Review Post 14 - Poetry in Emotion

Poets are funny people; at least if you go by the descriptions in my latest bout of reading. In yet another slightly tenuously-constructed post, I'll have a look at two differing views of poets and whether it is nature or nurture that creates and moulds them. Don't worry: there's no chance of any more of my poetry...

*****

The first of our poetic delights is Milan Kundera's Life is Elsewhere, a detached, sardonic description of Jaromil (the poet), a young man growing up in pre- and post-war Czechoslovakia. From an early age, Jaromil has been encouraged - mainly by his mother - to believe that he is special and talented, and this talent manifests itself in the form of poetry.

We follow the young poet through his formative years and see his efforts to make sense of the world and his desire to achieve love (or, at least, lust). Sadly, Jaromil, while possibly gifted with poetry, is a much less perfect human being in most other respects, and as the story progresses, the reader becomes ever more tired of his immaturity and stupidity. Don't worry; that's exactly as Kundera means it.

One of the most striking aspects of this book is the relationship between Jaromil and his mother, who smothers him from a desperate sense of belonging and a desire to live life vicariously through her precious son. I was reminded a little of Paul Morel and his mother (from D.H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers) in the way Jaromil attempts to free himself from the apron strings (although Morel was a lot more successful at it...).

Immature, pathetic, pitiful: this may sound a little harsh, but if you read the book, you'll see that Jaromil is not the most appealing of characters, and Kundera's slightly mocking portrayal gradually exposes his weaknesses. Far from being a great poet and a hero of the revolution, he becomes a cringing, mindless coward who betrays loved ones for pointless (and misguided) ideals. Don't worry: (relatively-) instant karma's going to get him...

*****

Over in Dublin, meanwhile, James Joyce paints his alter-ego Stephen Dedalus (one of the main protagonists of the ever-so-slightly complicated Ulysses) in a slightly more sympathetic light (although the theorists in the introduction to my version would disagree, obsessed as they are with the 'ironic' treatment). A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a surprisingly readable plotless novel, through which the reader follows Dedalus through his childhood and youth until he embarks on his quest to become an artist.

From his early, relatively comfortable days, we accompany Stephen on selected, important events in his life, defining moments which help to shape his character - and, perhaps his soul. Despite his eventual rejection of church teachings, his language and demeanour remain immersed in his pious upbringing (one of the ironies mentioned earlier). After overcoming his teenage angst and sinning, he briefly considers becoming a priest himself, but a chance encounter on the beach, one of several moments of poetic beauty, strengthens his conviction of the inevitability of his 'fall' back into real life.

The contrasts with Kundera's young poet are numerous. Jaromil is seen through Kundera's usual detached, quasi-scientific viewpoint, more like a specimen in a laboratory than a real person. He is supremely egocentric, seemingly unable to pick up on other people's thoughts and emotions, but utterly convinced of his own worth and talent (which consists mainly of imitation and works which catch the rather feeble zeitgeist). Blindly accepting the communist view of the events unfolding in his country, he quickly becomes a part of the machine, despite his role as a poet. What is worse, it is done knowingly and willingly...

Dedalus, on the other hand, is portrayed mostly from inside. We see things as he sees them, especially in his younger days. Admittedly, the older he gets, the more we see Stephen (as opposed to seeing through Stephen's eyes), but he is never objectified to the extent that Jaromil is. In contrast to the young Czech poet, Stephen has doubts, both about his gift and (more importantly) his soul. The chapter in which he wrestles with the concept of hell and his possible fall shows a beauty of description which Jaromil would be unable to comprehend.

Perhaps the biggest difference though is Dedalus' rejection of the institutions which claim to lead us in the right direction but which, in fact, may tie us down. Stephen rejects both the Catholic Church and the Irish nationalist movement, seeing both as nets which are there to prevent him fulfilling his potential and ambitions. However, he does not impose his beliefs on others, content instead to stand aside and create his own beliefs in preparation for the departure into a new life.

*****

Though I have praised Stephen and cursed Jaromil in the lines above, please do not fall into the trap of confusing my opinions of the characters with my opinions of the books. Both of these novels are wonderful to read, but in very different ways. Kundera's light (unberably light?), ironic style contasts with the brooding intensity and introspection of Joyce's lightly-veiled self-portrait; however, the end result is equally as pleasing. Joyce's book is just a portrait of a young poet; Kundera's is equally valid - and entertaining.

66 - 'Dubliners' by James Joyce

"In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone..." Sorry, just catching up on some family business. It's true though; I saw the statue of my semi-fictional possible ancestor on Grafton Street about ten years ago (I couldn't see any resemblance myself, but you never know).

Aside from the famous fishmonger/woman of the night, of course, the Irish capital's most well-known artistic creations are those of James Joyce, whose epic (in all senses of the word) novel 'Ulysses', did so much for Dublin's culture - not to mention the tourism industry. However, Joyce's preoccupation with his home city started much earlier, with the writing of a group of short stories which were to become the collection entitled (simply, and somewhat unimaginatively) 'Dubliners'.

This collection consists of fifteen short stories, most of which are very short indeed (in fact, if you take out 'The Dead', a late addition to the book, they average about nine pages each). Each of the stories takes place in Dublin, usually over a very limited time span, and follows a local resident along their merry (or not so merry) way before ending, if not suddenly, at least unexpectedly. By this I mean that there is no real conclusion to many of the tales; the story simply stops, and we move on to the next little view of the great city.

The writing is beautiful, seemingly effortless, and despite the brevity of most of the stories, the reader is sucked into the details of the main protagonist's life - what little we see of it anyway. Joyce also manages to tell the tale through language tailored to suit the speech and thoughts of the character he has created, which may sound obvious but is not actually that easy to do. As the book progresses, the age of the main character increases; where the first few tales are centred around children, by the end of the collection, the central personalities are far more mature (in years, if not always in behaviour).

The last of the stories, 'The Dead', which, at 34 pages, is by far the longest in the collection, could easily serve as an example for the rest of the tales. A seemingly simple account of a Christmas party at a dance academy, followed by the main character's trip back to his hotel with his wife, manages to cram in several of Joyce's most common themes: the status of Ireland as an occupied country in search of its past in the face of an uncertain present; the presence of sexual desires, despite the teachings of the church; above all, the importance of the everyday, the common, the mundane. The final passages, with Gabriel in his bed imagining the snow falling all over Ireland, "upon all the dead and the living", are simply beautiful.

Having read 'Ulysses' earlier this year, one of the questions I had about this book was whether, forgetting what was to come in the future, this set of short stories would actually measure up. It would be (and is) very easy to see in it the germs of the great novels to come, but is 'Dubliners' any good in its own right? I can assure you that the answer is an emphatic yes: it is a perfect example of the art of telling short stories. In fact, while 'Ulysses' is an undoubted classic, it would have been very interesting to see what kind of novels Joyce would have produced had he decided to become merely a successful novellist and not a genre-destroying genius. Something to ponder as I look out of my window and see the raindrops slowly sliding down the glass.

P.S. For those still confused by the first paragraph, let me introduce myself: the name's Malone, Tony Malone, licenced to make exceedingly weak puns...

25 - 'Ulysses' by James Joyce

"La, la, la, la, la, Ulysses,
I've found a new way, I've found a new way"

Thank you Franz Ferdinand for releasing this song, in Australia at least, while I was struggling through this book. Very, very annoying to have that line stuck in my head all the time.

However, whether they were writing about Joyce's epic work or not, the Scottish popsters have a point; 'Ulysses' is unlike anything you've read before (or that anyone has written since). In eighteen chapters spread over 933 pages, the writer tells the tale of an ordinary man's meanderings through Dublin on the 16th of June, 1904. While this may sound fairly straightforward, it is, in fact, one of the most complex and tightly designed pieces of writing ever published.

The eighteen chapters are not random; the whole novel is underpinned by the classic myth of Ulysses, or Odysseus, and each of the sections corresponds to a stage in the wanderings of the legendary Greek hero. Joyce wanted to contrast the idea of the hero with his everyman, Leopold Bloom, to protest against the dominance of violence and aggression, both in life generally and during the First World War. Bloom, a rather effeminate (or perhaps not overly masculine) Jew, wanders the streets of Dublin from house to funeral, from pub to beach, from brothel to deserted streets and back home again. On his travels, he meets up with Stephen Dedalus, the central character of Joyce's earlier, semi-autobiographical, novel, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', and the meeting of the two minds drives much of the later part of the book.

This meeting is also part of the original Odyssean myth: Bloom (Ulysses) is on a spiritual search for a son after his own died in childhood while Stephen (Telemachus) wishes for the parental guidance he does not find with his present, but absent, father. The theme of absent fathers is further discussed when Stephen elaborates on his ideas on 'Hamlet' (a vivid discussion ensues as to who Hamlet and his father are based on - is Hamlet Shakespeare himself or his son?). At the end of the book, the two have met and talked and seem to have made plans for future dealings; it is doubtful though whether either has really found what he is looking for.

Bloom is a very different type of person to the one you would expect to be roaming the streets of Dublin, and this is exactly what Joyce was trying to create, an ordinary man who is slightly out of the ordinary. His lack of understanding with many of the other men populating the pages of the book can be put down to his background (or the fact that he doesn't get blind drunk before noon...), but it is also something to do with his personality and his preference for the company of women. He abhors violence and is eager to live and let live (to the extent of not being overly concerned about his wife's infidelity). So, unlike the real Ulysses? Well, yes: he doesn't slaughter all of his wife's suitors. On the other hand, Ulysses, as can be forgotten, was also a man of peace and did his utmost to avoid being dragged off to Troy to fight in a war over a woman (just like Bloom!).

I usually write about themes in the novel at this point, but I'm not really going to here, simply because there are just too many ideas criss-crossing to get them all down in one post (I do not intend to make this a lecture series). One I found interesting though was the topic of colonialism, and the attitude of the oppressed to the oppressors. In my previous read, 'A Passage to India', E.M. Forster sketched the attitude of the Indians to the rule of the English, and there are many similarities in the natives' rather passive dislike of the invaders in Joyce's Dublin. The writer found the traditional Irish mythology of the famed Celtic defender Cuchulainn to be a bad basis on which to found a plea for independence and preferred the more cerebral Greek legend to form the skeleton of his story. Like the Indians, the Irish (well, most of them..) had very little time to wait for freedom from the Union Jack.

So much for symbolism and myth. As a linguist, the main interest for me in 'Ulysses' is the use of the language itself, which is, of course, the thing which makes it so hard to read. Having recently discovered Lawrence, Woolf and Boell, this seems to be my time for stream-of-conciousness writers; 'Ulysses' contains the mother of all stream-of-conciousness sections with Molly Bloom's 62-page, eight-sentence rambling monologue rounding off the book. However, it is Stephen's shorter, but seemingly more incoherent, talk early in the book which I found almost impossible to read. Joyce creates these patches of interior speech by starting and stopping thoughts and interrupting them with new ones and cutting the sentences short and not really stopping the flow because as you know that's how we think and speak not in standard sentences yes if you think about it writing is but no I mean (OK, I'll stop there; I think you get the point!).

Another inventive use of language is related to the use of different genres throughout the book, culminating in the scene at the midwife's house where events are relayed in different writing genres, progressing from ancient sagas to modern (for the time) slang. Each genre adds a different slant to the proceedings and uses a different type of language, something which most native speakers are unconciously aware of but could not actively analyse. In my tertiary studies, I have had to work with genres, and the ability to decode and, eventually, reproduce different text types is one of the key aims of a non-native learner of English (in fact, it could be argued that all speakers of English require some education in the different accepted styles of writing required in different spheres of life).

A third area of language use is the coining of new words and manipulation of word order and sentence structure. Joyce plays with word order to disrupt the rhythm of the text (and, thus, the reader's sense of comfort) and constantly introduces vocabulary which can be found nowhere else (or is so rare that it would be used nowhere else). As well as creating new adjectives and combining words to combine meanings, he has Bloom invent ways for animals and inanimate objects to communicate (apparently machines go 'sllt'). Although Joycean coinages may not have caught on as Shakespeare's did (he was another big maker-upper of words), it still shows a vast intellect - and courage...

Alright, yes, it's a classic, brilliant, etc. etc., but is it any good? Should anyone in their right mind actually read this monstrosity of a house brick masquerading as literature?

Yes. But the case for the prosecution...

1) It is a bit long and unneccessary at times.

Having read the extensive introduction in my edition and several commentaries, I realise that the bulk of the book is tightly woven onto the stem of the original Homerian tale; but are you really sure that it couldn't have been cut here and there?

2) It's a bit crude, unnecessarily so at times.

I'm sure it was all necessary to drive home his point (no double-entendre intended or implied). However, the language did go over the top, and some of the characterisation bordered on the stereotypical (and would have been described as such if produced by, say, Dickens).

3) Clever word play, at times too clever for its own good.

No argument here.

4) The portrayal of women is not balanced.

True, few of the women come across as appealing and realistic. Then again, neither do most of the male characters either.

5) You need to do a lot of reading just to be qualified to open the book.

Yes. A good grounding in Greek mythology (especially Ulysses, naturally), a fair command of Latin, some experience in French and German and a strong interest in Philosophy seem to be pre-requisites for tackling this monster (reading 'Dubliners' and 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' first is also recommended, if not compulsory).

The introduction of my edition comments that you do not read 'Ulysses'; it reads you. Very true. After reading it, you feel exhausted and a little confused. After reading what other people say about it, you're even more confused. This is the type of book which you read again and again, if only to try to understand it more (or if you have serious masochistic tendencies). I'd like to finally get around to reading the original Ulysses legend, which may help me to understand the modern myth a bit more, but that will have to wait a bit. My head hurts now, and I'd like Franz Ferdinand to finally bloody shut up.