3 Postcards from Motley Readers

Earlier this month I received three postcards from fellow motley readers re. our Feb/March reading of James Joyce’s “Dubliners”. I can’t explain how it pleased me to find these in my mailbox, visuals and words from 3 folks who range from friend to stranger–but all of whom I wish I knew more!

  1. cl
  2. bg
  3. gc

I apologize to the other motley readers–and especially the postcard-writers–for not posting these up sooner; February has been a looong month!

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Weekly Notes from 2010-02-27

  • spear #
  • Sword #

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Weekly Notes from 2010-02-20

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Weekly Notes from 2010-02-06

  • Fists #
  • Audio archive from the Keywest Literary Seminar 2010 (horrible regrets at missing this!): Mark Strand: http://bit.ly/markstrand #
  • Tried to use horse glue as a metaphor for love. I /can/ say, like horse glue, this turned out stinkier than I thought it would. #
  • cactus #
  • In @jonmott's class, engaging with lots of great ideas, and yet I can't stop thinking about getting outside to skate. #
  • 8&c9 (dream) –> 8&c6 #

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“Voices of Light” in “La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc”

voices of light

I hadn’t watched Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc with composer Einhorn’s “Voices of Light” until just this week. Einhorn has done a masterful job with the work, and indeed accentuates this already stunning and troubling film. If you haven’t caught this on Criterion, do. Here’s a clip from what I thought to be the most breathless scene, Jeanne’s confession:

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Paralysis in Joyce’s “The Sisters”

The first short story in James Joyce’s “Dubliners” (this month’s motleyread) is “The Sisters”, a slightly enigmatic story of an adolescent boy facing the death of his informal mentor, Father Flynn. Only half-way through the first page this sentence seized me:

Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis.

Of a number of themes and motifs in “The Sisters” the theme of paralysis intrigued me the most. Father Flynn’s strokes produce a literal paralysis, and his subsequent death itself represents a final paralysis (indeed, I sensed just a hint of fear of live burial–a terrible counterpart to a misdiagnosed paralysis–in the narrator’s viewing of Flynn’s body, implicit, perhaps, in the confusion that the narrator and the sisters seem to experience as they talk of Flynn as if he were still alive).

At a most basic level, paralysis is an inability to act for one’s self. I saw this as a psychological paralysis in the narrator, as he first wills himself to not speak of Flynn’s death before his uncle and Old Cotter, and then seems unable to speak at all in Flynn’s house. This paralysis in life appears in the actions of the women, too, who can’t quite seem to verbalize the reality of Flynn’s death. “Did he … peacefully?’” the aunt asks; the sisters, too, seem almost unable to complete their thoughts about Flynn, and speak of him in hypotheticals, in speculations, with halting self-consciousness:

She stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no sound in the house; and I knew that the old priest was lying still in his coffin as we had seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle chalice to his breast.

I’m not quite able to connect this as I should, but it seems this persistent theme of paralysis in life connects to another dominant theme: the ineffectualness of religion for Flynn and his neighbors. Religion here seems unable to sustain the living or confront and explain death. By not providing these desired comforts, religion does nothing to alleviate the feeling of paralysis the living may feel when confronted with death; indeed, it may, by controlling actions and speech invoke it’s own partial paralysis on its followers (I marked a couple almost involuntary superstitious actions in the story). For the dead, we wonder if it provides escape from the paralysis of death. As if hoping for some sort of happy peace for the dead Flynn, the narrator fancied “that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in his coffin.”

“But no”, the narrator realizes, perhaps beginning to settle into an understanding of Flynn’s ineptitude. This is reinforced by Flynn’s own inability to literally grasp the chalice (alive or dead), the strangeness that both Old Cotter and the narrator seem differently aware of, and his improper laughing (possibly weeping?) alone in the confessional.

Wide awake and laughing-like to himself…. So then, of course, when they saw that, that made them think that there was something gone wrong with him…

So the story ends, halting in its explanation in the same way that the women stop themselves from speaking the reality of Flynn’s dying. In this case there is some ambiguity in the ending ellipses, as either Eliza is unable to complete the story, or the narrator himself is unwilling to face the conclusion symbolized by “an idle chalice on his [Flynn's] breast.”

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Motley Read Feb: Joyce’s “Dubliners”

I’ll attempt to take advantage of Chris Lott’s invitation to join the Motley Readers this month as they work through James Joyce’s “Dubliners”. I say “attempt” not because I may be too motley for this crew (though that thought may surely cross some minds–especially after that pun), but to be realistic: I have once again taken on too large a pile for my limited abilities this semester, and so the pleasures of literature will be postponed as required.

In addition to a number of digital media for sharing reflections on our reading, one group member suggested physical post cards, mailed to any members of the group. Though I also intend to make a few meatier blog posts here, post cards grant a fine chance for me to send a little mail to friends, near strangers, and complete unknowns. When I do send post cards I think I will focus on darkest or brightest observation(s) in a given story, and may indulge my latent interest in art to sketch part of a story. I’m less excited to have my postcards be received than I am to see my postcards as part of a larger collection that Chris intends to compile.

Regardless of how much I share during the month, I do plan to read all 15 stories, which means I need to tackle 4 a week, like this:

  1. “The Sisters”, “An Encounter”, “Araby”, “Eveline”
  2. “After the Race”, “Two Gallants”, “The Boarding House”, “A Little Cloud”
  3. “Counterparts”, “Clay”, “A Painful Case”
  4. “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”, “A Mother”, “Grace, “The Dead”

P.S. I was inclined to own the Norton Critical Edition of “Dubliners”, but opted for an edition that is hardbound, a little more compact and, for now, less intellectually overpowering. I just received my generally clean (though imprecisely described) Modern Library edition (1954 reprint) for the same price off of ABE Books:

Dubliners 1954
Not to get too far afield, but I like the economy of older Modern Library editions in general. In the case of “Dubliners” there are several printings. The first is a bit hard to find–indeed, I couldn’t find a copy that was intact, in good condition, not price-clipped, that was worth buying. The dust jacket on these early printings is more elegant than the 1954 printing which I settled for. There’s apparently an intermediate Modern Library edition printing bound in green (brown?) leatherette, but I couldn’t find an acceptable copy of that, either.

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Poem: Draft: Repair

It’s no fun to make excuses, to claim biographical distance from a poem, but I do so here (as I often feel I must) to make it clear this is no confessional:

"Repair"

A blue tear of electricity flashes from the outlet;
I'm only plugging in the oscillating fan,
but this reminds me of the passion
I suspect still glows inside you.

And there at the library's bindery,
alone in a closed-off work room
the steamer reminds me of sweat we have made,
years ago when love was fresh.
But now we are like this brittle spine,
this split horse glue.
And yet I dream (as the steam reactivates
the amber, lustrous, waxy seam)
of love reversible:
bound in the old way,
though cracked, the break is clean,
is easily repaired when pressed together,
when soft, when hot again,
as it was at first.

Knowing what I must do, what I came to accomplish,
with a putty knife I scrape the glue,
mixing it with the unprotected pages' dust,
stirring in the passive dirt
that sifts down on all that are shelved,
reanimating corpse germs of others' coughs.
So gold turns to gray.

Soon the smell overcomes me;
I bolt for the door;
The electric fan that I relied on
can not make dead things fresh again.

The end of the third stanza was:

So gold turns gray,
as the sexterns are made clean.

A sextern is a particular kind of (typically stitched) section, consisting of six bifolios. I chose to use it originally because it provides some balance to the image of dirtied glue, while providing what I thought was a relatively mild double entendre. Apparently there’s a more modern use of the word “sextern”, and that coupled with the ambiguity and additive nature, I decided to cut it.

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Weekly Notes from 2010-01-30

  • 8&c7 #

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Poem: Draft: Fruitless

Here’s a poem that I worked out early this morning as I was mulling over some snatch of Frost on a stuck freeway leading on to work.

"Fruitless"

Winter will come
while I work this sloping field,
these rows,
one by one, row long
impressing on the earth.
And if the day turns and yawns
before I finish there will be
no sign of anything,
leaving me in the evening
an hollow head
leaning back against the chair, black
all around the hearth fire.
I waken to find the snow
skirting the mountain,
hiding the work of yesterday's row.
I begin the next row down,
tearing the snow's doily with my boot;
I work fast to keep the heat; my blood
surging around my brain when I stand and look,
to seek mustard tufts or
plots of burnt-out ground that the night's first snow
could not confound.
When I bend again a puff of steam, my breath
rises as if from something scorching under
ground.
Winter will come.
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