T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

The Waste Land Explication

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I Could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence (38-41)

        This passage taken from “The Waste Land” is the voice of a male speaker describing his moment of sexual failure/impotence upon seeing the girl from his past, the hyacinth girl.  Although the girl’s “arms [are] full,” suggesting sexual energy and expression as if she is about to embrace him, the speaker’s biological senses suddenly collapse, and thus fail to respond to her sexual desire/seduction physically: He becomes mute (“I Could not Speak”) and blind (“my eyes failed”).  However, with the lost of his corporeal sight, his spiritual vision sees beyond the mortal ground where he can at least, with confidence, affirm that he is neither “living nor dead,” as if in a state of limbo/nothingness.  Though unable to verbalize his epiphany, his spiritual vision “look[s deep]…into the heart of light” and becomes aware of the “silence” that pervades this nihilistic realm.  In effect, while he is in this mental trance, all forms of his familiarity de-familiarize.  For instance, he no longer recognizes/reacts to his old acquaintance (the hyacinth girl) the way he should/is expected to, that is passionately/nostalgically.  In other words, his cognitive mechanism disintegrates, causing his social behavior to defy his character or his wishes.  His “memory,” “knowledge,” and perhaps even his “identity” efface into a nihilistic state where nothing is decipherable/explicable: “I knew nothing.”  Despite what the lushness/sexual ecstasy her “wet” hair suggests and “hyacinth” that symbolizes her fecundity, his inaction to such an enticing, pleasurable call begs questions: Can we trust the speaker’s senses?  Why does his sight fail? Why is his sensory-collapsing epiphany ineffable? Could it be that the hyacinth girl is only an oasis, an optical illusion the speaker thirsts for in the desert?  If the hyacinth girl does in fact represent the normalcy and fruitfulness of the past that is no longer possible in the Waste Land, then Eliot in this passage is wistfully delineating a bleak, barren view of the modernists whose sexual/mental intercourse has fragmented abysmally.

John Donne’s “The Flea”: A Logical Farce

John Donne’s “The Flea”: A Logical Farce

        John Donne’s “The Flea” is one of the most famous seventeenth century seduction poems.  This poem showcases John Donne’s ingenious metaphysical conceit – his use of seemingly irrelevant objects/beings to assert similitude/analogy.  His hyperbolic comparison of trifling fleas to women’s chastity, however, is so outlandish and unrelated that his attempt to devalue women’s virginity for his witty sexual purpose, while entertaining, is fallacious in reasoning.  This false reasoning is so obvious to the addressee, the lady in the poem, that she completely disregards his argument; she kills it.  However witty and logical the speaker may be, the fact that she ultimately pays no heed to his imperative urgings cast the lady (the addressee of the poem) as the person in control of their relationship.  In other words, the speaker’s hyperbolic analogy between the flea’s paltriness to that of women’s sexual purity proves ineffectual, not only because the similitude between the two is outright impertinent, but because the speaker’s attempt to sexually dominate the lady fails.  Thus, John Donne’s “The Flea,” though highly comical and engaging, is a logical farce to the unconvinced lady. 

        The poem’s formality and consistency correspond with the speaker’s both civil decorum and persistence in his unrequited courtship. “The Flea” is a one-sided conversation with the poet’s lady.  The poet rationally explores his irrational sexual desires in a playful diction.  It is made of three nine-line stanzas, identical in form, and is predominantly iambic in rhythm.  While the first six lines have alternating pentameter and tetrameter, the seventh line is a tetrameter and the eighth and ninth, pentameter, with the rhyming scheme of aabbccddd.  The alternating meter scheme between the pentameter and tetrameter throughout the poem seems to project the speaker’s character – his deceitful linguistic duality.  Thus, the poem’s upright structure that allows alternation in the meter scheme, correlate with the poet’s ostensible formality that disguises his duplicitous motive.

        Although the overall tone of the poem is deceptively casual, the poet’s argument becomes complex and convoluted by the interlacement of religious and matrimonial imagery.  The speaker’s seductive persona lurks behind his religious and authoritative rhetoric.  For instance, the speaker’s opening trochee followed by a strong spondee, “Mark but this flea” (1), assumes an authoritative voice.  However, his power of voice owes much to his linguistic exploitation of the religious ethos prevalent during his era, namely the Christian’s guilty conscience.  For example, he employs words that are associated with profound religious misconduct, such as “sin” (6), “sacrilege” (18), or “blood of innocence” (20).  Also, the speaker’s matrimonial diction interfuses with the religious undertone, adding weight to and complicating his seductive voice.  For instance, the speaker’s courtly colloquy that “This flea is you and I, and this / Our marriage bed and marriage temple is; / Though parents grudge, and you, we are met,” (12-14) falsely suggests that the immoral act he has in mind is really religious in nature.  The lustful speaker—equipped in holy eloquence—also warns that though she has a “use” (16) or habit of killing the flea or thwarting his desires, she must not unwittingly commit a “sin” (6) of suicide by annihilating the flea which contains her blood.  Indeed, destroying the flea, according to the speaker, would be a “sacrilege” (18) of not one but “three sins” (18).  Thus the poet’s interwoven, religious and matrimonial diction give a false sense of poetic elevation/sophistication when in truth his wooing of the lady is base and libidinous in nature.

The religious and matrimonial imagery are further conflated with the speaker’s ingenious triple-extension of the implications of the flea’s existence by prefixing the word “three” before a central word.  For instance, the word “three,” which is a countable modifier in both “three lives” (10) and “three sins,” ultimately tantamount to “killing three” (18) – him, her, and the flea, holding the murderess accountable for the three lives (emphasis added).  Likewise, the speaker amplifies the quantitative epithet of the flea, “three lives” (10), into qualitative extensions.  First, “three lives” symbolically embody the threefold corporeality—him, her, and the flea.  Secondly, “three lives” alludes to the holy trinity that is emblematized in the flea’s body, which the lady symbolically desecrates by killing it. The speaker’s amplification of the flea’s significance is thus both technically and semantically tripartite.  Yet, in terms of his much sought-after courtship, the lady remains unaffected by the speaker’s sophisticated triple-amplified arguments.

What’s more, in his desperate desire to win the lady’s body, the speaker repeats certain key words to gain the lady’s undivided attention.  For instance, the opening line begins with an abruptly trochaic, imperative clause: “Mark but this flea” (1), introducing the annoying, uninvited flea as an object/guest of special consideration.  Then the same imperative command takes an anaphoric turn as it is reiterated as “mark in this” (1, emphasis added) to ascertain the lady’s sustained attention.  At other times, to augment his argument, the speaker’s repetition involves one central word with the variant adjuncts attached to it.  For example, the central idea is “marriage” in both “marriage bed” and “marriage temple,” and the “bed” and “temple” are adjuncts to the central word to increment the meaning of “marriage” (13, emphasis added).  If initially, their marriage via flea’s mingling of their blood is deemed physiological/sexual as what “bed” suggests, the future reality of their bodily union nevertheless will transcend into something holy/spiritual as what “temple” implies (13).  Moreover, the repetitive variation of the flea’s appellation – initially addressed as “this flea” (1) which then turns to “one flea” (10) with three lives – ultimately culminates to “this flea’s death” (27), charting with each address the approximate point of the flea’s fate.  However, irrespective of the speaker’s repetitive amplification about the connection/significance of the flea to that of his much-desired courtship, the fact that the flea’s death is not preventable illustrates how the speaker’s verbal redundancy is unimpressive to the lady.

In addition to the speaker’s repetitiveness, his metaphysical conceit – comparing the life of a flea to that of women’s chastity – hyperbolically devalues the ramifications of premarital sex.  For instance, the speaker attempts to oversimplify premarital sex as natural as “our two bloods mingled be” (4), and even she should “know’st that this cannot be said / A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead” (5-6).  He says, therefore, they should take the sexual issues lightly and “enjoy…before it woo” (7).  If the lady becomes impregnated like the flea that “swells with one blood made of two” (8), he thinks that they would simply “cloister…in th[o]se living walls of jet” (in the body of the flea) (15).  Unaffected by the speaker’s impassionate, hyperbolic reasoning and pleading, the fact that the lady nonetheless kills the flea, renders the speaker’s arduous defense against the flea’s life useless, if not logically dubious.

  The speaker’s hyperbolic appeals turn to hyperbolic condemnation as he fails to gain the lady’s sympathy: “Cruel and sudden, has thou since / Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? / Wherein could this flea guilty be,” (19-21).  Here, the overwhelmingly disruptive trochees and spondees ubiquitous in these lines (three trochees and six spondees) seem to reflect his vehement mood.  What’s more, the speaker’s indictment of the murderess – who has “Purpled [her] nail in blood of innocence” (20) – implicitly alludes to the biblical figure, Herod, who had mass-murdered innocent infants.  Thus the “innocent[t]” (20) flea, whose death marks the “sacrilege [for] three sins” (18), is likened to a Christ-like victim who dies innocently.  As the unruly, metrical scheme (of the lines 19-20) suggests, the speaker’s emotional turbulence works against his initial courtly decorum; it exposes his linguistic desperation without control, attesting to the lady’s undeterred control over her sexuality—his romantic enterprise.

        Despite the speaker’s deployment of various impressive rhetorical devises, the insubstantiality of the speaker’s seductive-logic causes his sexual fantasy with the lady to collapse.  The speaker’s initial intention was to use the flea to show his lady how small a sexual favor he is asking of her.  However, while the poet is logically arguing, the lady evidently attacks the flea, for he begs her to “spare” (10) its life.  He argues that since its body now contains not only the blood of the flea but also his and hers, killing the flea would be a “self-murder” (17) of all three.  Still, the lady is unmoved by his plea.  Although it is clever, the speaker’s postulation in alliterative antimetabole – that “Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee” (3), therefore they are symbolically already “marri[ed]” (13) – is, to the lady, a logical fallacy.  Despite his many warnings and pleadings, in the end, she kills it.  In fact, the lady proudly admits to her act of insecticide; with a “triumph[ant]” (23) demeanor, she remarks that she feels no “weaker” (24) since the flea’s death, rendering the speaker’s ingenious dialectics utterly futile. 

Perturbed by his obvious, complete failure, the speaker is unable to restrain his cynicism.  Left with no alternative, the clever speaker shifts his strategy.  He first agrees with the lady: “Tis true;” (25).  Then he draws a cynical, moral conclusion from the experience: that it just shows how “false” (25) her “fears” (25) and apprehensions are.  The alliteration of “false fears” (25) resonates not only that his “fears” (25) were foolish, but that hers are just as silly.  Thus, he exhorts, “then learn how…Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me, / will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee” (25-27).  This closing argument (the closing triplet) with the exceeding presence of spondees (five from lines 25-27), not only seem to exhibit the speaker’s frustration over his failed courtship, but more importantly, traces his dialectic detour to the original argument – that flea is indeed trivial.  For example, the speaker insinuates that her losing a little “honor, when [she] yield’st to [him]” (26) is as inconsequential as the life of a now dead flea.  Just as he did in the beginning, the speaker is, in effect, reasserting that the sexual favors his lady denied him are indeed paltry matters.  Nonetheless, the fact that the speaker’s closing and opening arguments are of the same claims (the flea’s trifling nature) signify that he is returned to the very first site of his courtly endeavor without success. 

The fact that the speaker fails to engage in unsanctioned premarital sex with his lady not only marks his sexually charged arguments inept/indecent, but also manifests who is in control of the courtship.  In John Donne’s “The Flea,” the speaker, with the seductive persona, attempts to devalue female chastity with logically incorporated humor.  Though she may be amused by the speaker’s eloquence and wit, she nonetheless ignores his pleadings.  She, in effect, without words (since the poem is a one-sided conversation), pains him by her action (insecticide).  The poet’s metaphysical conceit of comparing the flea’s triviality to women’s virginity is poetically innovative and profusely entertaining, but it proves fruitless for the sexually charged speaker.  Thus, the lady’s ultimate act of killing the flea, not only quells the speaker’s hope of sexual intercourse with her, but seals her dominance in the relationship.

The Tragic History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark: 3.3.85-96

To take him in the purging of his soul,                   85

When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?

No.

Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed,                 90

At game a-swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in’t –

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,

And that his soul may be as damned and black

As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.                     95

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

This soliloquy, spoken by Hamlet upon hearing Claudius’s penitent prayer in Act 3, Scene 3, Lines 85-96, in The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, illuminates his sinister logic that delays the murder of Claudius.  Hamlet’s postponement of the murder does not stem from his emotional remorse or pity for Claudius.  Rather, his hesitation springs from his perverse theological analysis of Claudius’s spiritual state as a sinner.  Hamlet knows that according to Christian theology, a repentant murderer like Claudius can be saved by grace.  Hamlet fears this possibility of Claudius’s redemptive state in afterlife, not only because he believes in retribution, but more threateningly, because Claudius’s redemption could mean that his free soul may join up with his mother again in the spiritual world.  In other words, if Hamlet kills Claudius at his redemptive moment, then he must accept one ominous possibility: Claudius’s physical obliteration might not warrant the two lover’s spiritual separation.  Claudius’s death, in other words, would merely mark the two lover’s mortal separation, while their spiritual, eternal reunion (when queen dies) is unguarded.  What Hamlet plots to intercept is this portentous possibility of the two lover’s “incestuous” (90) perpetuation in the next life.  However theologically perverse, Hamlet believes that only by killing Claudius at his most sinful, irredeemable state, the two lover’s both physical and spiritual alienation can be achieved.   

Lines 85-88 convey Hamlet’s preliminary response to and analysis of Claudius’s remorseful prayer.  Upon hearing Claudius’s self-accusatory confession, instead of rushing to kill Claudius, Hamlet pauses and collects himself.  The regularity of iambic pentameter in these lines parallels Hamlet’s controlled reasoning.  He begins to suspect that Claudius’s soul may be redeemed: “To take him in the purging of his soul, / When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?” (85-86).  The otherwise flowing rhythm of iambic pentameter suddenly halts to one syllable in line 87: Hamlet emphatically utters “No” to killing Claudius at such a salvable state.  Hamlet concludes that this is not the right moment to kill Claudius because he dreads the potential, divine impunity of Claudius’s sin.  No longer certain that Claudius’s death will effectuate his eternal damnation, Hamlet utters “No” (87). 

Hamlet, in line 88, rearranges his murder plot against Claudius to a later date.  The opening spondee – that is distinctly separated by two commas – creates much turbulence in the meter scheme to encapsulate Hamlet’s delayed, yet more determined resolution to stab Claudius.  The personified spondee – with a physically provoking “Up,” (88) and a combative object, “sword,” (88) – indicates Hamlet’s present inaction of killing Claudius cannot be interpreted as a passive resignation.  Rather, the personification of the two militant words, “Up, sword,” (88) prefigures the immediacy of the imminent slaughter of Claudius.  The rest of the lines, “and know thou a more horrid hent” (88), also stray from predictable iambic cadence to accentuate Hamlet’s self-suppressed, calculated motive.  The uncontrolled, ferocious burst of “Up, sword,” (88) is quickly repressed by Hamlet’s chilling reasoning.  He decides to delay the murder until “a more horrid hent” (88) can be framed for Claudius.

Throughout the soliloquy, the harsh consonants, “S” and “H,” reinforce Hamlet’s injurious plot against Claudius as both “sinister” and “hellish,” respectively.  For instance, the following “s” phrases are all indicative of Hamlet’s “sinistrous” accusations against Claudius: “his soul” (85), “seasoned for his passage” (86), “drunk asleep” (89), “At game a-swearing” (91), “some act” (91), “salvation in’t” (92), and most pungently, “th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed” (90) and  “This physic but prolongs thy sickly days” (96, emphasis added in all phrases).  Likewise, the “h” phrases denote the “hellishness” of Hamlet’s plot against Claudius.  For example, the alliterative phrase, “a more horrid hent” (88); the synecdochic expression, “his heels may kick at heaven” (93); and finally, the simile “that his soul may be as damned and black/As hell” (95) all depict “hellish” quality to the plot.  Thus, both “s” and “h” phrases, subliminally planted throughout the passage, underscore Hamlet’s maliferous plot against Claudius. 

In contrast to the subliminal undertones scattered throughout the passage, in lines 89-92, Hamlet explicitly points to the optimal moments to entrap Claudius.  In line 89, for example, Hamlet schemes two antithetical moments to kill Claudius: either in his “drunk asleep, or in his rage” (89).  These two bipolar activities also implicate that, in Hamlet’s perception, Claudius’s character is basically two dimensional: slothful and wrathful, both of which constitute two of the “seven deadly sins.”  Claudius’s two dimensional demeanor rapidly descends to an adulterous and blasphemous state: “incestuous pleasure” (90) and “game a-swearing” (91), both of which are also condemned under the “seven deadly sins.”  Thus, Hamlet’s numerous charges against Claudius’s character show that he is morally decayed and thus unfit to be a king.  It is fitting, then, that Claudius’s soul will “[have] no relish of salvation” (92) in the next life.  Notably, the sound effects of the words/phrases that deviate from their iambic structure seem to pound on Claudius’s incorrigibleness: “incestuous” (90), “about some act” (91), and “salvation in’t –” (92).  Among these three, one particularly stands out: “incestuous pleasure[s],” which Hamlet deplores the most, and thus which he (perhaps) considers to be the most optimal moment to kill Claudius. 

In line 92-94, black imagery and an inconclusive dash accentuate Hamlet’s relentless condemnation of Claudius.  In line 92, Hamlet wishes that Claudius’s “soul may be as damned and black” (94) with “no relish of salvation in’t –”.  The only dash in the passage after “salvation in’t –” heightens the infinite nature of eternal punishment that Hamlet schemes for Claudius.  Thus, the black imagery, a symbol of death, combined with the perpetual dash, signals a kind of hell suited for Claudius.   

In lines 95, Hamlet concludes that it is “hell, whereto it [Claudius] goes,” but his “mother stays” (95) with him.  Notably, Hamlet refers to Claudius’s soul as “it” (not even human) that goes to “hell.”  What is most crucial and conspicuous in line 95 is the distance established by the double syntax.  The period after the first sentence, “As hell, whereto it goes” (95) before the new sentence “My mother stays” (95) creates a deliberate space that enforces a separation between the two “incestuous” (90) lovers.  Also, this spatial construction hints at Hamlet’s possessiveness of his mother.  By capitalizing “M” in “My mother,” Hamlet seems show his strong attachment to his mother and a determination to preserve her by his side.

Finally, the couplet’s (line 95-96) rhyming assonance, “mother stays” and “sickly days,” capture the ultimate fate of Claudius.  Hamlet uses this paradoxical juxtaposition of “This physic” and “sickly days” (96) to dramatize the final anguishing moments of Claudius.  This paradoxical deployment suggests that “physic” (the medicinal intervention), ironically, can only harm Claudius by “prolong[ing his] sickly days” (96).  Claudius’s “sickly days” on earth, prolonged by his remorseful confession (the “physic”), will not help him escape his ultimate fate in hell.  In fact, to exacerbate his final damnation, his soothing companion, the queen, “stays” (96, emphasis added) with Hamlet.  The verb “stays,” in particular, uniquely cements the queen’s motion with Hamlet; it is the only static verb in the passage.  The other verbs throughout the passage, such as “take,” “drunk,” “a-swearing,” “trip,” “kick” and “goes,” all portray action.  These active verbs markedly contrast with the static immobility of the queen’s final motion: she “stays” while Claudius “goes” to “hell” (95).  These antithetical destinations of the two lovers, “hell” for Claudius and “earth” for Gertrude” forecast Claudius’s final moments, his fate. 

This soliloquy, spoken by Hamlet upon hearing Claudius’s penitent prayer in Act 3, Scene 3, Lines 85-96, in The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, elucidates Hamlet’s underlying sinister logic that delays the killing of Claudius.  His theological analysis that leads to this postponement is perverse yet rational and strategic.  Hamlet’s primary reason in lengthening Claudius’s “sickly days” (96) is born by his calculated reasoning.  He aims to capture Claudius at his most (optimally) abominable state that guarantees Claudius’s soul in “hell” (95).  What Hamlet ultimately plots against Claudius is not only an attempt on his part to ascertain eternal damnation of his soul, but most importantly, that he is without a companion, his mother, in the next life.  Only then, can Hamlet be assured that the two lover’s “incestuous pleasure[s]” (90) will not perpetuate eternally. 

Works Cited

Braunmuller, A.R. The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark. New York: Penguin, 2001

Tato Laviera’s poem AmeRican: Yearning for a Utopian Society

AmeRican Born Through Altercation and Unified Through Music

Tato Laviera’s poem AmeRican expresses the poet’s hope and yearning of a utopian society.  In the poem, the creation or the process of constructing a utopian society is described in several humanized stages.  For instance, the first three introductory stanzas all open with identical tidings: “we gave birth to a new generation” (1-9).  In these repeated messages, the word “birth” (1-9) signifies a human event.  Hence, “birth” (1), for example, can be thought of as belonging to the first humanized stage, a cocoon-like stage, in which the need of several ensuing growth or metamorphosis is inevitable for the newborn creature to mature.  In other words, Laviera envisions his utopia, “AmeRican” (1), to emerge through a process that is similar to the growth process of human, and in AmeRican, he poetically unfolds these humanized stages of a newborn nation.  Each of theses stages mature from one to the next through two primary mediums: “altercation” (56) and “music” (38).  “Altercation” (56), as a communication device, functions as a public forum that facilitates democratic, legitimate progress toward peaceful multiculturalism, and “music” (38) functions as a unifying agent that soothes and dissolves multiethnic tensions.  Ultimately, these two mediums assist the new nation AmeRican to grow, mature, and crystallize as a utopian state.

 In AmeRican, Laviera’s diction, such as “we” and “birth,” not only illuminate that the road to this utopian destination entails collective efforts, but more significantly, that the collective “we”(1) is at a “birth”(1) stage that involves many people, implicit of the ethnic diversity that is prevalent in America (the birthplace of the infant nation).  In this early stage, the newborn nation is blessed with the multiethnic presence: “all folklores,/ European, Indian, black, Spanish,/ and anything else compatible:” (10-12).  This is the infant stage where “AmeRican” (1) is born.

The newborn “AmeRican,” nurtured with multiethnic influences, grows to its adolescent stage, the tumultuous period.  Naturally, in this confused, but critical stage, many problematic issues are handled through the means of altercations.  In other words, altercation is inevitable and expected for a youthful, new nation that is culturally diverse.   As AmeRican actively seeks meaning and unity through public debates and altercations, its endeavor shows much movement and exchange of opinions: “across forth and across back/ back across and forth back/ forth across and back and forth” (22-24).

The struggles of young AmeRican forging a unifying identity becomes most visible in stanza eight; the poet does not even address the stanza as “AmeRican” to accentuate the most chaotic yet pivotal moment of AmeRican’s growth.  The following passage shows that it is not the spirit of altercation but it is what altercations can achieve that the poet advocates: “the attempt was truly made…absorbed, digested, we spit out/ the poison, we spit out the malice” (23-26).  In the arena of altercation, cacophony of many voices, the conflicts that are inevitable in a multicultural society, which the poet calls “the poison” (26) and “malice” (26), can be systematically and legitimately dismantled through the art of dialectic.  Thus, the ability to effectively debate in public forums imbues the young AmeRican a capacity not only to forge a unified identity, but also to wield that identity with power and purpose: “we stand, affirmative in action,/ to reproduce a broader answer to the/ marginality that gobbled us up abruptly!” (27-29). 

AmeRican grows to maturity with impressive accomplishments; stanzas nine and ten open with scenes of musical celebration that comes from the nation’s celebration of its achievements through altercation, chiefly, its new identity of a harmonious multiculturalism.  In other words, civil debates has provided the means for the new nation to achieve utopian purpose; and this achievement is personified as AmeRican “strut[les] beautifully alert [and] alive” (31) in “new york” (30).  In fact the entire city is “walking plena- rhythms” (30).  The young and triumphant AmeRican thereafter promulgates its new identity with the jubilant beat: “defining myself my own way any way many/ ways Am e Rican, with the big R and the/ accent on the I” (30-33)!   

Finally, this triumphant rhythm further develops to a national anthem that symbolizes the older, peaceful stage for AmeRican.  This anthem soothes and dissolves previously rampant multiethnic tensions.  Moreover, the national anthem evangelically calls forth the variegated communities in New York, and elsewhere, and through the power of music, unite the fragmented, multicultural citizens with the gospel-like beat: “like the soul gliding talk of gospel/ boogie music!” (37-8). Therefore, to this extent, music is crucial in its power to unify and harmonize nation’s diversity.  It is also significant to note that it is through music that the poet is able to integrate the multiple languages of different cultures to compose one special song that is uniquely AmeRican.  With this song which serves as an emblem for peace, happiness, and unity, the nation continues to celebrate its high level of tolerance and harmony it has achieved, and if formerly, there were problematic linguistic bigotry, they become altogether acceptable by a smile:

AmeRican,       speaking new words in spanglish tenements,

fast tongue moving street corner ‘que

Corta” talk being invented at the insistence

of a simle! (39-42)

Thus the music functions – if not most effectively – as the nation’s subtle, spiritual fix to dissolve the existing, social tensions. 

Ultimately, the fully grown AmeRican, the pan-America, with its social and cultural elements crystallized into one union through music, figuratively and literally represents Lavier’s materialized vision and hope of utopia: 

 AmeRican,      abounding inside so many ethnic English

people, and out of humanity, we blend

and mix all that is good!

 

AmeRican,       integrating in new york and defining our

own destino, our own way of life,

 

AmeRican,        defining the new America, humane America,

admired America, loved America, harmonious

america, the world in peace, our energies

collectively invested to find other civili-

zations….  (43-52)

Tato Laviera’s message is clear in AmeRican: he advocates peaceful multiculturalism that leads to utopianism.  He believes, through altercations, cultural differences can be managed and find legitimate solutions: “yes,…i dream to take the accent from the altercation, and be proud to call myself american” (54-57).  He also believes multiethnicity is amalgamable through music.  The music’s mechanical precision and rhythm metaphorically alludes and heightens the new nation’s celebration in orderliness.  Thus two mediums, altercation and music, if the functions are different, the purposes are the same: they both assist to deconstruct the contentious, illogical racial order in America to give birth to a new nation that has no racial hierarchy or inequality, the utopian society called “AmeRican” (1). 

Works Cited

 

Meyer, Michael. The Bedford introduction to Literature and Education. 4^th ed. 765.

Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1996.

Tato Laviera          “AmeRican”

 we gave birth to a new generation

AmeRican, broader than lost gold

never touched, hidden inside the

puerto rican mountains.

 

we gave birth to a new generation,

AmeRican, it includes everything

imaginable you-name-it-we-got-it

society.

 

we gave birth to a new generation,

AmeRican salutes all folklores,

european, indian, black, spanish,

and anything else compatible:

 

AmeRican,         singing to composer pedro flores’ palm

                      trees high up in the universal sky!

 

AmeRican,           sweet soft spanish danzas gypsies

                       moving lyrics la espanola cascabelling

                       presence always singing at our side!

 

AmeRican,         beating jibaro modern troubadours

                     crying guitars romantic continental

                     bolero love songs!

 

AmeRican,        across forth and across back

                     back across and forth back

                     forth across and back and forth

                     our trips are walking bridges!

 

                     it all dissolved into itself, the attempt

                     was truly made, the attempt was truly

                     absorbed, digested, we spit out

                     the poison, we spit out the malice,

                     we stand, affirmative in action,

                     to reproduce a broader answer to the

                     marginality that gobbled us up abruptly!

 

AmeRican,         walking plena-rhythms in new york,

                     strutting beautifully alert, alive,

                     many turning eyes wondering,

                      admiring! 

 

AmeRican,         defining myself my own way any way many

                     ways, Am e Rican, with the big R and the

                     accent on the i!

 

AmeRican,         like the soul gliding talk of gospel

                     boogie music!

 

AmeRican,        speaking new words in spanglish tenements,

                     fast tongue moving street corner “que

                     corta” talk being invented at the insistence

                     of a smile!

 

AmeRican,        abounding inside so many ethnic english

                     people, and out of humanity, we blend

                     and mix all that is good!

 

AmeRican,        integrating in new york and defining our

                     own destino, our own way of life,

 

AmeRican,        defining the new america, humane america,

                     admired america, loved america, harmonious

                     america, the world in peace, our energies

                     collectively invested to find other civili-

                     zations, to touch God, further and further,

                     to dwell in the spirit of divinity!

 

AmeRican,       yes, for now, for i love this, my second

                     land, and i dream to take the accent from

                     the altercation, and be proud to call

                     myself american, in the u.s. sense of the

                     word, AmeRican, America! 

                                                                            (1985)

 

• Pedro Flores is a Puerto Rican composer of popular romantic songs.
• “La espanola cascabelling” is Spanish for “Spanish (feminine form) covering themselves.”
• Jibaro refers to the Puerto Rican farmer who lives in the mountains.  The jibaros have a particular musical style.
• Plena-rhythms refers to African-Puerto Rican folklore music and dance. 
• “Que corta” is Spanish for “that cuts.” 
• Destino: Spanish for destiny. 

Comparative Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s two poems, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant–” and “The Brain – is wider than the Sky”

 Dickinson’s Circumference: Intellectual Totality and a Path to Divinity

In Emily Dickinson’s Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –, a reader must ponder what “Truth” she is talking about, and why this “Truth” would blind a man if it is told bluntly.  In her other poem, The Brain – is wider than the Sky –, one wonders how a size of a human brain could be compared to the sky.  In order to understand how these two poems connect together in meaning, one must first decipher Dickinson’s symbolic definition of the image of circumference.  In these two poems, the poet’s use of “circumference” does not conform to the conventional, scientific meaning of the word.  Rather, Emily Dickinson uses the image of circumference in The Brain – is wider than the Sky – and Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – to poetically manifest a metaphysical  principle.  For Dickinson, the “circle” signifies “totality,” a phenomenon in which two points, the beginning and the end are seamlessly connected and hold the “total” contents within their circumference.  This metaphysical phenomenon not only alludes to the circular shape of the brain itself, but also represents the brain’s mental capacity to hold its “intellectual totality” within its physical and spiritual circumference.  Thus, “circumference” is not a static boundary that restricts the mind, but rather an emblem that embodies “intellectual totality,” a state of omniscience that approaches divinity.

The “Circuit”(2) is the highest emblem that symbolizes “intellectual totality,” which equates to omniscience, and thus Godhood, because figuratively, it holds “all the Truth” (1) within its circumference.  In “Tell All the Truth but tell it slant –,” both “S” and “C” are capitalized in the passage “Success in Circuit lies” (2).  Deciphering the word “Circuit” (l) helps make sense of how the poet defines “Success.”  Dickinson’s capitalization of other words, such as “Truth,” “Delight,” and “Lighting,” and her choice of words, such as “superb” and “man be blind” throughout the poem, cast a divine undertone.  Of all the words, however, “Circuit” (2) is the prime and the most cryptic word that unlocks “All The Truth” (1).  Dickinson guides the reader to this “Truth” (1) by offering a direct clue, a successful path to this location: “Success in Circuit lies” (2).  Her terse instruction immediately leads the reader to this image of a circle.  Metaphysically, the value of a circle equates to totality, because its circumference holds entirety.  If this metaphysical formula is applied to humans – a being with a mental faculty – then “entirety” translates to the highest state of mental cognition; and the highest state of mental cognizance is the state of omniscience, and indeed, it is what Dickinson calls the most “superb” (4) phenomenon.  Therefore, “Success” (2) befalls to those who have traveled this path and have cognitively embraced this “Circuit” in its entirety, because this is the required course to claim authorship to divinity. 

Because “Circuit” (2) symbolizes the intellectual totality that leads to divinity, Dickinson exhorts that the “Truth” (1) must be told in its entirety; and within this entire truth, there are some inherent, natural phenomenon that corroborate the very tenet of Dickinsonian circumference.  Some of the most fundamental, universal truths lie within the shape and the logic of circumference: the smallest moving organism (the circular, microscopic cell), to the largest synchronized movement (the circumnavigating solar system).  Moreover, the seasons rotate, plants regenerate, and history repeats in cycle.  In fact, a circular shape facilitates faster mobility (as in wheels), and ensures longer longevity (as in pebbles, versus geometric, angular stones that eventually erode into a more circular, durable shape).  Thus, the multiple branches of universal, metaphysical phenomenon seem to ascertain the very shape and the logic of Dickinsonian circumference. 

Dickinson’s concept of circumference also revolves around a biological phenomenon that leads to divinity.  The biological process of achieving intellectual totality entails three incessant cycles: first, the globular receptors – eyes, mouth, ear and nose – register knowledge; second, the brain, spherical in its dimension and function, processes and stores abstract and concrete concepts into memory cells, which also bear circulatory traits; and third, the brain executes its assimilated ideas into a palpable form – art, music, politics, etc.  It is through such repeated cyclic processes that mortals not only sustain and perpetuate life, but also enact creation: either through physical procreation, or by mental execution of ideas into an intelligible form.  In other words, the secret of being divine, the mystery of the creation or evolution from nothing to fullness, is in the biological phenomenon of cyclic repetition that perpetually spirals toward eternity, each second, each day, and each generation, until mortals turn to immortals, if not in this life, then the next. 

Since Christianity has, in part (if not heavily), shaped Emily Dickinson as a poet, it makes sense to also explore the theological aspects embedded in the poems that align with Dickinson’s concept of circumference.  There are biblical references that even Godhood is based on this principle of circumference: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Rev. 22:13).  Perhaps this is why Godhead requires three divine personages (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost), the least number needed to form a circle – the holy trinity.  Such biblical analysis provides plausible cues to why the poet, who is awed by the potentially annihilating profundity of it all, would warn that the true meaning of the “Circuit” (2) must be told gradually and “With explanation kind” (6).  Dickinson, however, stresses that “all the Truth” (1) must be told, for she knows that “the truth shall make [men] free” (John 8:32), meaning, “free” from mortality.

For a human brain to be “free,” it must be operating at its fullest potential without any imaginative limits.  Once the Brain – the part of the human body that physically resembles the “Circuit” (2) – achieves intellectual totality through its cognitive faculty, it becomes “wider than the sky” (1) since it has mentally incorporated the concept of the universe into itself, and thereby is even able to absorb the sky within its circumference.  In The Brain – is wider than the Sky –, Dickinson claims that if the brain and the sky are held side by side, “The Brain – is wider” (1) because the brain, through its mental assimilation, will absorb the sky “With ease” (4).  She further argues that the brain is deeper than the sea, for if they are held “Blue to Blue” (6), the brain will mentally absorb the sea as sponges absorb water.  “The Brain” (9), then, as the speaker proclaims, is the “weight of God” (9), for if they are hefted “Pound for Pound” (10), the brain’s weight will differ from the weight of God only in the way that syllable differs from sound, since the brain and God share the same creativity and authority.  Here, we see the poet’s transgressive audacity in her insinuation that divinity derives from human cognizance.  In other words, the premise of the Dickinsonian circumference is based on seeing the power of human mind’s ability to absorb, interpret, and subsume perceptions as an origin and the cause that effectuate divinity.

Whether it is metaphysical, biological, or theological, perceiving that the process of deification is effectuated through infinite, cyclic phenomenon is not enough to answer the consummate, ontological state of intellectual totality.  By exploring the actual condition of intellectual totality, the reader can peek into what excites Dickinson, the precepts that she has discovered or formulated through biblical studying, but not explicitly sharing.  The following biblical passage reveals that the ontological state of deity is the state of one seamless union between the beginning and the end within the timeless, galactic circumference: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).  The “word” (the first phase of cognizance) and “God” (the final phase of cognizance) join as one.  Notice that it is first the “word” – the execution of the mind – that exists even before God emerges.  In other words it is the “word” that causes and creates “God.”  In a poetic sense, this religious theory legitimizes Dickinson’s provocative claim that divinity originates from the mind of humans.  Although theologically controversial, this piece of biblical evidence gives hope to Dickinson’s personal progress toward deification, as her words (poetry) and herself (the poet) transcend to one complete union, circumnavigating the spiritual circumference that seals her poetry as an everlasting art.  To put it succinctly, Dickinson conceives God as an essence that first takes its form from that of the human mind.

Finally, is there any deeper “Truth” (1), another dimension to divinity that Dickinson knows and hints at but does not spell out explicitly?  And if so, why does she shun away from expounding the matter, but pronounces curtly that “The Truth” (1) will be a “superb surprise?”  What exactly does she mean by “superb surprise”? (4)  The word “surprise” (4) connotes total unexpectedness, or nescience on the part of the receiver, but omniscience on the part of the giver.  “The Truth” (1) must be very shocking, perhaps even blasphemous, and for this reason, she prognosticates but does not explicate, for she fears the prodigious truth it will blind us.

The poet’s chanting word, “surprise” (4), entices the reader to unravel its sealed meaning.  Since Dickinson is unwilling to be explicit about what the “surprise” (4) is, theologically unpacking the esoteric metaphor behind the word will shed light into this mystery.  It is possible that she, a poet who is highly disciplined in self-reverie and a champion of individualism, at one point in her life has found fundamental reasons to oppose the guilt-ridden, restrictive Christianity of her era.  Perhaps she has even discovered that the essence of Christianity, monotheism, rests on shaky ground.   This monotheistic belief – belief in one omniscient and omnipotent God – is extremely limiting to a Poet who believes that the very essence of God takes its form from the human mind.  This begs the question, then, whether Dickinson had found any evidences or reasons to subvert the very core of monotheism; if she did, then that may be the “surprise” (4), that which she is withholding in fear of offending the countless generations of Christians all over the world. 

The following are the biblical passages that Dickinson hypothetically could have stumbled upon, gave thought to, and determined to be a “superb surprise” (4).  These verses show how Godhood is not singular but plural; furthermore, they suggest that man has potential to become God if one possess knowledge and discernment.  Here is one such verse: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen 1: 26).  The words, “us” and  “our” are plural, not singular; and man not only has the “image” of God, but also, more importantly, has the “likeness” of God – the potential to become “like” Him.  The next verse shows how knowledge and discernment can lead to divinity: “man has become one of us, to know good and evil” (Gen. 3:22).  Again, the speaker says “us” and confirms that “knowing” makes man divine.  Is this the “superb surprise” (4) that Dickinson hints at but does not define?  If the speculation is a confirmative yes, then Godhood is not an entitlement for one, but an opportunity for many, an idea that is utterly blasphemous and shocking to fathom, antithetic to orthodox Christianity, and a reason why Dickinson does not venture to explicate.  Although it is speculative to assume that Dickinson doubted the very essence of Christianity, monotheism, the speculation offers insight into the poet’s defiant attitude towards restrictive religious-sects during her era.   

Penned by the reclusive yet defiant poet Emily Dickinson, the two poems, Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – and The Brain – is wider than the Sky – serve a similar messianic purpose.  The images of circumference in these two poems, the “Circuit” (2) and the “Brain” (1) metaphorically represent an esoteric, metaphysical concept.  In them, Dinkinson blasphemously posits man’s essence on a more than equal footing with that of God.  The poet insinuates that divinity originates from man’s cognizance.  She insists that “The Brain is…the weight of God –“ (4) and “The Truth’s Superb Surprise” (4) is in the “Circuit” (2).  Emily Dickinson, who in mortality had been socially and physically circumscribed, shut up in her father’s house, through the extension of her cognitive faculty, finds the path to and mentally embraces the “Circuit,” in which her imagination infinitely circumnavigates its ever-expanding, spiritual circumference – ultimately, entering the sacred zone of timelessness where God dwells.  Although in her life she had often been subject to restrictive forces from without (those who tried to shut her up in her prose), her purposefully cryptic, ambiguous poetic language stimulates the mind of the reader, and invites his/her imaginative faculty to dwell in possibilities – the possibilities that consummately lead to intellectual totality, the source of divinity.

Works Cited

 Dickinson, Emily. “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –.” c.1868

Dickinson, Emily. “The Brain – is wider than the sky –.“ c.1862

John. Revelation. Bible: New Testament. Chapter 22:13

John. Bible: New Testament. Chapter 8:32

John. Bible: New Testament. Chapter 1:1

Genesis. Bible: Old Testament. Chapter 1:26

Genesis. Bible: Old Testament. Chapter 3:22

Vern Rutsala’s Poem, “Words”

Vern Rutsala’s poem, “Words,” questions the power of language enjoyed by the elites and doubts the efficacy of articulated words spoken by them to the lower class.  The speaker of the poem illustrates how the language of the elites can only convey foreign, subjective realities that not only debar the unsophisticated from their circles, but also insults their very own intelligence. For example, the use of double negative used by the commoner, “don’t have nothing” becomes “do have”by semantical logic, thereby the dispossessed effortlessly inherit whatever the elites point to or attempt to explicate. In short, this poem “acknowledges both the paradoxical affirmation of American slang as well as the national spirit–its dreams and failures, but above all its resilience–suffusing it” (The Washington Post, Rita Dove; 2000, Dec 10; Page X12)

Words

We had more than
we could use.
They embarrassed us,
our talk fuller than our
rooms. They named
nothing we could see–
dining room, study,
mantel piece, lobster
thermidor. They named
things you only
saw in movies–
the thin flicker Friday
nights that made us
feel empty in the cold
as we walked home
through our only great
abundance, snow.
This is why we said ‘ain’t’
and ‘he don’t.’
We wanted words to fit
our cold linoleum,
our oil lamps, our
outhouse. We knew
better but it was wrong
to use a language
that named ghosts,
nothing you could touch.
We left such words at school
locked in books
where they belonged.
It was the vocabulary
of our lives that was
so thin. We knew this
and grew to hate
all the words that named
the vacancy of our rooms–
looking here we said
studio couch and saw cot;
looking there we said
venetian blinds and saw only the yard;
brick meant tarpaper,
fireplace meant wood stove.
And this is why we came to love
the double negative.

(“Words” reprinted from “Walking Home From the Icehouse.” Copyright {copy} 1981 by Vern Rutsala. Carnegie-Mellon University Press.)

William B. Yeats: “Leda and the Swan”

Leda’s Vision

William Butler Yeats, in his poem “Leda and the Swan,” ponders cosmic grandeur and presupposes first, that God exists; second, God is powerful and violent; and third, God is indifferent and distant to human sufferings.  Upon these presumptions, unlike the Romantics who had revered divinity, Yeats poignantly and daringly questions Zeus’s offense to mankind.  Zeus’s rape of Leda unseals the next “gyre” – a cycle of history that must spiral up the expanse of a given time.  What the poet probes in this poem is whether Leda had known what lied within this gyre (two millennium) that entails the birth of Helen (of Troy) and Cytemnestra (wife of Agamemnon); and the subsequent destruction of early Greek civilization.  Had Leda only been aware of the “sudden blow” (1) or had her intelligence been quickened by God’s the assault?  “Did she put on his knowledge with his power” to realize the meaning and purpose of her participation in divine procreation  (2110)?

The author writes this sonnet on the premise that God exists and that he intervenes in human events.  The very title “Leda and the Swan” predicates this poem to be one of the mortal and immortal.  It is about the relationship of human and divine.  Leda is the chosen vessel that is forced to carry the divine seed of Zeus who has been incarnated as a swan.  She receives “[the] feathered glory from her loosening thighs” (6) acquiescently.

The first line, “A sudden blow:” (1) opens the tone of this poem as powerful and violent.  Yeats’ imagery depicting the violence of rape evokes a mood of unquiet indignation in the reader against the divine.  “[The] great wings beating still above the staggering girl…her nape caught in his bill, he holds her helpless breast upon his breast” (1-4).  “How can those terrified vague fingers push” (5) her assailant away?  Prodigious is the God’s insemination of the womb of Leda that symbolically unfolds a new generation of violence, fire, and death with the ensuing birth of two daughters, Helen and Clytemnestra.  “A shudder in the loins engenders there the broken wall, the burning roof and tower and Agamemnon dead” (9-10).

Leda has no doubt that Zeus is an uncaring God.  As her violated, traumatized, and feeble body hangs loosely in the air seized by the “indifferent beak,” (14) Leda fears that this beast might carelessly drop her to death.  However, the omniscient being knows   that successful ushering of a new era requires Leda’s pulse to be intact.  Killing her would mar his divine purpose.  “Being so caught up, so mastered by the brute blood of the air,” Leda’s fearful mind attempts to comprehend the incomprehensible, the divinity.

In the last stanza, Yeats moves away from the details of bizarre physicality of the rape and enters an abstract realm of analogy to implicitly connect this violent event to a cosmic order that is hostile to mankind.  In the authors mind, the past, present, and future, in the context of history, are in concordance with divine stratagem to have mankind suffer.  He is pained to come to an understanding of the brutal and indifferent God whom we, the mortals, are subjects to.  He believes, just as Leda had been caught in this cosmic historical pattern, he and all mortals are mere puppets of the deities. 

In this poem, Yeats uncovers the face of a cruel and aloof God he has discovered, but he further dramatizes this finding by throwing an unsettling question to his readers:  In physical union with the divine, had Leda been enlightened with a foreknowledge of the future?  Had she known the significance of her terrible rape and what the future held for her offspring? 

To infer from the overtones of the previous stanzas, she had been quickened by the sexual-union with Zeus and received foresight pertaining to the horrific fate of her descendants.  Leda, “[being] so caught up, so mastered “ by Zeus, not only literally sees what is beneath her, but symbolically sees what history is laid out underneath “the brute blood of the air” (11-12).  When she is held in the air by the beast, the panoramic view of the two thousand years of future is so gruesome and repugnant that she instinctively fears this “indifferent beak” (14) would inflict the same cruelty on her.  She witnesses firsthand the power of the divine – how totally dominating, and heartless it is to its creatures.  In fact, the only metaphorical significance of the swan lifting her up in the air is to impart her a portion of its divine, uplifted, prophetic vision of the future.

It is clear that Yeats purposely describes God in this poem to be omnipotent and omniscient, allusively parallel to Jehovah.  Mary knew that Jesus was in her womb, so must have Leda known that Helen and Clytemnestra were in her womb.  Mary knew what role Jesus would play, so must have Leda known what role her two daughters would play in the coming years of Greek civilization.  Just as Mary had no power over this matter, Leda had no power over the imminent future.  However, Leda had to have been affected by an intimate union with the divine.  If not, then, Yeats has failed as a poet for not giving sufficient merit to the God figure (Zeus) to effectively intensify his poem’s blasphemous message to its readers. 

“Leda and the Swan,” is a stark contrast to the traditions of Romanticism not in its imaginativeness but in its explicit condemnation of divinity.  Romantic writers such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, show great yearning to be in union with the divine and considers it to be a blessed ecstasy.  Contrarily, Yeats depicts Leda’s union with the divine to be a curse that inaugurates a series of historical events that culminate in destruction and chaos for helpless humans. 

Wordsworth and Coleridge had seen beauty and mystery in the universe, but Yeats sees desolation and a clear cosmic scheme that he exposes as a very disturbing truth.  Wordsworth, in his poem “The Tables Turned,” says, “Let Nature be your Teacher” (16).  Also in his poem “Tintern Abbey,” he reveres nature to be “the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being” (109-111).  Likewise, Coleridge, in his poem “The Eolian Harp” describes nature to be mysterious “as twilight…when they at eve voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land…which meets all motion and becomes its soul, a light in sound, a sound-like power in light” (21-27).  Yeats, however, sees a more threatening mystery in nature.  If the grandeur of the universe had been an ineffable inspiration to Romantics, then now, Yeats has deciphered that mystical aura to be nothing more than a cruel and an aloof God who dictates human events and cycles with the employment of innocent mortal agents to fulfill his cosmic plans.  

Yeats, in his poem “Leda and the Swan,” maligns divinity.  He purposely uses primitive Greek mythology to hypothetically argue his blasphemous view of the deity.  Though he depicts God to be omnipotent and omniscient, his primary mission in this poem is to disclose God’s lack of empathy towards human sufferings.  By implying that Zeus’s rape of Leda had ushered a cycle of history that had been devastating to Greek civilization, he not only implants in the reader a resentment against God but also instills hopelessness in life of the mankind that is fated by God’s control.  Leda and the Swan’s obscene sexual imagery by the author desecrates what had been holy to the Romantics – the mystical union they had sought with the nature, the divine.  That Leda had known the historical significance of her divine assault can be assessed by the subtle hints throughout the poem.  After all, how can a supreme God touch a mortal without affecting the one being touched by him?  What merit does God deserve as a divine figure if his direct contact with a human leaves no significant trace?

George Eliot’s “Law of Love”

The Law of Love

George Eliot introduces a naïve and trusting character, Silas Marner, to demonstrate through him how life, with its many strange and unexpected turns, can defeat the purposes of the most cultivated minds while endowing unsuspected gifts to humble souls.  Godfrey, who had been eager to guard his self-significance through premeditative deceit, finds at the end – much to his bewilderment – that his ingenuity wrought him sorrow while the simple-minded Silas finds gold in his lot.  Silas Marner, a man who had been violated by the urban clergies and thus was in an inward recluse in a small town of Raveloe, rebuilds his trust in mankind and finds happiness both by raising Eppie and through healthy associations with the townspeople.  George Eliot, by giving Silas Marner a happy ending, demonstrates that there is a higher moral order.  While religious laws and its fanaticism destroy an innocent man, the moral laws higher above all things, redeem and compensate the wrongly accused, not by the canon of sectarian authorities, but by small, genuine, and loving gestures of simple-minded commoners. 

Silas Malner’s broken faith in man and God shatters his ability to trust.  Though he is a man of a modern city, he is least inclined to worldly avarice and most abiding to his peculiar religious sect.  He has an almost worshipful devotion to his best friend, William, and he also has a woman dear to his heart, Sarah, who is promised to be his wife.  His unassertive nature causes him to lean heavily on these two.  However, these very two people succeed in rending the man’s every fiber of trust.  William falsely indicts him of theft.  Soon after the event, Sarah loses faith in Silas and in time disowns him to marry William.  Inevitably, such a traumatic incident makes him seriously question God’s existence.  The pain would have been more bearable if God weren’t so seemingly aloof to his desolation.  To not witness his just God standing in judgment over his offenders and exculpate accusations made against him is beyond his religious comprehension.  Not only does he lose confidence in abstract ideologies (“false ideas”) and the meaning of religion, but he also starts to doubt all emotional and subjective beings – mortal or immortal.  Thus, this event shakes his belief system in God to nothingness and shatters his trust in man to impassiveness. 

After the initial shock hits him, his battered and fragmented senses lead him to take a remedial step – a self motivated exile for him to subsist.  It commences at Raveloe, a town most foreign to Silas Marner.  The narrator states that it is an “ exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories” (12).  The town provides a safe haven for Silas’ wounded soul by effectively blocking his past memories of pain and by allowing his exhausted senses to rest in haziness. 

The malignant weight of the incident sedates him to an inanimate state where his irrational attachment to money overtakes any normal human associations with the neighbors.  He does not desire or expect any friendship. “He invited no comer to step across his door-sill, and he never strolled into the village to drink a pint … or to gossip” (4).  He is not about to rebuild the trust he once had towards human beings.  He rather puts his trust in some objects that are oblivious to human emotions – shillings and guineas.

Though Silas does not know at the time, Raveloe is perfectly equipped with human and communal elements to cure him from apathy.  The community holds all the keys to unlock him from the “false ideas” of men (11).  As “Silas began now to think of Raveloe life entirely in relation to Eppie,” he sees firsthand that salvation comes not by mere meditation (as in Lantern Yard) but, rather, it comes by practical means (133).  He experiences how conversing with ordinary people about ordinary things, such as child rearing, possess certain power to allay his pain and ultimately heal him.  Raveloe, the town which “for fifteen years, he had stood aloof as from a strange thing, with which he could have no communion” starts to have a different significance to him (133). 

Silas’ dedication towards Eppie stirs the heart of the townspeople to turn to Silas and allows Silas’s heart to turn to the townspeople.  “Silas Marner’s determination to keep the ‘tramp’s child’ ” softened the people’s feeling towards him (122).  His broken-heartedness from the loss of his money coupled with his need to care for the new replaced gift, Eppie, pierces an opening in his heart to be more receptive to help, guidance, and wisdom, which all come to him from plain-minded rural folks.  If Dolly Winthrop holds one of the bigger keys to unlocking his inwardness, the other members of the town hold some of the smaller keys to unlocking his solitude: each and every member, collectively playing their role in restoring and reinstating the broken man’s heart, mind and soul.  Just as life with Eppie teaches him that a man’s most cherished companion cannot be lifeless objects (guineas and shillings) but rather, needs to be a meaningful person to obtain the utmost happiness – similarly, his association with the people of Raveloe helps him see that some of life’s most important treasures are a result of the interactions between human beings.

Dolly Winthrop, who represents the best of Raveloe, holds the main key that unlocks his introversion.  Dolly, in many ways is who Silas Marner was in Lantern Yard.  She is every bit what a true Christian should be.  She is a lady who knows no sophistry or sophistication but has instead simplicity and sincerity.  Though her mind is limited, her heart is infinitely loving.  However, her trusting and pious nature is the very thing that Silas would run away from if he hadn’t needed her help.   As it becomes evident to Silas that he lacks the knowledge of rearing a two-year old child, Dolly’s ever-willing warm hands are the very first two hands that he reaches out to.  Thus, Dolly’s unfeigned acts of love win an entrance to Silas’ seclusion.

Dolly Winthrop not only generously extends temporal aid to Silas but also probes deeper in an attempt to salvage the souls of both him and Eppie.  With her kind tenaciousness, she easily triumphs in convincing Silas that he needs to attend church for Eppie’s sake, for he has a strong conviction that Eppie “must have everything that was good in Raveloe” (133).  “Silas…appeared for the first time within the church, and shared in the observances held sacred by his neighbors” (127).  For Silas, this is a paramount undertaking because for him to go back to his once abhorred religious establishment  signifies his union with the past has begun.  Attending church in Raveloe forces him to meet the reminders of his past, and such a setting provides an atmosphere where the job of extricating his psychological confusion can begin.  Dolly, acting in a timely manner, is responsible for bringing Silas to the threshold of his emotional and spiritual healing. 

Eppie’s presence in his life helps him awaken from his subconsciously begotten haziness.  As Silas learns to truly love the child as his own and as he feels the love back from her, he begins to reconnect with life in spiritually progressive ways.  In the past, the guineas and shillings had bound him to a regressive state of mind.  Now, in his attempt to provide the needs of a child who reveres outdoor, he is frequently invited to the divine nature; he takes in a slice of healing each time he takes “Eppie beyond the Stone-pits to where the flowers grew” (128).  “Eppie was an object compacted of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward…carried them away to the new things” (127).  Life with Eppie is active, stimulating and healing.  As his senses emerge back to a conscious level, the dark chapter of his life fades and he becomes capable of creating a new reality – a life with Eppie. 

As Eppie becomes the prime purpose of his existence, he makes sure that ultimately everything is done on his own terms.  The growth of happiness in his life makes him fearful and watchful of anything that might weaken or harm the source of it, the bond he is establishing with the child.  Unlike his younger years in Lantern Yard, he turns into a more vigilant and independent character.  He is no longer passive and abiding to rules set by others.  “But I want to do things for it myself, else it may get fond o’ somebody else, and not fond o’ me,” he says to Mrs. Winthrop.  Eppie, to him, was the only meaningful source of human love, so “he trembled at a moment’s contention with her, lest she should love him the less for it” (129).  Such apprehension leads him to politely but firmly express his disagreement with that of Ms. Winthrop’s belief about child discipline.  Being a father to Eppie propels him to develop assertiveness and self-assuredness that he lacked previously. 

As a true guardian of Eppie’s innocence, he strives to implant only the pleasing aspects of life to Eppie.  Silas Marner is a man who is well acquainted with grief but does not allow grief to be part of his new life by consciously moving its forces and sources away from Eppie’s milieu.  Any negative consequences deriving from his belief that “Eppie must be happy always” are borne by him.  “So Eppie was reared without punishment, the burden of her misdeeds being borne vicariously by father Silas” (132).  Though Silas had tasted bitterness in his life, he refuses to be bitter; his such mental attitude indirectly manifests its effect as Eppie’s childhood radiates with happiness – a blessing by her noble father. 

Silas and Eppie, together, build their home to be a heaven on earth.  Silas, with patience and diligence, implants faith and security in the abandoned child; he instills in her a concept of unconditional support by almost never disapproving of her. “She knew nothing of frowns and denials” (132).  While Eppie learns to have faith in her supportive father, in return, she teaches him trust by trusting him (though she knew he was not her birth father), and love by expressing rich affections and sharing her uncensored emotions to all matters of life.  In such a way, Eppie and Silas – both abandoned beings by their loved ones – nourish and grow together, forming one another into a creation of transcendental beings – ennobling one to an angel and another into a saint.  It is a magical transformation saved only for the purest in heart and mind.  Two beautiful minds, in unison, build their residence, Stone-pit, to be a home of trust, peace, and happiness that others pay solemn respect to – even the most prominent Squire Cass.

The author seems to imply that what Silas has desired from the very beginning is human companion, not gold.  Gold represents just a passing substitute for what he fails to obtain in Lantern Yard.  The fact that he does not feel angry about the stolen money is a strong evidence that his disenchantment has not stemmed from his lost of money but rather from his loneliness.  The incident inflicts indescribable pain to him because he had considered the money as his loyal companion that was within his grip – not as a real monetary value but as a controllable object.  He considers the absence of money as if it represents a missing member of his household.  “The loom was there, and the weaving…but the bright treasure…was gone: the evening had no phantasm of delight to still the poor soul’s craving.”  “And all the evening, as he sat in his loneliness…moaned very low” (76). 

Furthermore, Silas’ “open door” symbolizes his receptiveness and his desire to have a companion.  His desperate hope that his lost companion, the gold, may return forms a strange habit in him – “a habit of opening his door and looking out from time to time” (110).  It is a habit that “can hardly be understood except by those who have undergone a bewildering separation from a supremely loved object” (111).  In essence, he is knocking on the doors of heaven for a blessing.  That is why he is quick to realize that the child he finds is for him to keep.  Likewise, he is quick to discern that the money may not come back since it has turned into a child.  The narrator reveals his thoughts to this miraculous event: he “trembled with an emotion mysterious to himself…he could only have said that the child was come instead of the gold – that the gold had turned into the child” (124).  Thus Silas eagerly and thankfully welcomes his gift with an open arms.

He receives his gift (Eppie) because he is worthy.  Unlike Godfrey, Silas is not preoccupied with planning every step of his life; he only reacts to it.  His is humble but not weak in character.  Though, he is simply reacting to the anguish and loneliness he feels due to the stolen money, contrary to Godfrey, he makes life’s most important decision decisively.  In such a manner, Silas unconsciously commits himself to a special blessing.  “She’ll be my little un,” said Marner, “She’ll be nobody else’s” (125).  He willingly and ardently has claimed a child who people thought to be an orphan.  In effect, he has replaced the second attack of misery with a redemptive angel  “who came and took men by the hand” because Silas has committed himself to the responsibility and sacrifice of rearing an angel (133). 

Squire Godfrey symbolically loses his gold by not claiming Eppie to be his child. He is depicted as a person who is guilty of deceit in order to protect his self-significance.  Godfrey’s dignity decreases as he fluctuates cowardly in an indecisive manner before his ordeal.  His premeditative mind that risks life’s highest priorities leads him to abandon his paternal duty.  As a result, Godfrey’s prominence shrinks as he and his wife are unable to produce offspring to continue their legacy.  The couple’s barrenness metaphorically suggests that there is a moral law that governs and punishes the deceitful.  Godfrey realizes his sin and his due punishment when he says, “I wanted to pass for childless once, Nancy – I shall pass for childless now against my wish”(174).  Godfrey’s punishment doesn’t end at this.  His worst punishment is the fact that now he has to live with the pain knowing that not only his daughter denies him but detests him.    

Eppie’s ultimate choice of Silas as her father instead of Godfrey illustrates George Eliot’s belief that not only moral laws dictate a person’s fate, but also suggests that common folks are more akin to nobility and thus happier.  Eppie reveals a strong conviction that the life she is accustomed to is superior over the new life that Godfrey offers, because it is more in harmony with nature and humanity.  As it becomes clear that Silas has won a daughter over Godfrey by successfully building and protecting his relationship with Eppie with love, his plainness in character reshapes into an extraordinary figure.  Silas’s humble rank exalts to a majestic honor as he earns the respect of the townspeople by showing courage, commitment, and persistence when he had been confronted with life’s most severe ironies and challenges.  Silas has endured the aftermath of loving – even betrayal.  However, the experience does not deter him from choosing “love” over anything else in life – Eppie.  In the end, the supreme order rewards his demeanor according to “law of love”; that is, to obtain love’s blessings, one must do love’s bidding.

William Blake’s “A Poison Tree”: Repressed Energy

Repressed Energy 

William Blake’s “A Poison Tree” metaphorically illustrates how the energy of human anger, can exert either a destructive or a constructive force to bear fruit of such emotions accordingly.  The state of the speaker’s mind is not necessarily against the “wrath” itself but rather tries to create the mood against the “repression of wrath.”  The speaker starts from a premise where “wrath” is accepted as an innate element of human nature. 

His emphasis is on exploring the effect of repressed anger.  For example, the very first line: “I was angry with my friend:” demonstrates how natural and common it is for humans to feel anger even towards our most beloved ones, our friends.  It is when this natural phenomenon of human emotion is concealed behind a deceitful smiles, it generates destructive current harmful to both the harborer and the receiver of wrath.  In the poem, the speaker was angered twice; his first anger was dissipated through an employment of constructive force, which expelled it out, and the latter enlarged and grown to bear poisonous fruit by engaging in a destructive force which deceptively suppressed and concealed the feelings.  The speaker’s free will to use his imaginative faculty to either preserve the beloved or to destroy the abhorred, is an instructive example of Blake’s doctrine where “innocence” is representing the positive force versus “experience” is representing the negative force.

The tree symbolizes the “wrath” which was planted obscurely in the speaker’s heart to provide it to grow and bear the fruit of vengeance.  Instead of respecting the beauty of “balancing the good and evil” in our imaginative mind, the speaker soaked his “innocence” in filth of corruptness and depleted only the evil side of his mental faculty as he conceived, concocted and schemed to take the life of his foe.   Line 5, “And I watered it in fears” seemed to reveal the speaker’s initial stage of conscientious awareness of discerning good from evil was yet intact: since, generally, in order to “fear”, one must experience the feelings of wrongness in his heart.  But in line 7 & 8, “ And I sunned it with smiles, / And with soft deceitful wiles” he seemed to have quickly ignored the small still voice that rung from his “well of innocence” and allowed his other side, the side that welcomes and thrives on “experience” took over.  His faculty of volition chose revenge over grace.  After he had somewhat numbed his moral senses, it became easier for him to aim and simmer his wrath till perfection. 

However, from the passage,“ And it grew both day and night,/ Till it bore an apple bright (9-10),” the readers sense that the success of the speaker’s vengeful plot being carried out to a complete decimation of his foe relied not only upon the man’s ingenious planning but also relied upon his endurance and patience of a full cycle of season, till the tree bore fruit.  Understanding intelligibly and precisely what was needed to let the poisonous tree grow, he, in whom God dwells, with his God-like power, implanted the vile seed Delicately and cautiously, for a whole season, he rendered the tree of its needed nutrients: water, sun and a fertile soil.  Excitedly and secretly, bearing in his bosom, the anticipation of his uncertain success of murderous plot, he made sure the soil in which the tree grew was within the proximity of his enemy’s reach.  His divine free will, gave him the prerogative of eliminating one member of the human race out of his sight.  He ignored that this venomous imagination on his part, will bear a cost of exhausting his other creative energy, his “innocence.”  Just as the omnipotent and omniscient Creator of mankind had exercised his privilege to place the “tree of temptation” within a comfortable reach of Adam and Eve, and just as Adam and Eve who though warned of the portentous danger, knowingly partook of the irresistibly sensuous appearing fruit, likely, the Speaker’s enemy, being impulsively vulnerable to the temptation, partook of the fruit in haste. 

        And my foe beheld it shine,

        And he knew that it was mine,

        And into my garden stole,

        When the night had veild the pole; (11-14)

If the planter of the tree had been guilty of the secret motives behind the seemingly beautiful poisonous tree, then, his foe is also guilty in the dark and secret steps he took to steal the tempting fruit, which decisively trapped him down and immediately sapped his last breath.  Thus, the Speaker’s foe, though previously had been fully aware of the imminent danger, by being temporarily carried astray by his wishful thinking, fell into the deadening soil of the poisonous tree.

 The poem “A Poison Tree,” is keenly distressing to the minds and feelings of the readers because Blake’s illustration of the two opposing powers of human beings: “open expression of wrath” and “deceptive repression of wrath” were being tried and tested poetically to bring “preservation of life” for the former, and “annihilation of life” for the latter.  Blake’s choice of the “poison tree” seemed an attempt on his part to seek a mystical union with the “forbidden tree” which was in the Garden of Eden that he had read from a Bible.  Blake, being the believer of God’s presence and power suffused in all man, depicts the speaker of the poem as one who is capable of either creating or destroying life.  To Blake, “perfect, pure, and utopian state” is the state of “innocence.” Contrariwise, in his world of “experience” the evil coexist with the good. Accordingly, the poem’s dwelling is in the domain of Blake’s “experience” since it clearly addresses the sick and corrupted side of the mankind.  Blake detests concealment of feelings, and this poem certainly demonstrates the profound effect of such concealed emotional anger.  Although he seemed to be condemning the speaker’s evil deed, he is not necessarily condemning the property of evil itself, since Blake realizes that evil is an essence for the “good” to be recognized as “good.”  Without the opposing influence of evil the good will loose its meaning and effectiveness and its sacred power will be vanished.    Thus, the moral of this poem is not in judging the vileness of the speaker; rather, it is in seeing through the speaker’s deeds, the creative power in all man, which is beyond what we ordinarily assume it to be.  Through his work, “A Poison Tree”, William Blake mystically and metaphorically showed the pre-eminence of the mind in each man, which is inherently divine, and can be employed to either imagine the good or the evil, create or destroy what s/he chooses to preserve or abandon respectively.