W B Yeats 1885 – 1939 … a symbolist (Ezra Pound) … W  B Yeats the most cited name in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland.

Here are some words from Yeats on his philosophy and thinking on poetry.

‘A poet writes always of his private life’ … the autobiographical component transmuted by storytelling, fantasy, symbol and also history. I would tend to agree with this in that everything we say and write defines us in some way or other.

Yeats claimed that ‘all sounds, all colours, all forms … evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions … because an emotion does not exist until it has found an expression … poets, painters, and musicians … are continually making and unmaking mankind’

In an essay on the philosophy of Shelley’s Poetry he wrote …

‘It is only by ancient symbols, by symbols which have numberless meanings … that any highly subject art can escape from the barrenness and shallowness of a too conscious arrangement, into the abundance and depth of nature’.

He believed there to be emotional and intellectual symbols … often personal … a product of an external force … evoking the shared human mind and memory (similar in ways to Jung’s collective unconscious)

In poetry it is symbolism that has the power to move people. I would argue that it is the association invoked by the symbolism that develops an emotive response by the reader.

He was certain that ‘imagination has some way of alighting on the truth that reason has not’

… and also intuition (my comment)

‘Symbolism began with the first words uttered by the first man, as he named every living thing; or before then in heaven when God named the world into being’ …

From Symons – The Symbolist Movement in Literature 1900

Concerning his basic philosophy … Yeats’ three famous beliefs …

1 … that the borders of our mind are ever shifting and that many minds can flow into one another … and create or reveal a single mind, or single energy.

 2 … that the borders of our memories are as shifting, memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.

 3 … that this great mind, memory can be invoked by symbols.

From ‘Magic’ essays and introductions’ … dated 1901 pp. 33,60

Those with a positive outlook might equate the essence of such a single mind to be that of beauty, of order, of joy, of healing, and of course love itself … and for the religious a spiritual communal dimension. Any intuitive thoughts?

Yeats also had an association with the occult …and I think this may have influenced Ted Hughes in his experimentation at university.

Yeats had an image for Ireland based on an agrarian society with few politician and tradesmen and a dominant class based on the landed gentry.

Other References:

Critics on Yeats – Readings in Literary Criticism ISBN 0 04 801012 X
The Twentieth Century in Poetry – Peter Childs ISBN 0 415 17101 6

God is not Nature, Nature God
But Nature product of the same
That from itself a God became
Of beauty beyond any name

Her more mature novels – Mrs Dalloway (MD) … To The Lighthouse … The Waves

To my knowledge Virginia Woolf¹ never wrote any poetry. However, I really enjoy  her words from her books … you could say there are sparks of the poetic as well as being profound, philosophic … consider Mrs Dalloway (MD) for example …

… from metonymy (an attribute stands for the thing itself) to metaphor … a multi-layered metaphoric stream of consciousness with a certain poetic lyrical flow … VW used a new approach in writing

… all about sensitive people living from one privileged moment to the next, passing through intervening periods of depression and doubt

And then thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning – fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

                          What a lark! What a plunge!

 For so it had always seen to her when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning, like the flap of the wave, the kiss of the wave … (page 3 MD)

Lark and plunge … Life and death … to build up or to close in … these are the two contending forces in MD … Clarissa is touched by both as she moves through her activities in arranging a party on a glorious June day … her parallel opposite is the shell-shocked Septimus Smith who disturbs her joie de vie.

Individuality and universality in irreconcilable opposition … each person seeks to be connected to the whole from which that person is alienated by individual existence.

… different people in different places at the same time … layered together in an underlying communion … reflected in the individual’s actions in ways unknown … exploring the extent and influence of such impressions made on the individual consciousness …

… did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her (page 9 MD)

 … somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, of the trees at home, … part of the people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best (pages 9-10 MD)

 … nothing exists outside us except a state of mind  … (page 62 MD)

 … the narrator is a consciousness born by the consciousness created from the characters in the novel … yet somehow apart … seeing all, knowing all perspectives … in the present as the present unfolds … including in the present the past remembered by the characters … the virtual present of the readers’ experience

… unity, reconciliation, communion well up spontaneously from within the characterisation

… the narrator is unknown but sensed by the characters … does the narrator have life outside the life of the characters and if this is the case then what is the nature of such individuality? … the vital questions.

VW’s ‘great discovery’ ² … ‘tunnelling process’ … to dig our beautiful caves behind her characters … humanity, humour, depth … the caves connect

VW philosophy … miraculous joy of the moment rises out of the commonplace, not from some transcendental source …

How moments like these are buds on the tree of life (MD page 31)

Foolishly, she had set them opposite each other. That could be remedied tomorrow. If it were fine, they should go for a picnic. Everything seemed possible. Everything seemed right. Just now (but this cannot last, she thought, dissociating herself from the moment while they were all talking about boots) just now she had reached security; she hovered like a hawk suspended; like a flag floating in an element of joy which filled every nerve of her body fully and sweetly, not noisily, solemnly rather, for it arose, she thought, looking at them all eating there, from husband and children and friends; all of this rising in this profound stillness (she was helping William Bankes to one very small piece more and peered into the depths of the earthenware pot) seemed now for no special reason to stay there like smoke, like a fume rising upwards, holding them safe together. Nothing need be said, nothing could be said. There it was all around them. It partook, she felt, carefully helping Mr Bankes to an especially tender piece, of eternity; as she had already felt about something different once before that afternoon; there is a coherence in things, a stability; something she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again tonight she had the feeling she had had once today already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that remains forever after. This would remain.

(from ‘To The Lighthouse’ … pages 113-114)

 Footnotes …

¹Virginia Woolf 1882 – 1941 …  father Sir Leslie Stephen …educated by her father’s magnificent library … member of ‘The Bloomsbury Group’ … lived in the cultured world of the London intelligentsia… bisexual … relationship with  Vita Sackville-West … worked with husband Leonard to found the Hogarth Press … depressive – suicided

Reference –

²Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse … contemporary critical essays … Edited by Su Read.  (New Casebooks – Macmillan)

The place names and characters in WH …

 Wuthering Heights (Earnshaw) v Thrushcorft Grange (Linton)

passionate hard brutal v comfortable soft refined

 Earnshaw

The children …

Hindley, Cathy – Heathercliff (Foundling)

Relationships …

Hindley–Francis (an outsider) > Hareton (son)

Heathecliff–Isabella > Linton (son)

 Linton

The children …

Edgar, Isablella

Relationships …

Edgar–Cathy > Catherine (daughter)

Isabella–Heathcliff  > Linton (son)

 Ellen Dean … housekeeper to both families at different times and one of the narrators

Lockwood … tenant of the Grange after control by Heathcliff … the second narrator of the story … a southern who would not understand the intensity of the wild north family

Other … Joseph, Zillah … W Heights

Note the apt choice of names … and initials …

It was common for the mother Catherine to become Cathy and the daughter to take the name Catherine.

The HC combination in the first generation  … then the forced revenge marriage of what was in fact a Linton marrying Linton in (Linton and Catherine) and then ending with some hope in the final relationship HC (Hareton – Catherine) in the second generation.

Reviewing the Book  …

Wuthering … a local word meaning atmospheric tumult.

The book may be difficult to read perhaps because there are two narrators and that there are breaks in the ‘time windows’ described. Actual windows play an important part … from Lockwood’s nightmare when forced to stay the night at the Heights … the children looking into the window of the Grange …to Lockwood looking into the window at the Heights at the end of the novel. The family relationships are quite simple and have a well-crafted and designed symmetry (see above).

The novel covers a 25 year period in two distinct parts before Cathy Earnshaw’s (Linton after marriage) death and then the life of the second generation after Cathy’s death. The first part establishes the foundation of the wild love between Heathcliff and Cathy, her ‘bad decision’ to marry Edgar. Then the return of a prosperous but revengeful Heathercliff and the dramatic effect this had on both households.

The remainder of the book deals with the influence of Heathcliff on the second generation. His revengeful acts both by his marriage to Isabella. Then the naming of his son Linton the dominance of Linton’s life and Heathcliff’s reciprocating ill-treatment on Hareton after the death of Francis after his own ill-treatment by Hindley. Heathcliff helps the destruction of Hindley by drink. He forces the marriage of Catherine to Linton to get control on the Grange but after the death of Linton when Catherine develops her relationship with Hareton he curtails his original resentment.

It is the age-old story of humanity connected to nature and the coming to terms with the different aspects of the human condition. The differences and the fragilities are set against the wild environment. The final integration of the two families (Catherine and Hareton) in a sort of happiness provides a calm – that is before the arrival of the next storm of course – hopefully not such as dramatic as the foundling Heathcliff.

The wild moors and the spiritual world is integrated in the characters … especially Catherine (Cathy) Earnshaw (Linton) … and after her death she haunts the rest of the book and becomes a ghost obsessive to the thoughts of the revengeful Heathercliff.

Some comments on Emily Bronte

Nature pervades all her writing … a longing to be connected to the forces of nature … her characters representatives of eternal truths.

Expressing high emotion in precise symbol and image is evident throughout the prose and poetry of Emily Bronte.

The open freedom of the moors was essential to Emily’s happiness and creativity. Writings involved themes of liberty and repression.

Charlotte in her memoir to the1850 editions of WH states … Liberty was the breath of Emily’s nostrils

Stronger than a man, simpler that a child her nature stood alone … Charlotte on her sister.

In her own family Emily supported the wayward brother Branwell when other family gave up on his misdemeanours.

She was influenced by the literary figures of her day … especially Byron and Scott.”

My favourite poem by Emily Bronte – ‘No Coward Soul is Mine’.

Remembering Jane Austen

It is interesting that the memorial originally placed in Winchester Cathedral makes no mention of her writing …

The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her, and the warmest love of her intimate connections. Their grief is in proportion to their affection they know their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they are consoled by a firm but humble hope that her charity, devotion, faith and purity, have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her redeemer.

… and fifty five years were to pass before a second tablet was added which included the words …

To Jane Austen known to many by her writings.

The inscription concludes with a quotation from the book of Proverbs …

She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

Here are the words of Jane Austen’s own prayer …

“May we now, and on each return of night, consider how the last day has been spent by us, what have been our prevailing thoughts, words and actions during it, and how far we can acquit ourselves of evil.”   (Memoir Works … ed . Chapman and Southam, Oxford University Press 1972 … Page 453)

… and Jane Austen did write some light verse … below is a poem obtained via this link …

Oh! Mr. Best, you’re very bad

Oh! Mr. Best, you’re very bad
And all the world shall know it;
Your base behaviour shall be sung
By me, a tunefull Poet.—

You used to go to Harrowgate
Each summer as it came,
And why I pray should you refuse
To go this year the same?—

The way’s as plain, the road’s as smooth,
The Posting not increased;
You’re scarcely stouter than you were,
Not younger Sir at least.—

If e’er the waters were of use
Why now their use forego?
You may not live another year,
All’s mortal here below.—

It is your duty Mr Best
To give your health repair.
Vain else your Richard’s pills will be,
And vain your Consort’s care.

But yet a nobler Duty calls
You now towards the North.
Arise ennobled—as Escort
Of Martha Lloyd stand forth.

She wants your aid—she honours you
With a distinguished call.
Stand forth to be the friend of her
Who is the friend of all.—

Take her, and wonder at your luck,
In having such a Trust.
Her converse sensible and sweet
Will banish heat and dust.—

So short she’ll make the journey seem
You’ll bid the Chaise stand still.
T’will be like driving at full speed
From Newb’ry to Speen hill.—

Convey her safe to Morton’s wife
And I’ll forget the past,
And write some verses in your praise
As finely and as fast.

But if you still refuse to go
I’ll never let your rest,
Buy haunt you with reproachful song
Oh! wicked Mr. Best!—

Jane Austen

An internal conversational poem by a woman concerning the movement of a man according to the lady-situation in that part of the country … Mr Best being not bad at all but just following his fancy filled freedom of his youth in searching for a suitable playmate … what do you think?

The Jane Austen the film ‘Becoming Jane’ … a 3 star rating … has a factual base but the fabric is its own creation. Apparently Jane was interested in another gentleman, besides Mr Lefroy, while at the coast on holiday. This fellow died mysteriously. Jane could have written ‘Persuasion’ based on this contact … a link to this film

Contrast

A door just opened on a street–
I, lost, was passing by–
And instant’s width of warmth disclosed,
And wealth, and company.
 
The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by,–
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.
 
Emily Dickinson
 
What a well-chosen word – enlighten – to give clarifying information to someone … and in this case the reader is enlightened to the state of the person represented in the text … I think it would be valid to assume Emily Dickinson had such an experience of misery … it is such a common occurrence …that is losing your way in a big city.
 
I have just seen the film ‘The Butler’ … there is a defining event concerning a very hungry person and exquisite cakes are in view but the window is a shutout to a hungry man as he walks the street.
 
But I think this poem is all about loss and loosing something perhaps you might have taken for granted. I must admit when overseas there comes a time when I really appreciate Oz and I guess we can easily generalize to many different situations when we experience loss and then it is highlighted by some other experience.
 
Black Becomes Blacker
 
Black
Black
Black
 
For a split second super-white
 
Blacker Black
Blacker Black
Blacker Black
 
You can use the above as a framework in creating your own contrast poem … and of course there are many variations on this theme … for example five stanzas (three black stanzas, one super-white then one blacker black) or if a sonnet eight black lines then six super-white/ blacker black. 
 
… and by the way you can buy super-white paint as well as just white.
 

Here are two contrasting sonnets. The first by local Canberra poet Suzanne Edgar looks at the sonnet in traditional form … in the well-dressed format (with rhyming scheme abab cdcd aeae ff) and I must admit I do like the traditional – the well dressed woman with a subtle surprise to her name. We are too often told to think outside the square so it is nice to recognize the delights that are within and I love that first line … a light flavor without being too descriptive.

INSIDE THE SQUARE Suzanne Edgar (see footnote below)

A sonnet is a squarish-looking thing
Steady on its feet and neat, compact,
Not flighty like a bird upon the wing
or stealthy burglar startled in the act.
Sonnets always wear their hats and gloves’ –
conservative is not a tag they shun.
They never flirt about with loose-lipped loves,
avoid the wayward line and careless run,
but still they have their forceful little fling
which often turns assumptions upside down
permitting fourteen lines to dance and sing.
So if you meet one, do hold back a frown.
With even beat to captivate your ear
The sonnet will outlive the sceptic’s jeer.

Of course it is also nice to look outside the square. Paul Hetherington, another local poet, has done exactly that in his definition words below. Perhaps the casual sonnet can be more expressive allowing the street poet to exhibit quite uninhibited music. I guess it all depends upon your own personal taste and whether you think it scores more when a disciplined tune.

CASUAL SONNET Paul Hetherington

The casual sonnet
entrances because
it has the ease
of modernity
and none
of the old strictures.
It is free to embrace
the unknowable music
that the street vendor hums
and has the grace
of an outdoor cat
groomed by sunlight,
its manners
irrelevant.

This is basically two sentences broken into the mandatory requirement and to be a little different the “volta” is after six lines and not eight.

Poets are always trying to create something a little different. Don’t you think they are naturally outside the square sort of people?

Footnotes …
 
INSIDE THE SQUARE was first published in Kevin Brophy & Judith Rodriguez ed,  The 155^th Sonnet by the Melbourne Shakespeare Society/ Hit & Miss Publications, Melb 2010; then in Suzanne Edgar’s The Love Procession 2012.

Paul Hetherington is an associate professor at the Canberra University on the team of the International Poetry Studies Institute.