Lecture 22: … Nothing, SomethingPATRICK MOONEY, M.A.

ENGLISH 10, SUMMER SESSION A

27 JULY 2015

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982)

● Taught at UCSB, 1968–1973.

● Wrote the Encyclopaedia Britannica article on “Literature.”

● MCed the famous poetry reading at Six Gallery, San Francisco, California.

● Later was Allen Ginsberg’s defense witness at his obscenity trial over the Six Gallery reading.

● “Father of the Beats”

● “An entomologist is not a bug.”Rexroth in 1982Photo by Morgan Gibson

Misery is all the lot of the unlovable ones,And of rejected lovers,But not one of these knows the empty horrorOf the slow conquering, long fought off,Realization that love assumed and trustedThrough years of mutual lifeHad never been there at all.The bells of St. LawrenceSprinkle their music over the town.Silver drops, gathered in BermudaShimmer and are lost in the brown English water.It is all just like the poet said.

(end of “The Hanged Man”)

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

(“Between Two Wars”)

                   we believed weWould see with our own eyes the newWorld where man was no longerWolf to man, but men and womenWere all brothers and loversTogether. We will not see it.We will not see it, none of us.It is farther off than we thought.

[…..........................................................................]

                           We know nowWe have failed for a long time.And we do not care. We few willRemember as long as we can.,Our children may remember.

(“For Eli Jacobson,” lines 3–10, 40–44)

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013)

● Eldest of 9 siblings, raised on a farm in County Derry, Northern Ireland.

● Nobel Prize in Literature, 1996.

● Lived and taught in Northern Ireland, England, California, and the Republic of Ireland.

● Occupied uncomfortably overlapping subject positions: Catholic,Northern Irish, British, Irish, rural, educated, …

● Consciously works with multiple literary traditions (British, Irish, Greek).Heaney in 1970.

Photo by Simon Garb.utt

I’m writing just after an encounterWith an English journalist in search of ‘viewsOn the Irish thing.’ I’m back in winterQuarters where bad news is no longer news,

Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leadsLitter the hotels. The times are out of jointBut I incline as much to rosary beads

As to the jottings and analysesOf politicians and newspapermenWho’ve scribbled down the long campaign from gasAnd protest to gelignite and sten,

[….......................................................................................]

Who proved upon their pulses ‘escalate’,‘Backlash’ and ‘crack down’, ‘the provisional wing’,‘Polarization’ and ‘long-standing hate’.Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing,

Expertly civil tongued with civil neighboursOn the high wires of first wireless reports,Sucking the fake taste, the stony flavoursOf those sanctioned, old, elaborate retorts:

‘Oh, it’s disgraceful, surely, I agree,’‘Where’s it going to end?’ ‘It’s getting worse.’‘They’re murderers.’ ‘Internment, understandably . . .’The ‘voice of sanity’ is getting hoarse.

(“Whatever You Say / Say Nothing,” section I)

He would drink by himselfAnd raise a weathered thumbTowards the high shelf,Calling another rumAnd blackcurrant, withoutHaving to raise his voiceOr order a quick stoutBy a lifting of the eyesAnd a discreet dumb-showOf pulling off the top;

(“Casualty,” section I, lines 1–10)

He was blown to bitsOut drinking in a curfewOthers obeyed, three nightsAfter they shot deadThe thirteen men in Derry.PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,BOGSIDE NIL. That WednesdayEverybody heldTheir breath and trembled.

(section I, lines 38–46)

Prophesy who struck thee! When soldiers mockedBlindfolded Jesus and he didn’t strike back

They were neither shamed nor edified, althoughSomething was made manifest—the power Of power not exercised, of hope inferred

By the powerless forever. Still, for Jesus’ sake,Do me a favour, would you, just this once?Prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone.

(“Weighing In,” 3rd section)

How culpable was heThat night when he brokeOur tribe’s complicity?‘Now you’re supposed to bean educated man,’I hear him say. ‘Puzzle meThe right answer to that one.’

(“Casualty” II, lines 32–38)

The coding problem

The liberal papist note sounds hollow

When amplified and mixed in with the bangsThat shake all hearts and windows day and night(It’s tempting here to rhyme on ‘labour pangs’And diagnose a rebirth in our plight

But that would be to ignore other symptoms.Last night you didn’t need a stethoscopeTo hear the eructation of Orange drumsAllergic equally to Pearse and Pope.)

(“Whatever You Say,” section II)

The Bog Bodies

● Naturally mummified bodies intermittently found across northern Europe.

● PV Glob’s book The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved, translated into English from Danish in 1969.

● Most bodies found are connected to a tribal society, just becoming agricultural, approx 500 BCE–500 CE.

● Many are assumed to have died violently and/or as ritual sacrifices.

Tollund Man

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

– Seamus Heaney, “Mother Ireland” (1972 discussion)

but he now liesperfected in my memory,down to the red hornof his nails,

hung in the scaleswith beauty and atrocity:with the Dying Gaultoo strictly compassed

on his shield,with the actual weightof each hooded victim,slashed and dumped.

(“Grauballe Man,” last 3 stanzas)

Little adulteress,before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,undernourished, and yourtar-black face was beautiful.My poor scapegoat,

I almost love youbut would have cast, I know,the stones of silence.

(“Punishment,” lines 23–31)

"Grauballe Man." Photo by Sven Rosborn

I almost love youbut would have cast, I know,the stones of silence.I am the artful voyeur

of your brain’s exposedand darkened combs,your muscles’ webbingand all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumbwhen your betraying sisters,cauled in tar,wept by the railings,

who would connivein civilized outrageyet understand the exactand tribal, intimate revenge.

(“Punishment,” lines 29–44)

Smoke signals are loud-mouthed compared with us:Manoeurvrings to find out name and school,Subtle discrimination by addressesWith hardly an exception to the rule

That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled ProdAnd Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape.O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,Of open minds as open as a trap,

Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,Where half of us, as in a wooden horse,Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks,Besieged within the siege, whispering Morse.

(“Whatever You Say,” section III)

What Is To Be Done? (I)

A cobble thrown a hundred years agoKeeps coming at me, the first stoneAimed at a great-grandmother’s turncoat brow.The pony jerks and the riot’s on.

[…...........................................................................]

Call her ‘The Convert,’ ‘The Exogamous Bride’.Anyhow, it is a genre pieceInherited on my mother’s sideAnd mine to dispose with now she’s gone.Instead of silver and Victorian lace,The exonerating, exonerated stone.

(“Clearances” I, lines 1–4, 9–14)

The old man rose and gazed into my faceand said that was official recognitionthat I was now a dual citizen.

He therefore desired me when I got hometo consider myself a representativeand to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.

Their embassies, he said, were everywherebut operated independentlyand no ambassador would ever be relieved.

(“From the Republic of Conscience,” last three stanzas)

Media credits

● The photo of Kenneth Rexroth (slide 2), by Morgan Gibson, is not in the public domain, but is a low-resolution version selected as a teaching tool because no freely available alternative can be found. Original source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rexroth#/media/File:Kenneth_Rexroth.jpg

● The photo of Seamus Heaney (slide 6) has been released by Simon Garbutt under a Creative Commons-Attribution license. Original source:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SeamusHeaneyLowRes.jpg

● The photo of Tollund Man (slide 14) is out of copyright because it is very old. Original source:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tollundmanden#/media/File:Moorleiche_von_Tollund_J%C3%BCtland_um_100_n_Chr_hingerichtet.jpg

● The photo of Grauballe Man (slide 17) has been released into the public domain by Sven Rosborn. Original source:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Grauballemanden#/media/File:Grauballemannen1.jpg