A Modern Trilogy

Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable 

by Samuel Beckett

“In other words, or perhaps another thing, whatever I said it was never enough and always too much.”   ― Samuel Beckett, Molloy

Beckett's three great novels like his plays, break new ground in their structure and narrative. A bleak emptiness hovers throughout the three novels that one may consider a sort of trilogy. I was mesmerized from the opening pages of Molloy and wondered what it was in this bleak indeterminacy that was so beguiling. Reading slowly and closely I slowly found a method in this seemingly chaotic world. Drawn inward by moments of humor that counterposed the strange events, if they can be called that, I was drawn forward by the narrator even as the narrative itself seemed to be collapsing. These are three novels with so much wonder and ideas to think about that the attentive reader cannot fail to be impressed. I found these novels to be moving in a unique way and important additions to the literature of modernism.

In Samuel Beckett's novel, Molloy, the first sentence states bluntly, “I am in my mother's room.” This is followed on the first page of the novel with the phrase “I don't know” repeated five times, and if you add “I don't understand” and “I've forgotten” you have eight assertions of lack of knowing. How can or should the reader interpret those comments as establishing anything but a high level of uncertainty both about what the narrator (I) is telling us and what the narrator, may or may not, believe about himself and the world around him? Of most interest to this reader is the comment that the narrator would like to “finish dying” and that his mother is dead, although he is not sure exactly when she died.

What is the reader's expectation for the succeeding 167 pages of the novel based on the first page filled with uncertainty and death? There is work mentioned, but the pages he works on are filled with “signs I don't understand”. Can we say the same for ourselves as readers? At best we are left with snippets of possible information about a handful of others (the man who comes every week, they who may or may not have buried his mother, the son that he may or may not have, and the chambermaid without true love, and yet another who was the true love-whose name he has forgotten, repeatedly). As I reread these lines I cannot help but note the humor of the situation.

A Little Person in The Troubles

Milkman 

by Anna Burns

“People always said you'd better be careful. Though how, when things are out of your hands, when things were never really in your hands, when things are stacked against you, does a person - the little person down here on the earth - be that?”  ― Anna Burns, Milkman



Milkman is a unique historical novel told from the personal prospective of an unnamed young female narrator. Walking while reading, a girl - Middle sister - is pursued by the Milkman. This original sometimes mesmerizing narrative made me successively fascinated and bored with the dizzying rapidity of thoughts that connected - somehow, sometimes and ultimately. 

 The history is the setting of the novel during the time of the "Troubles". This refers to the conflict in Northern Ireland during the late 20th century. It was also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict and it is sometimes described as an "irregular war" or "low-level war". The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Among other awards it won the Booker Prize in 2018.

What makes Milkman unique, among other things, is that the narrative portrays the "Troubles" without using such terms as ‘the Troubles’, ‘Britain’ and ‘Ireland’, ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’, ‘RUC’ and ‘British army’ and ‘IRA’. On the other hand, the narrator’s personal, first-principles language, with its phrases coming at you so frequently with inverted commas and sudden changes of register, is also used to describe the inner world of a young woman ... 
“I used to puzzle over the extent of this anger, of all of ma’s blaming and haranguing and complaining. It was only much later that I came to realize that this was a case of her not forgiving him for many things – maybe for all things – and not just for not cheering up.”

It’s a brilliant rhetorical balancing act, and the narrator can sometimes be very funny. The tonal changes are subtle and the plot has some absurd moments, yet, while it is easy to overlook on a first reading, at least until the final stretch, there is a density and tightness of plotting behind the narrator’s apparently rambling performance. What’s more, the comic unfolding of the plot runs counter to the narrator’s tight sense of what can and can’t be said and done in her neighborhood, and, after a chilling final encounter with the milkman, the ending is a surprise and perhaps a relief.


The author uses imaginative language and her limited use of proper names creates a sort of distancing effect. The style of the novel is demanding, but as a reader your perseverance is rewarded in the end. I would compare the difficulty I encountered with its style to a similar difficulty that I experienced reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2004). While very different in many ways both of these difficult reads are worth the effort required.

A Spectre in Armour

The Canterville Ghost 

by Oscar Wilde

"The vulgarity of the twins, and the gross materialism of Mrs. Otis, were naturally extremely annoying, but what really distressed him most was, that he had been unable to wear the suit of mail. He had hoped that even modern Americans would be thrilled by the sight of a Spectre in Amour," - Oscar Wilde



This is a story by one of the greatest humorists of his or any age, so one should not be surprised when it turns out that the titular Ghost is not very scary. At least he is not scary to the American Minister to Great Britain and his family who bought Canterville Chase in spite of severe warnings that it was "haunted".


The ghost who haunts Canterville had died a hundred years ago and ever since had managed to scare the subsequent residents. That all changes when Mr.Hiram B. Otis, his wife, and four children take residence. Hiram is emphatic when he says, "I come from a modern country . . . I reckon that if there were such a thing as a ghost in Europe, we'd have it at home in a very short time in one of our public museums, or on the road as a show."

Needless to say, Wilde has fun with his parody of the hicks from America, but also pokes fun at the British lords with their cultural snobbery. What ensues is a topsy-turvy plot with the Ghost being flummoxed by the refusal of the Otis's to believe in him along with the mischievous activities of the youngest children, twins, who pester him on an almost daily basis.

The story is subtitled "A Hylo-Idealistic Romance" and as a romance it does have a sweet ending. Virginia, the only daughter in the family and a kind-hearted girl, becomes friends with the ghost. She gradually learns his background, appropriately sordid, and the story takes the reader on a supernatural journey befitting a "haunted house" tale. The result is one that benefits both the Ghost and Virginia, but you will have to read the story to learn the details. Let me say, however, that it was a delightful and satisfying story from the comic beginning to the romantic ending. It almost left me wanting to believe in ghosts, at least those that are as sympathetic as this creation of Oscar Wilde.

Poet for an Age

The Collected Poems

 of W.B. Yeats 

by W.B. Yeats

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart;"
- "The Second Coming"



I have enjoyed the poetry of William Butler Yeats for many years as evidenced by my well-worn copy of his Complete Poems. But there is more to enjoy when considering this protean author for throughout his long life, William Butler Yeats produced important works in every literary genre, works of astonishing range, energy, erudition, beauty, and skill. His early poetry is memorable and moving. His poems and plays of middle age address the human condition with language that has entered our vocabulary for cataclysmic personal and world events.

"O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
("Among School Children", p 105)

The writings of his final years offer wisdom, courage, humor, and sheer technical virtuosity. T. S. Eliot pronounced Yeats "the greatest poet of our time -- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language" and "one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them."
He was also a great poetic chronicler of his homeland as can be seen in these lines:

"The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans."
("The Wild Swans at Coole", p 131)

There are always new things to be learned, new sounds to sing to, and new beauty by which to be possessed, when reading and meditating on the poetry of this masterful author.

Humor in the Silence

Waiting for Godot 

by Samuel Beckett

“We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! (He advances towards the heap, stops in his stride.) In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness!”   ― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Waiting for Godot is set nowhere, but in a place that is somewhere we know not.  The set is spare: a tree, a rock, the backdrop and the foreground. At the end of each act night falls and a full moon appears. The setting is in reality the stage. It is a stage that characters inhabit, walk on and off, look to the distance where they see no more than the audience which is nothing.  Estragon and Vladimir spend two days waiting, waiting for Godot to come. He does not come but instead sends a small boy with a message that Mr. Godot will surely come tomorrow. In each act there is an interlude with a visit by two itinerants, Lucky and his boss Pozzo.

The production of Waiting for Godot by the Druid Theatre Company of Ireland that I saw last week was a revelation.  Having read and studied the play I knew what words to expect, but the actors, through their movement and reactions, brought out the humor that is one aspect of the essence of this great drama.  When they used the silences to bracket their words and demonstrated a camaraderie that was visceral and transcendent made this an exceptional afternoon of theater.

There is deep meaning in the happening of the words and actions of this play. It views thinking as a strange, ludicrous activity; the actors pass the time in activity - dancing, talking or saying nothing at all, exchanging hats and meditating on the nature of their boots.  The beauty and feeling that the actors display is difficult to put into words.  You may read the play as I have before and will likely again, but to see it on the stage provides a perspective that cannot be achieved by reading.  My afternoon was one where I could delight in the beauty of the magic of theater thanks to a handful of actors and one Samuel Beckett.

An Irish Family

The Green Road 

by Anne Enright

“Far below were the limestone flats they called the Flaggy Shore; grey rocks under a grey sky, and there were days when the sea was a glittering grey and your eyes could not tell if it was dusk or dawn, your eyes were always adjusting. It was like the rocks took the light and hid it away. And that was the thing about Boolavaun, it was a place that made itself hard to see.”   ― Anne Enright, The Green Road

The Green Road is a family narrative told through place and time. The writing demonstrates real lives filled with compassion and selfishness and effortlessly carries the reader forward. It is a thoroughly Irish book that considers issues both modern and traditional through that lens. Our Thursday night book group enjoyed it for a variety of reasons that led to a lively discussion. I found the writing style and the structure of the book the best aspects, even while some of the characters, not all, were somewhat opaque. The story explored both the gaps in the human heart and family tensions in our modern age.

The story unfolds over decades with the first half of the book constructed from vignettes that might stand on their own as short stories. These stories explore the lives of the children of Rosaleen, matriarch of the Madigans, a family on the cusp of either coming together or falling irreparably apart. Each of the four Madigan children and their mother Rosaleen receive a chapter of their own beginning with Hannah Madigan. Hannah's chapter focuses on a family member as a child and deals with her relationship with her father. She is traumatized by viewing the culling of a chicken for dinner on her grandmother's farm. Dan Madigan's story jumps forward to 1991 during his time in New York with his fiance as his repressed homosexuality comes to the fore during the AIDS epidemic. He gradually accepts his life and begins living in Canada with a life partner. Constance Madigan's chapter is based in 1997 Limerick and considers her domestic roles of mother and wife. She is seen balancing the concerns of her health that make her face her own mortality. Emmet has traveled to Mali in 2002 and works with impoverished children even as he is haunted by previous relief work he has been involved with. All the while his relationships are slowly deteriorating.

Rosaleen, in her early old age, announces that she's decided to sell the house and divide the proceeds. Her adult children come back for a last Christmas, with the feeling that their childhoods are being erased, their personal history bought and sold. The second part of the book focuses on this homecoming as the story comes together through a combination of memories and family interactions. This was the best section of the book for this reader. It is where the home becomes a character as much as the Matriarch and her children.

The book is a pleasure to read through the story of the family and the author's beautiful prose. The story about a family's desperate attempt to recover the relationships they've lost and forge the ones they never had becomes a profoundly moving work.

A Favorite Poet

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats 

by W.B. Yeats

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” 

― W.B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds

I have enjoyed the poetry of William Butler Yeats for many years as evidenced by my well-worn copy of his Complete Poems. But there is more to enjoy when considering this protean author for throughout his long life, William Butler Yeats produced important works in every literary genre, works of astonishing range, energy, erudition, beauty, and skill. His early poetry is memorable and moving. His poems and plays of middle age address the human condition with language that has entered our vocabulary for cataclysmic personal and world events.

"O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
("Among School Children", p 105)

The writings of his final years offer wisdom, courage, humor, and sheer technical virtuosity. T. S. Eliot pronounced Yeats "the greatest poet of our time -- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language" and "one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them."

There are always new things to be learned when reading and meditating on the poetry of this masterful author.  But I often return to his greatest poems like "The Second Coming".  It was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the first World War. The version of the poem below is as it was published in the edition of Michael Robartes and the Dancer dated 1920.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

― W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Flawed Friendship

How Many Miles To Babylon? 

by Jennifer Johnston

How many miles to Babylon?
Four score and ten, sir.
Will I get there by candlelight?
Yes and back again, sir.. 
- Traditional Nursery Rhyme


With a title referencing a traditional nursery-rhyme this novel retraces some familiar ground. How Many Miles to Babylon presents issues of friendship, family, class and war. What makes the novel worthwhile is the fine writing style of the author. Both the description of the desolation of Ireland as seen from the eyes of the impressionable youths and the experience on the fields of Flanders as it ends their innocence is well told.

The story begins, however, with the complex tale of a friendship between two boys in Ireland prior to and during World War I. Alec, the son of Anglo-Irish parents grows up lonely and friendless on his parents' estate in Wicklow during the early years of the 20th century. His parents have a difficult relationship and it is stated that "their only meeting place was the child." He meets a local boy, Jerry, who shares his passion for horses. Alec's mother, who believes strongly in the class system of early twentieth century Ireland, discovers the friendship and forbids him to spend any more time with Jerry. Their friendship is one that transcends their differences in class and character.

I found the psychology of the family triangle of Alec, his over-bearing mother and his deferential father to be the most interesting aspect of this slight novel. Their friendship is continued in private until the outbreak of the First World War. Jerry signs up as his father is already in the British Army and the King's Shilling would be of great benefit to his mother. Alec feels no compulsion to sign up until his mother tells Alec that his father Fredrick is not his biological father and in that moment he is so frustrated with his mother he impulsively signs up. In France the two friends are stationed together, but now divided by rank as well as class. They are commanded by Major Glendinning, a ruthless officer who shares Alec's mother's belief in the class system and divisions between rank, demanding that there be 'no flaw in the machinery'. When Jerry learns that his father is missing, he leaves to find out what happened to his father leading to a tragic ending.

While the end of the story is apparent from the opening pages, the complex and lyrical style of the author held my interest and kept me reading to discover the story behind the sad beginning. Another view of the tragic nature of the Great War, this short novel resonates with better and more substantial fictions and I would recommend readers turn, or return, to Erich Maria Remarque's magnificent All Quiet on the Western Front for the seminal version of this tragic turning point in World history.

Tales of Dublin

Dubliners 
by James Joyce



“Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascent to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable lonliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own.”   ― James Joyce, Dubliners



Dubliners was Joyce’s first publication of prose and the only collection of his short stories published during his lifetime. Arriving two years before A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, it contains stories that depict the Irish middle class at the height of the Home Rule period when the island was wrestling with its identity under British rule. Rereading Dubliners is always a real joy, particularly due to Joyce's command of language. The variety within the collection emanates from Joyce's Irish experiences, which constitute an essential element of his writings. Many of the issues faced by the characters in this collection highlight the concerns of many early 20th-century Irish: class, Catholicism, nationalism, modernity vs tradition, and infidelity. It is penetrating in its analysis of the stagnation and paralysis of Dublin society. The stories were written at the time when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences.

Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses. The initial stories in the collection are narrated by children as protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. They often focus on his idea of an epiphany: a moment when a character experiences a special moment of self-understanding or illumination.

Joyce's writing in Dubliners is neutral; he rarely uses hyperbole or emotive language, relying on simplistic language and close detail to create a realistic setting. This ties the reader's understanding of people to their environments. He does not tell the reader what to think, rather they are left to come to their own conclusions (in stark contrast to the moral judgments displayed by earlier writers such as Charles Dickens). The stories frequently demonstrate a lack of traditional dramatic resolution. It has been argued by some critics that Joyce often allows his narrative voice to gravitate towards the voice of a textual character.
For example, the opening line of 'The Dead' reads "Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet." She is not, in this instance, "literally" run off her feet, and neither would Joyce have thought so; rather, the narrative lends itself to a misuse of language typical of the character being described.

Joyce often uses descriptions from the characters' point of view, although he very rarely writes in the first person. This can be seen in 'Eveline', when Joyce writes, "Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne". Here, Joyce employs an empirical perspective in his description of characters and events; an understanding of characters' personalities is often gained through an analysis of their possessions. The first paragraph of 'A Painful Case' is an example of this style, as well as Joyce's use of global to local description of the character's possessions. Joyce also employs parodies of other writing styles; part of 'A Painful Case' is written as a newspaper story, and part of 'Grace' is written as a sermon. This stylistic motif takes a more prominent role in Ulysses (for example, in the Aeolus episode, which is written in a newspaper style).

The collection as a whole displays an overall plan, beginning with stories of youth and progressing in age to culminate in 'The Dead'. This, the longest work in the collection, concerns a university professor who attends an annual party and dinner with his wife. Here he learns that his wife had been in love with a young boy named Michael Furey who had died tragically many years ago. The professor soon begins to realize that he had never, and would never, be as close to his wife as she had been to the dead young man. A short yet powerful tale, The Dead draws parallels between the loss of life and the loss of love, using the desolate backdrop of an Irish winter to emphasize the desolation of the characters. The story was later adapted into an acclaimed film by the legendary director John Huston.

Great emphasis is laid upon the specific geographic details of Dublin, details to which a reader with a knowledge of the area would be able to directly relate. The multiple perspectives presented throughout the collection serve to present a broad view of the social and political contexts of life in Dublin at this time.  The combined effect of Joyce's magic with prose is a wonderful collection of stories that provide, in my estimation, the best introduction to his writing that a reader could wish for.


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A Young Man's Muse

A Portrait of the Artist 
as a Young Man 
by James Joyce


"I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile and cunning." - James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man



James Joyce's autobiographical A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published on this day in 1916 (after having appeared serially in the literary magazine The Egoist in 1914-15). 
I first read this novel during my participation in the Four-year Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago. I have since read and reread this classic work by James Joyce. It is a portrait in words of the coming-of-age of a young boy in Ireland. As a portrait its words resonate with the ideas of Aristotle and the faith of Roman Catholicism and the spirit of music. Music, especially singing, appears repeatedly throughout A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen's appreciation of music is closely tied to his love for the sounds of language. I remember being told by a close friend that Father Arnall’s sermon on Hell was the same sermon she heard while a youth in a catholic neighborhood in Chicago more than fifty years later. Stephen is attracted to the church for a brief period but ultimately rejects austere Catholicism because he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being human.

From the opening lines, “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo”, Stephen grows in awareness and towards his artistic destiny through the words that delineate the world around him. Joyce's use of stream of consciousness makes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a story of the development of Stephen's mind through words as he grows through experience. Stephen's development gives us insight into the development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the influences that transformed Joyce himself into the great writer he is considered today. Stephen's obsession with language; his strained relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an aesthetic of his own mirror the ways in which Joyce related to the various tensions in his life during his formative years. In the final moment when he goes "to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience" of his race he raises a banner that seems emblematic of the life of the author of this inspiring novel.


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Satiric Essay

Selected Prose and Poetry 
by Jonathan Swift



"The army of the Ancients was much fewer in number;  Homer led the Horse, and Pindar the Light-Horse;  Euclid was chief Engineer: Plato and Aristotle commanded the Bowmen, Herodotus and Livy the Foot, Hippocrates the Dragoons."


Jonathan Swift was one of the greatest satirists of his age and we still read his prose with delight for its wit and humor. This collection includes several examples of his satire with the essay "A Modest Proposal" being perhaps the best known. Early in his career as a prose stylist he wrote an essay that was equally witty while blending satire with polemics. That essay was "The Battle of the Books".

Mirroring an earlier literary argument in France was one in England where Sir William Temple published an answer to the "Moderns" entitled Of Ancient and Modern Learning in 1690. His essay introduced two metaphors to the debate that would be reused by later authors. First, he proposed that modern man was just a dwarf standing upon the "shoulders of giants" (that modern man saw farther because he begins with the observations and learning of the ancients). They possessed a clear view of nature, and modern man only reflected or refined their vision. These metaphors, would be continued in Swift's satire and others. Temple's essay was answered by Richard Bentley, the classicist and William Wotton, the critic. Temple was supported by friends and clients, sometimes known as the "Christ Church Wits," referring to their association with Christ Church, Oxford and the guidance of Francis Atterbury, then attacked the "moderns" (and Wotton in particular). The debate in England lasted only for a few years.

Notably, Jonathan Swift was not among the participants, though he was working as Temple's secretary. Therefore, it is likely that the quarrel was more of a spur to Swift's imagination than a debate that he felt inclined to enter. He worked for William Temple during the time of the controversy, and Swift developed his short satire entitled "The Battle of the Books" in which, there is an epic battle fought in a library when various books come alive and attempt to settle the arguments between moderns and ancients. In Swift's satire, he skilfully manages to avoid saying which way victory fell. He portrays the manuscript as having been damaged in places, thus leaving the end of the battle up to the reader.

The battle is not just between Classical authors and modern authors, but also between authors and critics. The prose is a parody of heroic poetry and not any too easy a read for such a short essay. One section of the essay that helped this reader immensely was the interruption in the combat in the "Battle" with an interpolated allegory of the spider and the bee. A spider, "swollen up to the first Magnitude, by the Destruction of infinite Numbers of Flies" resides like a castle holder above a top shelf, and a bee, flying from the natural world and drawn by curiosity, wrecks the spider's web. The spider curses the bee for clumsiness and for wrecking the work of one who is his better. The spider says that his web is his home, a stately manor, while the bee is a vagrant who goes anywhere in nature without any concern for reputation. The bee answers that he is doing the bidding of nature, aiding in the fields, while the spider's castle is merely what was drawn from its own body, which has "a good plentiful Store of Dirt and Poison." 

This allegory was already somewhat old before Swift employed it, and it is a digression within the Battle proper. However, it also illustrates the theme of the whole work. The bee is like the ancients and like authors: it gathers its materials from nature and sings its drone song in the fields. The spider is like the moderns and like critics: it kills the weak and then spins its web (books of criticism) from the taint of its own body digesting the viscera. The moderns were depicted as narrow-minded, filled with poisonous prose, and in general intellectual upstarts. In spite of this depiction the ancients were not without faults and the essay does not conclude with either side winning.

As satire it is fascinating if not exactly fun, and it is especially interesting to see the early use of metaphors like that of modern thinkers "standing on the shoulders of giants". As a reader who values the ancient classics I appreciate this discussion recognizing that there is room for new ideas as long as we do not neglect the foundation provided by the giants of the past.


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An Irish Girl in America

Brooklyn 
by Colm Tóibín

"In the silence that lingered, she realized, it had somehow been tacitly arranged that Eilis would go to America." (p 25)


“None of them could help her. She had lost all of them. They would not find out about this; she would not put it into a letter. And because of this she understood that they would never know her now. Maybe, she thought, they had never known her, any of them, because if they had, then they would have had to realize what this would be like for her.”   ― Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn

I recently viewed the movie, Brooklyn, based on Colm Toibin's novel.  It is a very fine film with some great performances, particularly by one of my favorite actresses, Julie Walters, who portrays the proprietess of the Brooklyn boardinghouse where the protagonist of the story, young Eilis, lives.   However, since the novel like all good books is so much richer and rewarding than the film, I am sharing my review from a few years ago.

   

Doors opened and closed, sunlight and shade, yesterdays and tomorrows; these are all motifs that come to mind as I consider the beauty of Colm Toibin's poignant novel, Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the tomorrow when the novel begins and almost becomes the yesterday that is forgotten as Toibin shares the story of Eilis Lacey in his own unsensational way. From the start the importance of her family permeates the book as seen in the simple opening sentence: "Eilis Lacey, sitting at the window of the upstairs living room in the house on Friary Street, noticed her sister walking briskly from work." (p 3)


Her sister, Rose, along with her mother are important in Eilis's young life as she experiences the opening and closing of doors. The way Eilis who appears almost stoic at times, yet is full of emotional turmoil inside, handles the major changes in her life is both touching and endearing. I often tell a close friend that I seldom love (or hate) a character in a book, but I grew to love Eilis as her character matured. For this is also an Irish-American bildungsroman with Eilis, encouraged by her sister, growing and learning and maturing into a woman who must face some difficult decisions.
Colm Toibin tells this story through the accumulation of small moments that gradually cohere to form a novel that deals with profound questions of love and life and death. He is at his best when he describes how difficult it is for Eilis to communicate her innermost desires with those closest to her. His abililty to describe the impact of both memories on the moment and the being of the other resonated with my own experience. Meditating on her family that she left in Ireland she muses: "they would never know her now. Maybe, she thought, they had never known her, any of them" (p 73)


The otherness of Eilis that permeates the novel arises not only from the isolation of an Irish girl in Brooklyn, but also from the tensions that develop as she tries to develop her own identity as a woman and face the choices she must make as one. It is in these choices, the lyrical beauty of Toibin's prose, and the impression that you are left with - a feeling that you have shared a part of the life of this young woman from Ireland - that make this a meaningful novel.

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The Great Mutiny

The Siege of Krishnapur 
by J.G. Farrell



“Things are not yet perfect, of course,’ sighed the Collector. ‘All the same, I should go so far as to say that in the long run a superior civilization such as ours is irresistible. By combining our advances in science and in morality we have so obviously found the best way of doing things. Truth cannot be resisted! Er, that’s to say, not successfully,’ the Collector added as a round shot struck the corner of the roof and toppled one of the pillars of the verandah”   ― J.G. Farrell


Set in India, 1857, during the Great Mutiny, this novel by J. G. Farrell is both a mighty work of historical fiction and a humane study of man. Farrell has the ability to create a world filled with flawed but often sympathetic characters and that sets this novel apart from typical historical fare. He also underlays the action both subtly and with irony depicting the contrast between the civilization of science and rationality, represented by the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its' Crystal Palace, with the culture of India as seen through the eyes of their British overlords; who at this time are from the British East India Company. It is this presentation of the attitudes of the British in India that makes this as much a challenging novel of ideas as it is an historical drama.

The action takes place during the period of unrest that leads to the end of the control of the Company with battle sequences during the siege by the Sepoys that are riveting, but do not detract from more abstract discussions of theology, philosophy and medicine. Ultimately the British in Krishnapur are faced with a battle for their lives against multiple attackers; disease in the form of Cholera, starvation and the Sepoys. All the while, the novel seems to overflow with wit, tenderness, satire and the whole of humanity. As told in a very readable style with both irony and humor by J. G. Farrell this is one of the best historical novels I have had the pleasure to read.

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Tragicomedy in Dublin

Juno and the Paycock 
by Seán O'Casey


 “Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.”  ― Seán O'Casey

Juno and the Paycock is the second in his "Dublin Trilogy" that also includes The Shadow of a Gunman and The Plough and the Stars. 

Juno is the goddess of household in Greek mythology. She has been presented on riding a chariot driven by peacocks. Juno’s husband was Jove, also known as Jupiter or Zeus, chief of Olympian gods. In O'Casey's play he stands for Paycock i.e. showy and vain. And as Juno’s husband Captain Boyle is a very irresponsible and an idle person. This is example of O’Casey’s brilliant ability to create caricature. On the other hand, Juno is called “Juno” because she was born in June, married in June and begot a child in June. Juno’s husband, Captain Boyle, has aristocratic airs about him. He hates manual work. He enjoys the company of courtiers like companion and of some sycophant who adores him in flattery and always praises him.

In the play Boyle’s family consists of four persons; Captain Boyle, Juno Boyle, their son “Johnny” and their daughter “Mary”. The son has been crippled in the war. The daughter works in a factory and the factory workers are on strike. She is very much active in trade union. The arc of the story sees the fortunes of Juno and her family soar with anticipation of an unexpected inheritance only to return to earth in the last half of the play when the inheritance disappears along with the crafty lawyer who duped them and also beguiled Mary. Mary's character has a depth that I enjoyed that was demonstrated by her interest in literature. She always had a book in her hand and was cleverly shown reading Ibsen, whom I am sure likely influenced O'Casey's art.

The background of this tragicomedy is based in the impact of the political strife in Ireland following the Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish War of Independence from 1919-1921, followed by the Irish Civil War. As the play opens son Johnny has already lost an arm in the struggles and he has betrayed Robbie Tancred, a neighbor and fellow comrade in the IRA, who was subsequently killed by Free State supporters; Johnny is afraid that he will be executed as punishment. In spite of this turmoil there were impressive comic moments carefully integrated to lighten the combined impact of poverty and war on the family. One typical moment has Mr. Boyle and his friend Joxer Daly discussing books and history. But their mock-intellectual discussion is interrupted by the voice of a coal vendor. Joxer flies out of the window at hearing the voice of Juno. But in this fun and ludicrous description there is a tinge of pathos as well. For example, at one place, Juno says to Boyle:
“Here, sit down an’ take your breakfast – it may be the last you’ll get, for I don’t know where the next is going to come from.”
Then when there is knocking at the door and Boyle asks Joxer to tuck this head out of the window and see who is there, Joxer replies:
“An, mebbe get a bullet in the kisser?”
Apparently, this remark may be funny but underneath there is a grim tragedy in it … the tragedy of Ireland destroyed and wasted by civil war. Boyle’s remark that:
“… the clergy always had too much power over the people in this unfortunate country.”
This again shows the grim situation of Ireland.
People like Captain Boyle think that if they work under them, they will be promoting the interest of the foreign exploiters. That’s why they degenerate even more.  Thus, the whole burden is on Juno. Juno runs the house. She also symbolizes “Juno” the goddess of household. She is a conventional wife. She has an interesting relationship with her husband. Since she is the earning hand of the family, she dominates and scolds her husband but as a good wife, she also considers her husband as a lord and wishes to serve him. All this creates a very interesting situation. In a way this is a feminist play that Juno struggles evenhandedly to serve her family. She suffers most of all. So, women are weakest of the weak and exploited of the exploits. One very great feature of the play is the realistic depiction of the slum life in Dublin.

I enjoyed The realistic presentation of tragic events leavened by comic moments. The play is considered one of the most effective plays in English literature. O'Casey's handling of both mythic and contemporary themes is matchless. This has heightened the tragic effects and made trivial family story a great tragedy. The play is very humorous and very tragic at same time. O’Casey is the master of creating humour in tragedy and tragedy in humour. In this art, he is very close to Shakespeare. and caricature make this a great play that has been popular in Ireland and elsewhere since its first production.

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Further Notes on Samuel Beckett

Collected Shorter Plays 

Embers

"That sound you hear is the sea. [Pause. Louder.]  I say that sound you hear is the sea, we are sitting on the strand. [Pause.]  I mention it because the sound is so strange, so unlike the sound of the sea, that if you didn't see what it was you wouldn't know what it was." (87)


My recent reading of Beckett's plays included Happy Days, Embers, and Not I, the last two of which are included in this excellent collection of his shorter plays. The length of these plays does not diminish their brilliance or depth of meaning.
In these short plays Beckett focused even more tightly on the inner experience of humanity. In Embers, a play written for the radio Beckett presents a man named Henry who shares his thoughts, both through attempting to tell a story and through memories of his past. With creation of characters his imagination presents these others, including his family, with an intensity that makes them seem alive. Yet it is their ghostly and ephemeral character that takes precedence. In the background the sound of the sea provides an ostinato that is haunting. Henry's imagination, however, weakens over the course of the short play. We first experience this as his story is interrupted more than once, yet he returns to it only with more and more difficulty. 
The memories of his past include scenes with his daughter and his wife, who may be present although her weak monotone voice suggests otherwise. "Not a sound" is a recurring phrase; but more important is the sound of dying embers. Henry tries to make us hear this but cannot project it:
"not a sound, only the fire, no flames now, embers. (Pause.) Embers. (Pause.) Shifting, lapsing, furtive like, a dreadful sound" (90). It is a sound (the title of the play) that we are denied. It represents death and extinction and to give it sound would be to give it life.
Beckett's prose has a serene, almost poetic quality and must have been extremely effective on a radio broadcast.


Happy Days 

"Oh you are going to talk to me today, this is going to be a happy day!  (Pause. Joy off.)  Another happy day." (23)

Happy Days presents a bleak landscape that is severed from anything like the real world. A woman, Winnie, is buried up to her waist in a mound at center stage. There is one other character, Willie, who for most of the play is hidden behind the mound, burrowing head first into it. However unrealistic this sounds there is a certain realism from  her handbag that contains some of the detritus of everyday life that plays an important role for Winnie. She is a seemingly irrepressibly cheerful woman whose incessant optimistic prattle provides a counterpoint to her situation. She tells a story of a man and woman (Shower or Cooker) who, passing by, speculate as to why she is there and why Willie does not dig her out. This emphasizes the oddness of her situation but does not explain it. The situation is particularly perplexing because the cause of her confinement is indeterminate. It is just as indeterminate as the situation of Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. In fact this indeterminacy is one of the overriding themes in the plays of Beckett.
The second act begins with her buried further up to her neck and, combined with her memories that suggest a previous life when she was not buried, present a degenerative condition that is inevitable.
The play is one of contrasts with the chief one being that between Winnie's optimism and the gravity of her situation. In other plays Beckett's characters have recognised the bleakness of their situation and while they do not always strive to face their existence they do not deny its awfulness. Winnie's cheerfulness includes maintaining normal daily rituals like brushing her teeth and cleaning her glasses. The contrast with these rituals and the abnormality of her situation may represent the essence of her need to distract herself from her terminal helplessness. In the second act she has even less to be cheerful about yet still refers to life as "a mercy". She says to Willie, who is trying to crawl up to her level, "Have another go, Willie, I'll cheer you on." (63) It reminds me of the famous quote from the end of Beckett's novel, The Unnamable, "You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on,"

Each of these plays further the poetic and comic world of Samuel Beckett though each present a bleak horizon that is delimited by indeterminacy.  Perhaps this is the indeterminacy of the post-modern world or rather, it is the nature of our home in the universe.

Transformations

First Friday Lecture


ON Friday afternoon last, May 2, I attended a lecture in the First Friday Lecture Series of The Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults.  The lecture was titled: 
"Two Transformations:  Isak Dinesen's / Gabriel Axel's Babettes's Feast and Willam Butler Yeats's "Among School Children""

That title is a mouthful and as the speaker, Claudia Traudt, admitted during a lecture on Robert Frost's poetry the previous weekend, she is wont to recommend longish titles for her talks that sometimes must be edited down to presentable form.  
This title alone spans a double discussion of a significant concept as presented in three separate works of art, a short story, a foreign film, and a famous poem by one of the greatest poets of the twentieth, or any, century.  In the printed introduction to the her talk she states:  "I will be speaking about stirrings, and about change, exploring two great works of art [three if you count, as I do, the film adaptation of the story as a separate work of art]: "  Among the aspects to be considered are transformations "in full spate;  transformation continuing -- consciously , and beyond cognition . . . some modes of transformation or change as the subject matter of the works," and more.

I will comment on my impressions from this wide-ranging presentation that, unfortunately, was somewhat truncated due to time considerations.  That this occurred is not surprising as the concept of transformations alone, as suggested by the length of the entry in the OED which Ms. Traudt referenced to commence her talk.  My own first thought turned to the transformative modes explored by Ovid in his great poem Metamorphoses.  But of the various types of transformation discussed in the entry I would point to the example drawn from Hamlet, (II,ii,5ff), where we find, "Something you have heard / Of Hamlet's transformation;"  In the lecture she referenced Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan where, in chapter six, he discusses the passions including imagination and the possibilities for transformation.  This reference led her to the epigraphs for the lecture which appear in the last lines of the Dinesen and Yeats works.

"Ah! How you will enchant the angels!"
"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

The first quotation, from Babette's Feast, refers to the expectation of Phillipa, for whom Babette had been cook for many years, that Babette would truly be among the angels due to her transformative impact on Phillipa and her sister and the others from the small village of Berlevaag who attended the feast she had prepared.  But to understand these transformations one must return to the beginning of Dinesen's story where the first paragraph introduces this town that in its fairy-tale like existence resembles nothing more than "a child's toy-town of little wooden pieces".  With the introduction of two elderly sisters, Martine and Phillipa, and the presentation of their stories as background to the advent of Babette, an escapee from the violence of the Paris Commune of 1871, we have the makings of a story of love gained and lost, memories, and a gradual realization that the passions of the inhabitants of this small town would be permanently changed by the presence of Babette.  In section V. titled "Still Life" Babette arrives and,
"Her mistresses at first had trembled a little . . . They silently agreed that the example of a good Lutheran life would be the best means of converting their servant.  In this way Babette's presence in the house became, so to say, a moral spur to its inhabitants."(pp 31-32)

A dozen years transpire and due in part to a fortuitous joining of Babette's good luck at winning a French lottery and the plans of the sisters to celebrate the birthday of their father, Babette is allowed to prepare a feast for them and their guests.  It is a feast that is transcendent in many ways and proves to be the culmination of the transformation of many lives.  This is the most beautiful section of the short story but by no means the only one in a story that demonstrates the ability of the process of art to reach an apotheosis for which we reserve words like enchantment and angelic. 

The depths of beauty in Dinesen's short story are matched and exceeded by those in Yeats's famous poem.  The remarks of Ms. Traudt on the poem were brief but suggested the momentous power that emanated from Yeats's ability to structure words in a way that blended public spectacle with private memories and led to an apotheosis in its final two stanzas.   Perhaps it would be best to end with some of these lines and suggest that, based both on my own experience reading these works and on the brilliant presentation on Friday last, that readers everywhere would benefit from their own exploration of these transformative works.   

"O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, 
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

-  W. B. Yeats, Among School Children

Second Act, Same Result

Waiting for Godot

by Samuel Beckett

-   further notes

As the second act of Waiting for Godot begins Vladimir and Estragon are in the same place they were at the beginning of the play.  That is it seems to be the same, a country road, a rock to sit upon, a tree.  But the tree has leaves that it did not have in the first act.  The pair enter into a discussion about several things but soon turn to examine the tree, and its leaves.  They cannot agree whether the leaves were there the day before or not.  Is it the same tree?  Are they in the same place?  Where were they the day before?  The play seems once again frozen in a world of bewilderment.  But perhaps this is a variation of what was called the "imponderable" by Ludwig Wittgenstein.  That is the discussion verges on what might be called imponderable evidence.  That is the notion discussed by Wittgenstein near the the end of the second part of his Philosophical Investigations when he talks about "imponderable evidence" as that which is not "documentary" and represents those things for which language has no words.  How can we tell if that tree was genuinely the same tree as yesterday or even that our memory of what happened yesterday is genuine?

This episode in the play is merely one example of the continuing aporia of existence for our hapless heroes.  They are lost in a world that, for moments, appears to be real and not unlike our own; but it quickly diverges into a different world where memory plays tricks or ceases to exist and words cross paths in ways that suggest the dramatis personae are unaware of each other.  Is Estragon beaten every night?  He says he is but Vladimir cannot make any sense out of it.  The upshot of these moments is summed up by Vladimir when he says:
"We wait.  We are bored.  No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it.  Good.  A diversion comes along and what do we do?  We let it go to waste.  Come let's get to work!  In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more in the midst of nothingness! [He broods.]" (p 71)

Pozzo and Lucky, a pair that visited in the first act, return.  But now, unlike his appearance in the first act,  Pozzo is blind and does not seem to recognize Vladimir and Estragon.  The discussion between them, Lucky is dumb (again unlike the first act when he had a soliloquy), is strange when it turns upon the question of time--as Vladimir asks Pozzo, "Since when?" (was Lucky dumb).  Pozzo responds furiously:  
"Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time!"  Upon reflection this seems not to be an unreasonable question.  Don't we all, at times, torment or at least frustrate ourselves with unnecessary concerns about time?  Pozzo continues, "It's abominable!  When!  When!  One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? [Calmer.] They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more." (p 80)

Pozzo and Lucky exit and, after a bit of dialogue with Estragon about whether Pozzo was  really blind or not (another imponderable), Vladimir seems to respond to Pozzo's remark,  "Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.  Down in the hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the forceps.  We have time to grow old.  The air is full of our cries.  But habit is a great deadener." (p 81)
The play ends the same way the first act ended with the visit of an unnamed boy with the message from Mr. Godot that he will not be coming today, but he will be coming tomorrow.  Vladimir and Estragon agree to wait for another day.  Estragon has the last words, "Yes, let's go. [They do not move.]" 


Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.  Grove Press, 1954 (1952).