up the same stuck
as a wife of some actors, killing herself in the end.
To the Lighthouse shows the most mature writing of Woolf, who goes back to
her childhood and specifically in her home in Cornwall: each character is an
alter ego of her family or other important figures of her life, and the titular
lighthouse is a metaphor for her mother and “Hebrides Islands” – it’s also an
intermittence of light and dark, day and night, in other words her own back
and forth with mental illness. The novel is sectioned in three parts greatly
distanced temporally, with the characters trying to achieve a moment of being
and being drawn by the lighthouse, organizing both their life, their furniture,
their evenings or painting a perfect portrait.
Necessity of “wholeness” and real existence leads to the search of those
moments, Eliot with poetry, Joyce and Wolf with moments of being, Forster
with human connections and Lawrence with sexuality.
15/12/2023
We continue to read To the Lighthouse, with ever shifting perspectives; Mrs.
Ramsey is simply shortening a stocking, but the flow of thoughts in her head
pours out on the page, filling it with descriptions and sidetracking. The idea
of two people that would make a good couple, the books she never read, the
furniture, tidying her home – everything intersects with her task at hand, and
actually takes precedence, since her measurements are expressed in
parenthesis while her thoughts are narrated directly. Looking at the doors and
windows, she’s also reminded of one of her maids, who’s losing her father to
cancer and gets sad at the sight of the mountain out the window; he lives
there and there’s nothing anyone can do.
The other passage is about the dinner and the happy memories made,
regardless of whatever has gone slightly wrong, about the memories the
children would bring with them all lifelong; afterwards Mrs. Ramsey finds her
daughter Cam afraid of a skull and fighting over it with James: it’s a symbol of
death but quickly gets turned upon its head into one of life, covered with a
shawl like it was a nest for birds – a shift from happiness to sadness with the
maid, now back again to happiness with her children.
We’re done with Woolf, on with Lawrence and Forster, and generally the
novel. The novel as a genre, we remember, is closely tied with the bourgeois
society of the 18th and 19th century, since it dealt with the social matters at the
time – this meant the writer had a specific and clear role as a mediator
between the reader and the characters in a display of objective chronological
events (don’t forget that this was its defining characteristic that distinguished
it from romance). This was possible thanks to the (perceived and apparent)
stability of the then Victorian era, but the Age of Anxiety shattered this
foundation and forced the novel and the writers to rethink themselves: that
new, incomprehensible, senseless reality was strange and hostile, and the
writers reflected that as mediators of their society. Without the objectivity of
the past, subjectivity was now the only way to make readers and tales relate,
even if that meant fragmenting the story and the world of their books – but
that also meant new techniques were necessary. That’s why internal
monologues are developed, why time “jumps” like the flashbacks and
flashforwards become more present and time in general is nonlinear, why
internal point of views become more widespread, why perspective multiply.
The novel becomes a sort of window on the mind of the characters before it
has had the time to reorganize itself in a truly comprehensible manner, when
memory, thoughts, ideas, images and feelings are still confused and mixed up.
The interior monologue is, basically, the antithesis of the Victorian novel:
completely subjective and not real (as it happens in the mind of the
character), it has no time or space coordinates; psychologically, it’s known as
the “stream of consciousness”, a free association of ideas made up by a
wandering mind.
(While we talk about it, there’s actually two or three type of internal
monologue, so for now let’s define the difference between the first two:
indirect monologue has a narrator that relates the character’s thoughts in
logic and ordinated fashion, detailed with description, comments and brief
explanations; direct monologues get rid of the narrator and everything that
has to do with a logical order or logical sense, it’s just free thinking “with a
mind-level of narration”. This means that the direct monologue also gets rid
of full stops, paragraphs, continuity with previous topics and events.
But I’ll personally add, while I’m at it, the definition for extreme monologue:
it’s basically the internal but on steroids, it’s typically exemplified in Finnegans
Wake, by Joyce, and happens while the homonymous character sleeps: it
happens in an unconscious state, where the mind doesn’t just wander but
starts associating, linking and experiencing all sorts of memories, images,
sounds, thoughts in the most “natural” and non-logical fashion imaginable).
Follows Molly’s monologue from Ulysses, by Joyce, a soliloquy of scattered
thoughts and memories that come up as she’s half-asleep about the time she
first met her husband.
18/12/2023
James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882 and died in 1941, the same as Woolf.
Dublin is important in his life and his poems as a symbol of his typical
“paralysis”, specifically referring to the stativity of family, homeland and the
Church. He was as a fact educated by Jesuits, when they still had corporal
punishments, as described in his semi-autobiography “A portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man” (1916, from here shortened to PAYM). His father is a
prevalent figure as someone who tried to be everything and kind of failed at
everything too, someone talented in of itself but unaccomplished. Even if
linked profoundly to Dublin, he lived as a cosmopolitan on a self-imposed
exile: from sixteen years of age, he started considering himself a rebel to
Dublin’s shabbiness and ignorance in matters of art and culture
(philistinism), refusing his Christian faith and to join other popular causes
among students, even Irish nationalists, for he saw himself as an artist.
Of his first actual novel, which had some hundred pages already written, we
have basically nothing if not proof that it once existed: in a letter to his
brother, Joyce confesses that it was unsatisfactory and decided to thrash it.
He travelled to and from Dublin, due to his mother’s illness, working in
Trieste and Zurich as an English teacher, then in Paris in his later years
(having the company of Nora Barnacle, a woman with no interest in literature
but whose charm and positivity captured Joyce; they kept each other company
‘till death), dying in 1941 after an intestinal operation. He drank heavily and
they didn’t gain much monetarily (though he had the merit of being Italo
Svevo’s teacher) and suffered from eye diseases which needed multiple
operations. One of their two children, Lucia, was also deeply problematic and
ended up dying in an asylum because of her incurable mental illness. Joyce
was buried in Zurich.
He was a moody person, but not in a violent way, only prone to bits of silence
alternated with joy, surrounded by friends and literary circles for most of his
life in Europe. Though he worked and lived here on the Continent, all his
works take place, or are directly about, Dublin, its atmosphere, people,
religion, topography and politics, creating a literal literary microcosm.
The Dubliners were published in 1914, a collection of 15 short stories all about
Dublin. It was appreciated by Pound for his unconventional style; he’d help
Joyce with PAYM two years later. The stories all revolve around the concept of
“paralysis”, a sort of stasis, an incapability to move forward in life, a lack of
courage, will and self-esteem: he sees Dublin as the center of this paralysis
and his people all live limited lives and socially compromise through family,
politics, religion and such. The only moments where paralysis doesn’t afflict
the characters is the epiphany: a sudden spiritual realization that reveals
something about the world, one’s life and existence (similarly to Woolf and
Eliot’s moments). The stories can be divided on Childhood, Adolescence,
Mature Life and Public Life. The style is realistic and detailed, almost
everything is revealed to be a metaphor or hide a second meaning, like “Lily”
in The Dead, both the name of a flower (it symbolizes life and death) and of a
young governess in the story: this means that the living and the dead coexist
in the same reality, or perhaps are even one and the same. Colors are
important too, brown, gray and yellow are often used as representations of
paralysis.
The Dead, the last of these stories, is the tale of Gabriel and his wife Gretta
while at a Christmas party. Here Gabriel is thinking about his wife and how he
desires her, but she’s paralyzed on the stairs, listening to the music coming
from the piano: it reminds her of a young lover, one Michael Furey. This
makes it awkward for them and when they go back to their hotel room after
the evening, she tells him the tragic story of her and Michael, falling asleep
after crying on the bed and leaving Gabriel awake. Then he has an epiphany:
the party and everyone who routinely participates in it are fixed in a state of
paralysis, devoid of satisfaction, emotions or any sense of fulfillment, that’s
why thinking about it, his feelings towards the once young lover change from
irritation to sadness. He felt a passion and a strong sense of love in Michael's
story that he himself has never known; he feels as unfulfilled as he thinks
everyone else is. He feels like the world we live in is one of shadows, beings
midway between the living present and the dead past; this is an illusory wall
though, as looking out the window, Gabriel gazes upon the falling snow and
thinks of Furey’s gravestone, covered in white like the rest of us: we aren’t as
divided as we think, we are all human.
In the introduction of PAYM we have a reference to Ovid’s Metamorphoses,
roughly translated as “and to unknown arts and knowledges he directed his
mind”, a reminder of the artist’s goal – this is basically the starting point of his
personal artistic philosophy, which sought to break free from burdens and
limitations in your way of life, thinking and being – fatherland, church and
family were three of such burdens for Joyce personally. We start from the
infancy of Steven Dedalus, the author’s alter ego, experienced with all his
senses: the smell and music of his parents, the punishment from the Jesuits…
His financial difficulties would have followed him all lifelong if it hadn’t been
for Harriet Shaw Weaver: a feminist and editor, this Englishwoman became
his “anonymous benefactor”, arranged the publishing of his works and
allowed him to write Ulysses (which should’ve been published by Hogarth
Press, but Woolf refused to publish it due to her idiosyncrasies).
Eveline is a short story about a teen in Dublin living with her father. The
conflict is about her life and her choices: on one hand she wishes to simply
forget it all and sail with her secret love, a seaman, to Argentina; on the other,
she feels responsible for her drunk father and the brother who’s still alive after
the death of the other one. She ultimately suffers the paralysis, both on the
streets and at the docks – there’s nothing to do, the world is simply too
frightening, and change is scary.
Finnegans Wake is his last novel, featuring the extreme interior monologue.
21/12/2023
George Orwell, pen name of Eri Arthur Blair, was born in India in 1903. He is
mostly known for 1984 and the famous Big Brother, though now its image has
been distorted and repurposed in modern times.
He lived, from a young age, episodes of bullying and racism, both at school in
England where he transferred with his family early on and later in India where
he returned to enlist in the Indian Imperial police; he resigned after 5 years
exactly because of said xenophobia and because of British policies.
He decides to try to live like an authentic homeless person, deprived of any
possession and roaming in London and Paris – he experienced the
dehumanizing condition that poverty forces on oneself, worked as a
dishwasher and even sold his clothes once to pay for a hotel room. The point
was to understand what society and nations were doing for the last and
forgotten, how governments addressed poverty and how society as a whole
acted to resolve the issue (if any of them did anything at all); this kind of
“journalism” actually developed in Victorian times. His experiences were
published as a sort of biography/memoir titled “Down and Out in London
and Paris”, signed as George Orwell.
He went on to teach for some years before marrying in 1936; in the same year
he joined the United Workers Marxist Party in the Spanish Civil War,
returning home only after a severe injury. This part of his life too would be
published as “Homage to Catalonia” in 1938, crystallizing his experience and
feelings as the moment he fully converted to the ideals of socialism,
brotherhood, and equality.
He returned to London with the breakout of the WW II working under BBC
and taking on the broadcast of cultural and political programs. He resigned
after 5 years and went on to work as the editor of a socialist weekly paper, The
Tribune. During that year, the writing on Animal Farm began.
After two years, he published “Animal Farm” in 1945. It’s a satirical allegoric
fable featuring animals as the protagonist of a revolution: the animals of a
farm are tired of their owner and the way they treat them, so they organize a
revolution to be independent of them and seize power. The story concludes
with the animal free but reorganized under the rule of pigs, who have gone on
to become the new de facto dictators, as “all animals are equal, but some are
more equal than others”. The story tries to paraphrase the Stalinian revolution
and its failure, the depressing concept that even the most righteous ideals and
principles can be corrupted and distorted into a search for power, blinding the
population in the process. These are all themes that would be repurposed in
1984.
“1984” can be considered one of the forefathers of the dystopic novel: set in a
distant but-not-so-distant devastated future, the world is now dominated by
three superpowers (Oceania, Eurasia, Eastasia) and our protagonist works for
the ministry of truth in Oceania. Winston Smith lives in an authentic
totalitarian empire dominated by The Party and its Big Brother, the only two
political entities allowed. Much more has been restricted and more will be
forbidden, the story itself is being rewritten in said ministry of truth by our
protagonist to fit the narratives of The Party and manipulate the population.
New Speech is a new form of language deprived of all superfluous
expressions; Double Think is a way of thinking that allows people to make
sense of two contrasting notions – whatever can be conjured up to ensure that
no one falls out of line is being used. The Big Brother itself is not a person but
a sort of symbol, an ever-watching eye that literally spies on the citizens
through cameras and undercover agents to report crimes as emotional crimes,
meaning non-reproductive relationships that thus don’t benefit The Party, sex
crimes, non-allowed intercourse, and thinking crime, when someone
disagrees with accepted ideas and philosophies. Individuality is almost
repressed, people are brainwashed and allowed a daily “Hour of Rage” in
which they are presented with different images of things to shout at to relieve
their stress and lull them in a false sense of liberty. Our protagonist lives like
any other person in this sense until he meets Julia, a member of a dissenters
known as the Brotherhood. They fall in love and slowly approach other
members of this group until they meet a certain O’Brian, shortly revealed to
be a member of the party sent to flush them out and torture them to reset
them into a state of obedience. Winson doesn’t remember Julia and vice versa,
escaping from the grasp of Big Brother is basically impossible. 1984 can thus
be considered as a sort of alarm towards totalitarianism, in particular Nazism
and Stalinism, but has also been reinterpreted as a warning towards future
technologies, the way they can be used to spy on us and deprive us of our
privacy and how media can alter our perception of facts, how it can literally do
propaganda on whatever companies or governments need to shush protests or
hide historical truths – how it can “lobotomize” the population towards a loss
of critical and individual thinking.