Burnt Norton, Section III, and IV

Analysis to follow, by the Grace of God.

III

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.



IV

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?

Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

The Seven Mechanical Arts

Hugh of St. Victor explains the Seven Mechanical Arts in his book, Didascalion: Concerning the Art of Reading. Basically, the Didascalion is the How to Read a Book of the twelfth century. In it, Hugh provides instruction for the students entering the school of the monastery of St. Victor in Paris. The first half of the work covers the twenty-one arts, how to study them, and what to read concerning them. The second half of the work deals with Scripture and other sacred writings. Among the twenty-one arts, Hugh includes the Seven Mechanical Arts: fabric making, armament, commerce, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and theatrics.

Fabric making is all kinds of weaving, braiding, sewing, twisting, etc. with materials of wool, flax, hemp, jute, hide, etc. to make clothes, sails, coverings, sacks, etc. (This is the short summary; Hugh’s list is quite extensive.)

Armament originally meant weapons, but through a lengthy etymology, Hugh shows that this science applies to the making of all tools or instruments. Thus, armament has two divisions: constructional and craftly. Constructional armament includes building houses and walls. Craftly armament includes everything that is made in the forge or foundry.

Next up is commerce. It’s just what you think it is: all buying and selling of goods both foreign and domestic.

Moving on to agriculture, we find four types of land: arable, used for sowing; plantation, used for trees and vineyards; pastoral, used for sheep and cattle; and floral, used for gardens and roses.

All hunting is divided into three parts: gaming, fowling, and fishing. Hugh also includes all preparation of food by cooking. He notes that there are two kinds of food: bread and side dishes (everything else).

The two studies of medicine are occasions and operations. Occasions are the six reasons for good or bad health: air, motion and quiet, emptiness and satiety, food and drink, sleep and wakefulness, and reactions of the soul. All operations are interior (medicine) or exterior (surgery).

Finally, Hugh comes to theatrics. Theatrics contains all types of public entertainment, including sports.

The Seven Mechanical Arts are so-called because they contain all things produced by human artifice. Hugh sees these arts as lesser than the Seven Liberal Arts because the Liberal Arts require the use of the mind, whereas the Mechanical Arts require the use of the body. For Hugh, the body is inherently inferior to the mind, and the great goal in life is to move beyond the body (he does lean towards Gnosticism). Hugh recommends the study of the Mechanical Arts, but prefers the Liberal Arts, since he believes that they renew the image of God in man.

Work Cited

Hugh of St. Victor. The Didascalion of Hugh of St. Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts. Translated by Jerome Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Delights of "A Clear Midnight"

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best,

Night, sleep, death, and the stars.

Walt Whitman, “A Clear Midnight”

From its first phrase, “A Clear Midnight” builds an aura of wonder. Whitman carefully develops the mood to lift the soul in contemplation. But, how does this short poem so easily move one to quiet meditation? Elements are the key. Every letter is perfectly chosen to fit the mood of a line. After establishing the poem’s quiet, elevated mood in the first line, the next three move the reader from the excitement of activity to the peace of meditation. A true master, Whitman uses the elements of sound and rhetorical devices to delight and inspire the reader’s own soul.

In the first clause, Whitman creates a hushed setting. Entirely lacking mute consonants, “This is thy hour O Soul” (line 1) impresses the reader with a quiet and gentle ambiance. While the liquid letters establish a peaceful tone for the poem, the words inspire a meditative mood in the reader. Whitman begins contemplation of abstract truth with a direct address to the intangible soul. Combined with soft sounds of the consonants and long vowels, the elevated language of “O Soul” works from the quiet setting and lifts the reader into meditation.

The rise is punctuated and confirmed by the emphasis on “flight.” In the first line, only “flight” ends with a consonantal mute, while the other words are full of vowels, liquids and semivowels. Even the other two stops in “into” and “wordless” are softened by vowels and gentler consonants. According to Mary Oliver, “Within a line, use of a mute sound is like a tiny swoon, a mini-caesura” (Oliver 61). As the reader is forced to pause at the end of the word, he is given time to picture the implied metaphor. The alliteration in “free flight” ties the words together and brings up the traditional metaphor of the soul as a dove. By using slightly more powerful letters in the second phrase, Whitman and further lifts the reader’s thoughts builds up his exhilaration.

The second line builds off this energy to move the reader out of pressures and distractions. With a long vowel in “away,” Whitman places a distance between the soul and the business of the day. This is also emphasized his avoidance of mentioning the word “soul” in the line. Without even a pronoun reference, the soul is completely disconnected from both the line and the demanding work it represents. Whitman establishes the day’s agitation with heavy mutes in “books” and “art.” The oppressive consonants build the feeling that if the soul does not escape, books and art will trample it. Whitman demonstrates this detachment with the line’s ending. As the d’s enclose “day erased,” one can see the whole day closed and put away just like a book. At midnight, the soul leaves all distractions and finishes the day. Even so, another mute consonant in “done” emphasizes the break from stress while the liquid n closes both the line and the reader’s mouth. Whitman builds up the antagonistic energy with the power of mutes and uses the visual absence of the soul to argue that, as in the line, the soul must break with the day’s pressure and fly away to the quiet of midnight to meditate.

After establishing the flight from the cares of the day, Whitman transitions back to the soul and its meditation by returning to the softer voiced “Thee” and “thou.” With the opening vowels and consonant clusters he presents a fall from the forceful energy in the second line. Mary Oliver explains that liquids “suggest softness, fluency, motion” while a mute “is an enforcer of the self-containment, and so the certainty, of what has been said” (Oliver 61). Thus, the rest of the line returns to the initial sense of quiet elation by swelling the energy from the opening th’s to the gentler g’s within “emerging” to the hard t’s closing “lovest best.” In the description of the soul, one word stands out from the parallel –ing suffixes. “Silent” is not only set apart from the balance, but its t ending also helps to elevate it above the rest of the line. Like “wordless” from the first line, it hits on the poem’s main point. When the soul is engaged in meditation, it has no words to describe the beauty it contemplates.

As it rebuilds a meditative mood, the third line also returns to a more cheerful attitude. Whitman develops the thoughtfulness by using increasingly more forceful words. Yet, even with more stops, as in “gazing” and “pondering,” only the t’s particularly stand out. As the line ends, several technical devices focus the reader’s attention on the last two words. Once again, the reader lingers over the words because of the mutes’ natural pause. Furthermore, the slight rhyme ties together “lovest best” and multiplies the impact of the pleasant word and positive superlative. These devices effect a happy feeling as the soul fully embarks on its journey of wondering meditation.

The poem’s upward flight reaches its crescendo in Whitman’s final line. Fittingly, each of the beginning three words has a natural punch from a consonantal mute. Since they are the substance of the soul’s contemplation, “night,” “sleep,” and “death” rightly stand out from the rest of the poem. The hard consonants, however, also set them apart from the rest of the line and emphasize their significance. But, the stops only symbolize the weight that each word carries in its own meaning and the silence inherent in each. Although the first few words of the line hit the reader with their quiet heaviness, Whitman does not leave the reader depressed and weighed down. Rather, he ends the poem on a pleasant note.

The very last word perfectly encapsulates Whitman’s excellent use of words and sounds. In the end, Whitman again lightens and elevates the mood by metaphorically lifting the reader’s gaze to “the stars.” The final word inspires the soul in its meditative hour to think of great things outside itself. Here is the full culmination of the poem as the reader saying the last a in “stars” physically drops his jaw like the soul in silent wondering meditation in “A Clear Midnight.” Thus, Whitman proves his masterful use of sounds and letters, which gives the poem its inspirational power and encourages the reader to join the soul’s contemplative wonder.

Works Cited

Oliver, Mary. Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.

Whitman, Walt. “A Clear Midnight.” From Leaves of Grass, 1900. Bartleby. 17 April 2006. http://www.bartleby.com/142/283.html

The Tragicomedy of Victor Hugo

I have not yet read Les Miserables in its entirety. This probably counts as a personal failing for a Literature major, but there stands the awful truth. I have, however, read most of it and listened to the musical several dozen times. I’ve just finished reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo’s other great work. While Les Mis is celebrated in music, verse, and movies, Hunchback exists in relative obscurity. Some argue it was written simply because Hugo wanted an excuse to write a travel book for Paris and the Bell Ringer of Notre Dame had a useful perspective.

Yet, as I read it, it occurred to me that they are almost the same story, yet one is driven by virtue and ends as a comedy, while the other is driven by vice and ends as a tragedy. Both figure the rejects of society. Jean Valjean, a convict, and Quasimodo, a cripple with little power of speech—both are feared and despised, and both, coincidently, are given shelter by churchmen. Yet while the bishop forgives Valjean his faults and urges him towards a higher life and serve humanity, the priest of Hunchback urges Quasimodo to shun the world, to seek only his company and to flee his humanity.

This is the first great break of the novel. Valjean’s sense of his forgiveness and love of people leads him to compassion for Fantine, to adopt Cossete, and save Marius’ life. Quasimodo’s inexperience and fear starves him of affection so deeply that when he loves, he loves as one obsessed, he has no way to form friendship with either the priest or Phoebus, the young soldier, and as a result dooms the one he loves, the dancer Esmeralda.

Esmeralda stands as the equivalent of Cossete. But where Cossete chooses to obey her father and submit to an external rule. Esmeralda is entirely guided by her passions—most powerfully, her infatuated love of Phoebus. But where Cossete recognizes a higher law than that love, Esmeralda will sacrifice honor, family, and culture for Phoebus’ whim. Cossete is rewarded with a loving husband and a good marriage, while Esmeralda meets tragedy. Fantine and Esmeralda’s mother also have interesting parallels, but I would hate to reveal all the plot twists.

Finally, there are the young men of the story. Phoebus is a young braggart who lives only for his own pleasure. He seduces Esmeralda in the night, but refuses to acknowledge her existence by daylight. Even when she stands falsely accused for his attempted murder. He wants a rich wife to secure his own comfort and promotion-he knows no higher goal. Marius, though young and headstrong, lives to serve: his country, his family, and soon, Cossete. While Phoebus only takes, Marius can’t wait to offer up his own life.

There are numerous other parallels, Javier and Frollo’s sense of justice, the convict versus the gypsy in society, the treatment of fallen and holy women and the similarities thereof, but those I leave to your discovery.