James Hargrave
EH 431.90
Witek
Draft of Paper
11 November 2002
Structure in The Dream Songs
John BerrymanÕs Dream Songs present a challenge to any reader. Their topic is continually changing and perpetually unclear, but the rambling dreams of their character, Henry, reach at the end some kind of totality. What unites the Songs to make them a single poem is, on the surface, very little, but their presentation as the dreams of a single character, and a structural consistency with echoes of older forms, gives the impact of the dreams as a psychological, if not topical, thematic, or linear, unity.
The briefest glance tells us that The Dream Songs will be complex. The songsÕ highly regularized form, and the numerology of their compilation, indicate that they must be read scrupulously, and even an approximate understanding of any single song must take into consideration its consistency with or variation from the "dream song form," with reference to surrounding songs, and with reference to the songÕs placement in the poem as a whole. This paper shall undertake several case studies of specific songs, using certain analytical tools which will be described, and will synthesize these case studies in an attempt to locate a framework or partial understanding of what it is that coheres these pieces into a single song, what the poem is "about."
BerrymanÕs very title suggests that any search for meaning in his poem will be problematic. Familiar as he was with Freudian jargon, it is undoubtable that our poet intended his work to be read on multiple layers of meaning, not directly allegorical but full of subterfuges and blind alleys, that their manifest structure and content, like that of a dream, serves not to elucidate but rather to obfuscate any latent, "deeper" content. The text of any song may be "about" any number of things, but the subtext must be read in terms of metaphor, slippage, and the subtle structures and structural variations within particular pieces. This paper will not assume any ability to deduce the "true" meaningof any particular song, and will not make speculations concerning the real person John Berryman, but will rather present a sense of the songsÕ overall structure, and hint at what forms and archetypes may peek through the corners of the pages, and will use its findings to suggest possible traits of the fictive and elusive Henry. A reader may wish to believe that Henry is John Berryman (and thatÕs certainly not a difficult presumption) and from there assume certain things about the poetÕs character; these assumptions may have a degree of truth, but this paper takes the position that anything we "discover" about Henry can, if read metaphorically, apply to any human, and as we most often see in a text most clearly those things weÕve brought to it, any psycho- or character analysis of John Berryman through his writing will likely reveal more about the analyst than about the poet.
The structure of The Dream Songs has historic roots in the Petrarchan sonnet. John BerrymanÕs book of Petrarchan sonnets, a personal project that was published twenty years after its completion, still has a presence in The Dream Songs but becomes not a poetic end but a lyric device, using its suggestive potential in service of a larger piece. The sonnet in Berryman moves from being an uncompromised whole to a motif within works that are not themselves sonnets. The title of The Dream Songs suggests an etymological relation with the sonnet (song, sound), and nearly every piece in that work begins in an iambic pentameter that suggests certain sonnet-ish things which fail (at least on the surface) to develop. By watching Berryman cut his teeth on pure sonnets, it should be possible to mark the ways in which his early flings with the form influenced its more sophisticated (or degenerate?) appearance in The Dream Songs. The form of the Dream Songs, essentially, sublimates the structure of the Sonnets, and individual songs themselves sublimate the structure of the archetypal Song.
Likewise, the long poem helps to sublimate content, to give to a poem essential motifs, while avoiding specific references to these things. Importantly, a long poem permits recurring images to have presence even in parts where they are not directly mentioned. In Book VII Henry travels to Ireland, and while songs 286-9 do not outright mention the voyage or foreign setting, the knowledge of HenryÕs journey changes a readerÕs understanding of themÑthese are things that affect the mind of a Henry far from home, in a land of literary ghosts. This is a simplistic example, but serves to illustrate that in a long poem, passages can be imbued with implications that they do not possess on their own. Any single song about HenryÕs voyage does not have to mention traveling, or the sea, in order to comment upon these thingsÑthe sea resonates through its presence in surrounding songs. Most examples in the Songs are much subtler. Images of parents, and of conflicted memories of the father, ripple below the surface of the poem, showing themselves at times so as to assure the reader that they do really exist, down below, before diving back under.
The form of The Dream Songs is highly regulated, yet it varies so consistently that itÕs hard to pin down exactly what form is being manipulated. Attempts to understand the Dream Songs stanza may best start with a glance at any form it seems to resemble. Nearly all the songs have three stanzas of six lines each, and those songs that vary from this norm do so by adding somewhere an extra stanza of one to three lines. Iambic pentameter is predominantÑit is hard to find a "pure" line, but nearly every song begins with a line of five more-or-less iambic feet, followed by a similar. This makes lines with many greater or fewer stresses stand out as somewhat irregular, and draw attention in their awkwardness of pronunciation. Any line in a song may be in rough iambic pentameter, and in any song at least half of the lines usually are. Others are as short as a single syllable (in song 80, for example), others (in 287) longer than twenty. There is no formula for this other than the internal logic of the poem. Some lines have large spaces in their center where a reader would not normally place a caesura. Despite all this variation, the heavy beat of iambic pentameter is strong enough that the readerÕs instinct is to fit nonstandard lines into that form; the resulting confusion makes one slow oneÕs readingÑsyntax deliberately makes a reader stumble over words. Other slowing effects are achieved with esoteric vocabulary (or even invented words) and inverted (when not completely twisted) diction. These high-sounding elements are juxtaposed and combined with informal speech, vernacular, and, especially in the early Songs, a mimicry of black colloquialisms. The effect overall is hard to describe. At times HenryÕs language seems Shakespearean, and if one considers ShakespeareÕs use of the vernacular of his time, the poem may actually be more Shakesperian than Shakespeare sounds today. It is certainly some kind of deconstruction of the KingÕs English, but also of colloquial speech. It is not unreasonable to consider HenryÕs odd language to derive from the fact that these songs are presented as dreams. The manifest strangeness of the diction may, then, be a ploy to pull attention away from whatever latent meanings lie beneath the songsÕ bizarre wordplay. It is not unlikely that Henry uses the least accessible diction in places where some kind of subconscious wants to draw attention away from what lies beneath.
The form suggested, but never realized, by the Songs is the sonnet. Given that Berryman wrote, earlier, a book of Petrarchan sonnets (whose diction is, if possible, even odder than that of The Dream Songs), it may be useful to consider the Petrarchan form as an ancestor of the Berryman song. A fair example is the seventh of BerrymanÕs Sonnets:
1 I've found out why, that day, that suicide a
2 From the Empire State falling on someone's car b
3 Troubled you so; and why we quarreled. War, b
4 Illness, an accident, I can see (you cried) a
5 But not this: what a bastard, not spring wide!.. a
6 I said a man, life in his teeth, could care b
7 Not much just whom he spat it on.. and far b
8 Beyond my laugh we argued either side. a
9 'One has a right not to be fallen on!..' c
10 (Our second meeting.. yellow you were wearing.) d
11 Voices of our resistance and desire! e
12 Did I divine then I must shortly run c
13 Crazy with need to fall on you, despairing? d
14 Did you bolt so, before it caught, our fire? e
This example conforms fairly well to the Petrarchan structure as put forth by Paul FussellÕs book Poetic Meter and Poetic Form (pages 115-120). Most apparent is the rhyme schemeÑa Petrarchan octave has an abbaabba structure and the sestet one of many variations; the cdecde here is fairly typical. Ideally, the sestetÕs end-rhymes are as different as possible from those of the octaveÑthis ensures that the reader will hear the poemÕs turn in addition to seeing it. The first quatrain of the sonnet projects a subjectÑin this case, an argument over a suicideÕs fall injuring another. The second quatrain complicates the subject by presenting the personaÕs defense of the suicide to Lise (the woman addressed in the Sonnets). The pressure is built, and the sestet releases it by turning the quarrel into a reflection on the beginning of the poetÕs affair with Lise.
This poem does not conform totally to PetrarchÕs form as put forward by Fussell in that LiseÕs argument extends into the beginning of the second quatrain, and even opens the sestet, although here it does create a rhetorical shift by projecting a specific situation into a general claim, one that foretells, as it turn out, the coming affair. Also, the e rhyme ("-ire") of the sestet resembles both the a ("-ide") and b ("-ar") more closely than Fussell recommends. Nonetheless, Sonnet 7 is ultimately quite classical in form.
One of this sonnetÕs departures from a most typical Berryman sonnet is its use of comparatively natural language. Certain phrases are slightly irregular, but exhibit none of the verbal acrobatics achieved by other poems in this sequence. More typical in terms of languageÑbut with significant structural variationÑis sonnet 103:
1 A 'broken heart' . . but can a heart break, now? a
2 Lovers have stood bareheaded in love's 'storm' b
3 Three thousand years, changed by their mistress' 'charm', b
4 Fitted their 'torment' to a passive bow, a
5 Suffered the 'darts' under a knitted brow, a
6 And has one heart broken for all this 'harm'? b
7 An arm is something definite. My arm b
8 Is acting-- I hardly know to tell you how. a
9 It aches . . well, after fifteen minutes of c
10 Serving, I can't serve more, it's not my arm, d
11 A piece of pain joined to me, helpless dumb thing. e
12 After four months of work-destroying love c
13 (An hour, I still don't lift it: I feel real alarm: d
14 Weeks of this,-- no doctor finds a thing), e
15 not much; and not all. Still, this is something. e
Structurally, this example is not as well-defined as the seventh. Its b and d rhymes are identical and the turn that follows the octave is not as clear as it might be. The turn arguably occurs not in the blank space but somewhere around the seventh line, where the poet likens an imaginary "broken heart" to the concrete reality of his injured arm. The sestet (although here itÕs not a sestet) elaborates on why a broken arm is more relevant than heartache, and concludes with a Shakespearean coupletÑand extra line. This structure is not the standard Berryman sonnet, but the eighth line is very typical of his re-ordering of words ("to tell you how" instead of "how to tell you") for the sake of the very structure that this poem violates. In his discussion of the SonnetsÕ diction, Joel Conarroe says their oddness suggests "difficulties that are, in fact, more imaginary than real," and that after a few readings the sequence as a whole, because of the recurrence of themes and characters, "emerges as nearly transparent" (John Berryman: An Introduction to the Poetry, 52). The SonnetsÕ weird language, then, flips in order to appear as if it were conforming to a structure far more difficult than is the case.
The Dream Songs continue the tradition of phrases skewed to fit a structure that is in fact quite malleable. Song 248, for example, places prepositional phrases earlier than they usually appear:
1 Snowy of her breasts the drifts, I do believe, a
2 although I have not been there. Mild her voice b
3 and often for no reason secrecies. c
4 A healthy peasant out of this might weave a
5 an ugly story, when we might rejoice b
6 but letÕs not bother. For size, c
7 sheÕs medium. She is no mathematician. d
8 Nor is Henry, and in that theyÕre one. e
9 Of other congruence f
10 weÕll less say. The sky begins to blond e
11 this tiger-lily here in SarahÕs pot g
12 blonds, with the consequences f
13 Dream on of a private life but you wonÕt make it g
14 Your fated life is public, lest we cheer, h
15 take it easy, kid. g
16 You lie uneasy whom we all endear h
17 where storms come down from the mountains d
18 The dog a rug away is munching a bone. e
Lines 4-5 and 9-10 stand out the most in terms of syntactic oddity. Both examples are twisted for the sake of the end-rhyme, and also the first instance needs to keep a regular iambic pentameter. If one is making excuses, however, there is none for "weÕll less say" (line 10)instead of "weÕll say less", and really the other two structural demands are conjured up by the poet and change on every page. Henry alters his syntax to conform to a system that he changes at will, so the twisted language in these song is a deliberate effort to appear more difficult than is necessary. Henry, as the dreamer, is the creator of arbitrary forms; surely he can alter the form to better express the idea rather than force his language to turn somersaults for the sake of compliance to its own everchanging whim. Why this might be actually desirable will be discussed later.
Structurally (assuming the standard of constant variation), a dream song is made up of three Petrarchan sestets. While the rhyme scheme of the Dream Song stanza is instable, it generally varies on the abcabc (read cdecde) form previously described. Rhetorically, a sestet should be the release after a buildup of pressure. This model cannot wholly function here: the reader cannot release pressure until something is built up first, so the beginning of a song will be inevitably (more or less) read as a dramatic rising. The fact that the Songs is a long poem, while the Sonnets are definitely a poetic sequence, does mean that subtexts and large thematic movements can serve to build up pressure through several songs: an entire song could then, on some plane, function as only buildup or release. It is necessary, however, to amend the laws of a sestetÕs rhetorical emphasis for The Dream Songs.
As a song is split into three stanzas, it may be possible to consider a mode in which the first two stanzas have rough similarities to the Petrarchan octave, and the final stanza to the sestet. If this is found in places, it may even be understood as the ghost of Petrarch peering through, rather than a conscious imitative effort on the part of the poet. This model would treat both the initial stanzas as one Petrarchan quatrain (subdivided into two triplets) each presenting aspects of a problem. The turn, then, comes somewhere around lines 12-13, and the final stanza serves as a reply to the initial queries. Applied to our model, this perspective meets with some success. The difficulty in understanding any dreamÕs references make the puzzle tough, and in some ways unsolvable but on the surface itÕs fairly clear that Henry speaks in the first two stanzas of a woman to whom heÕs attracted (in 247 he first sees her on the ship). In the third stanza Henry addresses himself in language even more inscrutable. his "dreams of a private life" may be hopes of an affair with the ship-lady, but what the storms from the mountains are (assuming itÕs valid to interpret any of this allegorically) is anyoneÕs guess. "The dog a rug away is munching a bone" could be a tauntÑ"that dogÕs got a bone, you need one too"Ñor, when one considers HenryÕs alter ego Mr. Bones, the songÕs final line becomes a warning, scaring Henry away from the woman. Whatever the voice in stanza 3 says, it is clear enough that it has a different direction than in earlier lines; that a Pertrarchan turn has taken place between the second and third stanzas.
Remembering that the overriding characteristic of these songs is their structural malleability, the ghost of PetrarchÕs poetry can be seen yet in their general form, and on some level has an impact on the way the Songs are read. If The Dream SongsÕ language sublimates desires that Henry cannot acknowledge directly, then their structure sublimates not only the Petrarchan model of the Sonnets, but even the archetypal Song itself, the original of which can be constructed only through its variations.
What then of the poemÕs structure as a whole? In their book The Modern Poetic Sequence: The Genius of Modern Poetry M. L. Rosenthal and Sally M. Gall deny the existence of any kind of overriding structure to the work. Dismissing the 385 poems as "uncontrolled proliferation" (416), they speak briefly of 77 Dream Songs but even in this smaller work find little semblance of structure. They search for a " storyÕ of a struggle for mental health at the heart of the dream songs" (418), and find a general movement of these poems from HenryÕs sadness to his lamentations to his institutionalization. Their ultimate judgment is that the 77 songsÑnevermind the book as a wholeÑamount to "interesting fragments and possibilities at best" (422) and find no profit in discussing them further.
Given the manically structured nature of individual songs, it seems unlikely that the entire poem lacks meticulous organization. Rosenthal and GallÕs treatment of Berryman suggests that any order is more authorial rambling than it may be real structural unity. They take especial issue with what they regard as BerrymanÕs "obnoxious intrusions" which, despite the bookÕs occasional fine moments, to overtly impose "dramatic context, by which the worldÕs woes... are meant to be felt as symbols of the poetÕs misfortune" (416). The author, in their view, simply intrudes too much in the text.
Joel Conarroe says of the SonnetsÕ structure that "there is a generally unobtrusive temporal framework [the sonnets begin in spring and end in fall], worth noticing but not, ultimately, terribly important" (John Berryman: An Introduction to the Poetry, 62). No pattern so easy can be placed on the Songs, although a number of sections, especially the earlier ones, have some internal dramatic coherence. A unity to the Songs will be, by any account, based not on any linear model but rather in terms of theme or character. What comes out at the end of this poem is, ultimately, the person HenryÑnot his life and adventures, but his dreams, his mental synapses in sleep. As dreams tend to last an extremely short time yet have enormous depth, so The Dream Songs can be viewed as the simultaneous firing of hundreds of synapses, images that blend to create the feel of a character to whom no definite concrete attribute can be attached.
Rosenthal and Gall call this BerrymanÕs preponderance for talking about himself, and for turning the whole world for the poetÕs own therapy. While "Henry is John Berryman" is a conclusion simple to draw, the least that can be said is that the Henry of the songs is an artificial, imaginary version of the real poet, that while the Songs are by no means impersonal, Henry is at least distant enough from Berryman that a reader can engage him without being forced to know a thing about the human creator.
Ultimately Henry does engage the reader. He is at times obnoxious, always incoherent, and to the twenty-first century reader the early blackface experiments have little effect. At times we are disgusted by Henry, at times we sympathize, and as often as not we only wish heÕd stop whining. These are attributes far more human than any biography, real or invented, can portray, and HenryÕs mind becomes a creation more real in its dreams than any concrete descriptions could hope to grasp. In discussing Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, Conarroe says Berryman succeeds in creating for Anne Bradstreet "a voice that, had she been born under different stars, might well have been her own" (83). The Homage mistressÕs archetype is the real person Anne Bradstreet, and likewise Henry, The Dream SongsÕ persona, is the voice of someone who is not but could have been BerrymanÑthe dream-worldÕs Everyman.
BerrymanÕs assertion that "the Songs are to be referred not to... the author but to the title of the work" is generally rejected by critics, who ignore the revealing nature of that titleÑdream songs. Many parts of the poem seem to be autobiography veiled so thinly as to be almost laughable; Connaroe says that "anyone who reads the songs carefully will reject the assertion that they are about an imaginary character" (95), but ultimately Henry, for all his similarities to the man John Berryman, is dreamt up, and even where Berryman writes blatantly about Berryman, it must be remembered that the poet is presenting a self conjured up through memory, imagination, ultimately his own dreams. That is to say, even if one reads the Songs as a completely autobiographical work, one must remember that it is BerrymanÕs imaginary version of Berryman that has been placed on paper. Thus Henry, and thus the claim that these songs must be read as dreams, as manifestations, not broadcasts, of a personality, not a person..
Whatever resemblance the poemÕs persona may or may not have with the man named John Berryman is irrelevant to its reading. Berryman is such a strong character, and his poetry appears so personal, that it is difficult to avoid combining the work and the self, but this is quite unnecessary. One intent on psychoanalyzing the poet may use the Songs as material, but a critical reading of the poetry, while it may use details of BerrymanÕs biography to offer possible interpretations of HenryÕs dreams, should strive to avoid drawing any conclusions, from the Songs, about the poet himself. What weÕre interested in ultimately is the creation, and we care about the man only insofar as biographical details lead to a better understanding of the poetry. (Sometimes, indeed, tacking a biographical explanation to a line can limit rather than increase possibilities for interpretation.) The poetry should, however (and does) operate convincingly and dramatically even if presented as a work by Anon.
While this paper will strive to make comments and assumptions about the character Henry and not the man John Berryman, comparison of BerrymanÕs biography with HenryÕs life is too inviting to resist. Connaroe claims that "anyone who reads the songs carefully will reject the assertion that they are about an imaginary characterÑsome details, of course, are invented, but the sequence adheres closely to the facts of the poetÕs life and mind" (95). BerrymanÕs real biography is clearly a model for HenryÕs dreams, but it does not follow that the dreams are about Berryman and not Henry. It may be unfair to analyze Henry and apply the findings to Berryman, but there is certainly a good deal of Berryman in Henry, and this paper will indulge in using BerrymanÕs life to elucidate parts of HenryÕs character.
HenryÕs persistent meditations on suicide compound the poem throughout, far moreso than in BerrymanÕs earlier long poems. There is a case in the Sonnets (7) where the persona recalls a discussion on suicide that he had with his lover Lise. Lise had been appalled that a suicide off of the Empire State Building would not take care to avoid injuring others (in this case landing on someoneÕs car). The persona hadnÕt understoodÑ"I said a man, life in his teeth, could care/ Not much just whom he spat it on" (lines 6-7). While the Sonnets certainly arenÕt about suicide, the speakerÕs sympathy with suicides is a motif still unchanged in these late Songs. In song 283 "two souls so eager for their pain... have just dropt in" (lines 8-9) to the sea and Henry recalls a point in his youth when he was "in love with life/ which has produced this wreck" (17-18)ÑHenry, presumably, being that wreck. In other songs, to his father or to Sylvia Plath, Henry seems to end up always sympathizing with the suicide.
In Song 166 Henry strains himself, cracks his limbs, harms everything but his ears, in a monumental attempt to hear. "Thus his art started," in a striving from the "VenusÕ foam" of the sea toward the shore, where he believed he would find the ears he needed. He forsakes the seaÑhis mother (line 11), puts his entire body to harm, to get to the shore.
The third line of this song seems to refer to HenryÕs fatherÕs suicide. There are many references in the poem that seem to point to a suicide-dead father; as BerrymanÕs father killed himself I assume that HenryÕs did likewise, in HenryÕs dreams if not in reality (assuming there exists for Henry a reality beyond dreams). So "one childhood illness" is the trauma of experiencing a fatherÕs suicide, and the gunshots dulled childhood ears. ItÕs these ears that he needs to get back, they are waiting on "the grand shore" (line 8).
"Only his ears set with his theme/ in the splices of his pride." ThereÕs some suggestion that it is HenryÕs ability to hear that gives him identity as an individualÑ"his ears," "his theme," have been deprived him, and he strains all else to get free from his motherÕs grasp, this hearing taken from him so long ago remains unharmed. It is the only part of Henry that his mother, the sea, does not control. HenryÕs faculty of hearing has belonged to his father ever since those ears reported the sound of the gunshot. This, then is HenryÕs theme: his father, and to reach his father he must escape his mother, "the almost unbearable smother." This song suggests that ears, and the faculty of hearing, play a special place in HenryÕs dreams; they are associated with his father.
A song of hearing is followed by a string about books. "[L]iterature must spread, you understand" (song 169, lines 5-6) says Henry, whose arm has recovered from the bonebreaking escape to shore, so that he may "scratch his baffled head" (15). One arm is recovered; it seems that Henry has only one arm. In the poem that brings this up, 170, Henry mulls over his death, considers returning to that mother-sea he finally left behind (17-18). Identifying himself with Mark Twain Henry asks the critics after his death to "back down" (7), not to "alter the best anecdote/ that he ever invented" (11-12). Henry pleads not even to be analyzed, to be "free of dons & journalists," only to return to his sea.
The sea is another frequent image in the Songs. In Song 166 its "Venus foam" seems to be a mother, crushing the persona as he strains all but his ears in a dash for the father-shore. At the beginning of Book VII, Henry begins a sea voyage to Ireland, and while the water is not at first directly mentioned, it lies under the songs in a physical sense. Here the sea is the means for traveling, and the trip is a respite from "the war for bread" and "for status" (279), and from "AmericaÕs perpetual self-laud" (280). No longer is Henry scrambling out of it to preserve himself, but he rather rides deliberately over the sea to Ireland, "the haunts of Yeats" (281), where he hopes to make considerable progress in finishing out his dreams, that "other new book-O" (279). The sea returns him, while not to home, to a retreat where it is promised that he will be able to rest, concentrate, and work seriously.
Works that may have been Cited by the time this paper is in its final draft
Bawer, Bruce. The Middle Generation: The Lives and Poetry of Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Robert Lowell. Hamden: Archon Books, 1986.
Berryman, John. BerrymanÕs Sonnets. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967.
---. Homage to Mistress Bradstreet. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967.
---. The Dream Songs. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: John Berryman. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
Conarroe, Joel. John Berryman: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. New York; McGraw Hill, Inc., 1979.
Linebarger, J. M. John Berryman. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc, 1974.
Mazzaro, Jerome. Postmodern American Poetry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980.
Rosenthal, M. L. and Sally M. Gall. The Modern Poetic Sequence: The Genius of Modern Poetry. New York; Oxford University Press, 1983.
Smith, Ernest J. "John BerrymanÕs ÔProgrammaticÕ for The Dream Songs and an Instance of Revision." Journal of Modern Literature. Summer 2000: 429-439.
Travisano, Thomas. Midcentury Quartet: Bishop, Lowell, Jarrell, Berryman and the Making of a Postmodern Aesthetic. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999.
Unterecker, John. "Foreword." Conarroe xi-xix
Weiss, Ted. "The Long Poem: Sequence or Consequence." The American Poetry Review July/August 1993: 37-47.
Friday, November 15, 2002
Monday, November 11, 2002
The Geography of Grief:
Mapping BerrymanÕs Dream Songs
structure for the paper:
*brief introduction
*comment on a song from somewhere in the depths
* relate this to structure of poem as a whole
*explain analytical methods to be employed, proposed goal of paper
*comment on another song, near end or beginning
*relate this to context of BÕs earlier works
*discussion of earlier works, analysis of a sonnet or two
*relate this to a song
*relate this to a part/whole of Homage
*analyze a few more songs, relate them to previously mentioned pieces
*as more analyses are entered, drawing conclusions will take up more space in each analysis. Last analysis should be a preface to drawing conclusions from The Dream Songs as a whole
*make generalizations about Henry, suggestions as to what makes the Songs a coherent piece, if indeed it is
The briefest glance tells us that The Dream Songs will be complex. The songsÕ highly regularized form, and the numerology of their compilation, indicate that they must be read scrupulously, and even an approximate understanding of any single song must take into consideration its consistency with or variation from the "dream song form," with reference to surrounding songs, and with reference to the songÕs placement in the poem as a whole. This paper shall undertake several case studies of specific songs, using certain analytical tools which will be described, and will synthesize these case studies in an attempt to locate a framework or partial understanding of what it is that coheres these pieces into a single song, what the poem is "about."
BerrymanÕs very title suggests that any search for meaning in his poem will be problematic. Familiar as he was with Freudian jargon, it is undoubtable that our poet intended his work to be read on multiple layers of meaning, not directly allegorical but full of subterfuges and blind alleys, that their manifest structure and content, like that of a dream, serves not to elucidate but rather to obfuscate any latent, "deeper" content. The text of any song may be "about" any number of things, but the subtext must be read in terms of metaphor, slippage, and the subtle structures and structural variations within particular pieces. This paper will not assume any ability to deduce the "true" meaningof any particular song, and will not make speculations concerning the real person John Berryman, but will rather seek to illuminate possible readings of various songgs as examples for a reading of the poem at large, and will use its findings to suggest possible traits of the fictive and elusive Henry. A reader may wish to believe that Henry is John Berryman (and thatÕs certainly not a difficult presumption) and from there assume certain things about the poetÕs character; these assumptions may have a degree of truth, but this paper takes the position that anything we "discover" about Henry can, if read metaphorically, apply to any human, and as we most often see in a text most clearly those things weÕve brought to it, any psycho- or character analysis of John Berryman through his writing will likely reveal more about the analyst than about the poet. Tread lightly.
"I have strained everything except my ears," marvels Henry in song 166, yet his ears are "too dull," and he rises from the sea to gather "all them ears."
In Song 166 Henry strains himself, cracks his limbs, harms everything but his ears, in a monumental attempt to hear. "Thus his art started," in a striving from the "VenusÕ foam" of the sea toward the shore, where he believed he would find the ears he needed. He forsakes the seaÑhis mother (11), puts his entire body to harm, to get to the shore.
So what, in this poem, are the sea and the shore?
Why is hearing on the shore?
Why is escape from the sea a thing to be striven for?
While this paper will strive to make comments and assumptions about the character Henry and not the man John Berryman, comparison of BerrymanÕs biography with HenryÕs life is too inviting to resist. (thereÕs a good quote to go here) It may be unfair to analyze Henry and apply the findings to Berryman, but there is certainly a good deal of Berryman in Henry, and this paper will indulge in using BerrymanÕs life to elucidate parts of HenryÕs character.
I state this in an attempt to defend my assertion that the third line of this song refers to HenryÕs fatherÕs suicide. There are many references in the poem that seem to point to a suicide-dead father; as BerrymanÕs father killed himself I assume that HenryÕs did likewise, in HenryÕs dreams if not in reality (assuming there exists for Henry a reality beyond dreams). So "one childhood illness" is the trauma of experiencing a fatherÕs suicide, and the gunshots dulled childhood ears. ItÕs these ears that he needs to get back, they are waiting on "the grand shore" (line 8).
"Only his ears set with his theme/ in the splices of his pride." ThereÕs some suggestion that it is HenryÕs ability to hear that gives him identity as an individualÑ"his ears," "his theme," have been deprived him, and he strains all else to get free from his motherÕs grasp, this hearing taken from him so long ago remains unharmed. It is the only part of Henry that his mother, the sea, does not control. HenryÕs faculty of hearing has belonged to his father ever since those ears reported the sound of the gunshot. THis, then is HenryÕs theme: his father, and to reach his father he must escape his mother, "the almost unbearable smother."
This song suggests that ears, and the faculty of hearing, play a special place in HenryÕs dreams; they are associated with his father.
A song of hearing is followed by a string about books. "[L]iterature must spread, you understand" (song 169, lines 5-6) says Henry, whose arm has recovered from the bonebreaking escape to shore, so that he may "scratch his baffled head" (15). One arme is recovered; it seems that Henry has only one arm. In the poem that brings this up, 170, Henry mulls over his death, considers returning to that mather-sea he finally left behind (17-18). Identifying himself with Mark Twain Henry askse the critics after his death to "back down" (7), not to "alter the best anecdote/ that he ever invented" (11-12). Henry pleads not even to be analyzed, to be "free of dons & journalists," only to return to his sea.
the next one contemplates PlathÕs suicide
Bawer, Bruce. The Middle Generation: The Lives and Poetry of Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Robert Lowell. Hamden: Archon Books, 1986.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: John Berryman. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
Conarroe, Joel. John Berryman: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. New York; McGraw Hill, Inc., 1979.
Linebarger, J. M. John Berryman. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc, 1974.
Mazzaro, Jerome. Postmodern American Poetry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980.
Rosenthal, M. L. and Sally M. Gall. The Modern Poetic Sequence: The Genius of Modern Poetry. New York; Oxford University Press, 1983.
Smith, Ernest J. "John BerrymanÕs ÔProgrammaticÕ for The Dream Songs and an Instance of Revision." Journal of Modern Literature. Summer 2000: 429-439.
Travisano, Thomas. Midcentury Quartet: Bishop, Lowell, Jarrell, Berryman and the Making of a Postmodern Aesthetic. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999.
Unterecker, John. "Foreword." Conarroe xi-xix
Weiss, Ted. "The Long Poem: Sequence or Consequence." The American Poetry Review July/August 1993: 37-47.
Fitzgerald, Terence J., ed. Police in Society. New York: H.W. Wilson, 2000.
Calvez, Leigh. "By the Time We Have Proof." Ocean Realm Spring 2000: 41-47.
Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Collection. Ed. Editor's
Name(s). Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. Pages.
Harris, Muriel. "Talk to Me: Engaging Reluctant Writers."
A Tutor's Guide: Helping Writers One to One. Ed. Ben Rafoth.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000. 24-34.
Peterson, Nancy J., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.
Author. Title of Book. City of Publication: Publisher, Year.
Mapping BerrymanÕs Dream Songs
structure for the paper:
*brief introduction
*comment on a song from somewhere in the depths
* relate this to structure of poem as a whole
*explain analytical methods to be employed, proposed goal of paper
*comment on another song, near end or beginning
*relate this to context of BÕs earlier works
*discussion of earlier works, analysis of a sonnet or two
*relate this to a song
*relate this to a part/whole of Homage
*analyze a few more songs, relate them to previously mentioned pieces
*as more analyses are entered, drawing conclusions will take up more space in each analysis. Last analysis should be a preface to drawing conclusions from The Dream Songs as a whole
*make generalizations about Henry, suggestions as to what makes the Songs a coherent piece, if indeed it is
The briefest glance tells us that The Dream Songs will be complex. The songsÕ highly regularized form, and the numerology of their compilation, indicate that they must be read scrupulously, and even an approximate understanding of any single song must take into consideration its consistency with or variation from the "dream song form," with reference to surrounding songs, and with reference to the songÕs placement in the poem as a whole. This paper shall undertake several case studies of specific songs, using certain analytical tools which will be described, and will synthesize these case studies in an attempt to locate a framework or partial understanding of what it is that coheres these pieces into a single song, what the poem is "about."
BerrymanÕs very title suggests that any search for meaning in his poem will be problematic. Familiar as he was with Freudian jargon, it is undoubtable that our poet intended his work to be read on multiple layers of meaning, not directly allegorical but full of subterfuges and blind alleys, that their manifest structure and content, like that of a dream, serves not to elucidate but rather to obfuscate any latent, "deeper" content. The text of any song may be "about" any number of things, but the subtext must be read in terms of metaphor, slippage, and the subtle structures and structural variations within particular pieces. This paper will not assume any ability to deduce the "true" meaningof any particular song, and will not make speculations concerning the real person John Berryman, but will rather seek to illuminate possible readings of various songgs as examples for a reading of the poem at large, and will use its findings to suggest possible traits of the fictive and elusive Henry. A reader may wish to believe that Henry is John Berryman (and thatÕs certainly not a difficult presumption) and from there assume certain things about the poetÕs character; these assumptions may have a degree of truth, but this paper takes the position that anything we "discover" about Henry can, if read metaphorically, apply to any human, and as we most often see in a text most clearly those things weÕve brought to it, any psycho- or character analysis of John Berryman through his writing will likely reveal more about the analyst than about the poet. Tread lightly.
"I have strained everything except my ears," marvels Henry in song 166, yet his ears are "too dull," and he rises from the sea to gather "all them ears."
In Song 166 Henry strains himself, cracks his limbs, harms everything but his ears, in a monumental attempt to hear. "Thus his art started," in a striving from the "VenusÕ foam" of the sea toward the shore, where he believed he would find the ears he needed. He forsakes the seaÑhis mother (11), puts his entire body to harm, to get to the shore.
So what, in this poem, are the sea and the shore?
Why is hearing on the shore?
Why is escape from the sea a thing to be striven for?
While this paper will strive to make comments and assumptions about the character Henry and not the man John Berryman, comparison of BerrymanÕs biography with HenryÕs life is too inviting to resist. (thereÕs a good quote to go here) It may be unfair to analyze Henry and apply the findings to Berryman, but there is certainly a good deal of Berryman in Henry, and this paper will indulge in using BerrymanÕs life to elucidate parts of HenryÕs character.
I state this in an attempt to defend my assertion that the third line of this song refers to HenryÕs fatherÕs suicide. There are many references in the poem that seem to point to a suicide-dead father; as BerrymanÕs father killed himself I assume that HenryÕs did likewise, in HenryÕs dreams if not in reality (assuming there exists for Henry a reality beyond dreams). So "one childhood illness" is the trauma of experiencing a fatherÕs suicide, and the gunshots dulled childhood ears. ItÕs these ears that he needs to get back, they are waiting on "the grand shore" (line 8).
"Only his ears set with his theme/ in the splices of his pride." ThereÕs some suggestion that it is HenryÕs ability to hear that gives him identity as an individualÑ"his ears," "his theme," have been deprived him, and he strains all else to get free from his motherÕs grasp, this hearing taken from him so long ago remains unharmed. It is the only part of Henry that his mother, the sea, does not control. HenryÕs faculty of hearing has belonged to his father ever since those ears reported the sound of the gunshot. THis, then is HenryÕs theme: his father, and to reach his father he must escape his mother, "the almost unbearable smother."
This song suggests that ears, and the faculty of hearing, play a special place in HenryÕs dreams; they are associated with his father.
A song of hearing is followed by a string about books. "[L]iterature must spread, you understand" (song 169, lines 5-6) says Henry, whose arm has recovered from the bonebreaking escape to shore, so that he may "scratch his baffled head" (15). One arme is recovered; it seems that Henry has only one arm. In the poem that brings this up, 170, Henry mulls over his death, considers returning to that mather-sea he finally left behind (17-18). Identifying himself with Mark Twain Henry askse the critics after his death to "back down" (7), not to "alter the best anecdote/ that he ever invented" (11-12). Henry pleads not even to be analyzed, to be "free of dons & journalists," only to return to his sea.
the next one contemplates PlathÕs suicide
Bawer, Bruce. The Middle Generation: The Lives and Poetry of Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, Robert Lowell. Hamden: Archon Books, 1986.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: John Berryman. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
Conarroe, Joel. John Berryman: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. New York; McGraw Hill, Inc., 1979.
Linebarger, J. M. John Berryman. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc, 1974.
Mazzaro, Jerome. Postmodern American Poetry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980.
Rosenthal, M. L. and Sally M. Gall. The Modern Poetic Sequence: The Genius of Modern Poetry. New York; Oxford University Press, 1983.
Smith, Ernest J. "John BerrymanÕs ÔProgrammaticÕ for The Dream Songs and an Instance of Revision." Journal of Modern Literature. Summer 2000: 429-439.
Travisano, Thomas. Midcentury Quartet: Bishop, Lowell, Jarrell, Berryman and the Making of a Postmodern Aesthetic. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999.
Unterecker, John. "Foreword." Conarroe xi-xix
Weiss, Ted. "The Long Poem: Sequence or Consequence." The American Poetry Review July/August 1993: 37-47.
Fitzgerald, Terence J., ed. Police in Society. New York: H.W. Wilson, 2000.
Calvez, Leigh. "By the Time We Have Proof." Ocean Realm Spring 2000: 41-47.
Author(s). "Title of Article." Title of Collection. Ed. Editor's
Name(s). Place of Publication: Publisher, Year. Pages.
Harris, Muriel. "Talk to Me: Engaging Reluctant Writers."
A Tutor's Guide: Helping Writers One to One. Ed. Ben Rafoth.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000. 24-34.
Peterson, Nancy J., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.
Author. Title of Book. City of Publication: Publisher, Year.
Monday, November 04, 2002
Threes in Rumplestiltskin
In a fairytale poem one would expect the writer to operate in threes; Sexton does not fail to do this in "Rumplestiltskin." There are of course the mentioned threes: the three times the dwarf spins straw into gold, the three rewards, three days to guess his name. The poem is also triple in construction, made up in many parts of groups of three lines: "Inside many of us/ is a small old man/ who wants to get out," "I am your dwarf./ I am the enemy within./ I am the boss of your dreams." The dwarf also repeats three magic times, "and no child will ever call me Papa."
There is another, binary construction to the poem. It is built in two sections of threes, split along the axis of the heroine's marriage. There are many couplets in the poem-- "And then the dwarf appeared/ to claim his prize." And while the fairy tale tells in threes, its characters are binary. Its two active characters, the girl and the dwarf, are presented as halves one of the other. From the start this poems villain is "[i]nside many of us," who says "I am the enemy within." That the dwarf appears to the girl in the outside is an anomaly; right at the beginning Sexton states that dwarves are Doppelgängers-- apparitions of the self. "Beware... Beware..."
And the internal conflict is conducted in twos. The dwarf pops in in a couplet (39-40), but identifies himself by the triple chant of impotency and turns his straw-weaving task in three successive shifts. His final demand is a couplet: "Give me your first-born/ and I will spin." (79-80) The couplet enacts the schizophrenic binary; the triplet a more measured ternary. A ternary is more comfortable than twos: it is the fairy tale's magic means of redemption. Two failures and then one success; two variations on a single theme. By uttering the same thing three times, a character is damned or liberated. Duality is much more problematic. There is no room for the necessary imbalance of thirds. Good and evil are given equal weight, and no third party is able to intervene and liberate.
In a fairytale poem one would expect the writer to operate in threes; Sexton does not fail to do this in "Rumplestiltskin." There are of course the mentioned threes: the three times the dwarf spins straw into gold, the three rewards, three days to guess his name. The poem is also triple in construction, made up in many parts of groups of three lines: "Inside many of us/ is a small old man/ who wants to get out," "I am your dwarf./ I am the enemy within./ I am the boss of your dreams." The dwarf also repeats three magic times, "and no child will ever call me Papa."
There is another, binary construction to the poem. It is built in two sections of threes, split along the axis of the heroine's marriage. There are many couplets in the poem-- "And then the dwarf appeared/ to claim his prize." And while the fairy tale tells in threes, its characters are binary. Its two active characters, the girl and the dwarf, are presented as halves one of the other. From the start this poems villain is "[i]nside many of us," who says "I am the enemy within." That the dwarf appears to the girl in the outside is an anomaly; right at the beginning Sexton states that dwarves are Doppelgängers-- apparitions of the self. "Beware... Beware..."
And the internal conflict is conducted in twos. The dwarf pops in in a couplet (39-40), but identifies himself by the triple chant of impotency and turns his straw-weaving task in three successive shifts. His final demand is a couplet: "Give me your first-born/ and I will spin." (79-80) The couplet enacts the schizophrenic binary; the triplet a more measured ternary. A ternary is more comfortable than twos: it is the fairy tale's magic means of redemption. Two failures and then one success; two variations on a single theme. By uttering the same thing three times, a character is damned or liberated. Duality is much more problematic. There is no room for the necessary imbalance of thirds. Good and evil are given equal weight, and no third party is able to intervene and liberate.
Sunday, November 03, 2002
So, I can debate with a critic, or apply a theory to a work of literature. best thing to do, i suppose, is go back through my notes.
i think that i can argue against Matthew Arnold pretty well. "see the object as it really is?" ha!
808 the function of criticism: to inform a mind, however bad criticism may also deform a mind.
my emphasis will be the function of criticism on the mind of a poetÑthis is to say, what happens between the time that a poet reads literature and writes s/th new. Ðthat is the moment of criticismÑthe poet interprets the work and implies the interpretation to his own work.
soÑall poets do criticism; tis merely whether the poet takes the time to formulate the criticism in writing, or jumps directly to new creation. a poet reads for the sake of the impact that the text will have on his mind and his work. a critic reads for the sake of describing/analysing the impact that the text has on his own mind, for the sake of cataloguing impacts. thus the critic serves two functions for the poetÑ1)presents an impact of a text alternate to the impact in the poetÕs own mind, thus expanding the impact of that text to the poet, or 2)if the poet has yet to read a text criticised, the criticism suggests what kind of impact the text is likely to have on the poetÕs mind; the poet can then decide whether this impact will be worthy, worthless, or even dangerous.
so the purpose of the critic is not to see the object as it really is, but to catalogue the impact as precisely as possibleÑthis would support my later argument that subjectivity is not only inevitable, but desirable. ie impact is necessarily subjective.
"Creative genius does not principally show itself in discovering new ideas, that is rather the business of the philosopher." --that is to say, the writer is a product of his epoch; the philosopher creates new epochs.
hereÕs the problemÑwhat is the source of the philosopherÕs discovery? where does the philosopher find the new ideas? in texts, naturally. and who writes the texts? ...there ya go
so, the poet has the new ideaÑdoes not formulate or catalogue it; merely the idea springs into the poetÕs mind (as a product of the epoch, no doubt)Ñand what the poet writes is then permeated with the idea. this is totally different from the theme, subject, or even philosophy of the work. these things are largely conscious. the idea is something new, something as yet undescribed which bubbles up as a product of the poetÕs surroundings. The poet himself is so immersed in the idea that he cannot recogvnise or describe it; rather, the poet has the idea.
The critic/philosopher then reads the text, discovers the idea, and catalogues it.
exÑMarx cataloguing the use of religion to oppress the people. This is largely unconscious. The religion was not cynically designed for oppression and control, and those who oppress and control do not deliberately, cynically (for the most part) manipulate the religion to oppress and control. Rather, a religion, by virtue of its being universally accepted, becomes the cog that holds a society togetherÑso the mechanism of an oppressive society runs on the structures of that societyÕs religion.
[a marxist analysis of the book of acts? or one of the gospels?]
A writer who uses religious metaphorÑor whose ideas are permeated with the religion of his societyÑdoes not then consciously employ religion to propagate a philosophy. However, there exists in the writerÕs mind the idea that religion is a controlling tool, and the writing reflects that. Writers as early as Homer described characters controlled by their religion, and in the case of the Iliad and Odyssey, divine intervention can be read as mere fantasy, or as metaphor for the ways belief systems were used to control the epicsÕ actors. The oath to protect Helen is a religious action; the kingsÕ deep belief in the divine implications of their oath allows them to be manipulated by Agamemnon into coming together to attack Troy. Agamemnon uses religion to control the kings of Greece.
Whether Homer was deliberately commenting on the uses of religion to exploit and destroy, the idea exists in the text and can be discovered by the Marxist critic. Homer had the idea, and wrote it; the philosopher/critic discovers the idea. So the poet is the source of all treasures (and garbage) dug up by the philosophers/critics.
or betterÑitÕs not hard to do a postcolonial analysis of Tolkien. To the modern critic, it takes little work to notice the Aryan purity of Middle EarthÕs "High" peoples, nor that the "foul" races/tribes tend to have dark hair and skin (the usually-accurate film gives dreadlocks, for examples, to the orcs), speak in gutteral tongues, and hail from the "South" or the "East."
It is doubtful that Tolkien bought into the notions of inherent racial superiority, but the idea permeates his myths (any myth, to be fair), to be noticed by later critics more sensitive to such judgments. The critic/theorist/philosopher does not invent the idea, but rather finds it, defends it, and annotates it.
Arnold never really explains what he means by "seeing the object in itself as it really is."
ConflictÑobject as it really is, v. function in the present eraÑie to see not the function of the object but its "true" self.
problem w/ objectivenessÑhow choose what to criticise? on what basis will one criticise? if one is to eat, how will one make sure that one is not subjectively influenced?
It is perhaps unfair to accuse a writer of making false predictions; however if a prediction is based on a theory, then it is certainly possible to find flaws with a theory by virtue of the fact that its predictions did not come true. Arnold suggests that the poets of the early nineteenth century, while splendidly creative, were so lacking in theoretical backbone that their works will hardly be remembered in the future. Yet today Romanticism is seen as perhaps the defining movement in English nineteenth-century literature, and the likes of Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and Coleridge are read far more widely than the poetry of Arnold and his contemporaries.
ArnoldÕs argument is principally with Wordsworth, who he is clever enough to admire. This mock admiration strengthens ArnoldÕs criticism; it is much easier to argue against someone who says "heÕs a bad poet" than against the critic who claims "HeÕs a genius! And if only heÕd read Goethe, he would be even better!" Arnold criticises Wordsworth for disparaging Goethe (and books in general) whithout reading much of him(/them). While "donÕt knock it until youÕve tried it" isnÕt a bad argument, WordsworthÕs rebuttal would have been effective: "I only have so many hours in a day; I should hardly waste my time doing something I consider worthless or even detrimental, when there is so much to be done!" Arnold replies that Wordsworth spent much time writing things of little value like "The Ecclesiastical Sonnets;" he would have been better off spending that energy to read more widely and write criticism.
Many writers will agree that every good line is built on the bones of a thousand failures. Writing bad poetry is not futile; it is a necessary background to good creation. It is the exercise which sharpens the writer in preparation for greater works. Often a writerÕs "greatest" works are those which sneak out unexpectedly. The poet spends so much time honing his skill on inferior verse that his instincts develop to the point where, one day on a seeming whim he jots down something brilliant as if instinctual (not to say there arenÕt innumerable drafts of even a halfway-great poem)Ñand itÕs the practice, the churning out of "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," which sharpens the instinct. Had Wordsworth spent the bulk of his time reading Goethe and writing criticism, and reserved poetry only for those moments when he was reasonably certain of resounding success, he would have penned few verses worth reading, if any at all. And possibly have become the worldÕs greatest critic, but thatÕs still our loss.
Reading always changes a person. It is impossible to encounter new ideas without being influenced (and not all influence is beneficial). WordsworthÕs ideal was for something of a raw, original poetry steeped in no tradition and influenced as little as possible by anything other than "nature." Whether he actually approached this ideal, and what influences he neglected to acknowledge, could be a matter of deep study, but at any rate if Wordsworth read some Goethe and found his ideas unimpressive (or worse, detrimental to WordsworthÕs own writing), then he was fully right to turn his energies away from the German author, and from any books which did not aid in his development of an original style, which served to constrain his worldview rather than develop it.
Arnold makes good arguments against himself in several places. He says the problem with the Romantics was that they wanted reading. Then he admits that many of them read heavily, and that many great poets have not. It was the lack of a "national glow of life and thought" and of "a culture and force of learning and criticism" that inherently limits the Romantics. Then he says, strange that the French Revolution did not inspire a generation of great writers, and explains what the Revolution lacked that it couldnÕt have done otherwise.
So the Romantics were not a "great" movement because their era lacked strong literary change and upheaval; the change and upheaval of the Revolution was not "literary" because it was associated with no great movement. (Granted that Arnold may refer here to the lack of a literary movement in France, but he does not deny the impact of FranceÕs experience on English thought, and by juxtaposing his ideas so closely he invites comparison.) The argument is painfully circular; and in our age that gives great importance to the Romantic era, we can use ArnoldÕs reasoning to say that the Revolution does count because it did inspire a generation as influential as the Romantics ultimately were.
Arnold says that the critics create the epoch, and the writer is made by the epoch. His observation that epochs of great writing and those of great criticism do not coincide but are obviously linked is valid and true; to say that one depends on the other, but never the reverse is a little shaky. Arnold seems to give all creative power to the critic/philosopher; the poets merely take great criticism and dress it up in verse. Being both a poet and a critic Arnold certainly benefits from this viewpoint: he is a great thinker and a great versifier. It is the critic/philosopher, he has said, who discovers all the ideas. Interesting that Arnold cares to use the term "discover" rather than "create." Who makes the ideas that the theorist discovers and describes? Where does the philosopher find the ideas? In literature, perhaps? The dialectic between writer and critic is more complex than Arnold perhaps allows, but giving him credit (to which he is amply due) we can perhaps say this: the poet has the idea, in a very undefined, noncerebral way. Why the idea comes to the poet at the time it does is, as Arnold suggests, probably a result of the writerÕs surroundings, of the conditions of the present time. The poet has the idea and is influenced by it in a nonintellectual way, and the poetÕs work is immersed in this as-yet-undefined idea. Other poets read the poetry and feel the idea; they are influenced by it in an ineffable way and their work ends up replicating their forms of this infectious idea. The critic then gets hold of this mass of work that is having such an impact (and often the critic is one of the new movement of writers), and discovers the ideaÑfinds it, identifies and catalogues its appearance, analyses its sources and influences, and adds it to the eraÕs cultural lexiconÑthe idea becomes a theory. New poets then start out with this idea no longer an ineffable spirit moving them to write, but as theoretical underpinnings for the creation of their own ideas.
Whether the critic or the artist then creates the epoch is difficult to say; the two certainly feed one off the other.
"The prescriptions of reason are absolute... to count by tens is the easiest way of counting [italics ArnoldÕs]." What he forgets is the curious existence of a number system based on twelves which, though less obvious than the decimal system, provides the foundation for our way of noting time; this suggests that somewhere, to someone influential, to count by twelves was the easiest way of counting. We can excuse our writer for not foreseeing that computers would count in twos, but the point is that the prescriptions of reason are at least as relative as they may appear absolute.
815 Arnold complains that contemporary English criticism is impure; it subserves interests not its own. Criticism ought to be kept in the pure intellectual sphere. Which intellectual pursuits he feels are pure is not addressed, nor why an intellectual goal is worthier than anything material. Sufficient to respond that as long as a critic has got to eat, he will be influenced by things other than pure theory. The well-to-do theorist, independently wealthy and able to take any stand without risking his livelihood, may feel that he has been afforded free play of the imagination, but the fact that he has few obvious material concerns already intrudes on his freedomÑhe does not know how to take material into consideration in his theorising. The material independence ois of course an illusion and one can effectively argue that one personÕs total freedom is supported by the slavery of a hundred. The point is that, while Arnold says that critics should operate free from interest, why should a disinterested person care enough to write? The things that we are truly disinterested in we ignore, and our judgments in those matters are equally ignorant. The Ugandan peasant is more or less disinterested in the results of a Central Floridian county council election, but we (rightly so) donÕt go to him for advice! The people informed enough to make relevant judgments are the ones who care, who have an interest in the matter at hand. This precludes the lack of bias.
Far better than ArnoldÕs elite who claim to be entirely disinterested, are the critics who admit their biases and are open about the interests they hold in the matter. A critic may not consciously give greater praise to books put out by his publisher, but it should be no surprise if he reads more of his publisherÕs books than others. Likewise, it is naturaly that the English-language canon should include mostly books written in English. It is not that Bengali and Japanese writers are inherently worse, rather we treat them as inferiors because we have less access to their workÑand what we do read is mostly in translation. Our knowledge and interests are biased, understandably, in favor of our native language. As long as we recognise this bias and try to work from within its framework rather than claiming objectivity, we are far more honest than ArnoldÕs supposedly disinterested critic, who refuses to admit that his "pure reason" is swayed by the worldÕs material limitations.
818 "The mass of mankind," claims Arnold, "will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them." This isnÕt the first time that our critic has pushed his silly notion that an idea ought to be seen "as it really is," and his disdain for people who are more interested in surviving than theorising is somewhat distasteful. Certainly there are more and less ludicrous ways of looking at something (the one who calls a hyaena a dog, we would say, is closer to the mark than one who likens the creature to iodized salt or a god) but to say that one is really true and another entirely wrong (hyaena salt is sweaty, and their power to destroy livelihoods by stealing goats is godlike) is to pretend that we can accomplish something super(or sub?)human, and even worse than to be entirely objective is to erroneously think that one even approaches a degree of objectivity, as this claim immediately disregards any opponent who is honest and self-aware enough to admit his bias.
As this paper argues for a self-aware subjectivity, it would be well to admit (briefly) its own biases. Its sociocultural backgrounds are apparent enoughÑthe paper is in English and contains all expected English-language biases, IÕve read the same stuff the rest of the class has readÑbut one other should be brought to light. The paper is written in a language that lacks a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. Rather than engaging in tongue-twisting innovations or awkward plurals, it call the undefined individual "he" because its male author instinctively assumes the "average" person to resemble himself. A ludicrous notion, but, I hope, no falser than any other.
i think that i can argue against Matthew Arnold pretty well. "see the object as it really is?" ha!
808 the function of criticism: to inform a mind, however bad criticism may also deform a mind.
my emphasis will be the function of criticism on the mind of a poetÑthis is to say, what happens between the time that a poet reads literature and writes s/th new. Ðthat is the moment of criticismÑthe poet interprets the work and implies the interpretation to his own work.
soÑall poets do criticism; tis merely whether the poet takes the time to formulate the criticism in writing, or jumps directly to new creation. a poet reads for the sake of the impact that the text will have on his mind and his work. a critic reads for the sake of describing/analysing the impact that the text has on his own mind, for the sake of cataloguing impacts. thus the critic serves two functions for the poetÑ1)presents an impact of a text alternate to the impact in the poetÕs own mind, thus expanding the impact of that text to the poet, or 2)if the poet has yet to read a text criticised, the criticism suggests what kind of impact the text is likely to have on the poetÕs mind; the poet can then decide whether this impact will be worthy, worthless, or even dangerous.
so the purpose of the critic is not to see the object as it really is, but to catalogue the impact as precisely as possibleÑthis would support my later argument that subjectivity is not only inevitable, but desirable. ie impact is necessarily subjective.
"Creative genius does not principally show itself in discovering new ideas, that is rather the business of the philosopher." --that is to say, the writer is a product of his epoch; the philosopher creates new epochs.
hereÕs the problemÑwhat is the source of the philosopherÕs discovery? where does the philosopher find the new ideas? in texts, naturally. and who writes the texts? ...there ya go
so, the poet has the new ideaÑdoes not formulate or catalogue it; merely the idea springs into the poetÕs mind (as a product of the epoch, no doubt)Ñand what the poet writes is then permeated with the idea. this is totally different from the theme, subject, or even philosophy of the work. these things are largely conscious. the idea is something new, something as yet undescribed which bubbles up as a product of the poetÕs surroundings. The poet himself is so immersed in the idea that he cannot recogvnise or describe it; rather, the poet has the idea.
The critic/philosopher then reads the text, discovers the idea, and catalogues it.
exÑMarx cataloguing the use of religion to oppress the people. This is largely unconscious. The religion was not cynically designed for oppression and control, and those who oppress and control do not deliberately, cynically (for the most part) manipulate the religion to oppress and control. Rather, a religion, by virtue of its being universally accepted, becomes the cog that holds a society togetherÑso the mechanism of an oppressive society runs on the structures of that societyÕs religion.
[a marxist analysis of the book of acts? or one of the gospels?]
A writer who uses religious metaphorÑor whose ideas are permeated with the religion of his societyÑdoes not then consciously employ religion to propagate a philosophy. However, there exists in the writerÕs mind the idea that religion is a controlling tool, and the writing reflects that. Writers as early as Homer described characters controlled by their religion, and in the case of the Iliad and Odyssey, divine intervention can be read as mere fantasy, or as metaphor for the ways belief systems were used to control the epicsÕ actors. The oath to protect Helen is a religious action; the kingsÕ deep belief in the divine implications of their oath allows them to be manipulated by Agamemnon into coming together to attack Troy. Agamemnon uses religion to control the kings of Greece.
Whether Homer was deliberately commenting on the uses of religion to exploit and destroy, the idea exists in the text and can be discovered by the Marxist critic. Homer had the idea, and wrote it; the philosopher/critic discovers the idea. So the poet is the source of all treasures (and garbage) dug up by the philosophers/critics.
or betterÑitÕs not hard to do a postcolonial analysis of Tolkien. To the modern critic, it takes little work to notice the Aryan purity of Middle EarthÕs "High" peoples, nor that the "foul" races/tribes tend to have dark hair and skin (the usually-accurate film gives dreadlocks, for examples, to the orcs), speak in gutteral tongues, and hail from the "South" or the "East."
It is doubtful that Tolkien bought into the notions of inherent racial superiority, but the idea permeates his myths (any myth, to be fair), to be noticed by later critics more sensitive to such judgments. The critic/theorist/philosopher does not invent the idea, but rather finds it, defends it, and annotates it.
Arnold never really explains what he means by "seeing the object in itself as it really is."
ConflictÑobject as it really is, v. function in the present eraÑie to see not the function of the object but its "true" self.
problem w/ objectivenessÑhow choose what to criticise? on what basis will one criticise? if one is to eat, how will one make sure that one is not subjectively influenced?
It is perhaps unfair to accuse a writer of making false predictions; however if a prediction is based on a theory, then it is certainly possible to find flaws with a theory by virtue of the fact that its predictions did not come true. Arnold suggests that the poets of the early nineteenth century, while splendidly creative, were so lacking in theoretical backbone that their works will hardly be remembered in the future. Yet today Romanticism is seen as perhaps the defining movement in English nineteenth-century literature, and the likes of Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and Coleridge are read far more widely than the poetry of Arnold and his contemporaries.
ArnoldÕs argument is principally with Wordsworth, who he is clever enough to admire. This mock admiration strengthens ArnoldÕs criticism; it is much easier to argue against someone who says "heÕs a bad poet" than against the critic who claims "HeÕs a genius! And if only heÕd read Goethe, he would be even better!" Arnold criticises Wordsworth for disparaging Goethe (and books in general) whithout reading much of him(/them). While "donÕt knock it until youÕve tried it" isnÕt a bad argument, WordsworthÕs rebuttal would have been effective: "I only have so many hours in a day; I should hardly waste my time doing something I consider worthless or even detrimental, when there is so much to be done!" Arnold replies that Wordsworth spent much time writing things of little value like "The Ecclesiastical Sonnets;" he would have been better off spending that energy to read more widely and write criticism.
Many writers will agree that every good line is built on the bones of a thousand failures. Writing bad poetry is not futile; it is a necessary background to good creation. It is the exercise which sharpens the writer in preparation for greater works. Often a writerÕs "greatest" works are those which sneak out unexpectedly. The poet spends so much time honing his skill on inferior verse that his instincts develop to the point where, one day on a seeming whim he jots down something brilliant as if instinctual (not to say there arenÕt innumerable drafts of even a halfway-great poem)Ñand itÕs the practice, the churning out of "Ecclesiastical Sonnets," which sharpens the instinct. Had Wordsworth spent the bulk of his time reading Goethe and writing criticism, and reserved poetry only for those moments when he was reasonably certain of resounding success, he would have penned few verses worth reading, if any at all. And possibly have become the worldÕs greatest critic, but thatÕs still our loss.
Reading always changes a person. It is impossible to encounter new ideas without being influenced (and not all influence is beneficial). WordsworthÕs ideal was for something of a raw, original poetry steeped in no tradition and influenced as little as possible by anything other than "nature." Whether he actually approached this ideal, and what influences he neglected to acknowledge, could be a matter of deep study, but at any rate if Wordsworth read some Goethe and found his ideas unimpressive (or worse, detrimental to WordsworthÕs own writing), then he was fully right to turn his energies away from the German author, and from any books which did not aid in his development of an original style, which served to constrain his worldview rather than develop it.
Arnold makes good arguments against himself in several places. He says the problem with the Romantics was that they wanted reading. Then he admits that many of them read heavily, and that many great poets have not. It was the lack of a "national glow of life and thought" and of "a culture and force of learning and criticism" that inherently limits the Romantics. Then he says, strange that the French Revolution did not inspire a generation of great writers, and explains what the Revolution lacked that it couldnÕt have done otherwise.
So the Romantics were not a "great" movement because their era lacked strong literary change and upheaval; the change and upheaval of the Revolution was not "literary" because it was associated with no great movement. (Granted that Arnold may refer here to the lack of a literary movement in France, but he does not deny the impact of FranceÕs experience on English thought, and by juxtaposing his ideas so closely he invites comparison.) The argument is painfully circular; and in our age that gives great importance to the Romantic era, we can use ArnoldÕs reasoning to say that the Revolution does count because it did inspire a generation as influential as the Romantics ultimately were.
Arnold says that the critics create the epoch, and the writer is made by the epoch. His observation that epochs of great writing and those of great criticism do not coincide but are obviously linked is valid and true; to say that one depends on the other, but never the reverse is a little shaky. Arnold seems to give all creative power to the critic/philosopher; the poets merely take great criticism and dress it up in verse. Being both a poet and a critic Arnold certainly benefits from this viewpoint: he is a great thinker and a great versifier. It is the critic/philosopher, he has said, who discovers all the ideas. Interesting that Arnold cares to use the term "discover" rather than "create." Who makes the ideas that the theorist discovers and describes? Where does the philosopher find the ideas? In literature, perhaps? The dialectic between writer and critic is more complex than Arnold perhaps allows, but giving him credit (to which he is amply due) we can perhaps say this: the poet has the idea, in a very undefined, noncerebral way. Why the idea comes to the poet at the time it does is, as Arnold suggests, probably a result of the writerÕs surroundings, of the conditions of the present time. The poet has the idea and is influenced by it in a nonintellectual way, and the poetÕs work is immersed in this as-yet-undefined idea. Other poets read the poetry and feel the idea; they are influenced by it in an ineffable way and their work ends up replicating their forms of this infectious idea. The critic then gets hold of this mass of work that is having such an impact (and often the critic is one of the new movement of writers), and discovers the ideaÑfinds it, identifies and catalogues its appearance, analyses its sources and influences, and adds it to the eraÕs cultural lexiconÑthe idea becomes a theory. New poets then start out with this idea no longer an ineffable spirit moving them to write, but as theoretical underpinnings for the creation of their own ideas.
Whether the critic or the artist then creates the epoch is difficult to say; the two certainly feed one off the other.
"The prescriptions of reason are absolute... to count by tens is the easiest way of counting [italics ArnoldÕs]." What he forgets is the curious existence of a number system based on twelves which, though less obvious than the decimal system, provides the foundation for our way of noting time; this suggests that somewhere, to someone influential, to count by twelves was the easiest way of counting. We can excuse our writer for not foreseeing that computers would count in twos, but the point is that the prescriptions of reason are at least as relative as they may appear absolute.
815 Arnold complains that contemporary English criticism is impure; it subserves interests not its own. Criticism ought to be kept in the pure intellectual sphere. Which intellectual pursuits he feels are pure is not addressed, nor why an intellectual goal is worthier than anything material. Sufficient to respond that as long as a critic has got to eat, he will be influenced by things other than pure theory. The well-to-do theorist, independently wealthy and able to take any stand without risking his livelihood, may feel that he has been afforded free play of the imagination, but the fact that he has few obvious material concerns already intrudes on his freedomÑhe does not know how to take material into consideration in his theorising. The material independence ois of course an illusion and one can effectively argue that one personÕs total freedom is supported by the slavery of a hundred. The point is that, while Arnold says that critics should operate free from interest, why should a disinterested person care enough to write? The things that we are truly disinterested in we ignore, and our judgments in those matters are equally ignorant. The Ugandan peasant is more or less disinterested in the results of a Central Floridian county council election, but we (rightly so) donÕt go to him for advice! The people informed enough to make relevant judgments are the ones who care, who have an interest in the matter at hand. This precludes the lack of bias.
Far better than ArnoldÕs elite who claim to be entirely disinterested, are the critics who admit their biases and are open about the interests they hold in the matter. A critic may not consciously give greater praise to books put out by his publisher, but it should be no surprise if he reads more of his publisherÕs books than others. Likewise, it is naturaly that the English-language canon should include mostly books written in English. It is not that Bengali and Japanese writers are inherently worse, rather we treat them as inferiors because we have less access to their workÑand what we do read is mostly in translation. Our knowledge and interests are biased, understandably, in favor of our native language. As long as we recognise this bias and try to work from within its framework rather than claiming objectivity, we are far more honest than ArnoldÕs supposedly disinterested critic, who refuses to admit that his "pure reason" is swayed by the worldÕs material limitations.
818 "The mass of mankind," claims Arnold, "will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas will always satisfy them." This isnÕt the first time that our critic has pushed his silly notion that an idea ought to be seen "as it really is," and his disdain for people who are more interested in surviving than theorising is somewhat distasteful. Certainly there are more and less ludicrous ways of looking at something (the one who calls a hyaena a dog, we would say, is closer to the mark than one who likens the creature to iodized salt or a god) but to say that one is really true and another entirely wrong (hyaena salt is sweaty, and their power to destroy livelihoods by stealing goats is godlike) is to pretend that we can accomplish something super(or sub?)human, and even worse than to be entirely objective is to erroneously think that one even approaches a degree of objectivity, as this claim immediately disregards any opponent who is honest and self-aware enough to admit his bias.
As this paper argues for a self-aware subjectivity, it would be well to admit (briefly) its own biases. Its sociocultural backgrounds are apparent enoughÑthe paper is in English and contains all expected English-language biases, IÕve read the same stuff the rest of the class has readÑbut one other should be brought to light. The paper is written in a language that lacks a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. Rather than engaging in tongue-twisting innovations or awkward plurals, it call the undefined individual "he" because its male author instinctively assumes the "average" person to resemble himself. A ludicrous notion, but, I hope, no falser than any other.
Monday, October 28, 2002
Transformations is Anne Sexton’s venture into narrative poetry. Her fairytales are told almost prosaically, but with unusual metaphors, anachronisms, and introductory commentaries, these pieces really are transformed.
“Rumplestiltskin” flips the old trickster-fable into a commentary about the dual nature of one’s own identity.
Rumplestiltskin and identity.
who is R?
dwarf
wart
silly little man
one of the magi
papa
Doppelgänger
small old man
little thing
no-sex
mortal
ridiculous
woman
barbed hook
R as the queen’s own construction
In “Rumplestiltskin,” Sexton presents the dwarf as an extension of the queen’s own personality, her “evil side” trying to get out. If Rumplestiltskin represents something evil, then the fairytale—both here and it its classic form—poses a dilemma. The queen needs the dwarf; he saves her from the king’s wrath. He is evil only in the sense that he demands a price the queen is unwilling to pay but must. Rumplestiltskin is a usurer.
A usurer, and in Sexton’s reading, an aspect of the queen’s own character. The “little old man trying to get out.”
This paper refers to the heroine as “the queen,” although she does not acquire that title until halfway through the piece. This is done for the sake of expediency; she is otherwise unnamed and “queen” is a short, simple title.
Names of the double in Rumplestiltskin
Doppelgänger: with this title, Rumplestiltskin is reduced (or empowered?) to a ghost of the queen’s own self. The adversary/helper as an entity of one’s consciousness gives him an unusually mystic role. How does one conquer a Doppelgänger? By naming it, Sexton says. If, as is suggested, the queen’s enemy is inside her, then victory is won merely by identifying the foe.
In her search for identity, the first names the queen suggests are Melchior and Balthazar—traditionally, two of the wise men who sought Jesus at his birth. This suggests the queen’s son as a kind of savior (and why did she want a child so badly?), but posits his seekers as not merely worshipers but kidnapers, replacement parents. Indeed, Rumplestiltskin as “papa” is a rather central idea. “No child will ever call me Papa,” he cries three magic times, and that desire for parenthood controls him throughout the piece. “[B]eing mortal/ who can blame him?” asks Sexton, undermining Rumplestiltskin’s supernatural characteristics. Rumplestiltskin is a father in need of a child.
With “Truman’s asexual voice,” Sexton’s Doppelgänger identifies himself as “your dwarf,... the law of your members.” In a world of subconscious and conscious, Rumplestiltskin is the subconscious, not the rational “grandfather of watchfulness” but a more instinctive bodily impulse. The “asexual voice” is somehow frighteningly sexual; Rumplestiltskin’s chant “nobody will ever call me Papa” is somehow more disturbing in its impotence than the king’s virile threats. And it is, arguably, Rumplestiltskin’s lack of sex that makes him the danger—he is unidentifiable.
The dwarf is frightening and powerful in his lack of (or freedom from?) sexual identity (though he is called “he”). It is this hidden identity that gives him power. The straw-into-gold business seems almost peripheral to the dwarf’s insistence on his vague “no child will ever call me Papa.”
“Rumplestiltskin” flips the old trickster-fable into a commentary about the dual nature of one’s own identity.
Rumplestiltskin and identity.
who is R?
dwarf
wart
silly little man
one of the magi
papa
Doppelgänger
small old man
little thing
no-sex
mortal
ridiculous
woman
barbed hook
R as the queen’s own construction
In “Rumplestiltskin,” Sexton presents the dwarf as an extension of the queen’s own personality, her “evil side” trying to get out. If Rumplestiltskin represents something evil, then the fairytale—both here and it its classic form—poses a dilemma. The queen needs the dwarf; he saves her from the king’s wrath. He is evil only in the sense that he demands a price the queen is unwilling to pay but must. Rumplestiltskin is a usurer.
A usurer, and in Sexton’s reading, an aspect of the queen’s own character. The “little old man trying to get out.”
This paper refers to the heroine as “the queen,” although she does not acquire that title until halfway through the piece. This is done for the sake of expediency; she is otherwise unnamed and “queen” is a short, simple title.
Names of the double in Rumplestiltskin
Doppelgänger: with this title, Rumplestiltskin is reduced (or empowered?) to a ghost of the queen’s own self. The adversary/helper as an entity of one’s consciousness gives him an unusually mystic role. How does one conquer a Doppelgänger? By naming it, Sexton says. If, as is suggested, the queen’s enemy is inside her, then victory is won merely by identifying the foe.
In her search for identity, the first names the queen suggests are Melchior and Balthazar—traditionally, two of the wise men who sought Jesus at his birth. This suggests the queen’s son as a kind of savior (and why did she want a child so badly?), but posits his seekers as not merely worshipers but kidnapers, replacement parents. Indeed, Rumplestiltskin as “papa” is a rather central idea. “No child will ever call me Papa,” he cries three magic times, and that desire for parenthood controls him throughout the piece. “[B]eing mortal/ who can blame him?” asks Sexton, undermining Rumplestiltskin’s supernatural characteristics. Rumplestiltskin is a father in need of a child.
With “Truman’s asexual voice,” Sexton’s Doppelgänger identifies himself as “your dwarf,... the law of your members.” In a world of subconscious and conscious, Rumplestiltskin is the subconscious, not the rational “grandfather of watchfulness” but a more instinctive bodily impulse. The “asexual voice” is somehow frighteningly sexual; Rumplestiltskin’s chant “nobody will ever call me Papa” is somehow more disturbing in its impotence than the king’s virile threats. And it is, arguably, Rumplestiltskin’s lack of sex that makes him the danger—he is unidentifiable.
The dwarf is frightening and powerful in his lack of (or freedom from?) sexual identity (though he is called “he”). It is this hidden identity that gives him power. The straw-into-gold business seems almost peripheral to the dwarf’s insistence on his vague “no child will ever call me Papa.”
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