October 31 and November 2
THE BEAR:
- He cannot see the bear until he gives up 3 things:
- his rifle
- his compass
- his watch
- because these things are mechanical and metal
- technically the knife kills the bear, not a rifle
- after all of these things are given up, he goes into the woods and has an epiphany, like Moses and the burning bush Exodus 3: 1-12
- Faulkner is difficult to understand because the way in which he says something is more important than what he is saying. (you need to conquer his style before you can appreciate and understand what he is saying)
- he writes in incantation
- he doesn't give instructions (like Hemingway), he describes it by finding the words to make the situation real, he writes it in the moment, so the reader can experience it, not just read it
"It isn't the shot that matters, it is the bullet rippling through the air" ~Faulkner
"A change of style is a change of subject" ~Stevens
Hints for reading Faulkner:
- read it fast
- read it outload
- the magic of reading outloud, like when Jim Dale reads the Harry Potter books for the tapes
- the story comes to life in a way that a movie could never do
- it is called 'secondary orality' , which is listening to what you did as a child
- the descriptive writing style that Faulkner uses come from the book of Judges, and is also seen in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
R. Ellison (Todd Clifton) -> Shakespeare (Antony) -> The Old Testament (Judges)
R. Ellison:
- "Here are the facts. He was standing and he fell. He fell and he kneeled. He kneeled and he bled. He bled and he died. He fell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood; red as any blood, wet as any blood and reflecting the sky and the buildings and birds and trees, or your face if you'd looked into its dulling mirror- and it dried in the sun as blood dries. That's all. They spilled his blood and he bled. They cut him down and he died; the blood flowed on the walk in a pool, gleamed a while, and, after a while, became dull then dusty, then dried." pg 449
Shakespeare:
- "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
- I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
- The evil that men do lives after them;
- The good is oft interred with their bones;
- So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
- Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
- If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
- And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
- Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
- For Brutus is an honourable man;
- So are they all, all honourable men--
- Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
- He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
- But Brutus says he was ambitious;
- And Brutus is an honourable man.
- He hath brought many captives home to Rome
- Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
- Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
- When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
- Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
- Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
- And Brutus is an honourable man.
- You all did see that on the Lupercal
- I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
- Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
- Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
- And, sure, he is an honourable man.
- I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
- But here I am to speak what I do know.
- You all did love him once, not without cause:
- What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
- O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
- And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
- My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
- And I must pause till it come back to me."
Judges:
- 5:24 Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent.
5:25 He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.
5:26 She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen's hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.
5:27 At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.
5:28 The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots?
5:29 Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself,
5:30 Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil?
Imagination and Wallace Stevens:
- Tat Tvam asi: that thou art (Hindu)
- ex) identity with integrative and connective powers of the mind- makes connections that others wouldn't find
- Neti Neti: not this not that
- ex) do not discriminate and separate, don't want to make connections.
- to strip away (disconnected) and find no meaning
Integrative person: a 'kitchen sink' person, who puts everything in, like James Joyce in 'Finnegans Way'
Discriminative person: leaves everything out, and uses language to it's minimum, like Samuel Beckett
"The greatest danger could be your own stupidity" ~fortune cookie
Imagination works in 2 ways:
- creative: see everything and connect everything
- Decreative: taught not to see, minimize everything
both of these work together to make an amazing imagination!
"even the absence of imagination has to be imagined"
"it is never the worst, as long as you can say it's the worst" ~King Lear
MY AMAZING PODCAST INFORMATION:
- 'The River of River's in Connecticut' was one of the last poems that Steven's ever wrote.
- He wrote it in his 70's, when 'he was infused with the realization of his own mortality'
- It is the only poem that he implicitly talks about death
- Stygia is the land around the Styx river in Greek mythology that separates the living from the dead
- the river is a metaphor for death
- Connecticut, in all of his poems is a 'region full of intonings" a place without description, but mysterious. It has imagination, desire and brings the world together
What I learned during the podcast:
- the philosopher Heraclitus said "You can't step into the same river twice"
- this shows that the poem is also about change, not just about death
- The ever changing river shows helps define change
- Stevens is always addressing a woman "the muse" in all of his poems
- "the imperfect is our paradise"
- Of Mere Being by Stevens
- "The more we know, the less we know" ~Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction
- Heaven distracts WS- it leaves our everything we have here:
- imperfection
- the act of becoming, not simply being
- no fall, everything is perfect
- no death at all
- no imagination
